Attribution: Photo by Michelle McEwen on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper and Phyllis in celebrating the magnificent thunderstorm that flashed and boomed over west Madison last evening. Its spectacular jagged slashing and eching rumbles as it dominated the landscape was a rare sensory embrace as the unseasonal storm moved in and over …
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Kickass and Car Experience
Attribution: Ford Model T, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper is fresh off one of those high-tech car experiences that discourages him from so much as opening the hood as corporate decisions and sophisticated techies make a big deal out of a simple dead battery. …
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Out of the Woodwork
Illustration by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter Ten years ago, the idea of a mob of American citizens attacking the U.S. Capitol Building would have dismissed as absurd, the stuff of apocalyptic fiction. In the 1950s, parents whose children’s lives had been saved by Dr. Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine would have been shocked and appalled …
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Kickass and Spring in February
Photo by Phyllis Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, passes along the keeper’s suggestion on what to do with a spring day that occurs early in February: 1. 2. 3. And when you have finished with 1, 2 and 3, do: 4. 5. 6. All of this will slow down the passage of …
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Kickass and Sigurd Olson
Attribution: Ville Kurki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper and Phyllis frequently compare notes about various outdoor adventures in their earlier lives, with Phyllis citing her hiking in all the national parks and camping on Isle Royal, and the keeper telling Canada fish stories and …
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Kickass and Weather by Republicans
Attribution: Photo by David Moum on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, notes, along with the keeper, that the strange unseasonably warm temperatures are due to a systemic responsibility slipup in which the turtle-like US justice system somehow ended up in charge of the weather, and the Repubs then filed a petition for summer. A prominent …
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The Pen in Hand Guide to the Movies
Artwork by Michael DiMilo The Power of Love: Film Review of Past Lives By Geoff Carter ★★★★☆ The mythos surrounding love, infatuation, and desire is woven throughout the fabric of human existence. Classic romances like Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Orpheus and Eurydice, or Wuthering Heights only begin to tell love’s grand story. This story is everywhere. It permeates …
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Kickass and Sharing
Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, agrees with the keeper that in all relationships, sharing is the key to tranquility, and a stunning example of that occurred when Phyllis went to considerable effort to concoct something called “Sheet-pan coconut shrimp and sweet potatoes” and the keeper dutifully and enthusiastically ate …
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Kickass Message to Boo
Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, seeks the keeper’s help in sending a message to Boo, a smallish schnauzer-type dog that once lived with the keeper and Phyllis on the Mazomanie hill and who could play the piano and dance, and who invalidated the keeper’s long standing custody arrangement and …
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Kickass and “My Shadow”
Attribution: Matthew Bowden www.digitallyrefreshing.com, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, hands it over to the keeper on this Groundhog Day of shadows, as he—the keeper, actually recalls from grade school days, the first few lines of Robert Louis Stevenson “My Shadow.” Impressed with the duration of such memory clutter, the …
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Unbalanced
Artwork by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter There’s an old adage that the balance of power in American politics swings like a pendulum, and that as times and the needs of the electorate change the pendulum will swing from left to right—or right to left, as the case may be, implying there is a balance …
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Kickass and the Groundhog’s Shadow
Attribution: Anthony Quintano from Mount Laurel, United States, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper passes along news that the Repub’s attempts to impeach the groundhog and replace it with a weasel has stalled as the entire weasel family—which includes the badger, serves notice that they …
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