Stearns, Junius Brutus, 1810-1885, artist, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Reply to The Oppression Olympics Featuring The Fabulous Dadbots: Dave S., Mark M., Mark O., Dennis C., Paul C., and Geoff Carter Mark, You might have titled this bot essay, The Victimhood Olympics. There must have been a theater director mass shaming recently about Native American …
Read
Kickass Takes on Football
B, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, agrees with the keeper that the saturation of football in American culture is little improvement over the collective coliseum days of Rome, and in some respects is justifiably compared to dog and cock fighting as organized spectator sports. Structured by billionaire overlord …
Read
Kickass and Young Storytellers
Attribution: קלאופטרה, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, notes that while the keeper was a professional storyteller for decades, he found himself at a disadvantage recently in a storytelling session with Tyler and Trevor, a couple of very young great grandsons. It was one of those rare and wonderful occasions …
Read
The Pen in Hand Guide to the Movies: Film Review of The Banshees of Inisherin
Farrell and Gleeson at Film Event Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons Friendly Fire: A Film Review of The Banshees of Inisherin By Geoff Carter One of the staples of the movie industry is the “buddy film” in which two friends—usually guys—share adventures, tribulations, and even (in a few rare cases) some emotionality. We can …
Read
Happy New Year from The Pen in Hand Blog!!
Pavel Ševela, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Kickass and TREESON the Book
Photo by Phyllis Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, assists the keeper and Phyllis in stepping into 2023 as if they owned it. The daily miracle of their being together at this juncture in their lives is not taken for granted, nor is their plain old presence on this flat earth. The first day …
Read
The Pen in Hand’s Guide to the Movies: Ringing in the New Year
Maasaak, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (Originally posted in December, 2020) By Geoff Carter We thought we had it made after getting out of 2020, but this has been another hard year—remembering everything that happened is painful—but we have to; if we do not remember, we’ll be doomed to repeat the same mistakes yet again. …
Read
Kickass and Youthful Sound
See page for author, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports on a belated clan Christmas gathering focused around Mike’s chili and Phyllis fruitcake during which the Clan dog Boo made an authoritative territorial statement and a bevy of young cousins shook Vista West out of its vintage-age slumber with …
Read
Kickass and New Year’s Resolves
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash Kickass, the doorstop dog, sympathizes with the keeper over his New Year’s resolution dilemma in that after a long life of multiple, long-standing character flaws that demanded annual resolution-making, the keeper has finally emerged as a perfect human being, whereby making any New Year’s resolutions would be extraneous and ridiculous. The best …
Read
Kickass and Crow Rejection
Photo by Niklas Veenhuis on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, passes on the keeper’s mental jousting as he strives to find something positive in most things, even including the abject rejection by the neighborhood crows who have not done so much as a fly-over of the balcony where for most of the past year there …
Read
2022: A Year of Extremes
Photo by Planet Volumes on Unsplash By Geoff Carter Last week, just before Christmas, we were bombarded with news of a possible “cyclone bomb”, a megablizzard that could bring record snowfall, dangerous windchill temperatures, and hazardous travel conditions. We were warned. Winter Storm Eliot was bearing down on us. And, for some parts of the country, it was …
Read
Kickass and Phyllis Appointments
Photo by Phyllis Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, announces that the keeper will not be posting any of his nonsense and instead is passing along one of Phyllis’s phone-photos of this morning’s sunrise as they drove to a dental appointment in Waunakee. The early morning appointment was a “fit-in” and was much more …
Read