The Weekly Screed

You want to be free? How much you got?

By David Benjamin | 12/20/2024 | Comments Off on You want to be free? How much you got?

by David Benjamin “… The president-elect has 96.2 million followers on X, while Mr. Musk has 207.9 million. (Mr. Musk is also far richer than Mr. Trump. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he is worth $458 billion, while the president-elect is worth a mere $6.61 billion.)…” — NY Times, 19 Dec. MADISON, Wis.—Once, one…

Read More...

Where’s Santa?

By David Benjamin | 12/11/2024 | Comments Off on Where’s Santa?

by David Benjamin We gotta send Santa Claus back to the Rescue Mission. Christmas don’t make it no more. Don’t you know that murder and destruction Scream the toys in every store… — Frank Zappa Ralphie was too old to believe in Santa Claus but zero hour was approaching and he couldn’t afford to risk…

Read More...

Invasion of the Hermaphrodites!

By David Benjamin | 12/03/2024 | Comments Off on Invasion of the Hermaphrodites!

by David Benjamin “It was difficult for me to see the relationship between public morals and public toilets, as to me those facilities had been more a matter of convenience than of sex.” —Christine Jorgensen MADISON, Wis.—Come here once. Follow me into the boys’ room. I know, it’s a scary place—where dead-end kids go to…

Read More...

Honing in on the haphazard homonym

By David Benjamin | 11/22/2024 | Comments Off on Honing in on the haphazard homonym

by David Benjamin “When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending…

Read More...

Our so-what majority

By David Benjamin | 11/14/2024 | Comments Off on Our so-what majority

by David Benjamin “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” —Pogo MADISON, Wis.—It might not seem evident to the naked psyche, but the MAGA army is in retreat. Its soldiers are, after all, a cult whose god is now a lame duck. The Capitol Hill vandals have one last tantrum to throw—call it…

Read More...

Movies to warm your cockles by

By David Benjamin | 11/08/2024 | Comments Off on Movies to warm your cockles by

by David Benjamin “Sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass everyday, but, mister, you ain’t seen a ray of light since you got here.” — Opal Fleener MADISON, Wis.— America is a nation of front-runners. There’s ample evidence of this in the fact that, for example, the most-bought baseball cap every year since before…

Read More...

First thing we do, we kill all the reporters

By David Benjamin | 10/30/2024 | Comments Off on First thing we do, we kill all the reporters

by David Benjamin “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you.” —Kash Patel, Trump campaign consultant “The worst thing we can do, the absolute worst, is to do nothing.” —Fritz Gerlich MADISON, Wis.—They came…

Read More...

The art of the scavenge

By David Benjamin | 10/24/2024 | Comments Off on The art of the scavenge

by David Benjamin “Workin’ on the railroad, a dollar and a dime a day, “Give my woman the dollar, and throw the dime away … ” — Josh White MADISON, Wis.—Kids need money. I’m not sure how kids get it these days. Maybe they just ask Mom and Dad, as payment for playing Little League…

Read More...

Pretty little heads … and other parts

By David Benjamin | 10/18/2024 | Comments Off on Pretty little heads … and other parts

by David Benjamin “Curiosity, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.” ―Ambrose Bierce MADISON, Wis.—There must be studies about this. Trouble is, I haven’t seen any. But there…

Read More...

The Paris welcome

By David Benjamin | 10/11/2024 | Comments Off on The Paris welcome

by David Benjamin “Paris is the city of joy where the naive are taken by the neck and blackened on the scaffold, and where villains hold all sway … Purse-cutters and knifemen lurk in the dark.” ―François Villon PARIS—Neither Hotlips nor I were born here, or anywhere nearby, nor do we hold the precious carte…

Read More...