Upcoming Events:
Thursday, 20 March, 9 am
Interview with Phil Nee, live on the WRCO morning show, Richland Center, Wis.
Thursday, 20 March, 5-7 pm
Tomah Chamber of Commerce Author Showcase, Three Bears Resort, 701 Yogi Circle, Tomah, Wis.
Thursday, 24 Apr., 6 pm
Book Talk, An Apartment in Paris, Waterloo Public Library, 625 N. Monroe St., Waterloo, Wis.
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The Weekly Screed
Stop saying that! by David Benjamin “Literally for Figuratively. ‘The stream was literally alive with fish.’ ‘His eloquence literally swept the audience from its feet.’ It is bad enough to exaggerate, but to affirm the truth of the exaggeration is intolerable.” — Ambrose Bierce, from Write It Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults MADISON,…
Read More...I wanna be Donny’s girl by David Benjamin “Dowd is rooting for the bear… She’ll criticize Trump, but ultimately, she’s OK with him, because he plays his gender role in what she has decreed to be an appropriate manner. He’s a boor, a rogue, a bully and a jerk, but… he’s a man, and that’s…
Read More...Pants police pulling for Carolina by David Benjamin “Lawmakers had focused… on the contention that it might allow men dressed as women to enter bathrooms and commit assaults. There is no evidence that has happened elsewhere, and it is not clear how the North Carolina regulation will be enforced…” — Jonathan Katz, The NY Times…
Read More...“I will bomb the shit out of ISIS…” by David Benjamin “I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation.” — William Tecumseh Sherman…
Read More...“… A new nation, conceived in lunacy…” by David Benjamin “There was a young lady named Bright, Whose speed was far faster than light. She went out one day, In a relative way, And returned the previous night.” — Reginald Buller MADISON, Wis. — Sometime last year, the Day of the Tachyon dawned. There is…
Read More...Pain in the morning by David Benjamin “Paris is always a good idea.” — Audrey Hepburn PARIS — Paris is not the city that never sleeps. It not only sleeps, hitting the sack by 5 a.m. at the very latest, but it has a hard time getting up. Paris is the city that rolls over…
Read More...The Packerscreed, by David Benjamin Who put the “mock” in all those mock drafts? PARIS — One of the perverse pleasures of being a hardcore fan, in any sport, is the discovery — as you get deeper into the intricacies of inside baseball, inside football, inside croquet, whatever — that the season never ends. As…
Read More...Franco lives by David Benjamin “We do not believe in government through the voting booth. The Spanish national will was never freely expressed through the ballot box. Spain has no foolish dreams.” ― Generalissimo Francisco Franco BARCELONA — Every time I come back to Spain, I get this vague inkling of a nation teetering perpetually…
Read More...The blurb culture by David Benjamin “Question: Does it turn out that social media is better at breaking things than at making things?” — Thomas L. Friedman PARIS — How would Einstein “tweet” the Theory of Relativity. I thought about this after reading Dennis Overbye’s lyrical New York Times story about physicists working with the…
Read More...It’s bean-bag season in America by David Benjamin “ ‘You’re not a politician,’ the man said. ‘You’re a public servant.’” — New Hampshire voter at a Donald Trump forum, 8 Feb. ‘16 “This is real retail politics, the way it’s supposed to be…” —N.H. voter Tom Lovely at the same forum PARIS — Tom Lovely…
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