Upcoming Events:
Wednesday, 8 July, noon - Book Talk, An Apartment in Paris, Mount Horeb Rotary Club, Mount Horeb, Wisconsin
Monday, 13 July, 11:15 am - Book Talk, An Apartment in Paris, Verona Community Center, 108 Paoli Street, Verona, Wisconsin
Tuesday, 14 July, 7 pm - A Dialog on Writing with Dave Wood, Whitehall Public Library, 18560 Scranton Street, Whitehall, Wisconsin.
The Weekly Screed
FRIDAY, MARCH 20, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#713) The ‘right to work’ for nothing by David Benjamin “You got me workin’, boss man, /Workin’ ‘round the clock. /I want a little drink of water, /But you won’t let Jimmy stop…” — Jimmy Reed MADISON, Wis. — The relationship has rarely been amicable between dedicated American…
THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#712) “You wanna make somethin’ of it?” by David Benjamin MADISON, Wis. — Unlike Ernest Hemingway, Nelson Algren and Opie Taylor, I didn’t engage in a whole lot of pugilism in my school days. Every normal kid in the combative 1950’s had ample opportunity to get beaten into…
SATURDAY, MARCH 7, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#711) A snatch of trade-show jazz by David Benjamin BARCELONA — If it’s March, it must be the Mobile World Congress (MWC). January was Vegas and CES. Been to IFA, NAB, CATV, DVB (in Dublin, with whiskey tastings and dog races — loved that), Electronica, CeBit (in Hanover,…
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#710) Overheard at an ISIS barbecue by David Benjamin SOMEWHERE IN SYRIA — A trio of Islamists — Ahmed, Mohammed and Kurlijo — gathered round a campfire, a Christian baby roasting on a spit. One says, “Ah, I love the smell of barbecued infidel in the morning.” “It’s…
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#709) The lost Nazi by David Benjamin PARIS — The report is sketchy, as usual. A Parisian living somewhere on the Left Bank went to his cave, or wine cellar, to fetch a bottle. He discerned there a furtive figure — a shadow, really. It flickered across the…
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#708) My car, the mother… board by David Benjamin PARIS — Over the past few months, I’ve been conducting an informal survey, asking friends and strangers this question: “What’s the best car ever made?” My dad’s choice was a ’55 Chevrolet Bel Air in which he used to…
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#707) I was Charlie by David Benjamin MADISON, Wis. — MADISON, Wis. — Considering the travesty at Charlie Hebdo this month, you might think that the worst thing that could happen to a satirist is writing (or drawing) stuff that gets him killed. This ain’t necessarily so. Whether…
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#706) The thing is… by David Benjamin “The thing is to put a motor in yourself.” — Frank Zappa LAS VEGAS — According to all the banners, keynote speakers and shameless self-promoters at this year’s Consumer Electronics Saturnalia (CES), the thing is the “Internet of Things.” The very…
SUNDAY, JANUARY 18, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#705) An interactive love story for the third millenium by David Benjamin LAS VEGAS — Fifteen years ago, just before the Consumer Electronics Show, Cisco Systems announced a deal with Whirlpool “to jointly build networked appliances, such as washing machines that can automatically detect mechanical problems and summon…
FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 2015 The Weekly Screed (#704) My mother, the raised ranch with detached garage by David Benjamin LAS VEGAS — In the area of technology, the popular media tend to be more credulous than when they cover analog news like evolution, abortion and Big Bang cosmology. One of the whizbang wonders regularly revived…