–Illustration by James Dankert Here’s a new wrinkle in the gray, clanging days before Christmas: Uncle Jumbo has been playing miserable pet store Santa Claus, wrestling squirming cats and dogs and even the occasional bird or lizard in my lap while a wrinkled and alcoholic little temp-pool elf tries to snap photos for somebody’s sad … Read more
Those soft, colored lights that make such a comfortable compromise –almost a real peace– with the darkness. The shiny glass bulbs and talismans that have the power to both cradle light and build tiny fires from memories that are almost lost. The warmth from those fires is powerful out of all proportion: a window, a … Read more
—Irwin Norling My grandfather played Santa Claus for more than twenty years, purely, I liked to believe, out of the goodness of his heart. His annual ritual was completely a volunteer effort and a solo undertaking. This was in a small town in the Midwest, and every November my grandfather would build a tiny candy-striped … Read more
There were increasingly more mysteries than he could get his head around. The puzzle of texture, pattern, and repetition. The idiot wonder prompted by even the most prosaic mosaic or randomly occurring stain. Prompts, responses, and resolute silences from the interior continent. Sounds of no clear origin. Desires of no clear etc. Desires. Desire. The … Read more
It has long been rumored that somewhere in a remote part of the world there survive at least a few remnants of a pack of laughing dogs. The existence of these dogs has never been conclusively proved (or so I am told), but what is purported to be the distant, haunting sound of their hysterical, … Read more
I feel like I need to explain myself. The aliens drilled a hole in my soft palate and inserted an energy depleter that uses my saliva to deliver a continuous feed of a stupefying agent into my bloodstream. Do you feel this rough spot behind my left ear? That’s an even more sophisticated negative energy … Read more
Every Christmas when I was a child much of my extended family would gather at my grandparents’ farm outside a small town in Illinois. We’d all trek there from various points around the Midwest. My own family would usually arrive early in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, and many of my other aunts and uncles … Read more
A lot of folks around town thought there was something special about Richard Kunkel. Big things were expected of that poor fellow. Certainly no one believed that such a fine, bright boy as Richard Kunkel would stick around a tiny little jerkwater village like ours for the rest of his life. Many assumed Kunkel would … Read more
1) The Critters, Mr. Dieingly Sad On the surface a simple little song with a borrowed melody (from Paul Williams, no less), The Critters’ masterpiece takes a turn down a very dark road about mid-song, and the next minute-and-a-half is a pure, harrowing cage match with Satan. No surprise: Satan wins, and before he’s done … Read more