THEY STRIPPED ME NAKED AND PARADED ME IN FRONT OF BOYS NO OLDER THAN HIM. DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT SHAME! Besides — Eppie continued, gathering herself — seeing an old woman’s bosoms isn’t going to deform his morals, not with the way people carry on these days. Ach. I…

As a youngster in the Age of Disney, cross-legged on the floor, Fess Parker on the idiot box, swinging Ol’ Betsy like a Louisville Slugger, single-handedly fending off hordes of advancing soldats — cowardly jackals slinking in on the injured Lion of the West — the story of the Alamo…

I’m in Portland, Maine’s, Monument Square with my special tape measure, the one where 1 foot = $100,000. I draw an X on the cobblestones, from which I mark off 1-foot/$100K increments. Now I invite you to stand on the line that best fits your personal finances: if you have…

Normally Honey Bunch doesn’t mind if I stay up to read, but tonight she’s having a rough time of it, snorting, tossing — and not just the regular kind, but whole-body flops, like a sturgeon flushing its gills. …

You know that soup I made the other week? When we get home I’m going to unthaw some for dinner.

Recruiter: Guess what: your ASVAB’s qualify you to be a Nuke! Me: Yay! Wait — is that good? Recruiter: Oh, better than good. Now the only question is, what kind of Nuke? You could be a Reactor Operator, sitting on your ass in a quiet, air conditioned, room, pressing buttons…

In 1968, I got teargassed and Mace’d rioting at the Democratic National Convention. In 1971, as threadbare refugees from Poland, Vietnam, and the former USSR started arriving in my old Chicago neighborhood, and I learned first hand of life — if you can call it that — in the People’s…

The nineteenth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center is almost upon us, and if experience is any guide, wherever you go on line, you’ll hear “9/11 Truthers” (my synecdoche for all 9/11 conspiracy theorists) shrieking that there’s “no way” a mere jetliner could’ve brought down a tower…

My cat got an “F” in Philosophy