There was once a time when I didn’t think much about coincidence and fate. I was the master of my own world and what happened happened because I made it happen. My will be done and all that. When I first quit drinking, I told a guy in an AA meeting that I didn’t want to go to AA meetings because I thought they would try to brainwash me. He said that maybe my brain needed washing. It did, as…
Not too long ago, everyone had three television channels. Our news was delivered to our front porch each morning rolled up and snapped tight with a rubber band. And radio disc jockeys were like Gods of the airwaves. It was easy to find consumers back then. Everything was predictable and stacked neatly in its places. Big media companies knew who we were, what we watched, what we read, and how we responded to specific kinds of messaging. Basically, they knew…
When I was a child, I remember driving through parts of Jacksonville where black people lived in wooden shacks on cinderblocks. It made me sad for them. Little did I know that they weren’t necessarily sad themselves. Yet, it didn’t feel right that people in general had to live like that. We weren’t rich. In fact, we lived in a black neighborhood for a while when my mother was single with two children. But later, after she remarried and we…
We didn’t win the lotto tonight. My wife bought three tickets and used various personal algorithms to pick the numbers. Though I don’t know why she just picked three. Three? “One for each of them,” she said referring to the children. “And one for us.” she added with a flip of her hair. I don’t play. Never did. I always gambled with my life, instead. Not that I’m against the idea of the lottery. Sure, it’s got its bad qualities…
Yes kids, believe it or not there was once a time when every important sporting event was available for free on regular television. Even Muhammad Ali heavyweight boxing matches. Free. On television. Of course we only had three channels back then (four, including PBS) and changing the channels meant getting up, walking over to the television and grabbing this big silver knob that you cranked around. Thump. Thump. Thump. I own the airwaves. You do too. We the people own…
I don’t tolerate bullshit well. I tend to close doors on dishonest people. It’s ironic, actually, since I once made a living by being dishonest. If you call that a living. But eventually I realized that the only thing I actually had in the world was my word. Sure, this sounds like something out of an episode of Bonanza, but it’s true. Not until I was stripped down, nay, leveled down to bare nothing, did I realize that I was…
