Ever since touring the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York a couple of years ago, something has been bugging me and it has to do with those terracotta jugs from ancient Rome, ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, ancient Kansas City. Maybe in Kansas City’s case, that should read ancient wine bottles, and there weren’t any […] Read more
Stories by Michael Gillgannon
Politicianese 101
I see that the U.S.ians are already talking about the 2016 election, three years and seven months before it happens. Well, Wolf Blitzer is at any rate. (Will Hillary or won’t she? Who is left for the Republicans to offend? What will Obama’s legacy be? That kind of thing.) That gets me thinking about politics. […] Read more
Tweeple use twadgets to grouptweet
The texting and Twitter world is here, and while you might expect these lines to be a diatribe against the practice, that isn’t going to happen. I have nothing against it. Far from it. It continues in the great tradition of painting on cave walls: mastodon big, stomp stomp, me chase, throw spear, mastodon chase, […] Read more
Potholes rate bad or worse
The town I live in has a street assessment program, where trained street assessment personnel fan out along the streets and byways, lanes and thoroughfares, avenues and boulevards and — you guessed it — assess them according to their need for repair. They all take the same training, so theoretically they should all come up […] Read more
The good old days aren’t always the good old days
My favourite story in Western People wasn’t even a story in Western People. Not exactly. It was a letter to the editor (me), but the little magazine didn’t publish letters to the editor. It was little, you see. I believe I already said that. Anyway, this letter arrived one fine day from a gentleman in […] Read more
Do violent video games spawn mass murderers?
A while back, I was getting beat up all the time. Then I began to study video fighting games in earnest. Now when my arch enemy turns into water, slides over to me, then refreezes and gives me an uppercut, I retaliate with my Heaven’s Drop super move, just to soften him up before wielding […] Read more
Helping those down and out
One thing recent times have created in abundance is consultants. But they go back a long way. A long way. In the Old Testament, Abiathar was the son of Ahimelech, a priest. He fled during a slaughter of priests under King Saul and became a religious consultant to David, who at the time was an […] Read more
With all this blogging going on, has writing gone to the dogs?
Well, that’s depressing. I have a blog on a site called WordPress, where every day there is a blurb along the lines of: “The best of 329,820 bloggers, 754,441 new posts, 467,400 comments, & 156,067,071 words posted today on WordPress.com.” One hundred fifty-six million, sixty-seven thousand and seventy-one words. In one day. That might be […] Read more
All work, no play …
Got a new video game. Put it in the PlayStation game hole. (Didn’t Homer Simpson call his garage a car hole?) A message appears: The system software of your PS3 system is version 3.60. To start, you must update to version 3.70 or later. Do you want to update now? Well, not really, but since […] Read more
Editorial Notebook
Goodbye Dryden, and that goalie too Sagacious. Unflappable. Laconic. Witty. Genteel. Jocose. Trustworthy. Balding. All these words and more describe Keith Dryden the newspaper person – and perhaps also that other Dryden, the goalie – but particularly the newspaper person, whose last Fringe column appears this week in a space nearby. Keith (he lets me […] Read more
