Women who say they prefer chocolate to sex either have bad sex lives or exceptionally great chocolate.
Male nipples simultaneously disprove evolution and intelligent design.
Marriage is the most reliable curative for hopelessly incurable romantics.
People who frequently “need to vent” to friends usually have previously failed to say what they really mean to those who inspired their need to vent.
Behind every vast fortune is a master criminal calling himself something else.
Those who employ the locution “eats like a bird” do not have backyard bird feeders in need of daily re-filling.
The most dangerous people are those who dedicate their lives to protecting people from themselves.
Sportscasters who frequently use the phrase “sacrifice his body” don’t understand what the word sacrifice means.
Professional athletes are paid handsomely not for their ability to throw or kick a ball, but for their . . . → Read More: Aphorisms, Epigrams, and Such
Originally posted April 22nd, 2012
By Michael Konik
If you’re reading this essay on MichaelKonik.com, you know that this is a reliable place to find “me,” the me who shares his ideas with the world, whether or not any part of the world is interested. This is where I unilaterally invade my privacy, allowing strangers to read my mind, exposing my beliefs and my doubts, keeping very little secret. You want to know what I think about something? It’s pretty easy to know. My Thoughts are even searchable. Hiding is almost impossible when you’re trying to be unflinchingly honest.
Yet if you’re looking for me on Facebook, I’m not there.
There’s an official Michael Konik Author page, which serves as a publishing conduit for my Thoughts. Dozens – dozens! – of people “like” it. Facebook also offers several Michael Konik Community pages, the equivalent of digital flypaper, where people who are looking for me on . . . → Read More: Free to Be Disconnected
Originally posted April 1st, 2012
By Michael Konik
Braving odds of 176 million-to-1, scores of otherwise sensible Americans, including several of our intelligent friends, were infected with Lottery Fever this past week, standing in lines of up to three hours to buy a ticket at “lucky” liquor stores and gas stations.
The prospect of a $640 million jackpot and the assurance that some of the money would go to our schools made throwing away hard-earned wages seem like an altogether fun thing to do. At $1 a pop, the lottery is a cheap fantasy while it lasts.
Like any fixed-odds proposition, a category that includes almost every casino game, including slot and poker machines, roulette, craps, and baccarat, lotteries are unbeatable. There’s no such thing as a professional lottery player; it’s not a viable way to end up with more than you started with. Sure, someone has to “win” the Mega Millions or Powerball, or . . . → Read More: Lotteries, Poker, and Other People’s Money
Originally posted March 25th, 2012
By Michael Konik
Outrageous. Horrifying. Disgusting.
These were some of the adjectives hurled in the press when news broke that the former world champions of football, the New Orleans Saints, for years had instituted a bounty system that rewarded their players for knocking opponents out the game. Players contributed to an in-house pool and collected $1,000-$1,500 when they scored a knockout. Hitting someone so hard that they required a stretcher or motorized cart to be removed from the field earned a special commendation.
The National Football League, presenters of America’s favorite gladiatorial spectacle, handed down sentences to the malefactors. The General Manager and an assistant coach were suspended without pay for about half the upcoming season. The head coach, Sean Payton, was banned for the entire year. And in a maneuver eerily reminiscent of the Soviet Gulag, the former defensive coordinator and alleged mastermind of the bounty program, Greg Williams, . . . → Read More: Violence Voyeurism
Originally posted March 11th, 2012
By Michael Konik
If you’re an artist, or have an artistic impulse, or care deeply about art, you probably experience the kind of quiet despair that I find in many of my jazz musician friends, my poet friends, my painter friends, and frequently from myself. Yes, it’s heartbreaking to be part of a culture that finds the work that we do increasingly irrelevant and of little worth (at least in the marketplace sense). It’s depressing to be so astonishingly good at something and yet so relatively uncelebrated and unappreciated. But you must never stop. We — all of us who care in varying degrees about stuff other than acquiring and consuming — are out there. We’re reading, and listening, and looking, and cogitating, and arguing, and questioning, and loving. We can’t be co-opted. We’re too smart and too aware. We’re not going anywhere. And we need you, you specifically, with . . . → Read More: Encouraging Words for Despairing Artists
Originally posted March 4th, 2012
By Michael Konik
After reading Adam Gopnik’s masterful examination of the American prison system in a recent issue of the New Yorker, in which he examines our fetishistic compulsion to warehouse millions of errant citizens in prisons, it’s easy to conclude that our conception of “cruel and unusual punishment” needs reconsideration. Gopnik burrows through the rotten veneer of propriety that allows us to convince ourselves that for-profit “correctional facilities” are a good idea. He argues persuasively that incarcerating drug offenders is a horrible idea. And he explains why our obsession with procedural correctness is often antithetical to our goal of universal justice.
He also makes us understand what it must be like to be confined to a cage. Not nice.
Compared to solitary confinement and the torturous sensory deprivations that usually accompany a term in the brig, the death penalty seems vastly preferable, if not altogether . . . → Read More: Cages
Originally posted January 29th, 2012
By Michael Konik
At the Super Bowl this Sunday, when most of America will gather to watch our national character accurately represented by a brutal, war-like game (football), controlled by a ruthless, cartel-like corporation (the NFL), selling us mostly disposable, harmful products (automobiles, alcohol, online gambling), you’re almost certain to see an expensive (and weirdly effective) propaganda campaign from the United States Military.
Watch when former American Idol Kelly Clarkson, singing our National Anthem, an ode to steadfastness in the face of bloody battles, belts out the alternate (but compulsory for pop singers) high notes on the word “free.” Although the skies over Indianapolis won’t be visible to the combatants and their audience in the stadium – it’s a roofless dome – some symbol of America’s military mightiness (a “stealth” bomber, a squadron of fighter jets in close formation, Taliban-killing drones) will fly over the site with an intimidating roar. . . . → Read More: Heroic Murderers
Originally posted January 22nd, 2012
By Michael Konik
With apologies (and mad props) to Ambrose Bierce, we offer a few selections from our upcoming blockbuster The New Devil’s Dictionary: Tellin’ it Like it Is, Ya’ll! We invite expressions of gratitude, outrage, derision, glee, dismay, and insight to be entered as comments below, or sent to via registered and insured mail to the executors of the Bierce estate.
“Morality”: What one group of people invokes when another group of people is having too much fun.
“Soy Sauce”: Tar-colored liquid salt.
“Phallacy”: The mistaken belief that size doesn’t matter.
“E-Trade”: America’s most popular online casino.
“Jews; i.e. ‘The Chosen People’”: A tribe of desert dwellers who figured out the ideal way — “God likes us the best!” — to alienate and enrage all other tribes.
“National Football League”: Proof that free markets are nice, but monopolies are nicer.
Originally posted December 4th, 2011
By Michael Konik
Last week I experienced my first ride inside the back of an ambulance rushing to a hospital emergency room. The sirens wailed while paramedics monitored my vital signs and called out important-sounding numbers. I looked up from the gurney I was attached to, noting the oxygen valve on the ceiling, the lights, the latched compartments containing the tools of triage, and since I get motion sickness when traveling backwards I concentrated on breathing steadily and not vomiting. I heard the beeping of an EKG monitor and the crackling of a two-way radio and felt the pressure of a plastic mask over my mouth and on the bridge of my nose.
This is what many people see before they die, I realized: the inside of a speeding ambulance filled with mustachioed firemen-paramedics.
Although I felt terrible, I was almost certain I wasn’t dying. I had passed out – . . . → Read More: Near Death on Two Wheels
Originally posted November 20th, 2011
By Michael Konik
Mr. Darwin has some ‘splaining to do.
Our species, which has managed to rise to the top of the food chain, conquer and colonize every region of the planet we care to inhabit, and control the fate of almost every other species unlucky enough to exist contemporaneously with humankind, seems to be partially exempt from the Theory of Evolution.
Sure, our spectacular advances in technology appear to be compelling evidence that we’re making progress, “improving” our existence by applying our superior intelligence to complicated problems that other creatures can’t solve. Want an iPad, Senor Gerbil? You might want to grow some thumbs! Life expectancy is longer – and by many measures healthier and altogether “better” (less violent, less frightening) than, say, 10,000 years ago.
But what kind of species is powerful enough to unilaterally destroy its environment, smart enough to understand the ramifications of its decisions, and . . . → Read More: Evolutionary Doubts
We're really sorry about our most recent trading loss. People will say we require more oversight, and, in this case, maybe they're right. It shouldn't have happened, and we'll take steps to make sure it doesn't happen for a third time.
The $4,000 or so ($4,882) of your money that we failed to bring back from our annual company trip to Hollywood Park Racetrack and Casino will in... Read More-->
If you’re reading this essay on MichaelKonik.com, you know that this is a reliable place to find “me,” the me who shares his ideas with the world, whether or not any part of the world is interested. This is where I unilaterally invade my privacy, allowing strangers...
North Korea is launching rockets, Syria is slaughtering its citizens, and the Filipino community is organizing a massive get-out-the-vote campaign for a crucial election (not for something boring and unimportant like a public office but a cause that’s got folks passionately engaged: the American Idol finals). So...
Sometimes our chaotic, unknowable, seemingly random Universe arranges itself with perfect symmetry. In these moments of bracing clarity, authored by a Creator (in whatever guise or nomenclature you prefer) whose sense of irony is matched only by her/his/its sense of wicked humor, our innate foolishness and learned...
Poet Robert Pinsky. Pianist Laurence Hobgood. Text, music, and the moment -- what we hear on the new POEMJAZZ recording is two giant artists making something greater than the sum of its parts. While Pinsky recites his lovely words with his unlovely (but weirdly attractive) voice, Hobgood, the longtime arranger and accompanist [...]
Violence Voyeurism
By Michael Konik
Outrageous. Horrifying. Disgusting.
These were some of the adjectives hurled in the press when news broke that the former world champions of football, the New Orleans Saints, for years had instituted a bounty system that rewarded their players for knocking opponents out the game. Players contributed to an in-house pool and collected $1,000-$1,500 when they scored a knockout. Hitting someone so hard that they required a stretcher or motorized cart to be removed from the field earned a special commendation.
The National Football League, presenters of America’s favorite gladiatorial spectacle, handed down sentences to the malefactors. The General Manager and an assistant coach were suspended without pay for about half the upcoming season. The head coach, Sean Payton, was banned for the entire year. And in a maneuver eerily reminiscent of the Soviet Gulag, the former defensive coordinator and alleged mastermind of the bounty program, Greg Williams, . . . → Read More: Violence Voyeurism