Originally posted June 15th, 2011
By Michael Konik
For writers serious and otherwise, Paris has always been a muse, the aesthetically inspiring place-feeling-energy that sends men and women of letters to their journal (or typewriter or, more likely these days, their keypad). We all have something to say about the world’s most beautfiul city — or at least we feel as though we ought to have something to say. It requires some measure of humility and equanimity to admit that everything one wishes one might write about Paris has indeed already be written. Much of it by a man named Gopnik.
Read his book Paris to the Moon. Then go there yourself.
Then see what’s left to be said. Which is not much.
Then read the book again and be glad that writers as great as Monsiuer Gopnik share their insights and poetry with the world.
Originally posted April 24th, 2011
By Michael Konik
As Thomas Jefferson did in the 1700s, let us set aside the Bible’s confounding melange of mythic mysticism, foggy mumbo-jumbo and confusing contradictions. Instead, let us concentrate on the principles that a dangerous Jew from ancient Nazareth was willing to die for. Let us behave less like the charlatans who organize their businesses around lost souls and more like Mr. Christ himself.
Let us put the Christ back in Christianity.
Love thy brother. Love thy sister. Take care of each other. Recognize the divine spirit in the humblest receptacle.
Originally posted March 27th, 2011
By Michael Konik
We hereby propose that speakers of English find a better way of expressing “showed some level of interest in me” than the current and regrettable “hit on me.”
Since having folks be interested in you is near-universal human desire, instead of disingenously refering to such instances as a form of assault — “hit on” — let us try “focused on.”
“I was in the airport lounge, and this guy, like old enough to be my dad, started focusing on me.”And eventually turned his attention elsewhere.
Originally posted January 30th, 2011
By Michael Konik
Tea Party “originalists,” John Boehner, Sarah Palin, and a large percentage of Americans who want less government and more “freedom,” profess an undying fealty to the Constitution of the United States of America. From its 4,400 words (written and agreed upon by the richest elites of the new Republic) stems the philosophical underpinnings of their “movement’s” ethos.
“All men are created equal.” “Of the people, by the people, for the people.” “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Awfully nice sentiments, these. And if you can find them in the Constitution — early drafts included — you’ve got a Pulitzer in your future. None of these phrases appear in our Constitution.
Like the Bible, which often says something quite different than what its adherents believe, the U.S. Constitution is widely and greatly misunderstood. Unlike the Bible, it’s short. So reading it, as House Republicans did to . . . → Read More: The U.S. Constitution Fetish
Originally posted January 8th, 2011
By Michael Konik
Having grown up in the Badger state, I feel well qualified to write sniggeringly about the place. I was there. I know what I’m talkin’ about, all right? It’s a great state beside a Great Lake, populated by generally nice folks.
It also has more taverns per square mile than just about anywhere, including Bavaria. Wisconsin is a state full of drinkers — who tend to be bullying and aggressive when they’re drunk. Which sort of explains (but doesn’t excuse) the behavior of a heretofore unamed Wisconsin employee of the TSA who, while protecting our collective security, detained and fined ($448) a passenger who was carrying a pipe that the overzealous TSA screener determined was “drug paraphenelia.”
The screener made this decision while sober (one presumes). But the bullying impulse was still there.
The screener was right about the pipe. It was for illegal drugs! The . . . → Read More: On Wisconsin: On, Wisconsin!
Originally posted November 14th, 2010
By Michael Konik
Bold prediction: Within a decade, a whole class of societal crusaders will develop and be recognized by the arbiters of culture. They will be called radicals, Luddites, crackpots. They’ll be dismissed and ridiculed. And they’ll be consistently marginalized by those with money and power. But they’ll be right.
Their main focus? Harnessing the astonishing energy and passion Americans seem to have for “protecting” innocent folks, sheilding them from dangerous temptations, such as recreational drugs. homosexual marriage, and filthy pornography — and anything else that seems to controvert “family values.” These new crusaders will apply that same misdirected evenagelical zeal into a movement to really protect Americans from corporate disease merchants.
Soon the crackpots will be calling for the dismantling and reorganization of the automotive industry and the factory food industry, two of the biggest sources of death and disease in our society.
Originally posted September 12th, 2010
By Michael Konik
I’ve been doing it all wrong, trying to get folks to talk about and desire my quirky, difficult-to-categorize books, trying to get the media’s attention.
Recent events have demonstrated the truth about how things really work. I’ve got a new book out in 4 weeks about marijuana. It’s called “Reefer Gladness,” and I want everyone to buy it and, more important, read and think about it. So, hey!, hello! Everyone! Check it out:
For Immediate Release: Author Michael Konik Pledges to Use DEA Chief’s Official Photo as Custom Toilet Paper; Says He “Won’t Stop Wiping” Until Pot is Legalized.
Friends and confidantes worry that my “irresponsible” actions could bring harm to marijuana activists working to pass the historic Proposition 19 referendum. They say there will be repercussions. But you know what? Heroes don’t worry about repercussions; they do what’s right, because, you know, it’s right.
Originally posted July 24th, 2010
By Michael Konik
Everybody is angry at the Gulf oil spill. Everybody is angry at BP. As an expression of that rage, and to punish the callous corporation for its carelessness, calls are circulating to boycott the company for a day, or a week or forever.
Boycotting BP would be mildly amusing, if utterly irrelevant. But anyone who is seriously considering “voting with the wallet” might consider a different target for his boycott: The family car.
If we really want to make a difference, if we really want to make sure something as horrible as the Gulf spill never happens again, we need to stop driving our automobiles. We need to make bicycles and feet and public conveyances the center of our lives, not cars. We need to use less oil.
Soon there won’t be any left. Let’s hope before that apocalyptic day comes we don’t suffer more environmental . . . → Read More: Boycott!
Originally posted June 26th, 2010
By Michael Konik
Everyone is late sometimes. Stuff happens.
Some of us, though, are always late. For everything. “Traffic” isn’t an adequate excuse when you’re late for events in your own home, or when you’re the headliner of a concert scheduled to hit at 8PM and you roll in, unflustered, at 8:45PM. There’s an underlying reason.
We propose three theories of chronic lateness:
1) Deeply Rooted Passive-Aggressive/Anal-Retentive Syndrome.Only by withholding that which is desired — the late person’s presence — can the child control and monopolize the attention of his parents. Or colleagues. Or audience members.
2) Incompetence. Some folks just can’t get it together. In any area of life. These folks are functionally dysfunctional, and their chronic lateness is a reflection of the chaos and disorganization in every other facet of their life.
3) Misanthropy. Blithely disregarding the consequences of one’s tardiness is a sign of the profound disregard and contempt for . . . → Read More: Three Theories on Chronic Lateness
“I welcome that debate.” — President Barack Obama, reacting to the disclosure of a secret domestic surveillance program operating under his watch.
“I welcome that debate,” I said to my wife. She had just discovered that I’d been having — actually, that I am currently having and intend to continue having — an affair with one of the hot flexible chicks in my yoga class.
Some bitter friend of my wife’s knows the girl I’ve…
We’re like every other patriotic American: when our beloved country is under attack, as it is at this very moment and every other moment of every day, we’re delighted to sacrifice our constitutional rights.
Whatever gets the job done, that’s our view. And if beating Islamic terrorists means being spied…
The time we’re living in is being called the Technology Revolution. It’s given us personal computers and cell phones and devices that, we all agree, make our lives altogether better. Everything is more efficient, more connected. Things can be ordered to appear at your door, getting lost in your car is…
Luckily for Barack Obama, news of improper shenanigans at the IRS stole attention from the week’s biggest story: that the President’s Justice Department had secretly seized call information from at least 20 phone lines belonging to Associated Press reporters, including personal cell phones and the main switchboard of the AP’s…
News comes from Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, that a disastrous fire swept through a garment factory there, killing eight people. A factory fire in November killed more than 100.
The garment industry in Bangladesh is euphemistically called “loosely regulated,” so, regrettably, these things (fires and so forth) tend…
Aside from the usual side-effects of hypnotic music — tapping toes, pumping heads, swaying shoulders — one of the interesting results of listening to the Cambodian Space Project is the onset of what feels vaguely like a psychoactive hallucination. They’ve got a delightful weirdness factor (at least to unseasoned Western ears). You feel transported. But [...]
