Yesterday, my wife reached the limit of her patience and dragged me out to shop for new clothes.
She thinks I dress like a dumpy old man…which I do because, well, because I am a dumpy old man. Personally, I never look at my ass–ever–so if my pants are baggy in the rear, it’s of little consequence to me. My wife, as it turns out, looks at my ass a lot, and has strong opinions on what I use to cover it and now, tired of me covering my backside with enough cloth to rig a small sailboat, she was determined to change the status quo that I’d so assiduously preserved.
With this as preamble, I got stuffed in the car and trundled off on a clothes-shopping expedition. I had little say in the matter, other than to unequivocally refuse to set foot in Target. My experiences there have been…unpleasant, exceeded only by dim, nightmarish memories of similar expeditions to K-Mart. She could drive up to the door of Target, but I knew she was physically unable to drag me inside.
So she took me to Kohl’s. (more…)
To be honest, I started this blog because I want your money. That’s not the only reason, but it’s definitely in the mix.
n time, he knew, his transgression would be forgiven (though not forgotten, for during their thirty tumultuous years, his wife had proven the tenacious nature of her memory when it came to remembered wrongs), but oh, in those first raw moments when his sleeping, animal mind awoke to action, its raging mouth spewing vowel-filled vomit and its sharp-clawed arms flailing the air with a strength that quite overwhelmed his usually reasonable demeanor, while his shrieking brain was infused by a single thought–Damn you!–and his only goal was to win, to beat down any who had the stupefying arrogance to question his authority, he was transformed by the heat of his frustration and anger from his normal self into a god–not the loving God of Creation, possessed of boundless serenity and knowledge, but one of the ancient gods, in whom everything human was magnified and every act saturated with earthly emotion–and though the rational part of his mind recoiled at the anguish he sculpted, his chiseled words striking her features with cold, steely precision, he could not suppress (and in truth, actually reveled in) the pounding exultation he felt as each tear tracked down her wizened cheek, a flood of salt water pressed from a frozen stone.
The spruce stood tall, a shadowed cone against the cold and dawning morn, a giant sentinel overlooking the crossroads along my route to work. The bus rocked like a ship in rough seas as it rattled into the intersection, fatigued metal complaining, whirring heater blasting air like a blow-dryer, but as we passed the ancient spruce, above the din, I heard music.
When I was a child, by far the worst verdict my parents could lower upon my head was the dreaded, “We’re very disappointed in you.” Crushing, positively crushing.
My brain writhes through dark hours
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 
Something…Wonderful
Posted in Culture, Writing, tagged creative writing, Dragon Magazine, reader comments, short stories, Spencer's Peace, Writing on 25 Feb 2015| 4 Comments »
Last night, as I was doing my taxes, something wonderful happened. Keep in mind: this is “wonderful” on a small, very personal scale. I did not happen upon the answer to problems in the Middle East or a cure for rampant stupidity. Nor did I find a loophole in the tax code that doubled my refund.
So, that’s what it wasn’t. With your expectations properly lowered, let’s move onward to what it was.
I was filling out Schedule SE (rather pleased that I had enough writing income to warrant its use) when an email came in. It was a message redirected to me from the Contact page here on this blog. I don’t get many direct messages from blog readers, and about half of those I do receive are from people wanting to market their wares via a guest-post on my blog–cheeky bastards–so when it was clear that this message was from a reader and not a self-promoter, it was already a good sign. I opened it, and I read.
In the hyperbolic style of internet memes: What happened next blew my mind. (more…)
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