Dispatches

An archive of the rambling missives I sent out long ago via email.


  • #22: February 14, 2024

    I was a little distracted by one thing and another for a spell and suddenly four or five months flew by without anything being sent out via this communications platform-thing. Now comes the news th…

  • #21: August 03, 2023

    Now that I’m scrounging for work again I have to economize, but I’m wondering if canceling my subscription to the San Francisco Chronicle was perhaps a bit too hasty. Though it’s overpriced a…

  • #20: July 19, 2023

    Hi all, and greetings from what the mass media has lately been portraying as a city in a “doom loop.” Egads! It’s nothing new that lazy reporters recycle received wisdom and don’t question …

  • #19: January 08, 2023

    Greetings from San Francisco’s still fairly ungentrified Excelsior district. No newly laid off tech workers jumping out of buildings here as, for now anyway, there aren’t any high rises in this…

  • #18: November 7, 2022

    Since I last blasted one of these quasi-columns your way Queen Elizabeth died at the age of 90-something (I think 96, but since in all honesty I couldn’t care less I see no reason to check). Oddly…

  • #17: August 29, 2022

    Let me just start by saying I’m pleased as punch that some of you didn’t immediately hit the delete key when you saw my surname. That means so much to me! Believe me, I would weep all over this…

  • #16: May 18, 2022

    Oops, I seem to have blown my self-imposed deadline again; please accept my abject apologies. I’ve been calling this a biweekly newsletter that comes out about once a month but maybe it should be…

  • #15: March 06, 2022

    As I type this events continue to spiral out of control in Ukraine. Putin’s military assault on that country reminds me of repeatedly watching footage of the U.S.-backed Indonesian invasion of Ea…

  • #14: January 20, 2022

    Once again I open with an exclamation mark! Two, actually, but why get technical about it? Despite said punctuation I’m actually not all that excited by what I have to tell you about the holidays…

  • #13 regarding important Thursday 12/2/21 event: December 01, 2021

    Welcome to the latest installment of my ongoing interior monolog, which I hope may someday provide material for the world’s strangest telenovela (currently untitled). This dispatch will be shorte…

  • #12: November 02, 2021

    Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. I hope you are all well and spending plenty of time sticking pins into McConnell, Manchin, and Sinema voodoo dolls.

  • #11, part two: September 01, 2021

    It certainly was a good time to take a break from pandemic paranoia. I hadn’t gone all Gumby at 45rpm on a dance floor in forever and a day and I needed that release like nobody’s business (anywa…

  • #11, part one: September 01, 2021

    My last dispatch concluded with me attempting to keep my sanity on a bus passing Chicago’s Trump Tower (my associate Scott wrote to note that the unfortunately-named structure had not actually pr…

  • #10 PART ONE (preamble to what was just sent): August 14, 2021

    [IT APPEARS I MAY HAVE EXCEEDED A TINY LETTER WORD LIMIT IN FINALIZING MY TENTH DISPATCH, AT LEAST THAT’S THE ONLY EXPLANATION I CAN COME UP WITH AS TO WHY I CAN’T SEEM TO PACK ALL I WANTED TO …

  • #10: August 14, 2021

    Though most of the unpopulated regions in The Land of the Coffee-Free Polygamists are to die for (maybe literally if you’re on foot, there’s not much water out there), as we approached the stat…

  • #9: July 20, 2021

    Good afternoon, good evening, or good morning, depending on of course on when you are reading this opening line. I’m fine, thanks. And how are you?

  • #8: June 15, 2021

    Gosh Batman, I’m a little overdue with this column. I could reel off a bunch of reasonable-sounding excuses, including a recent paid writing assignment that took longer than expected (what a shoc…

  • #7: April 15, 2021

    How you feeling out there? I SAID, HOW YOU FEELING OUT THERE? Oops, sorry about that, for a minute I thought I was onstage fronting an arena rocking super-group.

  • #6: March 27, 2021

    As you know, I try to keep these columns as sunny as possible. OK, not always, or even usually, but as an admirably bent Gahan Wilson character once put it, “I paint what I see, child, I paint wh…

  • #5: March 02, 2021

    You’ve probably noticed that my default word-slinging mode in these communiques is a sort of kicks against the pricks counter-narrative to the news of the day/week/month. Partly “here’s what …

  • #4: February 01, 2021

    First of all, let me express my appreciation to each and every one of you who has been praying for the speedy recovery of my damaged ankle. I have no doubt that your entreaties to whatever deity or…

  • #3: December 23, 2020

    I hope you’re all enjoying the Adolph Barnum Administration’s non-stop efforts to cling to power coming to naught. True, it’s not all peaches and cream yet, what with a senior Administration …

  • #2: November 26, 2020

    Thank you so much for deigning to open this festive (?) holiday email. I swear to you from the bottom of my heart that it means the world to me, even if by now you’ve already deleted this.

  • #1: October 30, 2020

    Greetings and welcome to the first installment of my biweekly (as in twice a month) newsletter. If you don’t want to hit the delete key two extra times a month please write me back and tell me to…