American Chimpanzee

  when hell is full the dead will walk the earth I have nightmares. It's been years, and I still have nightmares. It all began with a simple phone call. From the President. And when the President calls, I jump. It's the least I can do for the man who once saved my life in 'Nam. But this particular phone call caught me by surprise. "I want you to go to Pakistan," he told me, smoothly. "You're the only one I can trust to verify that Osama bin Laden is dead." "Of course he's dead," I answered. "We've both seen the video." I paused... and then we both broke up laughing at the same time. Video. What a joke. "And don't worry," he assured me. "Your little, ah, 'problem' in the Middle East has been smoothed over." That's Obama for you. Mr. Smooth. And that's how I found myself back in Pakistan, taking a freight elevator down to the basement where bin Laden's murdered body was kept. The e...

Back in the day, writers used to be paid by the word, that's why our classics are so looong. And, in addition to that, what else was there to do? You could spend six hours enjoying an opera, and not feel it's gone on five hours too long, much like the fans at a baseball game. You can't tell me Edgar Allan Poe's classic poem The Raven doesn't ramble far longer than it should. I don't know what seems longer, reading The Raven or suffering through one of my mother-in-law's visits. At any rate, that's why I rewrote it for today's audience. An audience whose time and attention span is limited.   The Raven Once upon a midnight dreary, My eyes bloodshot, my vision bleary, Something knock-knock-knocked at my chamber door.    Feeling, I, a wee bit drunky, Hadn't bathed, smelling funky, So whomever was there I decided to ignore.    Yet there it waited, a stately raven, An ebony bird in search of haven, Thus it continued knocking, and then knocked some more...

"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity." Edgar Allan Poe       The Tell-Tale Trump     by Stephen King as told to Jim Duchene You're right, you're right. I'm nervous, very nervous, but crazy? I only wish I were. You see, I've always found Donald Trump entertaining, in a monkey playing the accordion kind of way, but I never thought he'd be president. Then he stole the election, the only known instance of that ever happening. I could live with that. I bore him no ill will. It’s only four years, after all. How much damage can he do? But his tweets! They drove me nuts! No, not nuts. Not nuts. I'm not nuts. I swear I'm not. Soon, you might say, I became obsessed with Trump and his hellish tweets. Obsessed isn't the same as insane, is it? Of course not. Every time I picked up my smart phone I'd scurry to Twitter to read the latest verbal monstrosities from not-my-President Trump. Idiotic ramblings. Lies. Misinformation. There wa...

I was probably a pretty rambunctious kid, because I remember my father always being after me for one thing or another. When I was a Senior in high school, and prone to staying out later than I should on a Friday or Saturday night, he would always make it a point to get me up early the next day. "Why do I need to get up early?" I'd ask him. "Because everything has a price," he'd tell me. I'm sure he was trying to teach me something, but it was something I didn't want to learn. After a few early mornings of me getting up to do nothing but learn a lesson, the only lesson I did learn was if I got out of bed so he could see me, and then, when he went inside, immediately laid down on the floor of the far side of my bed, the side facing away from my bedroom door, so that he  couldn't  see me, then I could happily spend the rest of the morning in dreamland.  Happily, that is, until he discovered what I was doing. My snoring gave me away. As a kid, I was ...