P.A.Kane

     Char was standing at the open door of Dickie’s truck while he cleaned his dash talking about the fact that Dave had called in sick today when Kelly walked by. Excitedly, Char said to Kelly, “Dave called in sick today.”     “Dave called in sick today? Dave never calls in sick? Are you sure?” Kelly asked.     “Yes , I’m sure, Char said. “I was doing address insertions when Marcia took the call. Dave called in sick. He has the flu and won’t be in today.”     “You know,” Dickie said, “if Dave called in, he’s hurtin’ pretty bad.”     At the time clock where people waited to swipe in at 0640, the erase board indicated that Banick would be doing Dave’s route. Rudi asked if Dave was off today.     Russ was handing out equipment on the other side of the counter said, “No, Dave isn’t off. He called in sick today.”     Big Wayne said, “He’s...

    Though I’m not much of a daily blog reader I’ve always thought the best ones have a quick hit quality — a left, a right followed by a lean tight uppercut and then out. I’ve never been able to accomplish this in my own writing. Growing up in a small three bedroom, one bathroom house with nine siblings’ attention was granted when say, you broke a window, skipped out on your night to help with the dishes or when you gluttonously finished off the rare box of crack like Captain Crunch that made it into the house. The scorn, along with the damage Captain Crunch did to the roof of your mouth was intense and so worth it. But nobody was ever looking for me to share an opinion or to verbalize my feelings on a topic. Same is true now with my three college age children still at home who know absolutely everything and meet every query with an ironic eye roll. They don’t want to hear it. And, like a dormant flower shutdown and stilted by the cold of winter waiting for the nour...

Back in the early 2000's I published a monthly website called Buffalo Mudd that ripped off the satrical style of  The Onion. Describing the site I would tell people it's  T he Onion of Buffalo. Well, over this past summer I got one of those fancy streaming music services and today was the day I boxed up and exiled some five hundred cd's to the basement, including a couple hundred disks I burned myself. Going through them I came across a CDR titled "Buffalo Mudd Backup." As far as I remembered Buffalo Mudd  was only backed up with floppy disks. Yes, floppy disks, that's how long ago it was. And, as you might imagine, as excited as I was to see the disk I thought there was no way these files, which were more than a decade old would interface with my Blogger program. But after a little cutting and pasting I've managed to recreate a reasonable facsimile of the original, epistemological...Molly story. She was a little older and she was Molly O'Malley in...

I'll be selling and signing books Saturday, November 19, 2016 from 9-1pm at the South Park HS Artisan Market. Lots of local vendors selling unique crafts, jewelry, home decor and much more. Stop by...  https://www.facebook.com/events/741205032694013/

Chapter2     I almost made it the whole five days without the old man finding out about my suspension. School didn’t have his pay by the minute flip phone number and we didn’t have a home phone, but because of a downpour, he got sent home from a roofing job and found me there instead of at school. This was Wednesday, the last day of my suspension. By that part of the week he was pretty much broke so he was only able to stay at the bar for a few beers and wasn’t soused yet. He did have a plan though, with a fresh twelve pack of Keystone Lights that he loaded in the fridge, because, ya know, besides getting shit faced, he was worried about his figure.     Initially he was mad about how I was scamming him, getting up in the morning and then pretending to go to school. But his anger momentarily faded, and believe me him not angry for even a moment is a victory, when I told him how I smacked that fucking moron gorilla McManus upside his head with...

Chapter 1       McDougal had a blood disease or some pituitary dysfunction bullshit that made him a little sissy runt. He wasn’t the kind of sissy runt fuck that would cower and not fight when the bigger kids kicked him around, he just had that pituitary shit that made him little and weak. One spring day in the 9th grade when I was making my way through the transition hallway from the old building to the new building of South Park High School this red-headed moron gorilla 10th grader, Talty McManus kicked McDougal into me and the little shit got tangled in my legs causing both of us to fall and my books spilled all over the floor. Now, I didn’t really give a shit about that little runt fuck McDougal, people could kick him all they wanted as far as I was concerned, but as I lay there all twisted up with him, like always I got really mad, especially at the sound of that fucking moron gorilla McManus and his friends laughing while I was on the hallway floor w...

         I always thought  Bob Dylan’s  Christian period in the late 70’s, early 80’s was a bit of a ruse. Forever maximizing the mystery trend while being the permanent proprietor of the  next  cool thing I assumed the calculus went something like: Guthrie folk...protest song… electric…dropped out…Wailing Wall when John, Paul, George and Ringo went Eastern… a couple of suspect albums to reduce the heat…the greatest break-up record of all time…all that heat again…next thing?...hmm…Christian?  No, they wouldn’t or maybe…hmmm? Hence, the birth of  Slow Train Coming.    To me it seemed pretty unlikely that a guy as smart as Dylan and as Jewish and forty years old could fall for Jesus. There had to be an angle…right? But, tooling around the other day in my work truck in the brilliant crisp sixty-degree sun,  Gotta Serve Somebody found its way into the rotation on my iPod and I fell right in line with ...

McDougal's Tune; Mitski... Jackson's Tune: BMRC Authors'Tune:TR

McDougal had a blood disease or some pituitary dysfunction bullshit that made him a little sissy runt. He wasn’t the kind of sissy runt fuck that would cower and not fight back when the bigger kids kicked him around, he just had that pituitary shit that made him weak. One spring day in the 8 th grade when I was making my way through the transition hallway from the old building to the new building of PS #29 this red-headed moron gorilla, Talty McManus kicked McDougal into me. The little shit got  tangled in my legs causing both of us to fall and my books spilled all over the floor. Now, I didn’t really give a shit about that little runt fuck McDougal, people could kick him all they wanted as far as I was concerned, but as I lay there in the transition hallway all twisted up with him, like always I got really mad, especially at the sound of that fucking moron gorilla McManus and his friends laughing while I was on the floor with McDougal.     Once untan...

     A couple of thoughts on T Bone Burnett's well considered keynote address at Americana Fest from this past weekend. Burnett the winner of a Grammy and an Oscar, as well as having a mile long list of production credits that range from John Mellencamp to Diana   Krall. Burnett, to say the least, is a serious artist and his address makes the case for the sanctified role of artists in shaping and pushing societal innovation now and throughout history. He cites for example a man landing on the moon in a Jules Vern novel a hundred years before it actually happened. However, he feels today’s artist is in jeopardy due to the shifting technological landscape which has so upended the   music industry's business model, directly affecting his bottom line. On the encroachment of technology, he recommends a book: The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul, and goes on to say: John Wilkinson, the translator, in his 1964 introduction, describes the book this way- “...

Since this is going to be blog about writing, to get us going I thought I'd put up a couple/ three essays in written and video form about my process that will inspire you to be a hack author, just like me...Take notes there will be a quiz. Getting Going The Hack Writer's Routine: A Video Essay In Two Parts It's Okay, Scratch That Itch...