Lately, it seems my body has decided to become musical (and my mind  -"tetched.").  Not in any melodic sense, more like a combination of hand percussion do-dads.  My neck pops when I lean down and again when I straighten up.   My knees, when I bend them, go “crack-crack” leaning down and “crack-crack” coming back up.  So, every time I bend over and also bend my knees, it’s “pop, crack-crack, “pop, crack-crack, or crack-crack, pop.”  That fascinated me, so once I actually tried to create a beat to “Shall We Dance” from The King and I: Shall we dance, buh-dom, bom, bom.  I had to bend the knees first to get the “buh-dom” quick count, then my neck—down, up.  “Shall we dance ‘crack-crack, pop, pop.’”  Besides feeling (and looking) like an idiot, I got light headed.  Now I just listen to them do their thing, and smile.

    I have written a number of sports books, had them published which is tougher than writing them, but book stores have closed and the publishing industry has grown conservative.  Sports books sections have largely been reduced in size and in area in a store devoted to the genre.
     I had to change and I did not want to write mystery books.
     My agent contacted me and advised me to accuse my father of being a serial killer. 
     My father has been dead for 25 years, a perfect cut off date for some of the crazier mass murderers in American history, and my agent reasoned that my Dad was no longer around to be offended.
     “It seems kind of sleazy, and I don’t think the rest of my family would appreciate me accusing Dad of being a psychotic killer.”
     “Simple, cut them in on a percentage of royalties.  They will be giving you quotes. There true crime books are very popular.”
     “I’ll get back to you.”
      I spoke to my Mom and my siblings and they gave me their blessing and fee contracts.  I had a book to write!
      The words flowed, after all my Dad wore glasses and in the police artist’s sketches of The Zodiac, Zodiac/Dad was always depicted with thick glasses.  Like half the American males over the age of forty in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but people have long forgotten that.  With contact lenses and laser surgery, far fewer people wear glasses today and certainly the frames are much more stylish, so it was easy to make it sound like only Dad/Zodiac wore those thick tortoise shell specs.
     My Dad Zodiac did travel on business extensively to California, so it appeared credible that instead of grabbing martinis in the airport lounge, instead he went off on killing sprees.  The cops could never find him because he was back in Connecticut watching Ed Sullivan before the bodies turned cold.  I became convinced that Dad was Zodiac, and vice versa.
      The book literally wrote itself, coming home from my NRA meetings or testosterone injections, I saw the keyboard to my computer typing away.  In a few months I turned over my dreck to my agent, who duly submitted it to a dozen publishers.
     Unfortunately, all of them rejected the manuscript, not because of its quality or lack thereof, but because too many other My Dad Was Zodiac books had recently flooded the market. 
     Obviously this saddened me, not having the opportunity to make money by falsely accusing my Dad of being a mass murderer.  Passing rapidly through all the stages of grief, I suggested to my agent that my Dad had attended school in the 1940s and may have murdered the Black Dahlia.
     “Nah, same problem as Zodiac, the market is saturated.”
     “What if I make up a serial killer, the Connecticut Bludgeoner?”
     “Connecticut is boring, the book would never sell.”
     “What if I brought the British Royal Family into it?”
     “Lady Di….?” 

​copyright 2017

General Fortitude
General Fortitude's dying wish
was a glass of whiskey
through his quivering lips.
This liquid courage 
would set his rancor ablaze
for a final battle against
his wife's endless complaints.
-​Munira Sayyid 

1.  To have my own cubicle, decorated exactly how I want it! 
2.  To become the general of a zombie army. 
3.  To erase the stigma of being related to one of America’s most fiendish serial killers.  (Mother’s maiden name upon request) 
4.  To cut a bloody swathe through the deadwood of middle management and the nodding-in-their-chairs executive vice-presidents as I rise to the top of your corporation.
copyright 2017

​Take hands out of pockets. 
Tie shoelaces. 
Jump up and down and scream at teammate for ball.
When ball hits you in the face, do not cry.  (If it breaks your glasses, you are allowed to cry.) 
Retie shoelaces. 
If ball is loose, dive on it and assume fetal position. 
When ball is taken from you, drift underneath the basket. 
When ball bounces off opponent’s head, grab ball and throw it in the air. 
When ball goes in the wrong basket, apologize to coach.  (Do not cry.) 
Take peanut butter & jelly sandwich out of pocket, place on bench. 
Apologize to coach when he sits on peanut butter & jelly sandwich. 
Always ask to cover the fat kid.
copyright 2017

      President Trump did not lie when he claimed that Hillary sent up voters from Massachusetts to New Hampshire to vote for her.  I know this because I was one of them, a volunteer who first cast my ballot in the morning in Boston, then was shipped up over the border to help Hillary eke out some more electoral votes.  This is my story.
     In the summer of 2016, a security guard at Nordstroms apprehended me as I attempted to shoplift a handsome pair of Ivanka Trump brand boots there.  Before the police came to cart me away in the Paddy wagon, a nice gentleman came and straightened out the matter with the store’s shift manager.  Nordstroms agreed not to press charges against me. The nice gentleman convinced me to participate in a scam to vote multiple times in the upcoming presidential election for Hillary Clinton.    
     I voted in Boston as soon as the polls opened, then a We Think We Can® bus pulled up to the curb and opened its doors.  The driver smiled and asked me to come aboard.  We were going to Nashua, New Hampshire.
     I hesitated.  “We Think We Can®? Aren’t you the guys that the government kept shutting down for safety violations?  Don’t these things spontaneously combust?”
     The driver answered, “You’re right, but the Clinton campaign commandeered their fleet, so get in, and get your lunch voucher to Applebees.”
     It all seemed so legit, a nice woman inside that looked like Jeff Sessions handed me my Applebees voucher, a bottle of Thunderbird fortified wine and a brief bio of the dead person in Nashua on whose behalf I was going to vote for Hillary Clinton.  I asked about hookers and the woman winked at me and smiled.
     So I sat down with the other goblins on the bus and began to pour my Thunderbird fortified wine into a Dixie cup.  I thought that they had stopped brewing this crap decades ago, but there it was, 17.5 alcohol by content.  I, too, became content.
      The easiest part of the day was the voting.  The We Think We Can® bus dumped us off in the voting precinct where our dead alter egos once resided.  After getting off the bus at each stop, the fraudulent voters all threw up then voted for Hillary as the bus driver extinguished the flames emanating from the engine.  I was so drunk I almost voted for Trump, but I don’t think anyone can be that drunk.
     After we all had illegally voted, the bus took us back to Boston, and I discovered that they welched on providing hookers to us. I complained, but the nice lady from the Clinton campaign threatened to fink on me, so I caved.  Plus, she told me about this basement of a pizza joint in D.C. in exchange for my silence.
     Until now I have stayed mum, but the Trump people started coming around my house offering me Annie’s Green Springs.  In the interests of making America great again, I caved.

copyright 2017

The author insists this fictional account is all in fun.  Ask his lawyer.  -N.K.