All posts by rexmerritt

Agitprop/Propaganda, Observed, Pop Culture

Frolic and Friction

    The initial subject of this post was to have flogged Properly Stirred, the 2013 Slow Boat Media explicit exploits extravaganza. (Properly Stirred is available through Amazon Kindle.) However, incipient background upheaval and a timely dovetailing of international relations with anecdotal observations favor the topical subject.

    President Obama’s recent cancellation of bilateral discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin has set the “be afraid, be very afraid” segment of America into full peek in the closets/check under the beds mode. For them, the sudden spate of bug-out embassy and consular evacuations was soothing music. More sanguine Americans saw these closures as large scale security theater panic.

    Aware of history and the threat against our nation, menace cannot be discounted. Yet in the 21st century haven’t we yielded common sense vigilance to Bernard Breakdown instances of quivering uncontrollable fear?

    Similar to Breakdown, a Dick Tracy villain from the early 1980s, it takes little to disrupt the security apparatus’ coping mechanism.  

Continue reading Frolic and Friction →

Observed

Pebbles in the Pond

    With the increasingly maundering commemorations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki encroaching, it is once again time to loosen an unavoidable skunk upon the apologist/revisionist/revanchist picnic.
    
    Pearl Harbor. Isn’t it strange reading that location in August?

    No a-bombs apology from this corner. May one be an Arizona graduate who has attended mainland memorials consecrating that December 1941 day without agreeing why those detonations occurred 68 years ago this week?

    Every American of the Boomer Generation (and our successors) alive today should be grateful for Harry Truman’s orders. But too many Americans are not. Seems the percentage rises as the age lowers, too. One or two more generations and might we become what George Santayana cautioned?

Continue reading Pebbles in the Pond →

Pornography

Properly Stirred


    
    Paul Knox thought he’d squeezed all the wild-style ways out of his system. After buckling down, he settled down. Knox believed the remainder of his life aligned. Whether this satisfied him was immaterial. He’d plateaued upon a point where certain expectations demanded fulfilling. By him.

    But the good life threw Knox a curve. A big one so hard even Uncle Charlie would declare it a yakker. The kind that jolted Knox back to his previously unfettered manner of living. The nights and days when he personified Mister Party Room. Continue reading Properly Stirred →

Pornography

Twisty


            Below is an extract from the story that concludes Cool Brass, a Slow Boat Media e-book. Although Marianne Messing predominates throughout the three stories, this interlude features Paz Duarte, Caleb Abercrombie’s casual lover. The whole of Twisty may be read as reactions regarding how perceived outsiders create places in their respective societies as well as within their own skins.   Continue reading Twisty →

Pornography

Sin? Yes. Guilt? No.

           Both excerpts presented below are lifted from the second third of Cool Brass, a Slow Boat Media e-book. The deep trust between Marianne Messing and Caleb Abercrombie springs from various sources. Misunderstanding and contention are among them. The first exchange occurs in West Germany. (Yeah. Some events happen before reunification.) The second concludes somewhere in New England.  Continue reading Sin? Yes. Guilt? No. →

Pornography

Marianne, a Friend from Germany

    Below is an extract from the first of three stories comprising Cool Brass, the second Slow Boat Media e-book.

    Marianne Messing, alluded to all over Reveries, shows up and shows off in each Cool Brass vignette. She and Caleb Abercrombie enjoy a connection closer than intimate. Their friendship emerged from instinct. From that start it’s matured into utmost trust.

    In a tangent, Hatun Sürücü, a 23-year-old woman the West barely noted and quickly forgot, despite having been one of the better publicized victims of clannish ignorance and exceptional violence, haunts the first and third stories of Cool Brass.

    Years on, Sürücü’s waste remains an incomprehensible indignity. Not only could she have done things and gone places, she might’ve become a big somebody.  Continue reading Marianne, a Friend from Germany →

Agitprop/Propaganda

The Name of This Band Is Barking Heads

    National media actually titled the squall the Obama administration brushed off in mid-May “Scandal Week.” Wonderful. Brain cramps even infected the nation’s reputable information arbiters. What else could’ve sunk the country’s “scandal” threshold below curb height?  Continue reading The Name of This Band Is Barking Heads →

Observed

Am Facile. Will Travel.


     Isn’t today’s job search akin to escaping a pitch-black labyrinth? Landing new employment challenges during prosperity. Prospective hires and potential employers are now further separated by debasing technology and muddied qualifications.

   The latter can be overcome. The former fairly requires a semanticist. You know, a specialist who renders the fat around bullshit down to its bones. Continue reading Am Facile. Will Travel. →

Pornography

Double Down

    Caleb Abercrombie found Hajna’s cigarette lighter and lipstick while vacuuming out his car. The previous night she’d badgered him about their disappearance. He’d thought nothing of either then. After all, what were they but trifles?

    He and Hajna had been, for absence of a more genteel term, fuck-buddies throughout the period he’d sundered reporting for teaching. Her acquiescence, their finding quick mutual satisfaction blurred his career transition.

    Nowhere near serious enough to have substantive conversation, both nonetheless comfortably shared intimacies. They were happily situated in the loose expanse between promiscuity and insouciance. Until Hajna’s drug use veered into irresponsible from recreational, neither saw any need for adjustment. Continue reading Double Down →