All posts by rexmerritt

Pornography

Beyond the Classroom

    Four brisk entertainments sharing the same theme comprise Reveries.

    Caleb Abercrombie dominates the narratives. An untethered academic, the middle-aged Abercrombie fully enjoys the advantages of being a confident male whose vocation fulfills him.

    Paz Duarte, Abercrombie’s considerably younger foil, sounding board, and for lack of a better term, though nonetheless apt, serves as his fuck-buddy. They also share another calling. A vertical one.

    The excerpt offered by Amazon Kindle dissatisfied me. What the casually curious could’ve read were merely the first pages of the opening story, “Beyond the Classroom.”

    A good start? Yup! The sample gave an interesting taste. Like parfait. But further reading rewards with greater flavor. Why, by the last page of Reveries’ concluding story let’s say a creamy fudge ripple has been whipped up.

    Those who’ve already read it are probably chuckling at the reference. Good. Continue reading Beyond the Classroom →

Agitprop/Propaganda

The Whole Shooting Match

    Let’s hope the president was just being cynical when he tossed in video games and movies as perhaps energizing America’s gun nut culture. Pop culture does not incite mindless violence. Simple-minded adulation? Yes. Boy bands prove that.

    Fads that draw double takes such as severe serial tattooing and Marquis de Sade piercing? Certainly. Just in case carnival midways run short of, oh, geeks.

    But the force behind lapses into updates of the Boomtown Rats’ “I Don’t Like Mondays”? Uh, no. Continue reading The Whole Shooting Match →

Pop Culture

Cool. Resolute. Polished.


    Watching John Boehner well up, I wonder what father would’ve thought of such displays. While it’s good the Speaker of the House is comfortable enough in himself to let tears roll at the drop of a charged moment, isn’t there something unnerving about the leader’s, uh, expressiveness? Continue reading Cool. Resolute. Polished. →

Quarropas

The Paper Madeleine


    Sometimes simplicity is the best provocation.

    This season means card exchange. Or should mean it. Email and the erosion of cursive script are turning paper Christmas cards into museum pieces.

    Old-fashioned and time consuming as more and more of us regard them, Christmas cards are always welcome at this address. Their reception indicates a thought and care an e-card blast will never convey. Continue reading The Paper Madeleine →

Observed

Small Beer


    Americans are too enamored of SCANDAL. Few transgressions are worthy of such designation. The misused and abused word itself. Thanks to the giant scarlet S, peccadillos barely deserving shrugs balloon into outrage. 

    We resort to SCANDAL too easily. Same with hero. Who can’t be a hero in America? It’s so easy now one needn’t bother swiping Pauline off train tracks at the last minute or yanking cats from tree limbs. The valor invested in hero, like the disgust which should weigh SCANDAL, has been devalued. Otherwise why call such stalwarts “everyday heroes”?

    Isn’t that an oxymoron?

    We now bestow ever-fleeting glory on mundane acts. It’s lazy tabloid media usage. Continue reading Small Beer →

Agitprop/Propaganda

America Dismisses Mr. Charlie


    The United States is fortunate Barack Obama retained her presidency. His tone deaf, brain encased in amber opponent, Mitt Romney, would’ve been the perfect wooden Indian for Corporate America.
    
    In Romney, the grandees and high-flyers lording throughout boardrooms had their soul mate. That is supposing they possessed souls. This horde gives form and substance to Balzac’s quote stating “behind every great fortune is a great crime.” Continue reading America Dismisses Mr. Charlie →

Quarropas

Elsewhere on Earth


    My new gig drags me by plenty of evocative sites. On one hand, these cameos across former stages dent the job’s drudgery. On the other, being an older and worldlier actor permits clearer vision and better excavation of how certain scenes skewed wrong.
 
    Nothing like going past a boyhood marker and confirming that age’s innocence to have been blessed ignorance. Knowledge, truly a two-edged sword for adults.
 

    In the setting and people behind this post I merely occupied the periphery. Events unfolded outside my modest Quarropas neighborhood. All this occurred before money became an even greater determinant. Was ours the last generation in which affluence remained understated and character a worthier gauge? Continue reading Elsewhere on Earth →

Observed

Our Time on Earth

    Unlike morally smug, ethically deficient conservatives and the Scripture misinterpreting evangelicals who enable them, the rest of us have had no hand in our own conception. Randomly created, we are born. Inevitably we die. If we’re lucky we begin enjoying semblances of control several years into seeing first light until our mortal forms lose vigor, and blindness begins the cascade rendering us past tense.

    I read somewhere sight is the first of our senses that extinguishes; hearing the last. Maybe it’s apocryphal but Lillian Hellman yelled final tender endearments to Dashiell Hammett just as he succumbed on his deathbed. Seems right. The two writers were true to their beliefs as well as one another in a fashion that flouted convention.    
    
    Besides, who among us wouldn’t prefer going out hearing how we were adored? Loving phrases over a corpse comfort mourners but do the dead derive any benefit from them? Doubtful. Continue reading Our Time on Earth →

Observed

Clubby


    Don’t states of desolation descend on country clubs in autumn? Lingering summer’s unformed hours still insist on carefree activity. Remnants of airy remarks hover throughout empty rooms.

    Those ghosts will remain somewhat lonely.

    School has resumed. Vacations and lax diligence are finished. Although weather should permit several more weeks of sailing, serves and tee-offs followed by hacking, the emphasis our society places on nose to grindstone performance denies any extension of these pursuits past Labor Day.

    Strolls through such vacant shore or brae addresses are now mixtures of somberness and relief. The leisure class has abandoned these boating and golf premises to housekeepers, gardeners, and kitchen staff who’ve happily shucked much of their occupational deference. Continue reading Clubby →