Photo by Eric R. Rasmussen
Discovery Channel
Zoologists ask what birds would do with human arms. Answer: Just what humans do. Subjugate others.
Netflix
Watch these documentaries now before we find out their subjects committed multiple acts of sexual assault.
CNN
“Don Lemon Can’t Believe What He’s Hearing,” followed by “Anderson Cooper: Everything’s Ludicrous.”
HBO
“Entourage” now opens with a featurette by Susan Faludi that explains its historical context.
Fox News
Why Whites Wearing Surgical Masks Is Tyranny, While Stopping and Frisking Black People Is OK
Paramount Network
“Cops” opens with a featurette explaining its historical context two months ago.
MTV
“Catfish”: This love thing might be an illusion. Also, you’re dating someone online with a fake profile.
CNN Money
Love is an illusion but I’m forwarding my credit card numbers to a guy I met online anyway.
Bravo
The Manscapers of “Backyard Envy” really ought to be imagining this outdoor space as being full of quarantine tents.
Bravo
Are they really “The Real Housewives of Manhattan” if they have fled the pandemic and aren’t here to fill out their census forms for important tax and political redistricting purposes?
Bravo
The Real Housewives Remote After the After Show Show
Bravo
Cash Cab: If you stay in the cab, you can win $300 and expose someone in the service industry to a deadly pathogen.
Vh-1
Black Ink Compton Crew: If you can’t write something nice on your body, best not to write anything at all.
PBS
An old “Crossfire” featuring Mojo Nixon arguing with Pat Buchanan about dirty song lyrics makes us wistfully remember when the left wing liked freedom of speech.
Posted in Comedy, Entertainment, Film & TV, Technology | Tagged Entourage, Gone With the Wind, Netflix, Real Housewives, Reality TV, Susan Faludi, television, Vh-1 | Leave a Comment »
When my friend had
His first child, he said
“Now I believe in God!”
“How can you not
believe
When you first look
Into his eyes
Upon the miracle of his life?
The miracle
That is your baby?
“How can you not believe?”
When I had my child
And I watched him crawl
Watched him stoop and learn to walk,
When I saw my son bend his knees
And hunch over
To pick up his first apple
I thought,
“Holy Christ!
“We’re fucking apes!”
Posted in Poetry | Tagged monkey, Religion, Scopes | Leave a Comment »
When he told them whom to hate
He gave them permission to hate.
When he gave them permission to hate
He gave them permission to feel.
When he gave them permission to feel
They loved him.
Loved him so much. Oh so much.
And then he had them by the soul.
And he could do with those souls what he wanted.
Posted in Poetry | Tagged Politics | Leave a Comment »
I have never said my piece
To strong men and to kings
And my eyes they sweep the ground
When their tragedies are unwound
And the tragedy is how they’ve ruined little things
You dress up in red lipstick
For a date with providence
And every set of eyes is a possible expense
Every new set of arms a residence
But passion turns to violence
And you pin your hope to wings
The tragedy’s the same
they’ve ruined little things
And a weak little man stands
In the corner doing what he can
Helpless to stop brutality
Not ever good for you or me
And soon it comes as sure as if he had the flu
He comes to love his abuser too
And as sure as he’s helpless
The boy he learns to sing
Anther lament of a life ill spent
They’ve ruined little things
Posted in Poetry | Tagged lyrics, Ruined Little Things, Salon De La Guerre | Leave a Comment »
Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre | Tagged A Kid's Inside, From Sour To Cinnamon, guitar, pop, Salon De La Guerre | Leave a Comment »
You have your bulky joy
You wear your youth like yarn
Piss mordant till you dye
It keeps your skin from harm
The smoke was once alive
In yellow plaster’s pores
Nostalgic from the wounds
Love has too many sores
And when the plague it came
We measured its hours too
The worst things about man
Turned out to be virtues
We once invented need
In the pre-pandemic dens
Like strangers on TV
We see ourselves back then
A life force is absorbed
In the city’s coming squall
This is how you love now
If you can love at all
Posted in Poetry | Tagged coronavirus, covid-19, pandemic, plague, poem, sheltering in place | Leave a Comment »
I have just released my eighth novel, also known as Volume 2 of my seventh novel. The Ghost and the Hemispheres follows several generations of a Central American family as they experience a coffee boom, civil war, ethnic strive, a communist revolution and its aftermath. As the historical drama unfolds, everybody in the small town of Ascension is suffering from some sort of existential disorder that threatens their very concept of self, being and consciousness.
Volume 2 follows Patroclus Evers, scion of a once legendary family of coffee growers, as he leaves home and goes to the city to study medicine. Very quickly, he falls under the sway of radical students, poets and priests. Yet his dedication to social change is conflicted. From childhood, he has been haunted by feelings that there is another version of himself haunting the world. This person is not only an existential threat. Patroclus also fears that this other him might be enjoying life a lot more.
Volume 2 also follows his aunt Pepa through her own version of capitalist success and downfall, as she seeks the sexual validation of wealthy men, all to spurn the one man she couldn’t have.
The novel is now available in e-book form only, and only on Amazon.com. I hope to release a paperback version through Amazon’s platform next year.
The cover painting and design are by my friend Corey Brian Sanders.
Posted in Fiction | Tagged Central America, Eric Randolph Rasmussen, Comedy, Fiction, The Ghost and the Hemispheres, Nicaragua, epic, Miskito Coast, Sandinistas, Contras, communists, Managua | Leave a Comment »
It was in the Times
The future is looking worse
Racial strife. Illness. Hate
No.
The future is not looking worse
It will look better
When we stop lying
About what the past was
Posted in Poetry | Tagged black lives, George Floyd, Greenwood, Juneteenth, Tulsa | Leave a Comment »
The year was 1911. The movie camera was new
And when it captured the young old souls
In the pinned frames and licked their faces
Onto emulsion, the timeless New York jaywalker
Paid his debt
To posterity by showing,
Abreast the speeding cars,
He still didn’t give two fucks
Posted in Poetry | Tagged jaywalker, movie camera, New York, Poetry, silent movies, Timeless | Leave a Comment »
Beauty is Imperfection 