Category: The Crazy Life
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Trying to Reconcile America’s Racial Hypocrisy
Top 5 Things You’ll Learn If You Read This Whole Thing: You can never quite catch up with the present. Weird isn’t weird if you don’t think it’s weird. The exception to the rule is a dangerous thing. Overheard late-night conversations can change your life. America is founded on hypocrisy and rooted in bullying. One…
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What A Cult Is … And Isn’t
Top 5 Things You’ll Learn If You Read This Whole Thing: If you tell someone you grew up on a commune, be prepared for an interesting conversation. Bob’s last name was “Cockburn.” Cults aren’t like L.A. street gangs The definition of what a cult is leaves open a whole lot of room to call culturally…
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The Time God Burned Up His Son — And They Rebuilt It
Top 5 Things You’ll Learn If You Read This Whole Thing: Never… ever… try to sneak a baptism in on a commune mom’s kid. Perhaps the sign we’re waiting for is our ability to do what we’re asking for a sign about. Touchdown Jesus lived near Cincinnati, Ohio. You can buy a lot of Band…
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How Fish Farts Almost Blew Up the World
Top 5 Things You’ll Learn If You Read This Whole Thing: Kids who grow up on communes aren’t very clean Baths can cause people to fart. Russians suck at coming up with excuses. Sweden has to look to Denmark for smart people who can solve their problems. Fish farts almost led to nuclear war. Bath…
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The Hum is Real
Top 5 Things You’ll Learn If You Read This Whole Thing. The world outside the commune is loud. My wife does not like to be awoken early. What I’m hearing isn’t imaginary. A scary amount of people think there are aliens inside the earth. Librarians are good people. Horton heard a who. However, I hear…
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Breaking Down the Myth of Human Exceptionalism
Top 5 Things You’ll Learn If You Read This Whole Thing There have been five previous mass extinctions. We’re in the middle of the sixth. We evidently don’t know about 90 percent of the species on our planet. Knowing where babies come from is a relatively new thing. Humans aren’t that special. What if you…
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The Hermit of Budelli — and the Hermit in Me
Top 5 Things You’ll Learn If You Read This Whole Thing. The location of Budelli Island. And Sardinia. And Corsica. What ‘Spiaggia Rosa’ means. The sad story of Bucky. What I found when I went back to the commune. The amazing story of Mauro Morandi. Mauro Morandi just wanted to be away from all this.…
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Inside the B.A.K.C. (Badass Alcatraz Knitting Circle)
Top 5 Things You’ll Learn If You Read This Whole Thing. If you keep lots of birds in a prison cell with you, you’re going to be covered in bird crap. Robert Stroud was not a kindly prisoner, even if Burt Lancaster was a sexy stud. My Grandma Fiorina had elective hand-amputation surgery. Before Amazon,…
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When Rabid Bobcats Attack (and Why I’d Be Useless)
Top 5 Things You’ll Learn If You Read This Whole Thing: I stopped a Wienermobile from killing my wife. No, Kristi, a rabid bobcat does not sound like a cat. Lion Kinging what was seconds before killing your wife is kinda cool. Ants have feelings. I’m a bad husband As longtime readers of good ol’…
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Life Lessons From Atherstone Ball and a Boy Named Chestnut
Top 5 Things You Will Learn If You Read This Whole Thing You can’t “Hippy” the desire to conquer land out of boys. Sometimes leadership is thrust upon us. Bob is an idiot. There’s a game played by a bunch of violent, drunk Englishmen that even Nazi bombs couldn’t stop. Even the most violent feuds…
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Welcome to the Zone of Death
Top 5 Things You Will Learn If You Read This Whole Thing Guns N’ Roses was the shit. Idaho is known as the Gem State. Brian C. Kalt is kind of a pain in the ass. You maybe just might be able to murder someone without penalty somewhere in the United States. Our leaders know…
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A Nuclear Missile is Coming! … Oh… Wait
Top 5 Things You Will Learn If You Read This Whole Thing It isn’t difficult to piss off a guy who runs a snake collecting operation. If you get punched by your boss after he fires you, he wasn’t technically your boss when he punched you. Some people — but not you — hate their…
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Why You Shouldn’t Give a Knife to a Chicken
When good ole’ Q.F. was a bitty boy growing up in the hills of Northern California, I wasn’t allowed to own toy guns. Hippy Mom, she of the butt-length wavy blond hair and constant wearer of culturally appropriated moccasins, thought this would infuse me with peace, love and happiness. Instead, it infused me with devious…
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The Time a Bird Nearly Took Over the World
The Top 5 Things You Will Learn If You Read This Entire Blog Jeopardy buzzers suck. To rule the world, you must start in Australia. Emus are the perfect killing machines. When you send out the military to kill birds, always send a cameraman. When nothing else works, build a wall. It’s time for Blog…
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Size Matters; Just Ask This Guy
Introducing Q.F. Conseco, a relative in some way of Storyteller in Chief John Agliata. This is the first entry in Q.F.’s blog, “The Crazy Life, With Queso Fresco.” The Top 5 Things You Will Learn If You Read This Entire Blog Billy’s job was to fix airplanes. Billy was not very good at his job.…