Okay, so I had a heart attack in January. Don’t worry, my health is improving. I was treated in a local hospital where, as I had just recently given up my insurance as a cost cutting measure (timing is everything) they made sure I was going to live, put me on a ton of medication [...]
I was moved today, studying art born of the marriage of pain and intelligence. I was moved and inspired. But don’t worry, I took a nap and it went away. _______________________________ Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend Sign up to get updates from Geoff and [...]
Once upon a time there were usury laws, which limited the amount of interest an institution (or Vinnie from down the block) could charge on a loan. South Dakota decided a good way to attract some business to their state was to do away with such inconvenient laws. Vinnie moved to South Dakota and set [...]
March 12, 2009 – 12:21 pm
I see a great future for the technology now called “Texting”. Fairly soon, I predict that someone will invent a voice activated texting mode, so you can simply talk, and it will transcribe what you’ve said. After that will come the inevitable “Direct Texting” where your words, rather than being transcribed and sent to the [...]
January 1, 2009 – 11:13 pm
Dear _______, I apologize for writing this email to you, but I need to express it to someone and you are as good a person as any. I am a little in my cups at the moment and you can completely ignore this message if you want, I don’t mind in the least. Over tea [...]
December 20, 2008 – 4:33 pm
Every year, I get more and more annoyed at the tendency for people at all points on the political spectrum to manufacture issues about which they can become angry (and about which they can rile their “base” into a frenzied pitch.) It must be part of the human condition (or at least the Western psyche, [...]
November 24, 2008 – 1:37 pm
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! - William Shakespeare, Henry V, Prologue If I have a muse, she seems to have fallen asleep. I wish her good dreams. That she can convey [...]
September 28, 2008 – 12:12 pm
On a radio show recently, the question was put forth, “does art have the power to change a life?” Although I’ve always thought a life without art is a dead life and a society without art is a dead society, I’d never considered the question quite in that way. It started me thinking about my [...]
September 11, 2008 – 6:13 pm
I recently read a comic essay in Newsweek magazine in which the writer lambasted Crocs shoes (those odd, brightly colored plastic things) and the people who wear them. He got actual death threats for his efforts. This last week there has been a great, albeit artificial, political flap due to one politician using a phrase [...]
August 27, 2008 – 2:15 pm
Ah, that someone might write me such a song. I have a friend, I’ve only known him a few years but we seem to have a history or connection that is centuries old. I’ve written about him before, in my trifle on the theory of six degrees of separation. I know him to be an [...]
