LOS ANGELES-

I heard a great story the other night involving alcohol, feces, guilt, innocence, and a bathtub. My wife and I were out to dinner with some friends. Our friend Betty was the one who told the story. (And yes, she waited until after the meal to unleash it upon us.) Betty, just so you know, is a complete riot. She claps when she laughs. Always. I find this charming. She’s a tiny little thing, cute and petite. And she’s an easy laugher, a big laugher, really loves to laugh. And as soon as Betty starts laughing, she starts applauding. A matter of reflex. I find this tremendously enjoyable.

Betty was born and raised in the Middle West, in small town Illinois. Went to college in the Middle West, at Wisconsin. On holidays, as a college student, she would return home to visit family and old friends from childhood. These return trips were always festive. Betty and her buddies from the Land of Lincoln were at the height of their Bacchanalian collegiate excess. Anything went. It was youth. And it was a reunion.

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GLENSIDE, PA-

If you’ve never been to one of New Jersey’s fine beaches, I suggest throwing on any Springsteen album from the mid-80’s while reading this, and you’ll more or less get the vibe.

A few weeks ago I rented a house with my wife and two daughters in the gritty shore town of Wildwood, New Jersey.

Family vacation.

Americana.

We spent most mornings on the beach, and most evenings “walking the boards.” Wildwood’s boardwalk, the longest in New Jersey, is a mishmash of roller coasters, carnival barkers, bad tattoos, salt-water taffy, games of chance, loud tee-shirts, and hermit crabs.

And it turns out my two-year-old daughter NEEDS a hermit crab.

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GRAND BLANC, MI-

How tired of thinking, how sawed off my seeing, how heard my hearing, how tasteless my tasting, how senseless my ability to smell, how unfeeling what I touch. Just the same, so easy to relearn how to think, see, hear, taste, smell, touch. It’s only a forced illusion, a child’s card trick. Yet this deception serves as a thicker pair of glasses, a re-tuned hearing aid and…an artificial brain, nose and tongue.

Rotate the crops, Kierkegaard wrote (laugh, but I have ethics; I keep the neighbors at bay and love them when they’re on the other side of the ocean). I may not believe in a god, but I know fear and trembling. They’re hobbies of sorts, the kind that irritate oneself for the want of something better to do. But if the crop is the imagination, yes, rotate it, a degree, 360 degrees, or some degree between.

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MADRID, SPAIN

When I lived in Segovia, Spain in 1993 on a study abroad program, I saw my first bullfight.

I was 20 and full of post-teen angst and mid-college confusion, sympathetic to all underdogs in the world, including bulls.

I remember being nauseated by the spectacle: a bull charges into the ring and after 20 minutes is dragged out, punctured, bloodied and lifeless.

Fat Spanish men gnaw on wet cigars and yell vulgarities or praises, depending on the bull and bullfighter.

The bulls rarely stand a chance of surviving a bullfight.

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THE DEEP SOUTH-

This is a time of hope

for something greater than ourselves

to save ourselves

from ourselves

a time of dreams and dying

and dreams dying

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GULF BREEZE, FL-

Over the weekend I took Feldman to the dog park.

I like the dog park here in Gulf Breeze.

It has a statue of a Great Dane.

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GULF BREEZE, FL-

So. Here I am in the new place.

Crickets chirp. A tumbleweed rolls by.

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LOS ANGELES, CA-

I have always associated certain things in my life with specific scents and aromas.

I believe it is the strongest of my five senses because I never forget a smell and I always remember the moment when I first experienced it, whereas I can just barely picture my own mother’s face when pressured to do so.

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LOS ANGELES, CA-

On November 13th, 2005, in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, an electronics technician named Dale Airsman was attacked by his four-year-old llama named Charlie.

The first indication of potential danger came early that morning, when Mr. Airsman walked out onto his property and heard Charlie let out an unusual growl, which then evolved into a high-pitched squeal.

Charlie then spit, flattened his ears back, and bared his choppers, which included three sets of razor-sharp “fighting teeth,” which llamas use to rip the scrotum (more…)

The Queen City, NC-

I like Christmas. I like to see Christmas lights wrapped around houses. I like the cool air of winter. I like the good vibes people throw around, the smiles. It’s a childhood thing, I guess. A memory thing.

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By R Kent

ARUSHA-

We wanted blood.

We wanted to see a lioness chase down a wildebeest, leap onto its prey’s back, drag it down to the ground, and dig its teeth into the animal’s neck.

We wanted to see the creature’s back legs kick spasmodically as its heart pounded out its last desperate beats.

We wanted to see the pride gather about the fresh kill.

We wanted to watch as the lions rent the flesh from the wildebeest, gorging on its muscles and entrails.

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SAN DIEGO, CA-

When I found out there is a place where you can cut your own Christmas tree AND hand-feed kangaroos and wallabies, I forced my parents and husband to go.

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By R Kent

ARUSHA-

Irony is often cruel.

In my case, I love to travel.

So naturally I am stricken with horrible motion sickness.

Though I have been nauseous countless times in cars and on the occasional small Russian plane, my bête noire is the boat.

Whether in a canoe off the coast of Santa Barbara or an ocean liner in the Mediterranean, I know the slightest chop in the water, the merest ripple on the sea, will set churning my insides like a milkshake maker at Baskin-Robbins.

When traveling by boat, I have two options: knock myself out with pills, or vomit to the point of physical exhaustion.

Since neither of these actions interests me much, I usually do all I can to avoid boat rides altogether.

But as luck would have it, the last three Decembers have found me on islands, most recently that of Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania’s mainland. (more…)

MADRID, SPAIN (with remote editing from BROOKVILLE, OHIO)

My cat has bathroom issues.

This is my fault. I live alone, more or less, and tend to leave the door open. Whenever I go in there, El Lío follows. If I take a shower, he sits idly on the shelf under the sink and watches my blurry profile soap and rinse through the translucent shower curtain. If I stand to relieve myself, he perches himself on the shelf and watches the stream enter the toilet, like it’s a liquid string (which I guess, in a way, it is). If I sit down, he jumps into the bathtub and stares at me intently with black-bubbled pupils, wanting to play a game of finger hide-and-seek-attack .

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SANDY, UT-

Yesterday I went to the Living Planet Preview Exhibit here in Sandy.

It’s a curious phenomenon, in that it’s a “Preview Exhibit” of an aquarium that may never exist.

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