New Mexico Mercury

Rhymes with Rubes

April is National Poetry Month, and I am touched to be the one reintroducing this lost art form to the masses. This includes people like you and me! Because odds are, we don’t understand poetry.

Poetry has lain dormant since history days, murking its modern-time meanings. What I can tell you with authority is that poetry used to be a noble calling, largely because humans had not yet invented doctors. Once we could compare it to medical science, we got the notion that poetry was HARD and did not earn actual money. Plus, with doctors on hand, people weren’t all dying by the age of twelve. With all that extra time to challenge our brains, build our vocabularies, and deepen our understanding of human nature, we as a species chose to browse pictures of puppies jumping into swimming pools after tennis balls....

Fool’s Gold: Reptile Dysfunction

What did you have for breakfast this morning? Who cares! It was not more amazing that what I ate. Not even if you ate nachos and beer, which would otherwise be the coolest breakfast since leftover pizza. I win, because I ate real… genuine… dinosaur eggs!

I’m not bragging. YOU have eaten dinosaur eggs, too! Come to that, unless you are one of those vegans who doesn’t believe in eating, you have probably chowed down on an actual dinosaur!

These claims are not fabrications made up by me in my boyhood when I breathed, drank, and—without knowing it—ate dinosaurs. This is the real world, people. Dinosaurs are not extinct. They live among us, only most of you call them “birds”...

Ursinine Behavior

Which is, admittedly, not very close. A bear’s scent shades more acreage than a solar eclipse. If you could hear a bear’s odor—and I’m not saying you can’t—it would sound like busted speakers playing Tom Waits on a dubbed cassette tape through the PA system in the Astrodome.

But I still came close enough to uncover that holding a black bear cub is a real, honest possibility for a journalist with friends with sedatives. Mere weeks ago, a newspaper that runs this column featured a piece about precisely that. (The paper must remain nameless, lest the paper’s Editorialista regret not reassigning the story to me)...

Fool’s Gold: Grammar Sutra

I may have been a bit presumptuous last week when I declared my bottomless wealth via baseball card collection. My cards apparently require a bit more appreciation before I’m invited to spend the rest of my carefree life on Trillionaire Island. Lucky you, because I’m still here to talk about sex!

Actually, I’m here to talk about grammar. But by incorporating sex, I got you to keep reading. Numbers can be made to show that reader engagement increases by 152% if a first paragraph suggests free-range body parts and nothing at all about grammar.

The same fact is true for dating, incidentally. You typically should not discuss grammar on any date, from the very first one until death do you part...

Fool’s Gold: Tax Bases

America’s most famous holiday is nearly here! But no need to panic. With two whole weeks until Tax Day, you still have a dozen restless nights before self-appointed experts slam you with opinion columns like “How to Make Past Years’ Charitable Donations Today,” “Smuggle Yourself to an Offshore Tax Shelter with These Perfectly Legal Steps,” and “What If My Extension Lasts Longer Than Four Hours?”

I will have you know that this column is different. I have never ordained myself as an expert—the label adheres itself to geniuses (like me) who invent brilliant ideas (such as mine) for not paying taxes...

No News is Good Snooze

You want to become a master of multitasking? Boy, have you come to the wrong place!

But you can still better yourself by reading this column, because I am indeed a responsibility-juggling virtuoso. For example, I absorb the daily news through my radio alarm while still sleeping.

I set out to translate this knowledge of world happs as a courtesy to my dear readers when I saw a web link that declared I Would Not Believe What Happens Next!!! I never did find out what happened next, but I eventually accumulated these even more fascinating internet news tidbits for your edification...

Fool’s Gold: Time Crunch

Have you noticed lately how everyone but me shows up an hour early? It’s not like I was competing for any Mr. Punctual awards—one of the perks of being a writer is that folks expect such eccentricities as me arriving late, or on a unicycle, or not at all. But this latest trend really had me wondering whether I was the sole punctual person in an Early World.

So I did some research. And, yes, I am the only conscientious person in America today, outside of Hawaii and Arizona.

Fool’s Gold: Back to My Future

I have taken a real liking to myself. That’s why I am thankful for throwing out my back, despite depending on others to tie my shoes.

The pain is really not so horrible; it can’t be much worse than a shark bite, or getting run over by a garbage truck. It’ll get better. Either that, or it’ll kill me.

Just kidding! That’s what we back-pain survivors call “sciatic humor,” which is intentionally not at all funny because laughing sets our recovery back another two to ten years...

Paws Button

A while back, I promised to tell you the story about the dog who was afraid of flies. This golden retriever mix—let’s call her “Sugar,” because that is her human name—exemplifies how people are wonkier than Willy’s chocolate factory when it comes to training their pets. This story will butcher you; I myself narrowly evaded death, but it has a happy ending with, as you might recall, the great Kevin Spacey.

Speaking of Mr. Spacey, Sugar springs more leaks than the prematurely released third season of his Netflix show, House of Cards. Leaking is Sugar’s primary mode of communication. It’s how she indicates hunger, joy, complex arithmetic, and especially the presence of houseflies...

Fool’s Gold: Ps and Queues

I received some kickback over a disparaging comment I made about Hotmail a few weeks ago. Hotmail is technically an email provider that was all the rage for about four days in 1997. It is the communication service favored today by young Russian singles looking to marry a kindly Amerikan gentlemen, as well as, it turns out, one of my publishers.

I believe my exact words were—and I’m paraphrasing—that Hotmail is a quaint anachronism that deserves special consideration when it is finally tossed into a dumpster fire and destroyed forever...