What’s Your Six-Word Life Story?

SMITH magazine online presents us with a wonderful challenge: Can you tell the story of your life in six words? Some examples from the Six-Word Memoir contest:
*Pork Chops Searching for My Applesauce.
*Caller i.d. helps keep me lonely.
*Not Quite What I Was Planning.
What’s my [...]

Al Smith Saves the Presidential Race

Finally. Something good to say about the presidential race. At the Al Smith dinner in New York Thursday night, Barack Obama and John McCain showed their best. They came together at the same table, “without preconditions,” as Obama said, and each showed why they are their party’s nominees. And they reassured [...]

Blues’ Clues

It looks as if the security perimeter around next week’s Republican National Convention (RNC) is going to make St. Paul’s Excel Energy Center about as publicly accessible as China’s Forbidden City during the Ming Dynasty.
So how are blue bywatchers to know when the Red Man Group arrives in our fair city? A [...]

Can robots write tell-all books?

Breaking news from ONN (the Onion News Network): The Pentagon has developed and successfully deployed an unmanned spokesdrone, which is able to conduct press conferences and field questions deemed too dangerous for a human press secretary, whose career could be irreparably damaged by answering them.

Of course, the question remains: Can [...]

Mullet-Americans Rally Around Pawlenty

Mullet-Americans are “cautiously optimistic” about rumors that mulleted Minnesotan Tim Pawlenty may soon be named Senator John McCain’s vice presidential running mate.
“It would obviously be historic, and it could really balance the ticket, what with McCain’s embarassing lack of hair below the cervical vertebrae,” said mullet-American activist Billy Rae Cyrus.
Still reeling from the [...]

Disarming or Arming Humor?

Humor can be a terrific PR tool for disarming a controversy. Artfully done, it can show the world that you don’t take yourself too seriously and possess humility. It is mea culpa lite, still bringing closure with half the defensiveness of a direct apology. And it can make subsequent [...]