Dave's Fiction Warehouse

In which I bloviate about books, TV, movies, politics and other stuff.

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We don’t need no stinking followers

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Should we care that Elon Musk is about to acquire Twitter? Not really. Remember that Twitter, like Matt Gaetz and Marge Greene, is just a tool. Like any tool, it can be used for evil or good. Well, mostly evil in the case of Matt-n-Marge, but you see what I mean. I’m not going to ditch Twitter just because the world’s richest (for now) man and the […]

This could be
the last time

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You always know when you’re experiencing something for the first time. But you can never be sure when it’s the last. After a certain age, most things take on an elegiac cast. Only later can you look back and recognize a final moment for what it was. And you always wish you’d paid more attention.  The older I get, the more I wonder about those last times, […]

Still life with dicks

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Some miscreants have been spray-painting penises on the streets of our neighborhood. The Facebook reactions have been interesting. Some decry vandalism and the harmful effects on children who may pedal by. Others see vibrant guerrilla art, part of the rich tapestry of life in a supremely chill neighborhood.  I’m somewhere in the middle. Not really vandalism, since nothing is broken. And I doubt it’s going to corrupt […]

Not throwing away
my shot

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Whenever I go to a Wal-Mart, I am reminded that whatever you save there in dollars you eventually surrender in dignity. But it happened to be the first place with available appointments for the Covid vaccine, so my vigilant wife arose early and booked it online. When I arrived at the appointed hour, a number of lines had already formed at the understaffed pharmacy counter. In the […]

February fugue

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In Barry Levinson’s 1990 movie “Avalon,” there’s a scene where the aging patriarch sits down in his easy chair in front of the TV. The camera remains stationary, but there’s a slow cross-fade, and at the end of it we see that several years have passed. The old guy is in the same chair, still watching TV, but he has gotten much older.  He hasn’t moved, but […]

None the wiser

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Hard times need good songs. The Great War had “Over There.” The Great Depression had “Brother Can You Spare a Dime.” World War II had “We’ll Meet Again.” And now, with Covid-19 roaring back, it feels like we need an anthem too. I nominate “Wise Up,” by Aimee Mann. The song came back to me yesterday, just after I canceled the family vacation rental I’d booked for […]

The shit keeps coming

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‘Well, that was some weird shit.” President George W. Bush’s reaction to Trump’s 2017 inauguration speech was apt then and describes pretty well everything Trump has done since. Weird shit indeed! It never ends, does it? Last night (July 3) at Mount Rushmore, Trump was reveling in dystopian fantasies of culture war and forced-perspective photographs suggesting his own smirking visage would look pretty good chiseled alongside the […]