a once weekly open mike
because I hate spelling it ‘open mic’
Let’s see what happens when your host (me) has nothing to say. Step right up, speak your mind, tell a story, sing a song, whatever.
11/1/2025
Anything goes #52
15 responses to “Anything goes #52”
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I found this blog several weeks ago and I enjoy reading it. I just bought issue #22 of Pathetic Life from eBay and I’m looking forward to reading it. I saw your “My Obituary” and I’m glad you didn’t die right after I started reading your blog, I would have wondered if I am a jinx and I had brought you bad luck.
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The thought of someone paying good money for my long-gone zine in 2025 makes me giggle, even if I get none of the proceeds. What’s the going price?
Thanks for the note, I declare you the opposite of a jinx, and not being dead is highly recommended by me! Set a spell. Take your shoes off. Y’all come back now, y’hear?
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When you were gone for a couple days I thought, that’s it, better send your obit to the ava…
It’s an interesting one, maybe send it now?
Maybe we should all write them?-
Everyone should write their own obituary. It’s your last chance to tell the true story before everyone else gets it wrong or, more likely, forgets it. I’ve long intended to roll my own, and still might, as that attempt was rushed under the circumstances.
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Rare to get news from the world of zines these days:
https://uni-watch.com/2025/10/31/uni-watch-1999-2025/
Paul Lukas did “Beer Frame” back in the day, which everyone said they liked but I had never seen.
From the sound of it, seems like a threat of legal action, maybe over photo licensing?
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I remember Beer Frame. Nothing specific, but it’s a pleasant memory.
Uni Watch is unknown to me, and Paul’s top listed reason for shutting the site is declining ad revenue. I’m always glad I never went down that path and tried to make a zine/blog into a business.
He also cites an unexpected and impossibly high new expense, which you think sounds like a legal threat, and I agree. That’s the likely reason he’d not only cease and desist, but immediately start taking the whole site offline. Little people are not allowed to play in the big people’s pool.
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I cannot think of a less interesting topic than a discussion of sports uniforms, much less a constant grinding of the minutiae of them. But you know, people have interests, and I do like anything that’s nerdy and esoteric for the love of it. In the old days I might have found it, bookmarked it and then never gone back again.
Yet while searching to see if it was the same Paul Lukas that I remembered from zineland, I found these groups that were criticizing him for being critical, I think mainly because they feel he didn’t give enough rationale to why he didn’t like the 3rd alternate throwback jersey of their favorite team. It is simply impolite to suggest people think a little bit about their mass consumption now (admittedly, that’s probably an occupational hazard). They really laid into him like he was one of those guys who gave a bad review to their Star Wars or superhero movie. So today was the day that I found something even less interesting than a discussion of sports uniforms, and that’s polemical arguments over the discussion of sports uniforms.
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No doubt, someone will complain that the color is a shade too bright or the piping on the collar is somehow wrong, and probably toss in an insult and two profanities.
I saw this phenomenon when I was zining in the 1990s — people really enjoy criticizing and nitpicking — but social media and ‘reply’ forms under every article make it so much easier. You don’t even need to spend two minutes finding a piece of paper, a pen, a stamp; you can zing an insult or criticism at a stranger in five seconds, and the meaner it is, the more ‘likes’ or ‘upvotes’ it gets.
Also wondering, did you stumble across Paul’s blog by accident, or are you on a crusade to see what all the old-time zinesters are up to?
When I first started re-typing and posting old issues of Pathetic Life, I often internet-searched for any zinesters mentioned. Kinda stopped doing that, though, as too many zine people I remembered were turning up dead, and one that I’d particularly liked had become a preacher…
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Ha, funny but no, I think I saw a link to the final post on a basketball site.
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People just say anything. I had a girlfriend for a few months and we had nothing in common except we both liked food, sex, and music. (She was a checker at the Co-op, she smiled at me and that’s all it took.) She had tattoos and I didn’t. She had children and I didn’t. She had a regular job and I didn’t. She was poor and I wasn’t. She smoked cigarets and I never. She watched You-tube and I read books. She drank and gambled at casinos and I didn’t.
Her fourteen year old son waited around for dinner till 11:00pm when she came and prepared some for him. Well, maybe a teenager should be able to do for himself but one day I said, “Christy, you’re a bad mother.” She looked shocked and I didn’t see her for a few days and then she took me back. I told a friend of mine that I was surprised she took me back after I had blurted out one of the worst things you can say to a mother. “Oh, she wants the cock,” she said. Yeah?
The next time I saw Christy I said, “My friend said you took me back because you want the cock.”
“No,” she said, “I have a vibrator.” Later I said, “Why did you say that, about the vibrator? You know it’s not the same.”
People will just say anything. -
I chased a woman I met on Craigslist all the way to Texas, and when that didn’t pan out, despite wearing her little red party bra on my head for most of the drive, I met another Craigslist floozy who gave me a lot of strokes. She said I had a very nice cock and that I smelled really nice. Not using deodorant must be earthy and authentic, maybe she was used to the city boys with their artificial body washes? She taught me how to properly suck clit, had I been just sort of lapping around down there?
“Good posture is important,” she said and suggested that I kneel on the floor alongside the bed in a relaxing and comfortable position. “With one hand pull back the hood by grasping the skin above it.” The hood? What’s a fuckin’ hood? She said if I didn’t pull back the clitoral hood I would be ineffective.
“Now insert two fingers into me, bending the tips up beneath the clitoris,” she said. I gazed at that cute little pink thing and she said, “Now suck hard and pump your fingers hard!”
“All these steps seem kind of mechanical,” I said.
“Well, a blow job is kind of mechanical,” she replied. “But you don’t hear men objecting to that.” I saw her point.
I sucked hard and pumped my two fingers into her. “Harder!” she said. “Really pump your fingers in there hard, and suck my clit hard!” I followed her directions. “Now put your pinky into my anus, that’s called ‘The Ricky,’ and pump ’em all and suck hard!” It seemed like she came many times.
No matter how many times she came it was important for her that I come too, and I rarely did, maybe I need to be in love or something. She was Egyptian, had a sphinx in her backyard, and I would go out back and piss on its face. All of them here in Texas, the North Austin suburban chick who worked for the defense corporation, the South Austin Egyptian who was an infectious control nurse, and the South Austin bus driver lady, all of them had sons in the military fighting in Iraq and one had been wounded six times.
My therapist had said there was nothing to lose by putting in a personal add but I’m not so sure. That whole world is freaky and kinky and needy and weird. Okay, maybe I fit right in.-
Can’t do a jump start without popping the hood, man.
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The males of my acquaintance devote 40% of their conversation (and presumably, minds) to basketball, football, hockey, occasionally soccer, but I’ve stopped responding on such subjects. Baseball, OK, reluctantly, but other than that, no sports for me.
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Your comment about sports brought this dialog to mind:
Party Talk
Joe: God, this is so predictable, how boring. The men are all over here talking
and the women are on the other side of the room.
Pete: So why don’t you go over there?
Joe: I will, the instant you guys start talking about cars.
Pete: The women probably don’t want you over there.
Joe: Why should they? “Man talk” probably bores them too.
Pete: Why don’t you go over there and talk about your feelings ?
Joe: Yeah, you wouldn’t know much about that, would you?
Pete: Hey, the women are glad we’re all over here. It gives them a break from their husbands and boyfriends.
Joe: Yeah, if I went over there they wouldn’t know what to do. What to talk about.
Pete: They would probably all stop talking. It’s a secret society over there. They don’t even want us to know what they’re talking about. You would be the subject, a renegade fleeing his own kind!
Joe: Do you guys really like to stand around here talking about cars and sports?
Pete: Dude, you’re single. Of course you want to be with the ladies!
Joe: You’re boring. I’m leaving.
Pete: Good! This is why you don’t usually get invited to these parties.
Joe: What? I won’t play the game?
Pete: You’re dangerous dude. You’re a threat to our way of life.
Joe: But it’s boring!
Pete: And thats the way we want it, nothing too challenging.
Joe: Is this what marriage has done to you?
Pete: Ummm…-
Being a movie guy, I’m reading this as a short subject, Pete & Joe Go To a Party — and it’s good. Lots better than any actual party I’ve been to.
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