The Art of Tetman Callis

Some of the stories and poems may be inappropriate for persons under 16

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Entries from October 2013

In a wifely way

October 31st, 2013 · No Comments

“My wife had opened a bottle of liqueur, on which the word ‘Ananas’ appeared and which was a gift from our friend Otto: for he has a habit of making presents on every possible occasion.  It has to be hoped, I thought to myself, that some day he would find a wife to cure him […]

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Tags: Economics · Lit & Crit · Politics & Law

Watch this space

October 30th, 2013 · No Comments

“The Internet began as an unlikely collaboration between the military and academia.  This fact alone explains much of its contradictory character.  The military wanted to link their giant mainframe computers together to share data in order to build better bombs and rockets.  They also needed a robust system, open-ended and flexible enough to be extended […]

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Tags: Economics · Politics & Law · Verandah

It may be more difficult than it first appears

October 29th, 2013 · No Comments

“Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.” – David Foster Wallace, “Kenyon Commencement Speech, 2005″ Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin […]

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Tags: Lit & Crit

Oh, it’s him again

October 28th, 2013 · 3 Comments

“Satan has one pure pleasure: waiting until you have forgotten him, moved on with your life, feeling, if not a certain variety of cheerfulness, precisely, then at least the deficiency of immediate despair, and stepping up beside you on the street, nestling up behind you in your bed, to remind you in his hissy whisper […]

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Tags: Lit & Crit

Lewis Allan Reed, March 2, 1942 – October 27, 2013

October 27th, 2013 · No Comments

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Tags: Verandah

It looks different from the back end

October 27th, 2013 · 2 Comments

“Travel shows you what you already know in ways you don’t recognize. How little you understand when you begin your journey. How much less when you end it.” — Lance Olsen, Calendar of Regrets Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Lit & Crit

Voted least likely to recede

October 26th, 2013 · No Comments

“Our entire popular culture is in essence about high school: about reliving it, about its social relations, about the fears it hammers into your plans.” – Lance Olsen, Calendar of Regrets Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Lit & Crit

No tweezers to draw it out

October 25th, 2013 · No Comments

“Imagine for a moment, just a moment, that the reason the earth-ball is swarmy with transgression lies not in the fact that Man has foundered, failed, fallen, but that he has never risen, flourished, revised his basic constitution in the slightest, has always been, in a word, exactly what he is now: sin lodged in […]

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Tags: Lit & Crit

Eyes open, mouth shut

October 24th, 2013 · No Comments

“One must learn to stay put in order to see.” – Lance Olsen, Calendar of Regrets Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Lit & Crit

Would you like another cup of tea, dear?

October 23rd, 2013 · 2 Comments

“No people are more often wrong than those who will not allow themselves to be wrong.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Economics · Lit & Crit · Politics & Law

Over the hill and far away

October 22nd, 2013 · No Comments

“Ordinary men commonly condemn what is beyond them.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Lit & Crit

It can happen at any age

October 21st, 2013 · No Comments

“Most young people think they are natural when they are only boorish and rude.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Lit & Crit

Clarified

October 20th, 2013 · No Comments

Squirrels in West Rogers Park are fat. Skin ’em and gut ’em and stuff ’em with cloves of sauteed garlic. Sprinkle with black pepper. Wrap ’em in foil. Set ’em to baking in the coals. They come out all juicy, the meat melting off the bones. The skulls can be dipped in clarified butter and […]

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Tags: Economics · Oniontown · Poems · Words

They make a crowd of one

October 20th, 2013 · No Comments

“We hardly find any persons of good sense, save those who agree with us.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Lit & Crit · Politics & Law

It can knock us silly

October 19th, 2013 · No Comments

“Opportunity makes us known to others, but more to ourselves.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Lit & Crit

Where the Danger Lies

October 18th, 2013 · No Comments

Nine out of ten doctors will tell you that the crazy guy who gathers sopping newspapers off the sidewalk in the rain while talking to no one you can see about all the reading he now has to do is a crazy guy. He stops talking when people draw near, he’s not that crazy. He […]

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Tags: Oniontown · Poems · Words

It’s called “making lemonade”

October 18th, 2013 · No Comments

“To be a great man one should know how to profit by every phase of fortune.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Lit & Crit

You can find them in the Congress

October 17th, 2013 · 8 Comments

“If there be men whose folly has never appeared, it is because it has never been closely looked for.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Lit & Crit · Politics & Law

This one was got right

October 16th, 2013 · 2 Comments

Issue 13 of Robot Melon was published today. It contains one of my stories, “A Dog By the Ears.” Here’s the link: http://www.robotmelon.com/issue13/tetmancallis.html   Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Previously Published Stories · Words

Chop the tall poppy

October 16th, 2013 · No Comments

“Moderation is made a virtue to limit the ambition of the great; to console ordinary people for their small fortune and equally small ability.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Lit & Crit

We’ll see how that measures up

October 15th, 2013 · No Comments

“It is as proper to be boastful alone as it is ridiculous to be so in company.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Lit & Crit

A non-dischargeable debt

October 14th, 2013 · 2 Comments

“We may forgive those who bore us, we cannot forgive those whom we bore.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Lit & Crit

But he can get elected nonetheless

October 13th, 2013 · 4 Comments

“No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Lit & Crit

Unscrewing After the Dreaming

October 12th, 2013 · 2 Comments

Usually, when a piece of mine is first published someplace else, I post a notice here on my blog, with a link to the someplace else. I also post the notice and link on Facebook. Then, about three months later, I add a copy of whatever it was to my previously published works on this […]

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Tags: Words

That’s why we have lynch

October 12th, 2013 · No Comments

“A quickness in believing evil without having sufficiently examined it, is the effect of pride and laziness. We wish to find the guilty, and we do not wish to trouble ourselves in examining the crime.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Lit & Crit · Politics & Law

Betrothed to Facebook

October 11th, 2013 · 2 Comments

“We deceive ourselves if we believe that there are violent passions like ambition and love that can triumph over others. Idleness, languishing as she is, does not often fail in being mistress; she usurps authority over all the plans and actions of life; imperceptibly consuming and destroying both passions and virtues.” – Francois Duc De […]

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Tags: Economics · Lit & Crit

Daphne Gottlieb

October 10th, 2013 · No Comments

“the villagers are yelling. they are out for blood. you are not a monster; you want to say, but you do not have language for this because you are a monster, just not the kind they think.” – Daphne Gottlieb, “double cross” Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Lit & Crit

How low can you go

October 9th, 2013 · No Comments

“Humility is often a feigned submission which we employ to supplant others. It is one of the devices of Pride to lower us to raise us; and truly pride transforms itself in a thousand ways, and is never so well disguised and more able to deceive than when it hides itself under the form of […]

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Tags: Lit & Crit

Counting the Hours

October 8th, 2013 · No Comments

Hell in a very small place is directly beneath my feet. Las Hermanas de Las Dolorosas live if you want to call it living in the apartment below my soles. Their bickering ends only when one or both of them lose or loses consciousness. O to sleep and not to scream. They are up and […]

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Tags: Oniontown · Poems · Words

Sometimes it’s silence

October 8th, 2013 · No Comments

“True eloquence consists in saying all that should be, not all that could be said.” – Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld, Reflections (trans. Bund & Friswell) Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin Email Print

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Tags: Lit & Crit