no hero here

Is it possible to be a hero on the side waging an unjust war?

gold bug, gold slug

Gold is an inert metal, and an inert investment, in the sense that gold merely holds value: It doesn’t have the creative and generative economic value of an equity or bond investment.

last parking place

Two things that create dead space in cities: parking garages and cemeteries.

divisible eye

To update a 60’s protest chant: “The whole world is watching different channels!”

discomfiting thought

Comfort mongers among us.

only ankle deep

The rich claim they’re being soaked when the bottoms of their pants’ legs get wet.

slack learning curve

Some workers think that experience is knowing where the restrooms are and how much time you have for lunch.

one myth too many

Show me a self-made man, and in seconds I’ll scratch through to the social clay from which he was molded.

scar shaped like a smile

To see gloating global capitalism get its comeuppance was almost worth the financial pain of 2008-2009.

nothing obscured

Birds will alight on the branch that gives them the best vantage point.

nostalgists

Either they are aghast at the present or afraid of what lies ahead.

not mass enough to ignite

Remember, Earth, that planets are but failed stars.

untested

If you trust, you don’t need to test.

utter clutter

To live through a catastrophe in which everything has been taken away from you except your life. After that, all life must seem a dream cluttered with things, people and events.

house lust

I am desirous of a very large house so that I can have houseguests, and never see them.

paradise wasted

It’s sad to think of a place called Paradise after the fall. A place of great beauty and bounty that just goes on and on, all wasted, with no one there to experience it.

weak tea

What the American middle class most lacks is a sense of appreciation.

skip a step

Young (Gen Z) job candidate to the interviewer: ‘Take me to your loser.’

not front row seats

All kinds of horrors can happen until people’s clothes start to get spattered.

no better

This I can do; I can do no better.

perceived perfect

Don’t demand, rather prefer perfection, ever aware part of it is perception.

skin deep

How can I say this without being insensitive to the hours he spent under the needle, but he was someone who thought of a tattoo as a life-long accomplishment.

scared myself

Sometimes I think I’m scary sane.

o save us uncle sam

Those who are first to complain about ‘big government’, who claim that the private sector is more effective and efficient in all ways, are the same people now complaining that the government isn’t acting fast enough, isn’t using its vast resources, to solve the disastrous Gulf oil spill.

not me

In any error or act, the last thing we see is our complicity.

rat-a-tat-tat

Sprayed with automatic weapon-fire, I was having difficulty connecting the dots.

cast as extras

In any sufficiently complex notion of God, people simply become superfluous.

people trump ideas

The problems begin when one puts ideologies before people. People will complicate that which ideologies want to simplify.

past imperfect

Memory is imagination with a history.

seen enough

There have been countless UFO sightings and yet no confirmed contact with aliens has occurred. Quite possibly they’ve seen enough and are avoiding us.

serfdom

Serf to the fictional fiefdom of the self.

to go that far

To die in a place so wild or unnavigable your body will never be recovered.

proud flesh

Healed before the scars remembered where to leave their marks.

almost malapropism

Almost a malapropism except it makes sense: Devise and conquer.

low down

A sewer worker in the necropolis.

friend demand

Make too many friends and you forfeit your own life.

after the fall

Felled, but feeling better.

utilitarian time

Last time I looked the fifty dollar Timex told the same time as the fifty-thousand Rolex.

from haunt to hunt

I was haunted enough by to begin hunting for.

spot visible from space

In May 2010, scientists noticed that Jupiter had mysteriously lost one of its great cloud belts. At the same time, if on one of Jupiter’s moons an observer would've turned his telescope toward planet Earth, he would have noticed a ‘great dark spot’ developing on the surface of one of our seas.