The Contents of the Can by Vago Damitio When’s the last time that you actually took a few minutes at what is going into your garbage? Has it been a while since you looked? Do you imagine that since you haven’t looked that no one has looked? Well, unless you control every step of the trashing…
Category: Writing
Life’s Aspirations
When I was a child – I wanted to be one of those writers that lives an adventurous life, then locks themselves away for a year while writing the perfect novel while communicating with my agent and publisher – I with the internet and ebooks, things stopped working like that – (I also wanted to…
You Stick to the Internet
I had a dream that made me remember it the other night. Maybe you guys experience these too. Sometimes I wake up and am like “Okay, awake, dreamed, now on to life” etc. Other times the dreams remain in my brain and most rare of all is when I meet someone powerful and profound and…
Putting Down Modern Expectations
What are the modern expectations? They’re not so different from the pre-modern expectations. – Owning your own home is the key to your security – Having a steady and secure income makes life enjoyment possible – You have to work now in order to buy your freedom later That last one is the one that…
A Brief History of the Mass Media
The history of mass media is long and complex. It stretches back beyond the dawns of recorded history to the people that figured out that they could reach a larger audience through painting a picture on a cave wall than just by telling the story to whatever group happened to be present. While these distant…
Gun Control is My Right, Not Yours
I wrote this editorial article for The Horizon. The Student Newspaper of Whatcom Community College in November of 1996. My views haven’t changed 16 years later. GUN CONTROL OR NO GUN CONTROL I was on the bus this morning when a heated debate broke out behind me. I often eavesdrop on the public transit system,…
A Random Seattle Bender
A Random Bender in Seattle I was bored, not knowing what to do with my time, so I settled down in my bus and read Oscar Zeta Costa’s “Autobiography of a Brown buffalo”, a great book by the Chicano lawyer who gained fame through representing and carousing with Hunter S. Thompson. The overall effect of…
The Night I Decided to Sell My Guns
As I, and the world, try to come to terms with the murder of a bunch of kindergarten students in the USA, I think back to the night that decided me on selling all of my own guns. I’d grown up with guns and I had a 12-gauge shotgun, a few deer rifles, a .22…
Mathilda: The Hot Insurance Adjuster
Another true story from the year 2000. I’m still baffled by this one. I just don’t understand what the hell was going on. In the year 2000, I lived in Bellingham but was commuting with my little VW Fox to Seattle every day for a new job. It was a lot of driving, but…
A Typical Greyhound Busride – Farters and Axe Murderers
I’ve heard they’ve gotten better but here was what a bus ride on a Greyhound looked like in 1998. The bus ride was fairly uneventful. The first person to sit next to me was a sweet looking old woman who got on the bus in Centralia, Washington. I made room for her and she pulled…