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I don’t particularly care for opera, but it is consistent. All the dialogue is sung. Ballet bores me to tears. But again, it is consistent. It remains retarded throughout an entire performance of the unsexiest dancing ever conceived. Musicals, however… Oh, how I loathe them! Oh, how I despise them! Oh, how I hate their schizophrenic foolery. One minute, characters are engaging in mindless, over-exaggerated dialogue. The next, a melody magically floats into the scene sans instruments or a DJ, someone spontaneously begins singing in rhymed couplets without pause for thought, and all the characters’ brains coagulate into an impromtu hive mind, enabling any and all persons within the frame or the proscenium to step to choreography as easily as a crowd might succumb to mob mentality when flipping a police car or lynching an undesirable. Talk about dissuspension of disbelief.

It matters not whether it’s a kitchenette, a dinette, a luncheonette, or an entire dining room suite. Whatever class of familial eat-at-and-bicker-furniture it is, it was originally sold with an even number of chairs. Even, as in divisible by two. Even, as in initially coming with four chairs… six chairs… eight chairs… Sometimes as many as 10 or 12 chairs. Yet, at least half of the dining ensembles I find in estates are missing one. These abominations I have officially classified as Sans Unum.

Expectations can be ugly bastard children born from unreasonable dreams and over-optimistic minds. Case in point: The Baby Boomers. They can be likened to the spoiled little brat who receives a plethora of wonderful and expensive gifts on Christmas morning, but decries them because he didn’t get that one special piece of useless shit that he had so been hoping for with all his pre-adolescent might. Why? Well, despite rising from the primitive state of three television stations and crackly AM radio to a marvelous world filled with HD-TVs, MP3s, Blackberries, real-time navigation, high speed Internet access, and downloadable porn, some Baby Boomers (such as my father) are pissed off.

“Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.” - Psalm 150:6. Rev. Rachel Bickford had an epiphany when she read that verse, and so she instituted Sunday evening Woof ‘n’ Worship services at the Pilgrim Congregational Church in North Weymouth, Massachusetts. Yes. Feeling that religion in general needed one more thing over which to be ridiculed, Rev. Bickford is now holding services for dogs and their owners. (One woman even brought her ailing Bernese to be blessed, hoping that the power of Jesus would heal the pup.) All breeds, no matter how obnoxious or vicious, are welcomed so long as they are leashed. Such zoological Zionism may work for this particular group of Protestants, but as a former Catholic I can tell you that Rome would never allow such a thing to occur in its churches.

What is independence? Well, I was raised to understand that independence is taking responsibility for our own actions. Independence is self-determination. Independence is how we want to live our lives, and if along the way we make mistakes, we blame ourselves. Independence is not making excuses. It is not looking to the government for solutions. It is not believing that we are entitled to anything except life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Independence is not suing L’Oreal when we dye our hair the wrong color.

When looking back on my glorious and belligerent academic career, even I am amazed that I was ejected from a classroom only once. That was in my senior year of high school during a theology class, an event that has become known as The Mock Marriage Debacle. Although I will not admit any wrong in my stance, reaction, or anger, I will admit that Father Jim had no choice but to tell me to leave.

Perverts and wackos of the most extreme variety will be flocking to Storchen, a restaurant in Switzerland. Why? Because their newest menu contains soups, sauces, stews, and the like that are made with human breast milk. Why?… Well, I’m not really sure what Storchen’s motivations are, but PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) see it as another step toward stemming the “abuse” of cows.

Yes. I know Joe Cetta, the hack–I mean the genius behind Knowingly Undersold. He and I have shared the theatrical stage, college courses, and many a pitcher of beer. In our early twenties, we propped up each other’s superiority complexes while waxing drunkenly on literature, film, television, and the ultimate mystery of the universe: women. He has a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing and a penchant for making all those who love him equally despise him. Known affectionately by his friends as The Goat Ass, Professor Cetta has thrown his hat into the ring for the 2016 Presidential Race. I sat down with the candidate to ask him the tough questions about his campaign.

I don’t know where she came from. Neither do I know where she went. All I know is that I opened the front door of my auction gallery, rolled out the sign, and when I came back in she was standing there looking at me. Her face seemed to be frozen in a perpetual expression of bewilderment, much like the face of an idiot who looks at a Soduko and wonders why tic-tac-toe is being played with numbers. Then, she spoke:

Since March 15, 2008, this site has been powered by WordPress (WP). One of the best features of this blogging application is its automatic Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Every word that I type into this blog is thrown into cyberspace, crawled by Internet search engines, and attributed back to Authoring Auctioneer dot com (AA). So, tagging my articles is nearly unnecessary, except for what I want to appear in my sidebar’s tag cloud. When I combine the power of WP with the detailed reports of Google Analytics (GA), I am able to offer you one really screwed-up article (SuA)…

As Friday night became Saturday morning, I was asked by the love of my life if I was hungry. “No,” I replied to her, “but obviously you are.” She affirmed my assumption and then asked me to go to McDonald’s. There’s one in Dunmore, a town several miles up the road from my apartment building, at which the drive thru is open 24/7. I had never before ventured to this McDonald’s after midnight, and therefore was unprepared for the stupidity I encountered.

Although never surpassing Hitler’s SS in fashion, Mussolini’s Blackshirts were certainly just as terrible and tyrannical. As a student of history, I thought that a black shirt could never cause as much trouble, pain, and general consternation as it had in the days of Fascist Italy. I was wrong. My fiancee started a new job. Her uniform, which she had to acquire for herself, consists of black pants, black shoes, and a plain, black, button-down shirt. The pants were no problem; she already owned several pair. The shoes proved to be simple as well. We found them in Payless. It took all of five minutes to try them on and buy them. The shirt… Well… Add a mythical power and a menacing villain, and Spielberg has his next Indiana Jones movie.

“It would be wicked to give it a zero because it does show some very basic skills we are looking for, like conveying some meaning and some spelling.” That’s what Peter Buckroyd, a British high school English teacher, told the Associated Press after he awarded a student 2 points out of a possible 27 for writing nothing but an expletive on a test paper. The R-rated phrase consisted of two words: The first started with the letter F, and the second word was “off.” Mr. Buckroyd said that the student would have received a higher grade had the phrase been punctuated. Otherwise, the teacher felt it would have been inappropriate to give the student a zero, because the obscenity was spelled correctly and expressed the student’s thoughts. (You can read the story on FOXNews.com) I have to say that I am rather conflicted over the aspects of this little story from across the pond.

“Absolutely everything I have, I take nothing with me.” That’s what Ian Usher told the entire world when he decided to auction off his entire life. Mr. Usher, a 45-year-old British businessman, had been living in Perth, Australia with his wife Laura. On June 29, the final bid was taken for all that he had and all that he was. As soon as the buyer pays him, Mr. Usher claims he will walk out of his house with nothing but the clothes he’s wearing, his wallet, and his passport, and head to wherever the winds blow him to begin a new life…

As my father has gotten older, that particular area of his temper that kicks into action when confronted by a dumb ass has changed from angry finger pointing and thundering, harsh words to a quiet, sarcastic, kind of amused grace. Indeed, rather than shouting at the every day idiot (known scientifically as homo-idius abiectus), Dad offers them a facetious smile, one in which his lips press tightly together and his cheeks puff out a bit from the over-exaggeration of the expression. Of course, when face to face with the most dangerous of the species (homo-idius summus), Dad can still pull out the big guns and growl like a proper Italian.

Forrest Gump explained, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.” Well, that little fortune cookie excerpt also applies to answering the phone at Rebecca’s Auction Gallery. Every time it rings, I never know what I’m going to get…

It was the summer of 1999… the summer that we moved Rebecca’s Auction Gallery to Olyphant. I was alone at the gallery, setting up for the approaching auction, when two women (I’ll call them Dense and Denser) walked in to have a look. All seemed normal. Dense and Denser perused the inventory, making ignorant quips and clucking away like chickens. I gave them a few minutes to walk around before greeting them. I asked if I could be of any assistance.