daily prompt

Where There’s Smoke, There’s Ire

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I was fighting with temptation
But I didn’t want to win
A man like me don’t like to see
Temptation caving in—Leonard Cohen, “On the Level”

* * * *
Not included on the long list of substances, people, and activities that have not even briefly scratched my addiction itch is, mysteriously, cigarette smoking.

I wrote, “mysteriously,” because I gave smoking its shot at me. For a period of time measured somewhere between one day and half a decade, I considered myself someone who smoked cigarettes.
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I’m with the Banned

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Some thoughts on freedom of speech …

In an ideal world, there would be no need for the phrase, “In an ideal world.”

We do not reside in an ideal world.
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Just a Volunteer Here Myself

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

One can not, or one ought not, nickname oneself. This is not a hard-and-fast social rule, but it is similar to the unspoken rule about not declaring oneself humble. The person who volunteers that he or she is humble often is not at all humble. An exception comes when the humble person is speaking self-deprecatingly.

Every once in a while, I have desired a cool nickname, a moniker that precedes me wherever I roam. “Lefty” is a great nickname—Steve Carlton and Phil Mickelson both carry that name with distinction, but I am right-handed. No one goes by the name “Righty.” “Write-y”? No. No one needs a nickname that is a pun, a rhyme no less, and would always need a follow-up explanation: “‘Cause he calls himself a writer, get it?”

“No. No, I don’t.”
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