Dennis E. Powell's View from Mudsock Heights

Dennis E. Powell is crackpot-at-large at Open for Business. Powell was a reporter in New York and elsewhere before moving to Ohio, where he has (mostly) recovered. You can reach him at dep@drippingwithirony.com.

You are viewing page 1 of 34.

Discredit Where Discredit Is Due

By Dennis E. Powell | Jan 08, 2025 at 5:26 PM

We’re 12 days away from being rid of Bugout Joe Biden and his technocratic though dimwitted minions. As the coming months unfold and more and more institutions come to realize that backing the Biden organized crime family was not the smart play, we are likely to give thanks that Biden and his monkeys, well, bidened everything up. Their incompetence has been the country’s salvation.

What We Can Know About 2025

By Dennis E. Powell | Jan 01, 2025 at 9:53 PM

There are things we can know about 2025 within a minuscule margin of error, and it’s worthwhile to know at least some of them ahead of time, for planning purposes. Many of them are things humans cannot change. Others are things that humans could change but probably won’t, for good or bad reasons.

The Important Parts Don't Change

By Dennis E. Powell | Dec 25, 2024 at 7:16 PM

In Austria, 206 years ago this Christmas Eve, one of the most enduring religious (as opposed to secular retail) Christmas songs was sung for the first time. In Athens, Ohio, 10 years ago, I did what I used to do every year after Christmas Eve midnight Mass (no longer held at midnight, I’m sad to say). Savoring, yes, the silence of the night, I would take a long walk through town, breathing it all in and thinking of a place now all buttoned up for (as Clement Moore put it in a poem published five years after the introduction of “Silent Night”) “a long winter’s nap.” Students mostly gone home, residents in their houses enjoying their own Christmas traditions, there were quiet and peace.

I Got an M, Not an F

By Dennis E. Powell | Dec 18, 2024 at 11:57 PM

In my elementary school, we weren’t given grades of A B C D F as was the standard before and since. Instead, New Haven R-II school employed a different set of letters that meant the same thing. They were E S M I F. I have no idea how this came to pass, but I hope it was because some person seeking a doctorate in education realized that his dissertation was due tomorrow and he had nothing. Frankly, I could get behind that kind of education theory. Beats modern pedagogy, anyway.

In search of . . .

By Dennis E. Powell | Dec 11, 2024 at 11:29 PM

It’s important, I think, to begin by saying that I’m writing this on my television, as I sit on the couch 10 feet away and use a wireless keyboard.

Yes, it is a stunt, but one in service of point. In that respect, it’s a little bit like the old television ads that began, “We’ve replaced the coffee in this fine restaurant with Folger’s Crystals to prove a point.” In this case, though, the point is not that even if you have enough money to dine above your station, your tastes are still probably those of a field hand.

Buying Stuff

By Dennis E. Powell | Dec 05, 2024 at 2:54 AM

Here we are, at sort of the end of the beginning of the spending orgy that starts the annual accumulation of debt in honor of the birth of Jesus. While the season should involve debt, it’s not the kind that can be redeemed by money and not the kind owed to the credit card company.

Let Thanksgiving Be Thanksgiving

By Dennis E. Powell | Nov 27, 2024 at 11:50 PM

Most every publication in the country has run at least one column or “lifestyle” story this month about how to get along with relatives on Thanksgiving even though they are evil fascists. (To which I’d add, or football fans.)

A Fur Peace in Time

By Dennis E. Powell | Nov 20, 2024 at 11:23 PM

Was it fate or just the path of least resistance? It’s been 20 years and I still don’t know.

In the autumn of 2004 circumstances too long and boring to explain gave me the opportunity to live pretty much anywhere I wanted. There was no particular reason, no special interest, leading me to one place over another.

Third-World Internet from Frontier Communications

By Dennis E. Powell | Nov 14, 2024 at 2:19 AM

The internet and phone went out Halloween night. There was a light rain, and with Frontier Communications that’s all it takes. The rain doesn’t need to be local. As long as it is raining, or someone sneezes, anywhere in the world, Frontier Communications internet and phone service is likely to fail.

Royko Gets His Wish

By Dennis E. Powell | Nov 06, 2024 at 9:46 PM

If you look around or listen, you’ll hear the newly minted cliché that the Democratic Party is now engaged in soul searching after it got hammered yesterday, top to bottom, by voters who did not like what it was selling.

You are viewing page 1 of 34.