Dennis Latham: Life, Fiction, and the Pursuit of Madness

The joy of prescription meds can be shared by everyone. Ghosts I truly believe there is a parallel dimension that crosses into our lives at certain times and we have contacts from beyond. Things shift in the corners of our eyes. We may at times actually see what appears to be mumbling figures wondering in and out of places. But they are usually blurry and seem totally unreal in the scheme of life. It's kind of like dealing with DC politicians. ****** News Announcer Nightmare Name  Police are still trying to figure out why a 34-year-old mother committed suicide by leaping from her family's minivan on I-75 in Lockland on Monday. Lockland police on Tuesday identified the victim as Vijayalakshmi Comanagowda Kulkarni . I was going to watch the news to see if anyone could pronounce the name, but I later heard they kept it off the news because no one could pronounce the name. ****** Public Housing: Your Neighborhood, Not Mine (or) Do As I Say, Not As I Do. Th...

 My grandson with Freddie from Return Of The Living Dead. "Brains, live brains." Bizarre Short Tales Again "He was a short, kind of tall, fat skinny guy. A kinda baldish, hairy dude with blondish black hair." Bubble-eyed Joe Mcphearson describing the guy who robbed him. The Confederate Army More than a half-century after the last Civil War veterans died, a chapter in Kentucky law still offers a $50-a-month pension to any veteran who can prove service in the Confederate Army. Confederate pensions are a legal relic akin to the passage in Kentucky’s oath of office that requires elected officials to swear that they have not fought a duel with deadly weapons nor offered to act as a second. (Is Kentucky planning for the future or do they really fight duels no one knows about? Kentucky already has the highest rate of smokers in the country. Could it be the stress from duels and no one old enough to collect Confederate pensions?) The real ...

I'm second from the left, back in the days before I went straight, when I was an enforcer for the notorious Clown Cartel. We extorted dues from every birthday party clown operating in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. Still Even More Bizarre World Short Tales Andrew Jackson's Parrot    At   Andrew Jackson's funeral in 1845, his pet parrot had to be removed because it cussed when the preacher said anything good about the president. Jackson was a fighter and a drinker who loved to punch people bigger than he was when he got drunk. He once made the mistake of swinging at 6'8"   275 pound frontiersman Simon Kenton while in Kentucky. When Kenton knocked him across the room with one punch, Jackson stayed down and lived to become President. Had he pressed the issue, Kenton would have probably killed him. A cussing parrot for Jackson would have been a normal pet.     (I once heard of a guy who kept a parrot in his garage and it started cussing whenever he ...

Still More Bizarre Tales Of Real Life  You would never hear someone say, "Hey, he looks like old whats-his-face" about this armed robber. When You Die   When a person dies, hearing is generally the last sense to go. The first sense lost is usually sight. Then follows taste, smell, and touch. That's why I'll never be cremated. Hell, you might feel it. And if your hearing is last to go, and no one knows how long it takes because no one comes back from the dead, you may be able to hear everyone talking about you while you are in the coffin. At some point you'll probably hear, he looks good, doesn't he? It would suck to look better after you're dead than while you were alive. Passenger Screening     During the years that the TSA has been screening passengers, none of its employees anywhere has discovered a single terrorist. I imagine it's because they are not allowed to search anyone who may fit the profile of a terrorist because t...

  Michael In Hell  This is the back cover of Michael In Hell without all the writing on it. It's from a picture of me taken in 1994 in Aurora, Indiana. Some reader noticed when you turn the cover upside down, another kind of evil looking figure becomes visible with outstretched hands and long hair; standing in front of what looks like a large window. This could possibly be the monster part of Michael Tucker in the novel showing itself. This wasn't done on purpose and it does seem really weird. Some of the novel is based on truth. I won't admit exactly what parts beyond the Vietnam scenes that are based on my reality as a Marine during that war. I do know for sure there is a monster lurking in each of us. Michael In Hell on Amazon Kurt Vonnegut Short Take Vonnegut’s relations with women were vexed from the start. When he was 21, his mother successfully committed suicide — on Mother’s Day. Sunglasses and the Secret Service The Secret Service s...

(Zombie Gummy Bears) 73 Killed and 175 injured from falling bullets in Libya. Rebel leaders tell troops just to say Yippee instead of firing weapons straight up. (Now you know why American troops never fire weapons in the air.) The importance of proper spelling and understanding language. (From a WCPO/Cincinnati report) "According to Police Chief James Craig, an officer approached one of the groups after noticing a man holding something near his waste. " (I guess the guy took a dump on the sidewalk.) I can actually use handwriting, which is now like a new code language. Since they don't teach it anymore, most kids can't read it. The three most thrilling things in life: sex, chocolate malts, and being shot at. If you've experienced all three, you know all there is to know about the human condition.

Taking time off from writing for Christmas (you don't see the word Christmas much anymore and it's a shame) to concentrate on singing in the studio. I go in on the 27th to record about seven Sinatra songs for a CD and a demo for possible big band work. I've had a bad head cold, and I'm working on a Z-pack to knock it out, hopefully by the 27th. The Kentucky Ghost Hunters are coming back in February to spend the night at my house. Holidays always seem to spark some activity among our live-in other dimension friends, if they can be called friends. We are supposed to have a man, woman, and child spirits, and one of them is angry all the time. Their activity doesn't seem to be on any regular schedule. It has never been aggressive, but is more to let us know they exist, with thumps, crashes, flitting images, lights on and off, and whispering. Yesterday, another one of my childhood friends, JC, reached the 65th snow mark. None of us thought we would live t...