Amber and Johnny; or, The Poet by Dr. Dale Williams Barrigar PhD

(Images provided by DWB)

“I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.” – Bob Dylan

The person in these pictures is a poet in action.

She’s a poet and she does know it, but she does not show it, at least not in any overt kind of way (or hardly ever).

She’s 18 now, recently graduated from high school (she went to Hemingway’s high school), and she tried the poet clubs and poet readings at the school.

But she couldn’t really stand any of them.

Because she is horrified by any sort of insincerity. She can even feel it approaching before it’s there. For her, insincerity is akin to the proverbial fingernails screeching across a chalkboard. For her, most formal poetry readings and poet gatherings and poet clubs, and so forth, have the same sincerity value as Amber Heard’s testimony at the Johnny Depp trial which she, like her father, could not stand watching because of how blatantly insincere, false, and totally FAKE it obviously was.

(We were watching the trial because we’re Johnny Depp fans, big ones. And even though I couldn’t stand watching Amber make a fool of herself, or maybe because I couldn’t stand watching her make a fool of herself, she reminds me very much (physically included) of someone I once knew (and dated, and almost married), a stage actress and theater professor from Chicago, Illinois, which has more theater than any other place in the country except NYC).

To be a professional academic poet in the USA of today, one has to give professional poetry readings, and attend professional poet gatherings, and join poetry clubs, 99.999% of which have about as much sincerity as the testimony of Amber Heard at the Johnny Depp trial.

Hemingway, as a famous writer, was terrified of formal public speaking, so much so that he rarely, or never, did it.

Bukowski, Hemingway’s most famous direct heir, gave the greatest poetry readings of any poet in American history.

He could hold an audience of hundreds in the palm of his hand for hours. Almost literally.

And yet he hated doing it – hated it unto the death; because he said it made him feel like a fake, a freak, and a fraud.

The person in these pictures is a poet, but she almost never shows it, not in any overt way. (Although if you’re a sensitive human who’s a good judge of character and an artist, or artistically inclined, you may be able to tell it from a single glance.)

Writer in Action by Dr. Dale Williams Barrigar

(Images provided by DWB)

“You’ll find it when you stop looking.” – D.W. Barrigar

At 18, she doesn’t quite know it yet, but the way she walks, the way she talks, the way she thinks, and the way she acts all indicate one thing: writer.

Just who and what a writer is now is undergoing great flux and change, great challenges and readjustments. It’s been happening very dramatically since around the year 2000. We live in a period of rapid and sudden uncertainty, and we, of course, don’t know how things will pan out.

Edgar Allan Poe, it’s often said, was the first American writer who actually tried to make a living from his pen and nothing but his pen.

He failed miserably, had to work mostly as an editor instead, and died in the gutter because of it.

Before that, it wasn’t as if America didn’t have writers. Most people wrote and read letters, for instance, every day. (If they were “illiterate,” they dictated their letters and had letters from others read aloud to them from someone around them who could read and write.) It was simply the case that making a living as a creative writer was fairly unheard of. There were zero copyright laws at that time, among other reasons, many other reasons.

Geoffrey Chaucer, of England, author of the Canterbury Tales, is considered the first actual, individual author in the English language, in the modern sense. (Rome and other societies had their own versions much earlier than that.)

And making a living as a writer, as nothing more than a writer, never crossed Chaucer’s mind.

He had a million other jobs instead, while also completing the most lasting work in the English language outside of Shakespeare. And we all know how Shakespeare supported himself.

So even if she never publishes a word, and even as she also does other things, too, this is a writer in action – not tomorrow, not in a few years or decades, now.

America thinks everything is about money.

The best-seller mentality has poisoned the well of the minds of so many writers that many, or even most, of them have stopped writing seriously even as they still dream of writing.

I taught in the writing schools of the Midwestern USA for over twenty years, first as a graduate student, later as a professor and lecturer.

It gradually dawned on me that there was a mindset that was killing the creativity of many of my students.

Too many of them believed that if they didn’t become rich and famous writers overnight, then they weren’t writers at all.

And they quit doing it. They stopped writing. Because they thought the lack of instant “success” meant they weren’t good enough. So they bowed out, with embarrassed smiles on their faces. It was sad to see, sad that so many had (and still do) fallen for the lie. The big lie.

Writing, creative writing, is something you do if you’re called to it. Any outward success, or lack of so-called outward success, is never going to stop you if you’re a real writer.

We are all writers today, in many ways, inventing personas for ourselves, using words to text and email each other all the time every single day.

Jesus was a writer, even though he never wrote a word, except one known time, with his finger in the sand.

But who told more lasting, wide-ranging stories than he did? Short stories, usually very, very short stories, so powerful they turned him into the most famous human being who’s ever lived or ever will live – bar none. It was his words that did everything, including bringing back the dead. (“Lazarus, come out!”) And that makes him a writer. He was never paid a pittance for it, not even a single cent, ever, not even one time.

(He was never directly paid, but he was given free food, lodging, and wine from his audiences and hearers.)

The person in these pictures is a writer in action, even if she doesn’t quite know it yet, even if she never “publishes” a word.

“Nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’, but it’s free,” wrote Kris Kristofferson.

Beyond the Scientific Method by Dr. Dale Williams Barrigar PhD

(images provided by DWB)

“God is nowhere. God is now here.” – Philip K. Dick

The Omega Point is a theory conceived of and developed by the French mystical Jesuit and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin meant to explain evolution and the end of time to the human world.

You know you’re in good company when you’re in the middle and roundly attacked by both sides.

In Teilhard de Chardin’s case, “both sides” meant the Western secular scientists over here, and the Catholic church over there.

Those are big enemies to face down.

This particular French mystical Jesuit and scientist (not as rare a creature as it might sound) did it for the love of truth.

May we all be so blessed.

The end of time is a wild concept, to say the least.

It’s when everything stops happening.

Nothing moves. Nothing develops. Anywhere. At all.

Also, nothing ages. Nothing dies.

I will offer, next, a further interpretation of the Omega Point.

I cannot pretend to understand this.

I can only claim to be massively fascinated by it and to believe that it may well have so much truth to it that it is the truth.

Teilhard de Chardin basically predicted the internet at least fifty years before it actually happened when he said that humans were moving toward a higher consciousness with technology, a global web of human consciousness that was a natural part of evolution.

He claimed that this would raise human consciousness to higher levels, and eventually, much higher levels.

That hasn’t happened yet; but it doesn’t mean that it never will.

The Omega Point is the end of all time, and it is what the Universe itself (and all the Universes around ours) are moving toward.

It’s the time and the point when all things merge together and stop moving.

“No time” means no pain.

And every single consciousness that has ever existed – everything that has ever lived – all animals, all plants, all humans, all stars, all celestial bodies, all everything – will become one, while simultaneously maintaining their separate knowledge and separate consciousnesses.

In other words, we will all be together, in a good way.

Suffering will end.

And we will know all of it and everything, even the Ultimate Reason why.

All of the above is what we call, in English, GOD.

According to the theory.

Until then, we can all continue to hum along with the country singer Chris Stapleton when he sings, so sweetly, from his song “Broken Halos,” “Don’t go looking for the reasons / Don’t go asking Jesus why / We’re not meant to know the answers / They belong to the by and by. / They belong to the by and by.”

(“I am the Alpha and the Omega.” – Jesus Christ)

The End of the World by The Drifter

(Images by The Drifter)

“Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me.” – John, Revelation

“There’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names / And he decides who to free and who to blame.” – Johnny Cash, “The Man Comes Around”

In the old days, you could hear the barbarians arriving at the gate out of nowhere.

And it might not have meant the whole world, but it meant that your world, was about to end: completely, and thoroughly: forever; which was tantamount, back then, to the whole world ending.

It’s happened thousands, or even millions, of times before, here on Planet Earth, to humans. The end comes. And it comes hard. And it comes fast. And it comes for good. That’s it: kaput! Lights out; the world you knew and thought would last beyond you is suddenly gone.

People always knew it could happen at any time. Even though we have nukes now and are capable of blowing up virtually the whole world, we could never be sure, under those circumstances, that the nukes got everybody.

It’s actually almost impossible that the nukes will get everybody, if there’s a nuclear war.

There will probably be at least some random groups of people, in the southern hemisphere among the mountains and jungles, for example, who survive.

Even if some celestial body, hurled by the hand of God, crashes into Planet Earth and wipes out all humans; even then; we would never know, individually, that the world was, for sure, over everywhere, for everybody.

Even if it were true, we wouldn’t know it.

The end will come.

We can be sure of that.

The threats we are facing now are legion, and so horrifying, if you stare them in the face, that it seems like the book of Revelation, which was one of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s favorite literary works.

The book of Revelation was written as a warning; and to give aid and comfort to the good people, the few good people, who live, who live now, who have lived before, and who will always live: until the end.

Charles Bukowski wrote this: “Goodness can be found sometimes in the middle of hell.”

Buk considered the society he was inhabiting at the time to be HELL.

It’s worth considering what he and others like him would think about our own day.

Would they suddenly think everything was great back in the time/s in which they lived which they thought were hell at the time? Would they suddenly think it was great then, and horrible now?

Buk also wrote this (probably drunk): “Slavery was never abolished, it was widened to include everyone.”

On this Sunday, October 26, 2025, the underground internet persona “The Drifter” asks caring Readers to consider the following passage from the book of Revelation, one of Hunter S. Thompson’s favorite literary works, in a metaphorical way.

And in a symbolic way.

Not in a literal way. It was never meant to be taken literally.

The metaphorical truth it tells is the truth.

“And the beast was captured. And with it the false prophet who in its presence had done the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. And the rest were slain by the sword that came from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse. And the birds were gorged with their [the evil people’s] flesh.”

Saragun Springs Presents a Halloween Photo Gallery by Dr. Dale Williams Barrigar and Legion

(Co-Editor note: It is that time of year again, perhaps the best. “Seems odd that we should celebrate the macabre” is one of the dumbest lines I think I have ever heard. “Behold the beyond” is probably closer to the spirit and Spirits of this time of year. That, and the happy fact that Co-Editor DWB will be taking the controls for the rest of this fine month!–LA)

(All images provided by DWB and the unseen)

Old by Doug Hawley

The Perfect Couple

Everyone thought that Janet and Mike Wilkie were the perfect couple, and with good reason. Both of them were as close to physically perfect as imaginable. Janet was a tall Filipina – Irish mix and Mike was Italian – German. She was 5’8” and model attractive and he was 6’3” and could have done ads in Esquire. Both were athletic, she was a distance swimmer who had swum the Bosporus and he had been drafted as a point guard for the Boston Celtics, but decided to start his own business.

While Mike was perfecting his electronic empire, Gold, which rivaled Apple or Microsoft, Janet had moved from local showings of her paintings to achieving huge success in New York and other world capitals. Many of her works of neo-impressionism, or as they came to be known to those who lusted for neologisms, heightened reality, appeared in the halls of major corporations. Her paintings, according to one critic “looked more real than real”.

Continue reading →

Personals by Doug Hawley

W4M – Boyfriend wanted

Me – 300 pounds BBW. HSV positive. Fore kids with five differint fathers.

U – 6’2” to 6’5” athletec, edjucated perfessional generous$ gentleman to take me shopping n diner, then well see how it goes. Gross picture deleted.

M4M – ISO Str8 married guy

Kik me for a good time.

M4W – Let me rock your world

Look at this. obscene picture deleted .

M4W – Looking for a discrete affair

Handsome professional man wanting to get a little on the side. Helps if you are married too. obscene picture deleted.

W4M – Want late night fun.

I have low self esteem. Please demean me and my children. Call me a _______ ___ while ______ on me. Must be respectful non-smoker and DDF.

MW4W – Unicorn wanted

Successful, happy couple looking for a third to complete our marriage. Must be beautiful, 25-32, and willing to clean house. Fake picture deleted

W4MMMM – Hope to do this soon

Open to anybody to do anything. Do not be concerned about my husband with the gun; it is only for my security. He’ll just be watching and filming. Fake picture deleted

M4W – ISO Cougar

Buy me dinner and we’ll see how thing go.

W4M Ready to party go fast now

Bring party favors. You’ll need to give me a credit card to be able to verify your identity.

MW4MW Full Swap

Must be young, attractive & fit. Bring Tina and Air Blast for PnP. Non-smokers only.

W4M – Missed connection. I saw you at the checkout at Albertsons. You look like you are about 30 with long blond hair. You were dressed in black pants and white shirt. You were with a woman about your age and three children. You were buying food, tampons and panties. I was in the next lane over, the short, chubby woman in red, and didn’t get a chance to talk to you even though we exchanged glances. Are you single? If yes, I would like to bear your children. 10 year old picture of someone else deleted.

Bio: Doug Hawley is a little old man who lives in Lake Oswego, Oregon USA with editor, picture taker and musician Sharon.  Previously he taught math and was an actuary.  Now he volunteers at a non-profit bookstore Booktique in support of his local library and volunteers at his local park Tryon.  He was inspired to restart writing by reading “Wild” by local author” Cheryl Strayed”.  His stories in many fiction and non-fiction areas have been published in several journals as indicated on his website.

Catch up with Doug’s work in  a variety of genres, lengths and humo(u)r at (ahem) https://sites.google.com/site/aberrantword/

Twit @dougiamm

Guest Writer: Leg by Doug Hawley

(We welcome Doug back with another week of his curmudgeonly and intelligent look at the world. We hope you enjoy his work–The Co-Editors)

Joey Kellog was born twenty five years ago in Fresno.

His father Gary was and still is a real estate salesman. He had been a three sport letterman in high school and was drafted by the Chicago Cubs upon graduation. He got as far as Triple A baseball, but had inadequate speed for someone who was not a power hitter to make it to the bigs. The disappointment gnawed inside him, but outwardly it showed in his belittling the accomplishments of others.

Gary’s relative success in sports made him the leader of the guys in the neighborhood. At work, while hunting, fishing or golfing, or at the local sports bar he was deferred to. His opinions on sports, politics, sex, art and metaphysics were given great weight by his peers. They did not question his beliefs that ancient astronauts had created the art on the plains of Peru, or that Atlantis had not been colonized by Lemuria. Gary was not smarter than his friends, but his early success had given him an aura of assurance.

His mother Mary was a minor league (and below Triple A at that) trophy wife. Unfortunately for Gary his greatest successes had been early in life so he had not been able to upgrade. Mary dabbled – her interests included drinking, cards, volunteer projects (her part of the work always involved the phone) and an antique boutique which Gary hoped would make money some years and qualify as a write off in other years. Gary had better luck with the write offs than the profits.

Their marriage was a success because each was self involved and tried to ignore the other. Their unspoken road to marital contentment, if not bliss, was to keep anything controversial out of sight. Mary did most of her drinking, beauty treatments and phone marathons when Gary was gone, and Gary’s cigar smoking, poker and pornographic movies were always enjoyed with the boys. Their partnership was the envy of both men and women, and who can say they are wrong?

Gene was Joey’s younger brother. Since he was significantly taller than both Joey and Gary and had different skin tone and eye color, there was some good natured debate about his parentage. Gary had no problem with any such conjecture since Mary never broached the subject and Gary secretly believed that Gene was better than he could have conceived, so to speak. If Gary had dwelt on the subject he probably would have suspected that Gene’s father was one of his better ex ballplayer buddies.

At twenty two Gene had made it to the bigs. He was only a utility player, but his looks and quotability had made him a favorite of sports writers and fans. His inability to change a tire, locate Argentina on a map, find the square root of 16 or spell “cache” was not held against him, in fact it added to his charm. He did know the important things – Don’t show up the umpire, always wear a condom during sex and then only with unmarried females over 18, have someone else drive after you are unconscious, get a good agent and financial manager (not the same person) and don’t spit on fans regardless of how bad a day you are having. Having a father in the business had helped a great deal.

Joey was the odd man out in this household. He was the brightest, but intelligence did not impress anyone in the family and education was not encouraged. All of them knew that success was not dependent on a college education. Looks and motor skills suffice. His mother made him good meals and would tend to boo – boos, but he did not really fit into any of her interests. His father had spent a lot of time with him until he quit youth baseball for high school wrestling which was more appropriate for his build and skills. By that time, it was obvious that Gene was the one with the most potential so the family got behind the more likely winner. Gene had tagged along with Joey in order to play with the big boys, until his talent made it clear that he was better than his brother. Then he started to hang out with the even bigger boys. By the time Gene was a freshman in high school, he was a better ball player than Senior Joey, who had already quit ball in favor of girls, wrestling and wrestling girls.

Because of his illustrious, if flawed, family, Joey was deemed a loser. This was in spite of his successes in wrestling (not a big sport locally) and weightlifting. A good wrestler of the legitimate or the show business variety must have a combination of strength, speed, technique and endurance. Joey was only better than average at everything but strength. He built on his naturally superior strength with hours of weightlifting with the football players. At 145 pounds he got so he could lift with some of the linemen. He aided his quest for strength with a nutritious diet and supplements which had not been generally outlawed.

Because Joey was not really good at baseball, his father never gave him much advice. Therefore, he got herpes which limited his social life to some extent. Aside from that handicap, his perceived inferiority compared to the rest of his family made him somewhat inhibited. He mostly hung out with other wrestlers.

He had average grades in most subjects, but was good at logic and got good math grades. His family saw no reason for him to go to college, and he did not disagree. In any case no financial support was offered by the family, nor did he qualify for any good scholarships based on grades, athletics or other extracurricular activities.

After graduating from high school, he got a series of jobs including furniture moving, video rental and the like. He liked the physical jobs best because they allowed his mind free rein, but they paid barely enough for his small apartment, meals and a ten year old Corolla. Now he always used condoms and occasionally got lucky at closing time at the local bar “Drown Town”. By mutual agreement, his entanglements were mostly NSA. During the early years after high school he fooled around with weight lifting and was surprised to see steady improvement in his ability.

To find out how good he really was, he joined a local group which trained at the best gym in Fresno. To his mild surprise he rose to rank second or third nationally, depending on the meet, in his weight division. That was good enough to get him a little notice in the local news and some “Attaboys” from family and acquaintances. His mother used him in bragging to her friends that “Joey is very strong and won something or other”, his father was pleased that, as he put it, “Everyone in the family has had some success at something” and his brother told him “I might not be the only star in the family”.

After about a year of holding steady in the rankings, he finally got a break or lost his brakes. He was driving alone outside of town on a rare rainy day when he ran off the road. A friend, Garfield Travis, who was following him took him to a nearby clinic where his legs below the knees had to amputated.

Although he was not exactly famous, he was well enough known that he was showered with best wishes, presents and money. The local tech school “Better Than McJobs” paid his way through programming school while he recuperated. He got good, lightweight prosthetics which while not as good as the original issue, never got athletes foot or ingrown toenails.

To the surprise and amazement of most, Joey was as good at weightlifting, albeit a bit more mechanical, as ever after he finished physical therapy. Fortunately, style doesn’t count as it does in body building and synchronized swimming. Better yet, the light weight prosthetics lowered his weight enough to put him in a lighter division where he could be the best in the world.

When he began winning competitions, two things happened. First, some competitors and fans said that he had an unfair “bionic” advantage. In this case, he was the $5,432.50 man – the cost of the prosthetics as donated by a sympathetic citizen. The reaction to the criticism was being lionized by editorial writers and opinion makers around the country. Politicians of all stripes and dots rallied to his defense as did various athletes who had gone through similar difficulties. He was compared to the gymnast who completed her routine in the Olympics despite voluminous and noisy flatulence. His picture was put on the front of the breakfast cereal of endorsers. He became the actual poster boy (not the figurative or metaphorical, but actual) of the Disabled and / or Disgruntled Political Action Group.

The End

Or so it seemed except for those 7 or 8 people who knew differently. Joey had “issues” and he had a lot of information. Agents had told him number three would get him nothing, but number one would pay off. Brian Silver was ready to represent him if he could move up. Before drinking to excess and past remembrance (what did they do later that evening – he didn’t know) with a physical therapist named Jane Lane he had learned a lot about the prosthetics and physical therapy involved in lower limb amputations. When he was sober he found that Jane knew an emergency clinic Quick Fix that would provide services not sanctioned by the late Hipocrates (who was, after all, far beyond approving or disapproving).

Garfield and Joey ran Joey’s car off the road close to Quick Fix. Under anesthesia, Joey’s lower legs were amputated. Brian Silver did all of the public relations from the sympathy campaign, through the protests against his competition and ultimately the overwhelming support he received.

How do I know the whole story? I was assigned to what appeared to be a normal public interest story about Joey by Sports Deified. One of the people I interviewed for the story was Jane Lane. The interview started at Drown Town, but ended at her apartment. I don’t know if it was my charm, good looks (not likely), the aphrodisiac qualities of Budweiser, or the fact that I was from a national magazine, but we ended up in the sack. The next morning, when I woke up she was quietly weeping. I have gotten that reaction more than once and I know that it can represent either an emotional release or fornicator’s regret. When I asked her why she was crying, most of the Joey Kellog story came out. I later pieced together the rest.

Is Joey crazy? Is family to blame? Should I run the story as is, or the sugar coated version? Maybe I should have another beer rather than ask any more questions.

Appeared in Insert Magazine, and Down In The Dirt and Raven Cage

Bio: Doug Hawley is a little old man who lives in Lake Oswego, Oregon USA with editor, picture taker and musician Sharon.  Previously he taught math and was an actuary.  Now he volunteers at a non-profit bookstore Booktique in support of his local library and volunteers at his local park Tryon.  He was inspired to restart writing by reading “Wild” by local author” Cheryl Strayed”.  His stories in many fiction and non-fiction areas have been published in several journals as indicated on his website.

Catch up with Doug’s work in  a variety of genres, lengths and humo(u)r at (ahem) https://sites.google.com/site/aberrantword/