Smile of a summer night

Live! From the desk of The Dick Times: News That Bites!! Our paparazzo catches Trump as he approaches an uncommitted female delegate in Cleveland. His press secretary denies that inappropriate touching occurred, but bruises were found and "bleeding" happened, in the candidate's phrase.

"Look out. Cleveland"

Live from the banks of the flaming Cuyahoga River, it's The Dick Times: News that Bites! Only hours to go before the dregs of the GOP assemble to re enact an all white version of The Walking Dead! While most heavy hitters stay home ( Dub phoned in with a hangover ) , a few well- known clowns will pile out of a 1960 Beattle and honk their horns for Jesus as red balloons release orange popcorn that sticks to your hair. Soon, the new mental disorder, Trumpence, will emerge from a flaming test tube and infect the crowd with hopeless optimism.
Speaker after speaker will then begin a long march to Oz, ultimately revealing that there's nothing behind the curtain but a large robotic mouth that speaks in incomplete sentences as it promises walls, dead Muslims, and imprisoned abortion providers.
These boasts will please the assembled imbeciles, and they will vote unanimously to fall on their Boy Scout knives in a gesture of medieval self-sacrifice, all for the sake of a bankrupt real estate developer who left the car running at the back door. Dick sez: I'll trade you my Marvin gardens for a get out of jail free card.

Language police

From the Dick Times: News that Bites!! Special from the Language Clarification Desk! In response to queries from Trump supporters, as opposed, marginally, to athletic supporters, please be advised of the distinction between ignorant boobs and stupid tits, the former being Trumpers, and the latter being those giant basketballs featured on porn sites. Dick sez: Dear Trumpers, If someone calls you a stupid tit, you have misheard "twit", meaning jerk, ass, or Republican.

Wooooster weekend

I bear no fondness for this college, but nonetheless, and after much mental juggling, I have just registered for the alumni weekend which will begin on the ninth of June. This will be my first return in over fifty years. It's a six hour drive from my kind of town, and I'll leave the Green Hornet behind, convertible top and super premium gas be damned, since my principle motivation is finding a rich widow, and I don't want to appear to be a pleasure seeking roué. Which I am not, rich widows to the contrary notwithstanding. The only local alums I know of here are probably steeped in piety and shovel wads of cash to the development fund, which gets their names on buildings. My theory is, that's why god invented spray paint at five bucks a can.

GOP ROCKS!

LIVE FROM CHICAGO!! IT'S THE DICK TIMES: NEWS THAT BITES!! Major earthquakes strike U.S. as D.C. Republicans crawl from beneath rocks to endorse Trump! Former naysayers cry "Yay!" while sloughing off tough denials from distant past ( last week ) !
Dick sez: 8 points on the rectum scale! Excise those polyps, and and get them to the lab!

THE DICK TIMES: WE SPAN THE WORLD!!

THE NEW YORK SPAN:


THE CHICAGO SPAN:

Dick sez: does this bite, or what?

What's My Line?

Breaking news from the desk of THE DICK TIMES: NEWS THAT BITES! Dateline Chicago 18 Feb. Obama to nominate Hillary Clinton for the vacant Supreme Court seat! Such a brilliant and Machiavellean ploy would shatter the GOP's resolve to delay, block, obstruct and otherwise defeat the president by removing the main threat to their own candidate in the November election. The right wing would then be forced to affirm Clinton in hopes that her removal from contention would allow Sanders to slide into the Democrat's spot which, they think, would then be vulnerable to attack from anyone but Sarah Palin, if that. Dick sez (sort of quoting) : Chicago politics ain't beanbag, and Obama is known to be a poker player. AND: THE DICKQUIZ!! What's the line in Randy Newman's Rednecks that best describes the last seven years of Republican behavior? ( whisper it to yourself )

The Summer of my Discontent, or A Series of Unfortunate Events

     Last January I went to my dentist for continuing work on a new bridge.  At Christmas I had experienced discomfort in a tooth, and I asked him to look at it. Examination revealed a septic abscess in the gum beneath a temporary bridge. He went in there and cleaned it out after giving me an antibiotic and a prescription for more, to be taken over the following week. Within two weeks, I was falling down at home, in the classic tv "help I've fallen" mode of collapse.  After the third or fourth episode I phoned my almost-ex wife and she insisted that I report to the nearest emergency room, one of which happens to be three minutes away. They told my I had hep c and sent me home, where I immediately resumed the falling spells, at which time my wife piled me into her  car and sort of raced to Northwestern Hospital on Chicago's near north  side. The ER people there discovered that my liver had become infected by its own abscess ( livers can be so jealous! ), and I was admitted for  surgery. The procedure was modestly invasive, consisting of poking a hole into the liver and inserting a drain tube, sort of the opposite of a turkey baster. The tube went in just under the rib cage, lower right side, and the incision was tiny.
     After a week of monitoring and testing I was sent to Warren Barr  rehab pavilion for recuperation. Sometime into that stay I developed severe diarrhea which turned out to be the notorious C Diff, short for the French words which originally named it. They could have called it Les Miserables for graphic accuracy. It's an uncontrolled and continuous churning of intestinal violence requiring  diapers. Bathrooms are of no avail in that the patient has no warnings and no time for a short walk.
     After a month and lots of antibiotics, things had calmed down enough to allow a course of physical rehab designed to regain strength and mobility. I had lost about twenty pounds, most of it muscle. Warren Barr's therapists taught me to walk and climb stairs, and within another month I was deemed ready for release.
     Back at home I resumed my normal routine and was okay for about a week until the C Diff reasserted itself with violent authority, causing lots of unpleasant accidents as I tried to buy groceries and walk from my parked car into the condo. This will not do, said my wife when I called for medical advice. ( She is a type one diabetic who has dealt with hospitals and doctors for almost sixty years. Her guidance and patience saved my life.) Through connections in her job, she got me into the University of Chicago Hospital where, so we thought, I could receive a fecal transplant, a near immediate cure for C Diff with a 97% success rate. The transplant consists of inserting purified feces from an anonymous donor or helpful kinfolk.  It can be placed with an enema or through an esophagul tube.  Somehow the new feces reacts with the infected stuff and kills off the bad germs, so to speak.
     But not  for me. For reasons still unclear I did not have the opportunity to go the easy route and was put on a new regimen of various antibiotics. By this time I had lost another twenty pounds and was beginning to resemble a concentration camp survivor sans tattoo. Furthermore, when interviewed by a team of UC physicians I was asked about alcohol use. I assured them that I had not had a drink for five years due to interference with a drug said to calm spinal injury foot pain. To that point, I told them, I had enjoyed about two after-work beers a day.  "You're an alcoholic, " says one doc, and his accusation went went unchallenged by the others on the team. He repeated and enlarged upon this absurdity, ignoring my objections. I have never reported this unprofessional outrage to the hospital, and I doubt that any of the staff is reading this so the jerk will go on his delusional way without rebuke.  I cannot comment on his ethnic or religious status, but he didn't look like a Baptist prohibitionist, "not that there's anything wrong with that".
     Back to Warren Barr for more "rehab", now nothing more than about thirty pills a day, frequent blood tests and a fresh diaper every couple of hours, 24/7.  My room was off limits to anyone not wearing hazmat gear, and my food,  which until now had been predictably lame every where I went, now went though a "mechanical" mill and was served with an ice-cream scoop.  This diet was due to muscle loss in my throat.  Nothing on the plate could be identified. Bread was in a cup, eggs were yellow and carrots were orange. Meat was gray or brown and a green scoop could be just about any veggie imaginable. Worse still, the portions were often baby size, and I bad to call the kitchen for more.  Invariably, this was delivered by someone un hazmatted and presumably neither germ free nor somehow incapable of spreading my own germs around the kitchen and other parts unknown. It's no wonder that dozens of rooms down the hall were marked off limits.  C Diff must be a local industry.


     Isolated in my room from the rest of the facility, I had no opportunity to regain my ability to walk or lift a heavy book. I stayed that way for two months until at last one morning an administrator walked in to tell me I would be released in two hours and should start  packing. Earlier that week,  a team of social workers and therapists had evaluated me and assured me that my insurance and medicare would carry me forever, so the eviction came as a surprise.
     The C Diff had been cured by drugs, and I was given a supply of antibiotics to take home until the latest round had been completed, so I wasn't at a total  loss. I had even arranged for a $500 cleaning of my condo bathroom and surrounding floors, earlier contaminated by bad aim.  The clean up team was by coincidence to arrive at about the same time as me.
    I asked Warren Barr for a free cab ride home and returned to an apartment swarming with fruit flies, an epidemic still not resolved after almost two months.   They were even in the freezer. I found some rotting food in a bowl, pitched that and cleaned everything I could see with eyesight compromised by weakened muscles.
     This is a highly edited and condensed version of my summer of discontent, but the general picture survives, even though my Cadillac's battery has not. Two other cars have gone separate ways, and that phase of hoarding is now at an end, praise jesus.
   
   

Wishful Thinking

THE DICK TIMES: NEWS THAT BITES! Anita Alvaez lashes out at critics, claiming them to be nothing but office seeking wannabe politicos. This vacant claim ignores the dozens, hundreds and maybe thousands of citizens who wish her a not -so- fond farewell. Every day she reasserts the same lies and evasions in the fascist-like hope that repetition can make it real. Dick sez: You bet it makes me reel. If I wasn't stuck at this keyboard, I'd be downtown with a sign which says "Happy rails (tarred) until we meet again"
                                                        

My kind of town, Chicago is

    THE DICK TIMES: NEWS THAT BITES!!

Dateline Chicago 2 December, year of the rats. From the desk of the Dick Times, news of corruption, deception, deflection and induction into the Hall of Infamous, all of it RIPPED FROM TODAY'S HEADLINES! 

                             

    Top cop drops first shoe and ranks of Rahmulans sag under blow thrown by Black Friday protesters  who molest Mag Mile shops as sales flop to new lows! SECOND SHOE due to fall if Alvares goes "I quit" in fit of fear! Long reviled State's Attorney should take long journey on tar-dipped rail!
Dick sez: I fail to see the humor in this, but I'm pissed as another layer of dirt falls from mayor's shirt.  

AND!! The Dick Quiz!! Match the players!

         A. Garry McCarthy

         B. Anita Alvarez

         C. Toni Preckwinkle

         D. David Orr
         E. Clem Balanoff
         F. Dorothy Brown

         !.  Cook County Board President and recent critic of this mess ( yesterday )
         2. Cook County State's Attorney
         3. Clerk of the Circuit Court
         4. Cook County Clerk
         5. Chicago Police Superintendent
         6. Dick's upstairs neighbor and ersrtwhile  David Orr
             staffer who has just flown to Egypt to monitor elections.

              QUIZ PRIMER for dimmer readers:
 Sixteen-gate: Dick's name for the year long cover up of sixteen shots fired into the prostrate body of  a fleeing youth.
Garry McCarthy: Chicago's former Police Superintendent, now mildly discredited and out of work.
Anita Alvarez:  Cook County State's Attorney, long a feared foe of poorly defended perps who fell into her wicked web.
Dorothy Brown: Clerk of the Circuit Court who charges her staff a fee for wearing jeans to work. She also charges them up to $1,500 for their jobs, sort of an application fee. Some might consider these "bribes", but we don't jump to conclusions until the trap door falls and the body swings.
Clem Balanoff: Some guy: it's no big deal.
David Orr: Long time local bureaucrat who asked Clem to take in his friend's dog for a few weeks, being unable himself to fulfill the request. This third level degree resulted in a dog upstairs, but it didn't bark,  Dick slumbered peacefully and Mr. Orr was spared a starring role in a Dick Times attack.
Toni Preckwinkle, Cook County Board President, whatever the hell that is. It sounds real bad ass and has frequently been the seat of far reaching rot.
Mag Mile-The long strip of North Michigan Avenue that pulls in shoppers from around the globe.  Major retailers crowd the street with their flagship stores.
Tar-dipped rail (you're really not well read, are you?) : A means of transportation used by mad mobs to expel beyond the gates  any unwanted miscreant. The latter was often tar dipped, too, and then feathered, as you may have surmised by now. clever reader.
Rahmulans: The Mayor's crew of appointees and supporters whose name derives from an alien race on the long-forgotten tv show, Star Trek. It must have been a sci fi thing. Now we all watch twitter between texts.  

BIG NEWS THAT DOESN'T REALLY  BITE!! Our sister/brother blog owner, Ravenswood Used Books, is moving from its location on Lincoln Avenue to a sweet spot just .5 miles down the road at 2005 West Montrose Avenue, at the corner of Damen Avenue, a major north/south artery. Check it out at https://www.facebook.com/ravenswoodusedbooks

BULLETIN! From the city desk of THE DICK TIMES: NEWS THAT BITES! Dateline Lincoln Square 9 March 2014! Dick tweets sheep bleats to high seats in back bench! Wrenching jibes make bad vibes with dumb rhymes from ‪#‎TheDickTimes‬ !!

SPECIAL RELEASE TO THE DICK TIMES: NEWS THAT BITES!! DATELINE 6 Feb '13! Californians rally in objection to pedophilia cover-up by Archbishop! Young men of altar boy age are outfitted with "Onward Christian Soldiers" symbolic uniforms! Costumed parents demand accountability by pope! Dick sez: oh me of little hope.

Crash Scene

Special to THE DICK TIMES: NEWS THAT BITES!! Dateline 20 September, Chicago!  New York Times reports AT&T CEO remarks at investor conference! "No texting while driving," sez Randall Stephenson, who no doubt composed his message on a backseat laptop while being conveyed to the confab in a limo!  Left out of final draft was the optimistic observation that many driving texters die young, before producing heirs of equally limited cerebral capacity, thus elevating the gene pool by omission, a negative factor which current scientific efforts have found impossible to track, although arbitrarily rough numbers can be assigned by inference using the alliterative algorithm, "Dead Dopes' Destinies Defy Detection." Dick sez: Stay tuned for less on this emerging story! **Photo credit Yahoo images teens share WTF moment at accident scene.

A HOWL FOR MERCY!

The Dick Times: News that Bites!
Dateline Chicago 12 June Year of Viagra*
June Spoon Howl at the Moon

ITEM! Red Horde blasts court pick timing,
wants three months of sliming Sonia!
A.M. noise and Fox news boys decry
Obama’s choice for court,
not their sort, they claim!
Not lame enough, even with cracked ankle!

ITEM! Dems in White House rankle whackos,
more take up arms in opposition!
“Guns for God”, the Chosen seem to claim,
take aim in Wichita and Holocaust Museum!
Broadcast mouthpiece for the lunatics,
Limbaugh picks up microphone,
and blames left for killings!
Cheney kid adds manure to the compost heap
by leaping into fray with righteous fury,
dittos junk she hears at dinner table,
fairy fables of the un elected outs!

ITEM! Palin family throwing fits,
can’t get over losing, still amusing
on the late night shows,

Dick sez: but boring me to tears by dawn!

AND!!!! TheBeneDicktion!!!!
O, great spirit
lay your hand
upon the crazies in our Land,
let us all see middle ground.

Hound the haters into hell
fix the crack in that big bell
in Philly.

*AND!!! Hot new feature: The Dicktionary!!
“Year of Viagra”: that period in American history
in which the elected officials in Washington are
thwarted by stiff opposition from the (very) minority party,
as lead by their congressional spokesperson
John Boehner, R.Ohio, his actual name pronounced
in a way which kind of takes the edge offa this joke.
We’re down on that. We understand. Thank you.
http://TheDickTimes.blogspot.com
and our famous facebook group,
now gone global! “It’s free! And worth it!” (Dick)

AULD SOD (omites)

Same old tricks: bashing evil dicks
trashing catho licks!

The Dick Times: News that Bites!
The Auld Sod (omites)
Dateline Ireland, 20 May Year of Viagra
Special to The Dick Times!

Church of Rome runs home for rapists
on Auld Sod!

Irish house of god employs large gang
of child molesters 
in its foundling homes
as priests, and nuns, and bishops
wink and nod
and evil festers!

Clergy dirties hands
with child abuse 

and servitude by minors 
and beatings of the kids 
while in the nude!

The helpless and abandoned
and forgotten 
taken into charge
by rotten church- appointed freaks,

all geeks in habits, vestments,

covered up for years
and now revealed at last-

a vast conspiracy!
 
Abduction of the kids
of unwed mothers,
kidnapped by the parish priests, 
orphans taken in, enslaved to sex
and stringing rosaries in Jesus’ name!

The shame this news
should bring upon the church,
from Rome to Wichita
is still beyond belief
as readers of this page 
now find such grief too much 
to swallow!

So go follow 
all the latest dirt elsewhere,
if any papers in the states
should care to dig more deeply
through the rancid mess!

Dick sez: I must in sorrow
now confess
this news
just reinforces all my
former prejudicial views.

AND!! The BeneDicktion!
O great spirit
beam me up
take away the poisoned cup
the daily horrors on this earth
sometimes make the trip not worth
the show.

MAYDAY DICK!

The Dick Times: News that Bites!
Dateline Chicago, 8 May, Year of Viagra

MAYDAY! MAYDAY!

Politics hit springtime slump
but GOP takes self-linflicted lumps
as Limbaugh lashes out at all who dare to stand,
not kneel, before his throne!

With every speech the party lets him own its message:
all back down without a fight
in face of bloated talker's
broadcast might!

And!! The Palin girls insist
safe sex
is none,
while where the rubbers meet the road
the never-will-be-son- in -law says
"all kids do it anyhow,
for fun!"

Don't ask, don't tell still shrinks fighting ranks
as if straight guys lived in greater fear
of gays
than guns!

And!! Bracko does a tortured dance
around the waterboard,
then signs a Prayer Day proclamation
while nation watches three more states agree
that marriages should be
between two people!

Dick climbs nearest church's steeple,
where he hangs a flag
proclaiming
"Jesus loves a fag"!
Congregation now in 50/50 split
while non-believing P.C. readers throw a fit!

AND!!! THE BENEDICKTION!!!
O Great Spirit, hear my voice,
let all women have a choice
Give all lovers marriage rights
keep us out of foreign fights,
Bless the poor, ignore the rich,
and tow us from the downturn ditch.

A men, women, GLTG

DICK'S APRIL DIGEST!!!

The Dick Times News Digest!
Biting excerpts from recent stories!
Dateline Chicago and this ain’t April fools, folks!
It’s still The Year of Viagra!

Gingrich reaches out to Rome!
Leaves long term Baptist home!
Embraces Papist ways!
“My days are numbered,” Newt must think,
“Got to play it safe and drink the bitter cup:
a priest’s communion wine!”
(Baptists are just fine
with drinking grape juice at the rail.)

And!! House of Boehners fail
to turn back tide of
Democratic nominations!
“Abominations!” cries the miniscule Red Horde
as Prez decides that libs have won their turn to serve,
and new appointees have the nerve to ask for seats!

Republicans are left with making “sucking teats” remarks
while whining that the left is nothing but a sea
of greedy sharks.

And!!! Bracko faces European test
to see if wife competes
with best dressed women there!
Visit to the Euro lands ramps up a
propaganda wave, and many crave a look
at this new guy!

And!! The Diquiz!!
Where does your state rank on the growing list
of “most corrupt”?
Don’t we all feel a little thrill of pride when
our own climbs closer to the top of that ladder?

The BeneDicktion:
Do not allow us to grow madder
at the current state of things down here,
but give us hope, that having rid the country
of that evil dope, the Dubster, his remaining pals
will not continue to assail our noble dream,
the Constitution.
Amen, Ahhhhhhh Women!

SCHOOL OF HARD KNOX!

The Dick Times: News that Bites!
Dateline Chicago 19 March Year of Viagra

SCHOOL OF HARD KNOX
Bone Us package
stiffs U.S.
and sticks us with gigantic bill!

What swill contaminates the banking pool
and what the hell’s an A.I.G.
asks Dick.

What lowdown thieves
these number crunchers are
and after thirty years
the lower bar of Reagan days
has left us in a Purple Haze
of anger!

And! The BeneDicktion!
Oh Prince of Piece of Pie-
Where’s mine?

THIS MAY PINCH A BIT!

The Dick Times: News that Bites!
Dateline Chicago 16 March Year of Viagra ( Boehner, get it? )
THIS MAY PINCH A BIT!

Not so vanished veep creeps back
to make more news,
offers stomach-turning views
on new administration!
Dick sez: If castration is a cure for serial rapists,
let’s de-nut this prick!

And!! The BeneDicktion!
Oh Lord, please guide our hand
as we perform
the operation,
let not our anxious fingers slit the throat
of this dissembling Judas Goat.
Amen, Ahhhhhh Women!