Browsing Archive: June, 2011

PIC OF THE DAY

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, June 30, 2011, In : Pictures 

This is a picture I cobbled together on Photoshop just for fun a few years back. Always kinda liked this one, silly as it is...
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I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW...

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, June 29, 2011, In : Life 

Recently – and quite unwillingly, I hasten to add – I found myself making my first real, true, honest-to-goodness genuine concession to the unfortunate reality that is the aging process.


I got bifocals.


To be honest, it kind of surprised me that I took this development as hard as I did. After all, I’ve been wearing eyeglasses since the third grade, so it’s not like there was any kind of period of adjustment like I'm sure my father went through when he had to start wearing reading gl...


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IT MUST HAVE BEEN ONE OF THOSE WEEKENDS...

Posted by John Allen Small on Monday, June 27, 2011, In : Unbridled Silliness 

A Message From VAST (Vociferous Americans Sensing Trouble)

A Subsidiary of the Tea Party Institute for Creative Mind Control


• Do you believe that the United States Government covered up the crash-landing of a spacecraft from another world in Roswell, New Mexico in July of 1947?

• Are you convinced that the Apollo moon landings actually took place on a Hollywood soundstage?

• Have you recently spotted Elvis Presley wolfing down a large Canadian Bacon and Anchovy at Simple Simon’s Pizza?

...

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MORE TREK: THE EUGENICS WARS

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, June 24, 2011, In : Pop Culture 


As long as we're on the subject of "Star Trek," let me begin by stating that there's a story behind the above illustration...


Back in 2000, as much for my own amusement as anything else, I wrote an essay entitled "The Eugenics War Declassified," in which I attempted to explain how the Eugenic Wars first mentioned in a 1966 "Star Trek" episode could have still occurred given what had actually transpired historically during the intervening years. As a fan of Philip José Farmer and his Wold Ne...


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"ALL RIGHT... WHO CALLED ME A TREKKIE?"

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, June 23, 2011, In : Pop Culture 


 (Note: The above picture is my son William standing in front of the original model of the USS Enterprise at the Smithsonian Institute's Air and Space Museum during or visit to Washington D.C. in 2009)



 

“I didn’t know you were a Trekkie, Small.”


The comment was made by my boss one day a number of years ago as he happened to overhear a conversation I was having with a co-worker. We were talking about the film “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,” which I found (and still find) to...


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(From The Archives) The Really Great, Really Odd Leprechaun Adventure

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, June 22, 2011, In : Unbridled Silliness 
(Note: This was something I dashed off for one of my college writing classes in college back in 1988. The professor, as I recall, wanted us to have a little fun and so gave us a weekend assignment to "just write something really silly." I think my response scared him; I know it certainly scared me…)

Once upon a time, but not really all that long ago when you really stop and think about it, there was a mythical land which some people called Kankakee. And just down the highway from this mythic...

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Pic Of The Day: Joe Lansdale And Me

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, June 16, 2011, In : Pictures 
With this year's FarmerCon - the annual celebration honoring famed science fiction writer (and friend) Philip José Farmer - just around the corner, I thought I'd share this photograph taken at the first FarmerCon I attended at Phil's house back in 2007. This is me with award-winning SF-horror-western author Joe Lansdale together in the library in Phil's basement, where we and other PJF friends and fans gathered to talk about Phil and the impact his work has had our lives both personally and ...
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(From The Archives) CROSSOVER CONTEST ENTRY

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, June 10, 2011, In : Pop Culture 

(Note: The following was my entry in a contest Time magazine held in the late 1990s - I forget the exact year right off - in which the publication asked its readers to submit ideas for an episode of a television series in which characters from another series make an appearance. The winner was some dummy that had Homer SImpson turning up on an episode of "E.R." I still like MY idea better....)


*      *      *


Dear Time:


My name is John Small. I live in Ravia, Oklahoma, and the following is ...


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From The Archives: "ELEANOR RIGBY" RECONSIDERED

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, June 9, 2011, In : Pop Culture 
(Note: This is a paper I wrote for my Introduction to Poetry class in college back in 1988. The assignment, as I recall, had to do with using what we had learned about delving into the deeper meaning of poems and applying it to popular songs; the professor assigned each of us a different song and, knowing that I was a Beatles fan, he gave me "Eleanor Rigby". He made a point of saying later that he didn't really agree with my interpretation of the piece, but gave me an "A" anyway. I don't know...
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Pic Of The Day - For Kingston Trio Fans

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, June 8, 2011, In : Pop Culture 
Awhile back some of my fellow posters over at The Kingston Trio Place (http://www.kingstontrioplace.com/) were discussing what actors might have been cast in a movie about the popular folk group had such a film been made back in the 1960s. I liked a couple of the names that were tossed about and made this fake poster to advertise their dream project. Went over well enough that I thought I'd re-post it here.
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From The Archives: QUESTOR

Posted by John Allen Small on Monday, June 6, 2011, In : Pop Culture 
Came across this old file that I wrote back in college (circa about 1989 or '90) as part of a "fanzine" a buddy an I put together. This is probably my first real attempt at Phil Farmer-style creative mythography (it probably shows) and as such set the stage for so much that has happened in my life since then.

So without further ado...

*      *      *

 THE QUESTOR FILES


By John Allen Small


On occasion in various regions of the planet Earth during the late 20th and early 21st centuries, there we...


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20 YEARS SURE WENT BY IN A HURRY...

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, June 1, 2011, In : Reminiscence 

Try as I might not to let it get to me, I've been experiencing the occasional pang of nostalgia this week. I suppose that's only to be expected when you find yourself facing the 20th anniversary of your first child's birth.


Joshua Orrin Small was born on June 1, 1991 - 28 years to the day after I was born, as it happens. I've spent the last 20 years telling people that shared birth date was the product of accident, rather than design; I've never been that good at math, after all. What makes ...


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About Me


John Allen Small John A. Small is an award-winning newspaper journalist, columnist and broadcaster whose work has been honored by the Oklahoma Press Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press, the National Newspaper Association, and the Oklahoma Education Association. He and his wife Melissa were married in 1986; they have two sons, Joshua Orrin (born 1991) and William Ian (born 1996). Mr. Small is the News Editor and columnist for the Johnston County Capital-Democrat, a weekly newspaper headquartered in Tishomingo, OK. He obtained his nickname, "Bard of the Lesser Boulevards," from a journalism colleague - the late Phil Byrum - in recognition of the success of his popular newspaper column, "Small Talk." (In addition to the many awards the column itself has received over the years, a radio version of "Small Talk" earned an award for "Best Small Market Commentary" from the Society of Professional Journalists in 1998.) John was born in Oklahoma City in 1963; lived in the Bradley-Bourbonnais-Kankakee area of Illinois for most of the next 28 years (with brief sojourns in Texas and Athens, Greece, thrown in to break up the monotony); then returned to his native state in 1991, where he currently resides in the Tishomingo/Ravia area. He graduated from Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School in 1981, and received his bachelor's degree in journalism from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais in 1991. The years between high school and college were a period frought with numerous exploits and misadventures, some of which have become the stuff of legend; nobody was hurt along the way, however, which should count for something. In addition to his professional career as a journalist he has published two short story collections: "Days Gone By: Legends And Tales Of Sipokni West" (2007), a collection of western stories; and "Something In The Air" (2011), a more eclectic collection. He was also a contributor to the 2005 Locus Award-nominated science fiction anthology "Myths For The Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe," edited by Win Scott Eckert. In additon he has written a stage play and a self-published cookbook; served as project editor for a book about the JFK assassination entitled "The Men On The Sixth Floor"; and has either published or posted on the Internet a number of essays, stories and poems. He has also won writing awards from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the National Library of Poetry. He is a past president of the Johnston County Chamber of Commerce in Tishomingo; was a charter member and past president of the Johnston County Reading Council, the local literacy advocacy and "friends of the library" organization; served as Johnston County's first-ever Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator in 1994-95; served two terms as chairman of the Johnston County (OK) Democratic Party; and has taught journalism classes for local Boy Scout Merit Badge Fairs. He is a member of the New Wold Newton Meteorics Society.

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