Chris Rodell's Blog

 The knee-jerk reaction to the 5 Iranian Women’s Soccer players who were granted Australian asylum is that they would be persecuted for not singing the Iranian National Anthem.I think with more nuance.Like maybe the song just sucks.These women must be enlightened by Iranian standards at least. Did you know Iranian women have enjoyed voting rights since 1963?I did not know that.I have to

 It’s not something I’m proud of but there’s been a time or two when my drinking transgressions were so egregious bar employees have felt justified in giving me the ol’ heave ho. I’ll never forget the elderly bar prostitute’s mocking cackle.I went back a few years ago. They all remembered me. Said if I didn’t behave, they’d slip something in my drink that would cause me to be violently ill

 We’ll soon be hearing about lots of Olympians competing with guts and heart. If I had my way, there’d be an Olympics where the guts and hearts, etc. were the actual competitors.I’m suggesting an Olympics to which we can all relate. I’m talking one that gives the gold medal for things like marathon bladder control, highest blood pressure and for overcoming daily grooming frustrations.I’m

 For most of my adult life, I rarely took so much as an aspirin. That changed in ’18 when I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.Today, I take five different pills four times a day for a total of 10 pills.I’d right up front here tell you all their multi-syllabic names but the names are so uniformly intimidating they’ll make your head hurt and I wouldn’t want to do anything to hurt your head when

                                                Call me old-fashioned, but a tweet to me will always be 140 characters. Note, I didn't say 140 words. I said 140 characters. The original tweets would not let you

 (1,211 words)I was about 5 hours into my 9-hour ordeal when I began to wonder if I was on track to break my inert endurance record.Merriam-Webster defines “inert”  as “Lacking the power to move; an inert and lifeless body.”The previous record was achieved some time in, oh, 1987, at a bar called The Junction in Athens, Ohio.My inertness began at noon and ended at 2 o’clock — and

 1,124 wordsIt began to dawn on me the fourth time the EMTs said no, they meant business: they were not going to allow me to drive the ambulance.A more intuitive patient would have sensed this when he realized they’d strapped him to a gurney the way guards secured ol’ Doc Lechter when he asked if they had a spare can of fava beans.It was 6:30 a.m. last Wednesday and we were on our way to the

 1,124 wordsIt began to dawn on me the fourth time the EMTs said no, they meant business: they were not going to allow me to drive the ambulance.A more intuitive patient would have sensed this when he realized they’d strapped him to a gurney the way guards secured ol’ Doc Lechter when he asked if they had a spare can of fava beans.It was 6:30 a.m. last Wednesday and we were on our way to the

 We’re so disposed to reveling in our petty nationalist rivalries, we’re failing to see the big picture: We’re light years ahead of every other planet in every quality of life category there is.Enjoy ice cream? Then don’t try and eat any on Mercury, the nearest planet to the Sun. It’s 810-degrees there, a temperature which incinerates ice cream in less time than it takes to get the cone

In my maniacal quest to rid the world of historical typos I’ve found another and it too is Biblical. You might remember the last one was Yeaster instead of Easter.I did this based on the grounds that no one’s ever heard of an Easter. There is ni such thing. But yeast is a common kitchen ingredient widely used to make things — things like bread/slain Saviors —rise. The next one is obvious, but