So the SnowPlow comedy contest at the Outback was fun. I broke all my rules, went in with new material (I usually rehearse myself silly), and engaged in filthy blue comedy (I am usually a clean comic, but contests are always basically a parade of people discussing the personal details of masturbation. If I had…

Writers of internet content are in general unoriginal, pandering, and shamelessly given to formula, so when one particular article becomes a successful and widely shared piece of clickbait, you can bet that other articles in same vein will follow. Was that dress blue and black or white and gold? For the past couple months, I’ve…

By Kyle Finneron As I prep for my body-building competition I have realized that largest key to my success will be my ability to follow a proper diet and exercise plan to make the necessary changes. I am currently following one plan that is complicated, to say the least. Without getting into the real nitty-gritty…

By Cal Garrison a.k.a Mother of the Skye This week’s horoscopes are coming out under the light of a Cancer Moon. With an array of aspects that are superficially benign, looking under the surface there are other, not so neat-and-tidy angles that could blow us away. Draping those configurations over what’s taking place on the…

Make sure you head to Outback Pizza on Saturday night at 9 p.m. to see Low Country Funk (LCF). I first saw them in December at the memorial tribute concert for Steve Audsley. I had already seen most of the acts on the bill, but I only knew LCF by name, having listed them in…

By Dom Cioffi Does the name Andy Whitfield ring a bell? Unless you’re 35 or younger and a frequent attendee at Comic-Con, probably not. Born in Wales in 1971, Whitfield initially studied to become an engineer, and at the age of 28, moved to Sydney, Australia, to pursue this career. One day after work, while…

By Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week’s Horoscopes are coming out in the wake of a New Moon eclipse in the sign of the Fishes. I could fill your heads with all kinds of nonsense that makes it sound like I know what this eclipse did to us, but it would be…

By Dom Cioffi Prior to the beginning of August 2016, I knew exactly who I was. I had 50 years on this earth to try things out to see where I fit in. I had settled into life, my job, my family, my hobbies. I was, in a word, content. And then came the unfathomable,…

By Kevin Theissen Major market indices reached new historical highs in January, highlighted by the Dow Jones Industrial Average breaking the 20,000 milestone. However, political issues, along with a succession of disappointing earnings reports, trimmed gains in the final days of trading. For the month, the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.5 percent while the…

By Marguerite Jill Dye A friend on Facebook from South Africa posted a quote that has helped me see it’s time for me to change my focus: “I cannot put it to you more simply than this: As long as you persist in considering the situation hopeless, then it is and you make it so.…

By Leah Burdick An injured barred owl sat in the back seat of a four-door sedan, staring balefully out the window at its rescuer. “I saw him on the side of the road, just sitting there, trying to fly,” the young woman explained to Maria Colby, director of Wings of the Dawn Wildlife Rehabilitation and…

I have been sitting here, pondering all of the ways life goes wrong. I have been thinking of all of the things that have happened to me, dozens of injuries, dozens of broken bones (ostensibly more than a dozen broken noses alone), love life that is ridiculous to the point of stupidity, loneliness, no retirement…

As we all know, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. During the aging process we sometimes take the “long way ‘round” to go places and do things. If you are with the love of your life, that might work out OK because to alter the age old expression just a little,…

My girlish interest in the Academy Awards is surely fairly obvious to frequent readers of this column, given the truly embarrassing number of times I’ve written here about the Oscars (including last week, in what was, upon reflection, possibly least coherent column in the history of my Mountain Times career—a serious achievement). Even so, I’ve…

By Marguerite Jill Dye I’ve considered trying my hand at writing fiction for a change, but who needs fiction when each day brings a stranger-than-life, unimaginable reality? A Russian spy ship is just offshore and our democratic election and computers were hacked by our arch enemy from the Cold War. Whether we’re uncovering Russiagate or…