Watching TV with the Opposite SEX
It’s a relaxing evening at home just right for watching a movie. I sit down with my wife on the loveseat and think how nice this is when our cat jumps up between us and […]
Author: Bill Spencer
Bill Spencer is author of the book Uranus Is Always Funny: Short Essays to Make You Laugh (Humor Outcasts Press 2020). His humor writing has been published by Funny Times, Narrative magazine, Reader's Digest, The Sun, The Inconsequential, Clever magazine, Defenestration, The Short Humour Site, Hobo Pancakes, and Nuthouse. He has also published scholarly articles on the novels of Cormac McCarthy and is co-author of an unproduced screenplay, "Angel Pays a Visit." He lives in a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina with his wife, artist-poet Carolyn Elkins.
The Evolution of Cool
When I saw a list of popular musicians and bands recently, I thought I might be a victim of slightly early onset dementia. I could make almost no sense of it: Trae Tha Truth ft. […]
Love in the Time of Puberty
When I was in the ninth grade, two of my classmates got into a shoving-then-wrestling fight. Surprising because we were in a classroom at the time. In a Catholic high school. Right before Religion class. […]
How Hot I Am
During the 10 years or so that ratemyprofessors.com existed and that I was still teaching college English, not even one student reviewer ever awarded me a chili pepper icon indicating that she (or he) thought […]
Never Spank Your Skunk
When your twin sister calls you to help get rid of a gang of 9-12 smell-raising skunks living under her porch, you go—so my wife went out to Nogal, New Mexico. I call them a […]
Cormac McCarthy Catharsis
(Note: This piece contains “adult” language. If you’re squeamish about vulgarity, better skip this one.) Before Cormac McCarthy won a National Book Award or a Pulitzer Prize, before No Country for Old Men won an […]
Sister Mary Barbarian
My ninth-grade English teacher was named Sister Mary Barbara, but for purposes of anonymity, I’ll call her Sister Mary Barbarian. She was the toughest, strictest, unyieldingest teacher I ever had—a member of the order the […]
Meeting, the Enemy
Meetings are the cold, muck-filled trenches in which turf wars are fought. They are the Texas Death Matches of the business world. They are corporate roller derbies. People just trying to skate by spin their […]
Insider Art
(This poem previously appeared in Defenestration.) Insider Art “American Student Rescued after Getting Stuck in Giant Vagina Sculpture in Germany.” New York Daily News, June 23, 2014 Twenty-two firefighters labored to deliver you, yours a […]
Life in the Woods
Partly influenced, I’m guessing, by Thoreau’s Walden—nine years ago my bride and I moved to the mountain woods of North Carolina. We, too, “wished to live deliberately.” In my own experiment I’ve discovered that “life […]