The Steve Mertz Trilogy Table of Contents

I wrote The Steve Mertz Trilogy inspired by Alfred Jarry’s Ubu plays, which I haven’t read. I did read that the first play in the trilogy was based on a play he had cowritten with friends when he was younger. In this case “Steve Mertz, A Tragedy,” the first play of the trilogy incorporated elements [...]

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The Steve Mertz Trilogy, Part Three: Mertz in Love

SCENE ONE - the nineteenth century
A girl in a gingham sleeping gown, with white lace ruffles around the neck, is asleep in a large bed with decoratively carved wooden head- and foot-board. She is clutching an oversized, illuminated light bulb. Steve Mertz is watching her.
STEVE MERTZ
The first time I met her I banged on her [...]

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The Steve Mertz Trilogy, Part Two: Steve at Work

SCENE ONE - a windowless, fluorescent meeting room in a building in an office park in a nameless suburb
Steve Mertz, Worker I, Worker II and Worker III sit around a table facing The Manager who stands at a white board.
THE MANAGER
Here’s the latest cupcake on what we’re all flimsy. You’ll note this is a couple [...]

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The Steve Mertz Trilogy, Part One: Steve Mertz, A Tragedy

CHARACTERS
 
Steve Mertz
 
Bishop
 
Prostitute
 
Man in a Lemur Costumer
 
Little Bonk-a-Bonk
 
Truck
 
Miss Boobs
 
St. God
 
The Manager
 
Worker I
 
Worker II
 
Worker III
 
The Banker
 
Hans the Night Janitor
 
The Robot with a Degree in Industrial Psychology
 
The Girl with the Enormous Light Bulb
 
Fantasia Popcorn, a Woman Who Makes Believe
 
Unindicted Coconspirator
 
Minister Without Portfolio

 

SCENE ONE - Backlot, Emperor Stadler Insurance Offices and Coffeeshop, Greenspan, Ohio, in the ’30s
 
STEVE [...]

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State Department’s Conference on Blogs & Democracy: Final Impressions

The State Department-sponsored Conference on Blogs and Democracy that I attended last Thursday and Friday left me with mixed feelings. Some of those feelings were very positive, but, in the final analysis, I left with negative feelings about the U.S. government’s ability and will to do its duty in the face of a sometimes difficult-to-understand [...]

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Sokwanele Missing in Action?

Update: The Ladies and Gentlement of Sokwanele’s “This is Zimbabwe” are back.
***
I just found out from Sokari at Black Looks that Zimbabwe’s Sokwenle group has neither posted on their blog, This is Zimbabwe, nor on the Sokwanele site, for six weeks.
Not only that, they do not answer their email.
This in the midst of a further [...]

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Jeffersonian Chitter-Chatter

Jeffersonian Chitter-Chatter
Originally uploaded by Blogswana.
“I tremble for my nation when I reflect that God is just.”
To see the Jefferson memorial is to see the promise. The injustice of slavery compromised the message of the country’s promise. You have to see the Lincoln memorial to see that wrong rectified, though Abe was, [...]

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Washington Monument at Night

Washington Monument at Night
Originally uploaded by Blogswana.
Eerie and sublime, the afterglow of delicious and nutritious liberty. Kelvin took me around to the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. Hilarious and nearly inspiring. A very r-o-c-k in the U-S-A x ebony-and-ivory type of experience.
DC, Washington_Monument, Washington

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Ammar & Fred at the Meridian

Ammar & Fred at the Meridian
Originally uploaded by Blogswana.
Here the melancholy Syrian dissident poet Ammar Abdulhamid and the skeptical and mischievous Armenian superstar Fred Petrossian stand on the back patio of the Meridian Center in Washington, D.C., for all the world like a modern-day Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
Tags: Meridian, [...]

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Kelvin in DC

Kelvin in DC
Originally uploaded by Blogswana.
Absolute Zero insisting on the continued rocking in or about the free world.
DC, Jeeviants

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