The (New & Improved) HYENA KITCHEN

Appreciation by James Patrick Lockett Melancholy ain’t just Lassie guarding some cantaloupes. Nor is it the word that properly describes how I feel today.  There are forty-eight synonyms in the Thesaurus for ‘sad’ and not one of them adequately convey how I feel.  Just one of the many things I already miss about Harlan Ellison – I’m sure he would look at me and throw out ‘lugubrious’ or ‘woebegone’ or just a simple, ‘low.’ I’d started writing half a dozen times, different things the passed couple of days, and all the words always seemed to just mock my feelings.  Maybe it’s not time yet.  So, I sat eating (Hydrox) cookies and re-re-re-reading Ellison short stories – feeling sorry for our loss and mad that death slipped in like a thief in the night and took Harlan in his sleep.  Normally, that’s the way we all want to go, but there’s something lily-livered about not having the guts/spine/pluck (take your pick) to risk encountering Harlan’s wrath.  Eventually, I ran out of cook

            So this past week- while most of you were distracted by the Yanny or Laurel controversy – the world marked the opening of the relocated U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem; and while it was conducted with all the pomp and circumstance of an alt-right ribbon cutting at a Charlotte, N.C. Krispy Kreme, I fear the repercussions – far beyond the senseless murder of sixty Palestinians protesting the move by a frightened Israeli Defense Force [ as portrayed on Tuesday by The Ohio National Guard ] – will be unimaginable and in time, remembered as a grave moment in both U.S. and World history.             Now, the current resident of The “White” House doesn’t care about this move one way or another – it does not benefit his personal or financial agenda in any way – so, he didn’t want to go. He can’t send his Christian Zionist Vice-President because it wouldn’t do to have him gleefully jumping around screaming, “Jesus is coming, I know him.” like a tent revival Buddy the Elf.  So what do yo

A very rare photo the elussive Albino Jack Hyena & the equally rare Tuxedo Hyena seen here on their natural environment - asleep on the blue plaid plains adjacent to the Kitchen.