rants, reports, raves, and embarrassments from eric trules

Subscribe

anger

Family & Christmas. Like Love & Marriage, rrrrright?

December 24, 2013 Family and Christmas go together, right? Like love and marriage. Like horse and carriage, right? Well, I won’t disagree. But growing up in a mostly non-practicing Jewish family, I didn’t know much about it. Sure, we had Christmas in Salisbury Elementary School and W. Tresper Clarke High School in the 1950s and 60s suburbs of Long Island, New York. Of course, the other-side-of-the tracks O’Farrells and the D’Agostinos let us upper middle class Jewish kids know all about their Irish and Italian blue collar ways, with their anti-Semitic middle school harassment and their Catholic jock-swearing braggadocio. “Fuck…

Terror Magenta

It’s been on my mind, really bothering me…. that although in no way can I condone the “terrorist” attacks on America; they’re deeply brutal, frightening, and wrong. BUT…. How can we blow up the San Bernadino attack by these 2 radical jihadists into “the worst terrorist attack on America since 9/11”? Well, ok, 14 people were killed in a small, insular California community. Not good. Brutal, sad, and scary. But there was Fort Hood and the Boston Marathon well before it. And… it’s not the 3000 victims killed like at the World Trade Center in 2001. And…. at least as…

Pigs, Pestilence & Rats

I’ve gotten 4 traffic tickets in the last 2 weeks. The first was for speeding on the 2 Freeway in Glendale, where the cop was in hiding under an overpass. An obvious speed trap! He said I was going 80. I said I was going no faster than anyone else in the left lane. Let’s see who’s right. I’ve called the Ticket Clinic. The 2nd was just a $73 parking ticket right here at Echo Park Lake. I was showing a new friend around the neighborhood. I was probably just in too expansive a mood, was unaware of the No…

“Dog Wars” in LA’s Elysian Park

“Road Rage”. We all know what that is, right? That explosive and provocative malady driven by frustration and self righteousness, overtaking ordinarily peace-loving auto drivers, at unpredictable (or perhaps very predictable) moments of pique anxiety and stress “on the road”. Especially in LA. Perhaps you have a touch of it. I know I do. Sitting in traffic, late for work, I sometimes “tap” on my horn to just “wake up” all the absent-minded, dull and distracted drivers in front of me. To get them to just “step on the gas” a bit, or perhaps… torun that yellow light, just a fraction after it’s turned to…

The Modern Crusades: Militant Islam & Collateral Damage, 2 Inhospitable Bedfellows

First, let me say that I finished this piece just days before the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. “Je suis Charlie”, and I have not changed a single word. On Friday, January 2, I read, with distress, in the Los Angeles Times‘ “Year in Review” a grim and disturbing piece entitled “Militant Islam’s 2014 March”. In it, Carol J. Williams recalls, in shocking detail, the disturbingly violent assault of extreme religious Islam on both the East and the West: “In April, Boko Haram abducted more than 270 Nigerian girls and dispatched them to sexual enslavement. As the year drew to a close, the Pakistani…

confessions of an ageing rage-aholic, part 2: the mad prof

and… i aim my RAV 4 directly at mike. he sees me coming and his eyes start bugging out of his head. captain of industry, huh, mike? mike tries to maneuver out of my way, practically falling off his tan beach cruiser. i hit the brakes to a full stop… about 2 inches from mike’s front wheel. mike looks terrified. he should be.

Site Developed and maintained by Webuilt Technologies