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Melinda's Leg
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Forty-One
"Sardine, it distresses the hearts of all confirmed bachelors that even you couldn't resist the longing for security that a relationship promises. Believe us, the security and happiness are illusions. Men are solitary animals. They can't stand company or caring or too much sentimentality."
Non-Books, Part Two
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Forty
In which A Sardine on Vacation betrays every principle he claimed to stand for, and crushes our dreams like the British approaching Spuyten Duyvil.
Pursuit of Identity, Part Four
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Thirty-Nine
'"It's just that, well, I don't know how to say this."
"Say what?"
"You are Frank Weathers!"'
A World of Stooges, Part Two
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Thirty-Eight
"Women risk their lives giving birth to new generations of people while men remain superfluous and powerful. Women are pitiable slaves to nature. More hideously, they are dominated by a bunch of assholes."
A World of Stooges
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Thirty-Seven
"Bill (from Indianapolis): The Three Stooges are pretty good.
He might have said that he approved of rape or argued that the KKK were a misunderstood bunch of idealists."
Nobody's Perfect
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Thirty-Six
'Continental drift strikes me as the perfect metaphor for life itself. We are borne through life on the surface of powerful psychological, social, and historical magma. Our fit with other individuals – be these called cultures, tribes, persons, countries – is uncertain, incomplete, "bad," if you will.'
"Non"-Factors
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Thirty-Five
"Although you have mentioned a previous girlfriend or two, there's no evidence of a moderating female force in your life now. This absence in your life has allowed your negative attitude to filter into all of your opinions and characterizations."
Booked for Safekeeping, Part Two
reprinted March 2006
We present the second half of Booked for Safekeeping. Created in 1960 by the New Orleans Police Department, Booked for Safekeeping was a training film to assist police officers in handling mental illness crises. It has since been released to the public domain.
Parodies of Ourselves
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Thirty-Four
'"Same with the Sardine," added Wal-terr. "The longer he hangs around, the more we agree with what he says. Even what he said about me just now. I would have punched out anyone who talked about me that way. Except the Sardine. Frank Weathers said the other day how right the Sardine was about the Kennedy assassination. That's why the Sard's so depressed. His only alternative is to start agreeing with us and start giving the Logged-In Public what it wants."'
Pursuit of Identity, Part Two
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Thirty-Three
"Most people think he's crazy looking for the Sardine. He could lose his job over someone whom so few care to know about! His family tells John he'll never get married if he doesn't stay in one place. His girlfriend broke up with him when he went to Europe to follow the Sardine (he wasn't certain whether she was more angry at not being taken along)."
My Daughter's Vagina, Chapter 4
The conclusion by Richard Jeffrey Newman, November 2005
"Looking back, of course, I see much more clearly than I could then just how profoundly complex my insistence on abstention was, me, the guy, the one who was supposed always to want sex. All I can say now is that I was in over my head and I didn't know it. I was, after all, only twenty one and not really equipped, emotionally or otherwise, to set and live by the limits I wanted to set. More to the point, I didn't know what it was I was over my head in."
The Health Utopia, Part Three
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Thirty-Two
'...being "self-serving" would be the least of the Utopia's faults. The naïveté of the Health Euphorians, who cannot imagine any other course of life but their version of a healthy one, allows them to operate within a critical impunity once held for the religiously excited. All roads of the Health Utopia run through one ideal place in the utopia's mission to dominate our lives. A cure for death!'
Booked for Safekeeping
reprinted November 2005
Booked for Safekeeping was created in 1960 by the New Orleans Police Department as a training film to assist police officers in handling mental illness crises. It was then released to the public domain.
My Daughter's Vagina, Chapter 3
Part three of four by Richard Jeffrey Newman, October 2005
"For while I kiss and snuggle and fondle him in much the same way she does, I generally avoid his penis... When it comes to changing his diaper or washing him in the bath I have no problem handling or otherwise paying attention to his genitals, but the idea of kissing or snuggling or fondling him there inevitably conjures for me the images and feelings of my own sexual abuse, and so the touch itself is for me never innocent no matter how innocently it may be intended or received."
Social Pressures
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Thirty-One
"Wal-terr mentioned in the previous column a conspiracy to keep him from bartending in this town, believing his scrape with the FBI agent was the solus locus of his troubles for several years. He was fired from his last job, which he had held for ten years, not because of the fight but that he may have been having sex with one of the restaurant's busgirls."
My Daughter's Vagina, Chapter 2
Part two of four by Richard Jeffrey Newman, September 2005
'"I'm not talking," he says, "about doing this to someone I love. I'm talking about the pieces of trash you can pick up at the local bar, the sluts who give it away, the hookers who do it for money, women who are asking for it."
'"Why do they deserve to be murdered?" I ask.
"They're whores," he responds, "No one cares about them."'
Increasing Returns
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Thirty
"It's imperative that the column doesn't become too big. I'm a Sardine and I'll always be one. I've no wish to be a whale or a shark. A whale can't live on a sardine's diet. Nor can a sardine eat like a shark nor make waves like a whale. People will come to expect that should I become what I'm not."
Zombie Park
by JamieLepore-AKA-brace, September 2005
"the dead cum alive
at zombie park
a strain on 'properties'
in my head."
My Daughter's Vagina
Part one of four by Richard Jeffrey Newman, August 2005
"Dool is the Persian child-language word for penis. We use it with my son be-cause it's the word my wife uses with him. As opposed to jish, the word she says she would use for vagina if we had a daughter—and which is also the Persian child-language word for urine—dool as far as I know refers to nothing other than penis and functions neither as a metaphor nor any other figure of speech. "
Conspiracy Theories
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Twenty-Nine
"Ours was a bureaucratic world that slowly but surely has eroded the sense of individual responsibility for all consequential actions. The effect has filtered through our society, and it's now inconceivable for people to believe an individual could perform so profound an action."
The Honey of the Golden Years of Marriage
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Twenty-Eight
"How did the notion of marriage lasting forever enter the fevered human brain? Was there anything about human beings to suggest that they could live up to this forever standard? Especially when you consider the conditions under which humans mate! Infidelity over a lifetime is the least problem for a marriage."
Health Utopia, Part Two
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Twenty-Seven
'"What sentence did you get?" Wal-terr asked when I returned from the Health courts.
The crew at the bar should have come to the court.
"I won't get you a drink until you tell us."
"The local news didn't report it," Frank Weathers snickered.'
Quintessential Quentin, Parts IV through VI
by Bryon D. Howell, May 2005
"My Quentin loves me still he just stopped by.
He knocked this time, begged me to let him in.
He said that he was horny, moist, and high.
He said he had some time and needed skin."
Wal-Terr
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Twenty-Six
'"Just my luck we picked on an FBI agent. He wanted assault charges, everything. And no plea bargaining. McNulty was a basket case. He hadn't been in court for ten years. Besides, he had plead every case down. During the trial he didn't know whether to object or wind his watch."'
Quintessential Quentin, Parts I through III
by Bryon D. Howell, April 2005
"When Quintessential Quentin's in my bed...
I am his slave and poetry is dead."
Obsolete Innovations
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Twenty-Five
"Look what's happened to soccer. The world's game isn't good enough for us, there's not enough scoring, so we look for ways to do that. Nor do we like tie games. There must always be a winner, so we create shootouts. Worse, the shoot-outs have been incorporated into the World Cup."
Planning Ahead
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Twenty-Four
"Not realizing that tourists must defecate before ten a.m. could be the ruin of the company."
Conversational Leftovers
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Twenty-Three
"The nearly unlimited time one is allowed to sit in an Italian restaurant contrasted sharply with this current whirlwind tour from London to Athens. The bill would not be placed on the table until I asked for it. And even then it would take another twenty minutes. One nearly had to pry it from the waiter, as if you were insulting the establishment by wanting to leave. This was one of the differences between American and European businesses."
The Best Places I Never Saw
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Twenty-Two
"Was I alone feeling that I was missing something? Most of the tour members were over fifty and may have been to Europe once before. I heard no griping, however, and I was afraid to question the Greek woman, who had enthralled the forty of us with her knowledge of the cities and countries, besides the fact that she was good-looking, with a large mouth and vivacious personality, and jet black hair. She inspired great confidence in all of us that this, the package tour, was the only way to 'do' Europe."
The Fortunate Traveler
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Twenty-One
"I bumped into Oedipus in the men's room the other night and asked how he felt about Joe seeing his daughter.
""He's a good boy," said Oed, "just as long as he doesn't do anything I wouldn't have done."
"Guiding him to the urinal, I waited until the old Greek was finished before completing my own business. What exactly Oed meant by his statement I wasn't sure."
Pursuit of Identity
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Twenty
"Few if any of Pellatier's friends had heard of A Sardine on Vacation, and those who thought they knew it, or supposed they had read it, didn't like it much. He felt they should read the Sardine regularly and give themselves a chance to get involved in the lives of ordinary people. He e-mailed Jonathan Penton requesting to know the Sardine's real name. Jonathan wouldn't tell him."
The Snail Eaters
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Nineteen
". . .are done just to break the records established in the book. And for no other reason. This snail eating thing just goes to show the lengths people will go. And for what? To get a little fame the guy dies."
Death Wishes
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Eighteen
"It wasn't enough that you've criticized the democratic process or people's television and reading habits. It's not enough that you don't give the people what they want. Now you attack the judicial system, especially the hallowed process of trial by jury, which dates to Henry II of England. And when do you do this? Just when you're going to trial!"
Pun by Ordeal
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Seventeen
"What one can question is the modern prejudice that a rational mankind exists to be plugged into a system of fair and equal justice. When the barbarians used trial by ordeal, they had a dim view of human nature. They looked around and saw. . . barbarians. Nature was exalted above all things. Trust in the nature of life allowed them to equate justice with the outcome of a joust, that a great truth was inherent in the outcome of a contest. More truth than you would find in the harangues of lawyers and the tears of the victims."
Non-Books
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode Sixteen
"The idea intrigues the Sardine: "turning something into a book," as if it were magic. As if books happen after so many words are set in type, put in so many columns, collected as so many articles and stories. Turning something into a book that wasn't initially meant to be, by all rights should never be, a book."
The My Daughter's Vagina e-book
A Sardine on Vacation, Episode 15
A Sardine on Vacation, Episodes 1 through 14
The A Sardine on Vacation book includes the first 47 episodes run at Unlikely, plus five episodes that only exist in print