B. Elwin Sherman
Copies of his recent book: "IN WATERMELON SALT -- The Lost Richard Brautigan," can be ordered via his website.
His latest book: "WALK TALL AND CARRY A BIG WATERING CAN", will soon be published by Plaidswede Press.
His books are available at all fine online bookstores, including a list viewable here on Amazon.
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Articles by B. Elwin Sherman
December 21, 2011
But, should "life" happen to you adversely and unexpectedly, we wish you the strength to persevere from wherever you draw upon such mettle, and the best of outcomes.
November 21, 2011
Now, please, no letters on your dear Sister Lucy´s Double Decker Divinity, or your sweet Grandma Lizbeth´s Peanut Butter Pumpkin Bliss, or even your weird Brother Hal´s Pinto-Pistachio Rodeo Squares.
November 02, 2011
No doctor or nurse should be allowed to let their skills loose upon the ill and wounded without a mandatory course in humor
October 22, 2011
They´re harmless, but an overexposure to them will turn me into The Swamp Thing.
August 22, 2011
As Jack Benny would tell it, this week I´ll be celebrating the twenty-first anniversary of my thirty-ninth birthday.
Sixty years old.
January 19, 2011
I know what you´re thinking: he wouldn´t DARE write a humor column about heart attacks! Well ... yes, he would ... because if he didn´t, he´d have to hang up his humorist shoes.
June 30, 2010
I´m not here to debate changes in the global environment. Let´s just say that this was the first spring I can remember riding the Harley in 80-degree weather, and the following week I was mowing the lawn, and the week after that I was shoveling 14 inches of snow.
Not really that unusual for New ...
April 06, 2010
Never forget that it was scientists who determined that if you fed the equivalent amount of artificial sweeteners found in 1500 cans of diet soda a day to rats, the rats would have health issues.
February 28, 2010
So, again, we have a "killer" animal and a human victim. More radiant, human arrogance. (That really goes without the qualifier. Animals are not capable of arrogance.)
December 28, 2009
" ... BE IT RECONCILED IN 2010: I will attempt to pay my New Hampshire property taxes with live chickens ...."
November 24, 2009
" ... My memories of long-past Thanksgiving gatherings are rich with family reminiscence. Fortunately, the statutes of limitations have gone by on most of them ...."
November 18, 2009
Ahh ... I get it now! The party of the second part has no standing whatsoever with the party of the first part (with my sincere apologies to Groucho & Chico).
September 27, 2009
There is only one way to live smoke-free, but there is a filibuster of ways to get there:
August 29, 2009
He talked to US, too, and we understood every whimper, growl and arf, but he was not above doing those base duties one expects of a country dog:
August 06, 2009
My version of line-item accountancy resembles what happens when you combine a calculator and a pinball machine.
June 11, 2009
" ... As she learns the now reasonable reason for your abrupt change in navigation and temperament, she will naturally do the normal thing to try and assist you, by attempting to extract the intruder from your head with her sunglasses .... "
May 17, 2009
Careful, don´t go too far. I hope I don´t have to forewarn you about attempting a universal plugging/rescue maneuver, when you imagine that all cosmic evil has conspired to drip from your tub faucet and you are the sole aquatic superhero with the only form-fitting big toe that can stop the leak and save the world.
April 22, 2009
"Sure, we get calls from lawyers, but we get more from agents," says Frankie "Glitterdome" Curtoon, the self-deprecating originator of the list, who named himself its number one member when it first appeared in 1970.
April 18, 2009
" ... You know what a warranty is: that piece of paper that guarantees what it won´t do for you when you most need it at a price you can´t afford ...."
April 04, 2009
" ... Finally, here´s one place to have it all, when you sign-in to H.E.L.L.," says Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has reached a rumored 32-trillion dollar deal with YouTube, MySpace and Twitter that will merge the giant internet meeting places into one monstrous socio-cybernetic living room.
March 25, 2009
I´d imagined it while awake. I´d dreamt it in my sleep. But, neither state had fully prepared me for the announcement, when it came in a simple phone call: "You´re going to be a grandfather."
March 18, 2009
"...Never give a sucker an even break, or smarten up a chump...."
March 01, 2009
This is for those of us still feeling like a sub-zero crankcase. Call it what you like: seasonal affective disorder, spring fever, the blues, the blahs, the blow-me-downs. It´s FUNK.
February 24, 2009
" ... There's no joy in Tinseltown today," said Sid Ganis, current President of AMPAS. "We must have a zero-tolerance policy for any actor using any methodology that might artificially boost their ability to be someone else ...."
February 19, 2009
" ... Lou Dobbs and Nancy Grace will find, capture, execute and deport every illegal Alien welfare cheater baby's suspected kidnapper, in that order .... "
February 11, 2009
" . . . If you do look for your cat, never let it see you searching. It will use this against you. You must start trying to be more like a cat: illogical, ulterior, eruptive, but with the patience of dirt. Act like you´re ignoring a tree, and the tree is petrified wood. Now you´re cat-like . . . . "
February 01, 2009
" ... They also assume that either we frequent bars and go to work in an office, or prefer to have sex there, or both. Bonus points, apparently, for any of us who drink and drive and conduct all our office business in the car .... "
January 07, 2009
Yes, I couldn´t think of one good reason to impoverish, mortify, fracture or freeze myself for the sake of another ride in the chariots of the Nordic Gods.
Reason enough, for a humorist.
January 07, 2009
This is for the novice woodsmen out there who either received or bought themselves chainsaws for Christmas: Cheers to those armchair lumberjacks just itching to get up and go outside and use their new tools. You´ll now need some artful dodging on how to safely and efficiently become felling fellows.
November 09, 2008
I´m in trouble again today, after reading the Science section of a news magazine and finding this: "Scientists Alarmed At Radiation Levels In Granite Countertops." My trouble starts right there, because I believe everything scientific that I don´t understand, and I don´t understand just enough of it to start trouble.
October 09, 2008
Soon, we´ll be voting for a new president, but let´s forget that for the moment. If you don´t know who your candidate is by now, you probably shouldn´t be looking to me for guidance. I graduated from the PRFSPS, (the Paraphrased Robert Frost School of Political Science). Thus:
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I---I took the other one."
September 18, 2008
How to safely have sex on a Harley-Davidson
September 10, 2008
Well, here we are in our post-Convention stretch, and I see that neither Party heeded my call to cancel their ballyhoos. I´d suggested that they spend the money (roughly the amount of your average failing financial institution´s exiting CEO´s severance package) on grander pursuits – like eldercare, soldier´s families and generous grants for working humor columnists.
September 01, 2008
Upon her reaching the century mark, I asked her how she´d done it. She must have learned something special, and practiced some secret formula for living that had carried her so far. What had she done, or not done, to have lived so long?
August 21, 2008
Retiring to Florida from Washington, D.C.? Bring your crash helmet.
August 01, 2008
WITBONES – "Ask A Humorist!" is a new advice column for the laughlorn by humorist B. Elwin Sherman. This time out, he answers questions on small town life in Vermont, small state life in Rhode Island, and Massachusetts women drivers.
July 30, 2008
"Fishing anytime, in general, is inherently masculine, and for many reasons. Oh, it´s not that women don´t fish, but they go fishing with us in the same spirit that we go shopping with them."
July 14, 2008
WITBONES – "Ask A Humorist!" is a new advice column for the laughlorn by humorist B. Elwin Sherman. This time out, he answers questions on the value of Presidential fruit, World Record wannabes, vending machine theft, and the extinction of "paperboys" (and girls).
July 03, 2008
Should you take your dog on a canoe trip?
June 22, 2008
Want to save money at the pump?
June 11, 2008
WITBONES – "Ask A Humorist!" is a new advice column for the laughlorn by humorist B. Elwin Sherman. This time out, he answers questions on about an oversexed society, Creamy vs. Chunky peanut butter, slobbish neighbors and Presidential nominees:
June 03, 2008
Since when do we need to "survive" a vacation, especially in summer? Since we're honest about it. Here's what to do, and what not to do if you want to optimize your premier leisure time, by syndicated humor columnist B. Elwin Sherman.
May 16, 2008
WITBONES – "Ask A Humorist!" is a new advice column for the laughlorn by humorist B. Elwin Sherman. This time out, he addresses the problems of denture home repair, co-workers who can't stop laughing, and the formula for a long, healthy life:
May 06, 2008
Pray or vote? Should we have to neglect humor to find the answer? Ask syndicated humor columnist B. Elwin Sherman.
April 24, 2008
WITBONES – "Ask A Humorist!" is a new advice column for the laughlorn by humorist B. Elwin Sherman. This time out, he addresses the problems of obsessive-compulsive behavior, bank fees, feline boyfriends and crazy cars!
April 04, 2008
Think you're kick starting your old Harley-Davidson in your dream and discover that you're kicking the wife instead? City slickers upsetting country bumpkins? Dog won't stop barking? Can't find humor in your mate? Global warming getting to you? Find the answers on: WITBONES -- "Ask A Humorist!"
March 25, 2008
Just what do people want to know on the internet? Google has a lot to answer for.
March 11, 2008
Golf on Mars? MARTIANS on Mars? Soon as we get there....
March 02, 2008
WITBONES -- "Ask A Humorist!" is a new advice column for the laughlorn by humorist B. Elwin Sherman. This time out, he responds to readers trying to find the humor in Presidential politics.
February 21, 2008
New advice column from syndicated humor columnist B. Elwin Sherman. WITBONES -- "Ask A Humorist!"
February 07, 2008
"FREE ADVICE FOR AIR TRAVELERS: Airport (In)security guards are not the best audience for auditioning new comedy material."
January 17, 2008
First, the term: "winter driving."
This beggars its own description, because it will never mean the same thing to two people. First, you must define "winter," and for some of us this means the end of late summer; for others it´s the beginning of early spring. Then, "driving." A wide-open appl...
December 20, 2007
Daniel Webster, who I’m now nominating as the first official Humorist Laureate of New Hampshire, was once asked to fill the Vice-Presidential spot on the Whig Party ticket in 1858 with Zachary Taylor, the Party’s Presidential nominee. He turned it down, saying: “I do not propose to be buried until ...
December 19, 2007
"Twas game day on Christmas,When all through the landNot an athlete could playTo an empty grandstand.The events had been nixedBy political docsAll looking to banishOur over-juiced jocks.The players were muscled all snug in their suitsAs visions of champions collecting loots.And, Mama in her game cap...
December 05, 2007
(WARNING! The names of individuals and eateries below are fictitious, but the persons and places are not. Any resemblance to real people and restaurants is purely intentional.)
I don’t pretend to be a gourmet, and this is not the place to find high-toned hints on where to dine out, should you h...
November 21, 2007
Yes, it´s possible to celebrate Christmas somewhere other than New Hampshire. I´ve done it, even once harking my heralding angels for a winter in Tucson, Arizona. But, as a native Granite Stater in the desert, I just couldn´t warm up to jackalope reindeer, Frosty The Sandman, and...
October 29, 2007
I don’t often use this space to report on news from Japan. Aside from a column I wrote five years ago on my lemon of a Japanese used car, I haven’t mentioned the Land of the Rising Sun, unless I was referring to snow in New Hampshire on a rainy day (an inside joke for Granite Staters).
This is n...
October 19, 2007
Today, everything pales compared to the perils of shampooing a baby dog.
It’s time to give the new puppy a bath.
My apologies to cat fanciers and any other genre of animal husbandries, foreign and domestic, who may feel slighted by the following policies and procedures of puppy hygiene. I int...
October 11, 2007
Anyone who watches The Discovery Channel has seen Mike Rowe hosting the show: “DIRTY JOBS.”
Mike travels the world looking for ordinary people engaged in more (or less) than extraordinary vocations, made so by their less (or more) than decorous job descriptions. When he finds them, he volunteers...
September 21, 2007
*(Humorist’s note: I wrote this column several years ago, when Allan Greenspan still sat at the helm of the Federal Reserve. As his latest book: “The Age Of Turbulence,” hits the bookshelves, I thought it fitting to revisit his stewardship.)*
When I was very young, every Sunday afternoon I’d...
September 04, 2007
If we were smart, the first thing we’d do every morning is admit how dumb we are.
No, not the kind of dumb my dictionary calls: “a lack of intellectual acuity.” That kind of dumb happens when I don’t bring in the suet birdfeeder at night, and by morning, a herd of bears has trampled the rhododen...
July 17, 2007
To the Democratic Party Chairman.
Dear Dr. Dean:
" ... A political party which wishes to lead must listen to those it would lead ...."
So reads the Preamble of the Democratic Party Charter, adding: " ... A party which asks for the people's trust must prove that it trusts the people."
Thu...
June 19, 2007
Some of the following was culled from “Bicyclopedia,” a compendium of two-wheeling facts and folklore, and what I now believe to be the funniest reference book since the Congressional Record.
Bicycles.
The world’s first bicycle was my Schwinn Cruiser, and not the prototype sketched in 1493 by ...
June 01, 2007
If you can’t find it here, you don’t need it.
Pardon me if I borrow the old country store witticism, but Memorial Day was the beginning of the bargaining season, where everything new will be old again. Welcome to those weekend gatherings of clans and neighbors around shaky tabletops and folding ...
May 18, 2007
(Originally titled: YOU CAN'T GET THERE FROM HAIR)
We've come a long way, babies, since I sat squirming on the little boy's porcelain pony seat at the tonsorial parlor for my bimonthly rake crew cut, AKA "The Flattop."
The rake crew cut/flattop sounds like what it was: a long, multi-pronged...
April 12, 2007
(WARNING: This column may offend those easily offended.)
Civilization ended recently, when John Donald Imus, Jr., an American radio talk show host, shot himself in the foot in his mouth.
Let me rephrase that: Civilization did NOT end recently, when John Donald Imus, Jr., an American radio tal...
April 07, 2007
" ... Maria Cortesio Papageorgiou ...."
The name doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but I predict that one day its abridged version will become as much a household fixture as a teenage cell phone.
Thirty-year old Ria Cortesio is on deck to become Major League Baseball's first regular season ...
March 23, 2007
"New Scientific research reveals----"
Whenever I see those words coming at me, I go right into fight or flight mode. For a humorist, there is no finer gauntlet. I try to turn away, but once I see a newsbit announcing that scientists have done it again, I'm hooked.
Because I'm a technological...
March 18, 2007
I may not yet be considered the George Lerner of humor, but I wouldn't mind suffering the analogy when the history of wit & wisdom is said and done.
In 1951, Mr. Lerner invented Mr. Potato Head.
I was born in 1951.
(Bizarre coincidence, or a rendezvous with destiny? You be the judge.)
...
February 20, 2007
Right about now, those of us who aren’t moose, Bode Miller or trees, have spent more time in the last two months inside our houses than outside them. Yes, unless “sled-dog” or "cross-country" for us are verbs, or we can only enjoy our nouns while cavorting in six layers of clothing -- it’s nigh on ...
January 31, 2007
We don't have an M.D. or a Ph.D. after our names, but this morning my partner and I each weigh twelve pounds less than we did three weeks ago. That's one pound for every year we might've spent getting those doctorates, if you care to look at it that way.
I do.
You might ask how we accomplishe...
January 16, 2007
Of all things great and domestic and magical, these are the tried & true illusions naturally occurring when men and women live together, the unsung antics all of us know & practice, the sweetie-baby-cookie-honey household applications that distinguish us from the lower order of animals.
Dogs & ca...
December 28, 2006
(Note to my dedicated readers: As the New Year's arrival and this holiday season are a time for renewal and resolution, they also call up our best recollections. Please join me in my departure from the strictly humorous, as we well-remember our loved ones lost. Not to worry -- the light hasn’t c...
December 19, 2006
Every year I swear I won't, but I can't help myself:
Time to dust off the old chestnut.
Dedicated readers of this column know this as its Christmas Classic. It's my favorite misappropriation of what's probably the most revered and abused holiday ditty ever penned. Nothing has been dragged th...
December 10, 2006
I'm warning you in advance: you may not be ready for some of the following. I've spent a day researching this, and I'm now convinced, more than ever, that for all the beauty and grandeur found in the human animal, we are also the strangest & silliest creatures on the planet.
This column is dedic...
December 09, 2006
The world is making my job easier every day.
I no sooner sit down at this workstation, bent on finding and chasing the muse through a suitable topic, when my wonder about where I'll find it vanishes before a second sip of my beloved Maxwell House, with headlines like this:
"NINTENDO CAUTIONS G...
November 30, 2006
We’re traveling now to Spokane County in eastern Washington state, where Public Works Department officials are fed up with complaints from city folks who’ve relocated there and found themselves woefully unprepared for “the hazards of country living.”
Seems these new pioneers are moving to Spokane...
November 26, 2006
The challenge for any humorist is to find humor in everything. It's also, usually, the easiest part of the job, because most everything about us as a species is either standalone funny or has elements of humor that can be mapped out without too much difficulty.
Comedian Lewis Black expertly demo...
November 17, 2006
It's not your typical Vermont headline:
"Mad Moms Stage Nurse-In"
When I saw that this had happened in the Green Mountain State, my next-door neighbor, I envisioned a horde of maniacal country matriarchs running amok, attempting to heal people against their will, and I wondered why Vermont had...
November 05, 2006
I've just watched a video of a chimpanzee named Baxter hacking a Diebold voting machine, by deleting its audit log with a few keystrokes.
Well, why not.
In 1961 Ham The Chimp -- stimulated by colored light cues, sound prompts, and electric shocks to his lower extremities -- masterminded dozens...
October 30, 2006
I'm not a politician, though I did once announce and withdraw my candidacy for President on the same day, and all for the sake of a humor column. I also submitted that "B. EL-WIN Or Lose," was a ready-made rallying cry.
I quickly came to my senses, however, mud deep in the big waste, realizing t...
October 25, 2006
Halloween.
The rural Baby Boomers amongst us remember those simple horrors of childhood trick or treating, when we made do with what we had, and had what we made.
Costumes were all home inventions, from front-zipping bunny suits to wire-stuffed cat's tails, hand-painted faces, pressed-cloth ma...
October 19, 2006
Dear White House:
Att: George Bush & Dick Cheney
I see that the Marines are about to recall some combat battalions for ANOTHER tour of active duty in Iraq. Well, fellers, it's been 30 years since I was honorably discharged from the Marines; I'm 55 years old, but I must tell you, my housemate ...
October 11, 2006
Dear Dad:
I always think of you -- long-gone for the last 34 years -- whenever I hear techno-popology that would now beggar your imagination, had you lived to hear it. Take this morning's headline:
"GOOGLE BUYS YOUTUBE FOR 1.5 BILLION"
Sorry, Dad, but that one probably makes you glad you l...
September 27, 2006
Careful, I'm in a mood today.
In a recent concert, comedian Lewis Black (doing what Lewis Black does best) painfully pointed out the frustration any joke teller feels these days, when the revolving door of topical comic fodder spins so fast that it's impossible to keep pace:
"I barely have a P...
September 18, 2006
A reader wrote to sharply suggest I have been remiss in my duties.
“Why,” he impaled, “don’t you write something about the greatest game ever played?”
My first reaction was, “Because Naked Co-Ed Ping-Pong has been done to death.” Reading on, however, my offhand assumption was bluntly correcte...
September 09, 2006
(Author's note: This was written late in 2001. After the towers ... and before the war. Unfortunately, it still reads well. ---BES)
No, I’ve not deliberately not written about the events of September 11th.
I’ve just been busy waiting.
Waiting for the thesaurus to be bled dry by t...
September 03, 2006
" ... When my father heard Lincoln speak at Gettysburg...."
Not something you hear every day, and a sentence not likely to ever begin again, with the reported passing recently of George Johnson, "California's oldest living person," who died August 30th at age 112, and whose father WAS in attendan...
August 30, 2006
If you need a break from this world's current sandstorm politics, rock-diva religions and star-crossed mudpies, have I got a diversion for you.
I've just been pleasantly so-diverted via a letter from my physicist friend Stan, advising me that a broadcast media contact of his, uncertain of how to ...
August 24, 2006
As of this writing, I don't know where our beloved Boston Red Sox will be, come World Series time. I know where I WANT them to be, but for now I'll opt for the safe haven found in the old adage: "God made the world round so we wouldn't see too far down the road."
A few years ago, I had a headful...
August 17, 2006
We all have moments of public embarrassment, when we're caught looking, or not looking. Then, red-faced and mortified, and feeling like the only true dumb animal of the mammalian family, we skulk away.
Come, come ... you've done it, when you've:
--- Tripped over a sidewalk crack and stared...
August 02, 2006
Pay close attention.
This may be the last time I choose athletes & sports -- at least those subject to blood-doping conformities -- as humor column subjects. After my last outing on the bane of Zidane and the head-butt felt 'round the World (Cup), I received e-mail pleas and protests from appa...
July 13, 2006
Take a close look at the picture. I don't often depart from my self-imposed confines of humor columning, but this one won't lie down and die, and if the pictured head butt had been applied one or more centimeters this way or that, or delivered one millisecond sooner or later, that might have been t...
July 05, 2006
Dear Bill Gates:
Congratulations on your decision to self-outsource your job in 2008, and devote your efforts to full-time philanthropy. News reports state that you will take the same energy you once applied toward software technology, and redirect it “to global health, education and other intra...
May 09, 2006
(A special guest interview with B. Elwin Sherman, by Judy Wallace)
His home office is what you’d expect, if it’s possible to have an expectation of how a North Country humorist’s workplace should present: a dark, nearly inaccessible cubicle with a desk, shelves and walls so cluttered they belie a...
March 01, 2006
When American physiologist Walter Cannon first coined the term, “fight or flight response” in 1929, he wasn’t proffering an infantryman versus aviator interpretation of how, when we feel threatened, we will either stand our ground or literally take to the air.
His definition was a physiological on...
February 24, 2006
Lately, it seems we’re all in a big hurry to jump ship.
It’s all around us now, the search for ways to improve our standard of dying. We’re fast-approaching the land of diminishing returns. Maybe if we focused a bit more on ways to live with humor and grace, we’d be less concerned about how to d...
February 01, 2006
Dear Dave:
In the grip of another New England winter, I imagine you sitting in Miami on your “defenseless toilet,” remembering how you used to be funny in the place where neon goes to die. There in the land of palm fronds, aqua-toys and one-season radials, shadow-bathing in the climate where unde...
December 10, 2005
Dear Dedicated Reader:
The lab rats are running again.
I love science, partly because I’m not a scientist and I understand little of it, and partly because it will always provide an explanation not found in poetry. I like that. I’m a big fan of always having a Plan B.
Back when I was skydiving...