Short Cummings Audio

Sponsored by: www.GotoMyPC.com/podcast Who doesn’t love a trip to the zoo? Well, probably the animals for whom it is a one-way trip, but that’s not really the point. The point is that you get to spend a happy, lazy day eating junk food and wandering past neat rows of tiny cages containing permanently trapped animals. As you [...]

Sponsored by: www.GotoMyPC.com/podcast After an extensive examination, the doctor concluded that my wife wasn’t right in the head. Aside: my wife is glaring at me with a look that could blister the paint on a battleship. In the interest of avoiding incineration, let me provide a some context. The doctor in question is my wife’s oh-toe-lair-in …. auto-lauren [...]

In this age of heightened security, I’ve heard that the authorities might be monitoring the telephone conversations of ordinary citizens like me. If they are listening in on my cell calls to my wife, I have two words for them. Good. Luck. Really. Our conversations are non-linear in the same way that tires are non-square, fish are [...]

My lawnmower is gone. He moved away to college. With his departure, my wife and I took off the business casual clothing of active parents and slid into the comfortable shorts and Hawaiian shirts of empty-nesters. And you know what? It’s weird. Really. In the evenings, we no longer have to make sure that everyone has finished [...]

American daily newspapers are dying in record numbers. Where once these magnificent beasts roamed the plains in great herds, now they have been hunted nearly to extinction by the railroads. Oh. Wait. That’s the buffalo. Nonetheless, newspapers really are dying. If your local daily was a guest character on a medical drama, the hunky doctor would [...]

The history of modern professional sports is a real Cinderella story; a genuine David-and-Goliath fight between the teams on the one hand and an apathetic public on the other foot. Every team out there gives one-hundred-and-ten-percent every time the sun shines just to prove that they’re the team to beat … and watch. And nothing [...]

The Great American Pastime is, of course, taking people to court. No, I’m kidding. The Great American Pastime is baseball; an event in which small teams of highly skilled and carefully trained individuals convene in a specially-designated location to compete by following a complicated set of rules under the watchful eyes of a team of impartial [...]

After we finished installing our youngest son in his Freshman dorm room, he pushed us out so fast he nearly strained us through the keyhole. He hustled us off the way your immune system rejects a disease, the way a sovereign nation rejects an invading army, the way Jennifer rejected Brad when she found [...]

Now Available! After 24 years of marriage, a man learns a thing or two about surviving as a homeowner, husband, and father — mostly he learns to laugh at adversity. In this collection of essays, humorist Kevin Cummings takes on all aspects of modern domesticity. “Happily Domesticated” is a collection of 54 of the best essays from the [...]

When my dinner arrived at the table it looked less like food and more like evidence in an arson investigation. “I can’t eat this,” I said.  “The pork chop is completely burned.” “Not all of it,” my wife said.  “Just cut away the burned part and eat what’s left.” “What’s left is the bone.” “Then eat the green beans.” “Burned.” “The [...]

Experts are the bodybuilders of the intellectual world; except its harder to spot them in a crowded room. Body-builders stand out because they are tanned and fit in the exact same way that Mount Everest is not small. Their distressingly unnatural proportions make it tough for them to fit into regular clothes. This is why bodybuilding [...]

I’m a big fan of sky-diving…so long as it is undertaken for the express purpose of escaping from a paralyzed airplane which is hurtling ground-ward. On the other hand, leaving a perfectly functional aircraft mid-flight would be disrespectful to the hardworking engineers, technicians and flight crew who are dedicated to providing a safe, comfortable trip. Despite [...]

Later this year Microsoft will release Windows version seven. After nearly a decade-and-a-half in development, this new software package promises to give you the same smooth, hassle-free experience as Windows 95. As with the release of any new operating system, the arrival of Windows seven is exciting the geek community the way the arrival of [...]

Job interviews are the business-world’s equivalent of speed dating. Based on a brief conversation, hiring managers are supposed to select the candidate with whom they expect to have a long-term relationship of forty or fifty … months. The employer is expected to make a binding commitment to this person until death, promotion, mandatory staff reductions [...]

Things sure have come a long way since the Dark Ages. A few centuries ago we’d all have been living in a kingdom where any autocrat could summon all of the peasants into the castle for a meeting at a whim. At the same time, if two of the local knights had a disagreement — [...]