Author: Vic Socotra

Last Steak

We were going to call it the “Last Supper,” which was meant to commemorate Vic’s last bone-in ribeye over at Outback. But the connection to the Opening Ceremony to the Paris Olympics was too vivid. This commemoration is to celebrate the onset of a few weeks of soft dining that will result from the removal […]

Dearborns in the Headlights

A week to go, they tell us, with those number rolling around on the bottom, faster and faster the closer to where we sit at the Big Pink white Patio table. The selfie Splash took still glowed on the tablet on the table, though on “low power.” You could see the velvet was still on […]

Day of Repentance

Day of Repentance

We are tired of the Big Surprise watch and Splash has taken to sitting on the Patio until he is confident everyone else has gone to bed before he can press his phone screen to display: “Not Last Night” and burn a last cigarillo in the crisp dark air, Orion’s bright arm rising about the […]

Riding the Wave

Riding the Wave

The Chairman shoke Section Leader DeMille’s hand energetically on his way to do some business that might have involved a mimosa and a white tablecloth. He said: “Doesn’t look like the Israeli’s did more than send a real powerful signal, so I am going to see if we can get cozy with the company that […]

A Way to Break the Day

A Way to Break the Day

So, Arrias stops by with a load of poems dispatched by his Muse. There is some agitation in the circle around the picnic table. The annual meeting of the Old Spooks organization is later, over at the Country Club our grandfather’s generation built on the old farms in Arlington. So, the Production Meeting turned into […]

Bear Three-Ninety-Nine

Bear Three-Ninety-Nine

The Chairman directed extra attention be placed on things while the Election and Surprises are Looming. That means someone is supposed to prep for the morning Production Meeting, which produces some scrawls of unintelligible phrases. This morning’s list started without identification of region. The strike at Boeing just re-ignited and it just had another satellite […]

Arrias and His Muse: The Plan

Author’s Note: After reading some more miserable accounts of life in the trenches, they all want to push the Russians out, but they keep looking around asking “WT…?” Then my Muse dictated this to me: The President has a victory plan, How he’s gonna win the war, Just another year of fighting, That’s all he’s […]

Just Three Things

Just Three Things

Melissa had not come back from the El Paso café over on Pershing when the rest of the morning crew finally appeared sequentially on The Patio in the last clear inviting morning of a season waning like the moon above. Splash had scrawled “Small S’esses Rising?” on his tablet before doing something else and she […]

Requiescat in Pace

Requiescat in Pace

(Rest in peace, LCDR Evans and LT Whileman, lost in an EA-18G Growler mishap near Mr. Ranier). A confused morning at Big Pink. Splash had the Big Surprise watch last night and when it appeared there was not going to be an unexpected Big One, he just started looking at the moon’s arc over the […]

A Smokey Sunrise

A Smokey Sunrise

(Waning moon here in DC greets a smokey dawn Out West on an anniversary of victory & expansion. Fifteen more on the Calendar until something else). It is the Holy Day on the calendar, and Splash had the night-watch on alert for Big Surprises. He had a bottle of Old Crow to fortify himself until […]