Humor column Stumbling Forward by Texas humorist John Gosselink. (original) (raw)

Columns

• Who wants you, baby? 4-17-06
• Kids in Sales, Oliver Twist, 21st Century Style 4-1-06
• Strange Sightings I Have Known 3-14-06
• The wrong side of the mountain 2-28-06
• Kid Destroying Stuff 1-17-06
• Dear People of the Future 1-2-06
• Identity Theft 12-15-05
• Thanksgiving Freakout 11-26-05
• Excuse Note 10-19-05
• Snakes or Having a Hissing Fit 9-1-05�We have nothing to fear except fear itself, and snakes..."
• Sleeping over with the enemy 8-15-05
  "I agreed to help host a sleepover for 9 seven-year-old girls. What a fool this mortal be."
• The Sweat and the Fury 8-1-05
• Heat Advisory for the Inept 7-15-05
• Wouldn�t it be cool 7-1-05
• Itchy Problem 6-16-05
• Spring Pledge Drive 6-1-05
• A Touchy Subject 5-15-05
  "My aversion to hugging has been well documented..."
• Directions for Proper Use 5-1-05
  Instruction manual to insure that your �Stumbling Forward� experience is safe and rewarding.
• A Spring Clean Getaway 4-24-05
  (One-year sabbatical)
• A modest Texas proposal 5-19-04
  Our official state motto and our State of Texas Pledge of Allegiance
• Updating our sayings for the 21st century
• Suffering from the Clap
  I've previously noted that people who clap at movie theaters irritate me. Doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you're going to start, while alone in your house, clapping for books you like, paintings you appreciate, or if you make an especially good grilled cheese sandwich, give yourself a standing ovation.
• Directions
  Swing Set Assembly Made Easy
• Dancing around a problem
  99% of men can be put into one of two categories when it comes to dancing: those who hate dancing and those who hate dancing but pretend to like it to keep their wives happy.
• Sniffing at Allergies
• A Man's Guide to Housework
  "We here at the Unsolicited and Possibly Dangerous Center of Advice have come up with some helpful hints for homemaking for men."
• The Difficulty of Meeting Expectations
  I've come to believe that the committee meeting is the blight of America. It is sapping our strength, destroying our initiative, and making it almost impossible to get anything done. And they're real boring.
• Flying the Unfriendly Skies
• The Secret of Nonverbal Communication
• School Spirit
  Lament of the unspirited
• Gender Benders
  The Truth about Men and Women
• The nature of child-rearingIntro for "Stumbling Forward" Can John Gosselink save small town newspapers? by the Editor Column Begins
  August 17, 2003

John Gosselink

John Gosselink is another example of how hippies, the Vietnam War, and Rice-a-Roni really screwed up this country. Born in the San Francisco Bay Area during 1967's "Summer of Love," with his father returning from Vietnam war and his mother teaching liberal arts at the time, Gosselink would be a walking clich� for the excesses of the '60's if he were a bit more interesting.

In the early '70's, his family moved to Houston and he had a typical childhood of wedgies, gun-running in Costa Rica, Hooked On Phonics, and transcendental meditation. After graduation, his guidance counselor's testing indicated his aptitudes would lead to career of occasional odd jobs and aluminum can collecting while living in his parents' basement. Sadly, his parents didn't have a basement.

So he spent the next decade going to state universities named after Texas founding fathers, staying at each long enough until they gave him a diploma so he'd go away. He soon found a woman with poor eyesight to marry him, and now has two beautiful, intelligent daughters whose very existence raise questions about Mendel's theories of genetic inheritance.

He is currently writing and working as a migratory composition teacher in the Central Texas area, figuring if he teaches his students to write badly, it will lessen the competition. His home camp is in the river bottom outside of Smithville.

Gosselink has won many pretend awards, including "Most Likely to Get A Communicable Rash," "First writer to use the words 'pudding' and 'back-hoe' in the same sentence," and Texas Escape's prestigious "Second humor writer on our site with a Dutch surname - we think."

When not writing poorly, Gosselink likes to spend his time shouting incoherently at the Amish, rooting out communists at the tax assessor office, working on his experimental kabuki opera, renaming his pets just to confuse them, and making up "trying too hard to be clever" autobiographies.

� John Gosselink

John Gosselink's
"Stumbling Forward" website: www.stumblingguy.com