Tim Kiser's articles

I thrashed about restlessly in my bed as I dreamed of four rich people in expensive recreational outerwear, saying in unison again and again: "Shame on this government for not grooming us a cross-country ski trail."

The Placement of ‘Losing Control of One’s Vehicle’ on Rural Male Americans’ Ranked Lists of the Most Embarrassing Ways to Die: A Longitudinal Study, 1946-2012.

'"Why don't you tune in and turn them on?" was a thoughtful way for Bernie Taupin to have expressed his idea,' thought Elton as he reviewed the proposed lyric. 'I will agree to sing the words.'

I think that Annie Lennox's weird and funny pronunciation of the word "this" as these in the song "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" might have had the effect of imparting a campy humor to the word "these," at least in certain contexts, perhaps especially when the word occurs at the end of phrases or sentences. A preacher speaks on televison of "the least of these," and I laugh because it reminds me of somebody singing about the notion of something (such as sweet dreams) being "made of the…

"Well, I have been dining at this same Big Boy restaurant nearly every week for over forty years, and during that time I have not noticed any changes in the menu offerings, the portion sizes, or the quality of the food. I don't know what you're talking about."

What we'll do is, we'll have the full choir sing the choruses and the repetitions of "That's my soul up there." And our little twelve-year-old sweet-voiced nightingale will sing the other lines solo, i.e., the lines about the butterfly in the spiderweb and the skeleton choking on a crust of bread, etc. She sings just like the Langley Schools child that sang Desperado. I'm also thinking about having the choirmembers all stomp their feet rhythmically on the risers during the final chorus, to ma…

Be careful about how you phrase things. Because to say, for instance, that Christine McVie famously wanted to be lied to in song could be misleading because it sounds like you're saying that Christine wanted somebody to sing lies to her. But in true fact it was Christine herself singing that she wanted to be lied to, without specifying how she wanted the lies to be told. Christine was the one that was "in song." The idea of the lies being "in song" doesn't have anything to do with the situ…

There's a song for which I'm trying to remember the title and artist, and unfortunately I don't own a copy of it and I can't seem to find it online. It was guitar rock, hard rock, with a male singer, and the chorus was him yell-singing "Tryyyyin' to have a baby! Tryyyyin' to have a baby!" again and again. He says "Tryyyyin' to have a baby!" like a hundred times throughout the song, and I think all of the other words in the song were intentionally supposed to be unintelligible gibberish. Does…

'I feel like I ought to raise the point with Bob Geldof and Midge Ure that an occurrence of severe drought in a region of the continent does not grant one licence to wantonly declare that "in Africa" ... "nothing ever grows,"' thought Simon Le Bon.

Young filmmaker records as I, a man in my seventies, solemnly recite the names of every U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reservoir, each name followed by the words "provides recreational opportunities." We're on a porch and I'm in a rocker.

an idea to get rural and smalltown U.S. protestants riled up with paranoia that the Holy Bible was "adulterated" somehow during the centuries that its text was under the control of the Catholic Church

"Well I'm researching Madonna's pregnancy in 1996, and at this point I'll take anything I can find, basically. The paper is due on Wednesday. I know it's hard to get access to medical records but do you have any ideas for places I could look? Would there be articles about it somewhere?"

In honor of the careful new restrictions it has placed upon its customers' use of paper napkins, we hereby award this Sustainable Green Living Certificate in Recognition of Environmental Friendliness to: Burger King at 34th & Nicollet in south Minneapolis. Congratulations!

We are working to convince one million smalltown U.S. Christians that Lady Gaga recorded a song called "Here's To My Sweet Satan," and that it topped the Billboard Hot 100 -- that it was "the number one song in the country" -- for eight weeks in the fall of 2012. Can we count on you for your support in this endeavor? We hope to engage as many people as possible in communicating this "fact" via social media, email, and face-to-face conversation. We are especially in need of participants wh…