Usually, we lose power along the T-shaped intersection where I live in Walnut Hills when somebody spits on the sidewalk or a moderate wind blows through. So when the lights flickered the first time in TJ Maxx, I knew what was up.  

Dear Close Male Friends: There have been times over the years when some or most of you entered into serious, sometimes long-term relationships. I believe I have been extremely patient with each of you, understanding that your respective significant other might be meeting various universal human needs and making your life better.  

It's a rare night, an even more rare weekend night when I’m without my wife and daughters, so I find myself hanging out at the Oak for a guys’ night out with couple of friends, eager to watch the Reds and talk some trash. The young night grows old and soon I’m one of the last two holdouts, not quite ready for the evening to end.
  

Since ObamaCare didn’t get faded by the Supreme Court, Jean Schmidt plans to spend the rest of the summer riding shotgun in an ice-cream truck, waiting for a young boy or girl to drop their frozen treat onto the asphalt by accident so she can hop out, point and laugh at them.  

The volatile Asian silver carp, an invasive fish species notorious for its ability to “leap” out of water and injure boaters, has been discovered at the mouth of the Great Miami River, its first-ever spotting in the Cincinnati region. CINCINNATI -2
  

Out on the stoop, I’m smoking a cigarette, which is a big mistake. Kris has noticed me. He lives in a building up the street and he’s a pain in the ass. As he approaches, I already know what he wants.  

Antarctic chinstrap penguins have lost 36 percent of their population during the past 20 years due to a warming planet that’s caused sea ice to melt, destroying the penguins’ natural habitat and the krill population, a large component of the chinstrap penguin diet. WORLD -2
  

In 300 years, when machines run the earth, our robot scientist overlords will be able to study our ancient society’s morals and taboos via what we allow and eventually embrace in pop culture.     

Postmodern black American enslavement is quite a spectacle. Witness the temporary thunderclap of comfort and the blinding shinola emitting from the upper middle classes every time a black American charges an expensive purchase or, better yet, uses payday Friday bill money to floss. All black everything.   

The U.S. Supreme Court today said “hell nah” to many parts of an Arizona law designed to fight illegal immigration by racially profiling people. It wasn’t a total victory for those who don’t love America and think a nation built by immigrants will be ruined by them, as the court let a provision stand that allows police to check a person’s immigration status while enforcing other laws.   

New laws will soon change where and how you can buy things to blow up in Northern Kentucky. In March 2011, a bill passed that allowed the establishment of permanent retail sites for fireworks sales and also legalized the sale of mine shells, aerial shells and other previously illegal types of fireworks.   

Rodney King, long the butt of so many jokes with lead-ins about failed civil rights, police brutality, racism and profiling in the era of Arsenio Hall and NWA at the dawn of videotaping everything before the “broadcast yourself” edict of YouTube, the self-flagellating narcissism of reality TV and the faked friendliness of Facebook, was found dead Sunday at the bottom of the swimming pool he’d built himself inlaid with tiles with two dates.   

I’ve got a problem. Some call it a problem, at least. Personally, I prefer “fixation.” Better yet, a love. Passion. Interest. Civic duty, if you want to be fancy about it. Ask any of my former roommates; they’ll call it a compulsion. A quirk. The one descriptor they’ll use to sum me up to their next roommate. “God, she had this weird thing about recycling … drove me nuts.”    

It’s been about 16 months since I met my father for the first (and what looks like only) time. It would be difficult to describe his presence in my life. For 40 years, he was an absence, a void, a ghost in the machine; one that I can’t say I missed.  

Cincinnati Duke Energy customers could face increased utility costs to help Duke relocate utility lines for the new streetcar, if state regulators decide to permit Duke to recover expenses associated with the mass transit project. CINCINNATI  -1