Archive for February 2014
The many faces of Charles Wallace
The peanut butter and tuna fish sandwich
For people like me who hate mayonnaise (and there are many of us), foods like egg, chicken and tuna salad sandwiches are not viable options for us. When I was a kid, my mother didn’t especially care about my hatred for mayonnaise. When the canned tuna fish was on sale, we were eating it, damn…
Read MoreA death threat, courtesy of the Yellow Pages
The Yellow Pages is a telephone directory of businesses, organized by category, rather than alphabetically by business name and in which advertising is sold. The directories were originally printed on yellow paper, as opposed to white pages for non-commercial listings. I mention this because it’s entirely possible for anyone after 1990 to have no idea…
Read MoreA silver lining to rapidly increasing climate change
This is scary stuff. The one benefit to rapidly increasing climate change is that many of the naysayers and deniers will still be alive when all the polar ice is gone and coastal cities begin to disappear into the ocean. At least we’ll be able to say, “I told you so” to the morons.
Read MoreThe Moth: Black and White in Washington
The following is a story that I told at a Moth StorySLAM at Housing Works in New York City earlier this year. The theme of the night was Summer. I told a story about my pursuit of a girl while working in Washington DC and the unexpected and unfortunate turn that it ultimately took. I…
Read MoreThe average husband would choose the cash and time over well appointed fingernails.
I’m not criticizing the value of a manicure or pedicure. At least not at the moment. If a manicure or pedicure makes a person happy, that’s a wonderful thing. I’m not sure if I really believe this, but for now, I’ll stand by this statement so as to not confuse the issue. For now, here’s…
Read MoreWhat the hell is going on in Kansas?
Kansas state representative Gail Finney has proposed a bill that defines acceptable forms of corporal punishment in both schools and home as “up to ten forceful applications in succession of a bare, open-hand palm against the clothed buttocks of a child and any such reasonable physical force on the child as may be necessary to…
Read MoreEverything happens for a reason, especially when your life is good.
When I hear someone say that “everything happens for a reason,” I remind them that they might find this to be a less plausible premise if they had been sold into sexual slavery as a teenager or forcibly recruited into a Somali militia before their tenth birthday or were dying of smallpox in a mountainous,…
Read MoreAdvertising goes both ways.
My daughter didn’t see a commercial until she was almost three years old. Though we thought this moratorium was a good idea, it turns out that she is now completely susceptible to advertising. She’s once asked Elysha what stain remover she uses and was dissatisfied with the answer. She still doesn’t watch very much commercial…
Read MoreThe world is rapidly leaving the bigots behind
When an arena of Missouri sports fans gives an openly gay football player a standing ovation, the world is getting decidedly smaller for the bigots of the world.
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