Every time I've ever tried to keep a diary or journal, I've never been able to stick with it for more than a couple of weeks. Since I consider this to be my journal for the next year, I'm trying to make a better effort to write every single day, especially on the days when I don't feel like I have very much worthwhile to...
Read More
As part of the podcast that I record with my friend we're revisiting the films of Paul Verhoeven, and this morning we re-watched Starship Troopers. We've each seen it many times at this point, so every viewing allows us to focus on something different that we might not have picked up before. This time, it was something that was staring me in the face the...
Read More
Being single when you don't want to be can feel pretty rough at times, but it does have its moments. For instance, last night I was watching the movie Thoroughbreds, petting my cat and eating a sleeve of saltines, when my freshman year college roommate texted me and asked if I wanted to meet him that night while he was in town visiting his mother....
Read More
Over the weekend my co-best threw a birthday party for me; my only request was that we have an Irish Car Bomb every hour, on the hour. Needless to say, I had never noticed how short an hour could feel until it was counting down the time between Irish Car Bombs. It was exactly the sort of party I wanted and a tremendous mistake.
At...
Read More
The world is already filled with enough pain and suffering; do your best to avoid unnecessarily adding to it.
When Brett Kavanaugh was just your average, run-of-the-mill, absurdly powerful white man, I thought his confirmation to the Supreme Court was essentially a done deal. As I said before, Republicans had the votes and Democrats didn't. But last week a professor alleged that Kavanaugh assaulted her when they were both in high school; then, this morning, I read the news that three additional women now...
Read More
I just finished watching the Netflix miniseries Maniac, and by the end I was crying. Not bawling, but definitely misty-eyed. I tend to have a rather flat affect which gives people the impression that my emotional range is constricted, but a surprising number of things make my cry. The end of the Iron Giant, for example; no matter how many times I watch that film,...
Read More
Lately I've been making a few changes to my daily routine, the most important of which has been that I leave my smartphone plugged in when I do things around the house. This has led to a cascade of improvements. First, everything gets done faster. I didn't realize just how much of a time sink a smartphone is; for instance, in the past when I...
Read More
Kerfuffle: I'm not sure why I don't like this one, but I think it has something to do with the sound it makes, which seems at odds with the thing it describes. Something that describes conflict and disorder shouldn't sound cute.
Brouhaha: I dislike this word because of the "haha" attached to the end, which gives it a quality very similar to kerfuffle.
Kudos: I...
Read More
On Sunday my co-best friend took me to a pizza buffet, in which I proceeded to ruin my pancreas by eating a typically American amount of pizza. (I also managed to invent a new type of pizza, made with barbecue sauce and topped with pepperoni and sausage; I called it the Boss Hog.)
Buffets have a rule, in Texas at least, that every time you...
Read More