Did you know that John K(ricfalusi) of Ren & Stimpy fame sells original caricature portraits? Like this! Or this one! If you got me this for a birthday or Sukkot or whenever I’d want one with me either mixing cocktails with a rude appendage made windowpane shiny, or wearing a crossword puzzle as a diaper. [...]
:: Read on
Sugar is of nature, but adding sugar to peanut butter is, it seems, unnatural. We’re trying to cut down sugar use in this house, so we’re buying the kind of peanut butter consisting of merely peanuts and oil that comes in a tiered chemical preparation you have to stir to enjoy. And then either you [...]
:: Read on
It’s a staycation spring break y’all. The only possible reason that we should have three bottles of three different brands of spiced rum is that … why do we have three bottles of three different brands of spiced rum and no workaday whiskeys in this house on staycation spring break? I imagine college kids are [...]
:: Read on
From the OAD’s entry on dalliance: • brief or casual involvement with something: Berkeley was my last dalliance with the education system. I love that person.
:: Read on
Social networks like Facebook are also reflective media, but the image of us that they return, insistently, is very different from the one presented by the glass. What’s reflected by the network is not the part of the self “that one can divorce from … the influential presence of other men.” Rather, it is the [...]
:: Read on
My clearest memory was visiting the set in a shutdown aircraft factory in Southern California, where they were building the lake. They said, “Here, you can help us make a decision.” They led me into this room where they had kind of giant casserole dishes of water and different squares of cement painted different shades [...]
:: Read on
I can think only of two people I know who would be interested in this taste test. We have too many friends who eat preciously. This household doesn’t exactly eat poorly, but nor do we discriminate. A few weeks ago we tried Little Caesar’s Deep Dish Pizza, with pepperoni, takeout, hot and ready, for just [...]
I’ve written before about how much I appreciate ballot endorsements. I do what I can to learn what I can about candidates. But ballot initiatives? Constitutional amendments? They don’t get enough press and are written in arcane enough language that I need help. Help’s been a little tough to find, so here’s how I—a liberal [...]
So I’m a baking blogger now, okay? Which means I get to spread poorly reported, single-sided accounts of standup comics going off book. This recipe is adapted from America’s Test Kitchen’s banana bread recipe (kudos to Food 4 Wibowo for collecting), the genius of which is how it makes a reduction of thawed-banana juice to [...]
:: Read on
The thing about feeling helpless in the face of rich people’s ever-increasing influence over policy decisions in this country is that there are more of us than there are of them. I mean: they’re the 1% and we’re the 99%. But there’s another problem: the 1% are really good at spending their money on making [...]
At the end of the cleaning, KELLY, the dental hygienist, hands DAVE a clear vinyl pouch filled with standard dental supplies. DAVE: Oh yeah, I wanted to ask you, this um … Glide, the Glide floss? Do y’all recommend that over the regular, like chunky waxed old-style floss? KELLY shakes her head. DAVE: Does it [...]
:: Read on
Better read critics and theorists may have long solved this problem, but for me it’s been hard to figure out where to go in critique and creativity after going meta—which I’m here going to clunkily define as using the very aspects, techniques, or tools of some process to go out and above that process in [...]
:: Read on
To end the chiefly spiteful/sickly BlogWeek on a positive note, The Cupboard has just release its latest volume: Lorraine Nelson: A Biography in Post-it Notes. This was the winner of our first-ever contest, and it’s also (essentially) our first-ever work of nonfiction. A happy union. It’s about a person who may be real and a [...]
:: Read on
One shame in being sick is the way you let yourself go in terms of showering. I showered Sunday for the first time since Thursday morning. Is it gross? I was glad for the cinnamon sweet orange soap we had in the bathroom. Really? I’m going to blog about soap? I’m going to blog about [...]
I’ve been sick this weekend with a throat thing and a chills/body-aches thing. Prescribed Chloraseptic throat spray has been mostly unhelpful, but 1000mg acetaminophen every four hours did fine work on the fever/chills/aches. Before hearing from the on-call doctor that acetaminophen (which, like “Chloroseptic” I’d prefer to spell with another “o”) was best for body [...]
One of my resolutions for the new year is to buy one new record a month, at a store here in Tuscaloosa. And not Best Buy or Barnes & Noble, but Oz Music, which has these bumper stickers I’ve been seeing on the more sticker-laden cars around town that say “Support Local Music” or some [...]
:: Read on
(UPDATE: College applicants: Googling “i felt like i truly belonged when brown” is not going to help you get into Brown. Or maybe you’ve got rich folks…what do I know?) Here’s a thing I’ve never done, I don’t think: comment on news articles! From Aiming for Brevity: Quirky Application Prompts, found somewhere on the New [...]
:: Read on
It’s a word I’m torn on. It’s unclear what gifting does that giving does not, and yet the OED cites it in the 16th century. That’s Early Modern English, folks. Old enough for me to throw up the proverbial hands and talk about what I’m gifting or want gifted this gifting season. Most of this [...]
:: Read on
The absence from posting for two weeks has mostly to do with the beginning of the semester and the ever-nearing end of my story collection’s revision process. Several days ago I was going to quote a nonfiction craft text and talk self-righteously about what made me angry about it, but I’ve got this new blowhard [...]
