I’m not sure when I learned to hate team sports as a participant — it was probably some time in elementary school. You know the story — pretty much every nerd lived through it — unpopular, uncoordinated, and inevitably picked last. The thing is, I wasn’t completely unathletic — IContinue Reading
This Slacktivist piece on the victim-blaming inherent in certain kinds of advice [When good advice goes bad] prompted an epic comment mudstorm in which I briefly participated, kinda regretted it, stewed for a while, and started writing this essay.Continue Reading
This morning I had a serious anxiety dream right before waking up, so I’m going to write it out in the hope of making sense of it and then I’m going to post it because why not? I worked in some kind of natural history or science museum, but notContinue Reading
Santa Claus Every Christmas season, at least one movie will come out where the main thrust of the story is an argument demonstrating the virtue, in fact, the absolute necessity of all children everywhere believing in the literal existence of Santa Claus. Yet every adult connected with this venture knowsContinue Reading
When I was eighteen and a college freshman away from home for the first time, I learned that I was supposed to be afraid to walk alone in urban areas after dark. I learned this on the phone with my mother. I was telling her about my experiences settling intoContinue Reading
I grew up in southern California with a full quartet of grandparents, something Paul envies. My mom’s parents, Bernice and Judson Phillips, lived in Brea, near a park with a jungle gym shaped like a rocket ship. Grandpa Judd and I shared a birthday, and we celebrated together nearly everyContinue Reading
A few months ago I saw the movie Room 237, a documentary about obsessive super-fans of Stanley Kubrick’s movie The Shining, who have watched it more times than you’ve seen Star Wars and developed interesting interpretive theories about Kubrick’s film. These range from the relatively plausible (small incongruities aren’t continuityContinue Reading
Paul: I learned to do specific, useless household chores as a kid. Like iron towels. Julie: My mom asked me to help fold towels once. Then she told me to stop because I was doing it wrong. I don’t think I ever did anything around the house again. Just thisContinue Reading
The theme this year is pirates. I just realized I am on no pirate-related programming. So I will throw this out there: a few years ago I was saying that pirates are the new zombies are the new vampires. Steampunk is the new pirates. I don’t know if there’s aContinue Reading
Some things are weirdly predictable. A woman will write something about how much she hates being told to smile by strange men — such as [Smile, baby!] and [This morning a man told me to smile] — and the comments section will be full of guys telling her that beingContinue Reading
Over at Amazing Stories, Paul Cook decided to poke the anthill with a post titled When Science Fiction is Not Science Fiction. He says a number of rather silly things about science fiction that isn’t really science fiction, but the silliest is this bit right here: Another writer well-praised (fromContinue Reading
(Now that I have updated the website, I am doing some electronic housecleaning. Sometimes I run into a fairly complete, but unpublished essay, such as this one.) So, we saw the new Tron movie. I have inexplicably fond feelings for the old one. I saw it as a teenager, butContinue Reading
This is actually a post about writing, but I’m going to start out talking about Bikram Yoga. There is a pose, called standing head to knee. It’s supposed to go something like this: 1. Lift one leg and balance on the other with a locked knee. 2. Reach down toContinue Reading