I’ve been moderately scowl-y this holiday season. Brandishing my shopping basket like the battered shield of a medieval knight, I’ve been going through the motions in the produce section at the supermarket. Gathering ingredients for cranberry sauce with ill humor, griping to my brother on the phone: “I’m just not into the holidays anymore.” With […]
So my first-ever attempt at this NaNoWriMo thing? Not going so well. Oh, I could provide a litany of excuses. In fact here’s five, in no particular order, that I just thought of: I’ve had to closely monitor media updates on Ari and Pete’s breakup and subsequently listen to thank u, next 5 million times […]
It’s that time again! That time when I refuse to leave my home because I’m fearful of those egg-throwing, spray-painting ghouls also known as adolescents. Not to be a wet blanket (though that sounds like a great, easy Halloween costume, hmm), but I prefer to spend my Halloween holed up at home. I might light […]
“One person reminded me of what Jean Rhys once wrote, that all of us writers are little rivers running into one lake, that what is good for one is good for all, that we all collectively share in another’s success and acclaim. I said, “You are a very, very angry person.” –Anne Lamott That quote […]
“I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.” —Octavia Butler Been thinking a lot about motherhood lately. I don’t have kids, but you know […]
Sometimes I think about dead careers. Like lamplighters, for instance. Did they envision an electric future where no one would need to tend streetlights? Did they all heave a collective sigh when the first bulbs went mainstream? See their demise in the long shadows of the lampposts? As a content writer for brands and a […]
I avoided it for years. My four older brothers used to talk about it at family gatherings in reverential tones; discuss every white-lipped utterance flung from Al Pacino’s lips; hum the score like a dirge throughout the house; expound on the virtues of Parts I and II and deride the third. I’m speaking, of course, […]
I’ve always been very jealous of people who know stuff about things. People who can rattle off stats and facts; people who have more than a shadowy inkling of historical events (Napoleon…was short…?). For purely scientific reasons, I want to crack open their skulls and look at their brains: do they have more gray matter […]
I would like to write a very strongly-worded letter to every institution of higher education I’ve ever attended and ask them why I’ve never been made to read Alice Munro. It’s a name I’ve heard, for sure. I worked at an independent bookstore for five years (my longest held employment – go figure) and patrons […]
Ya’ll familiar with Theseus’s Paradox? Quick philosophical set-up: Theseus was all about adventuring on his great wooden ship, right? Well, after he dies, the Athenians keep the ship as an homage. As the years go by, it begins to rot. The people of Athens replace each piece of rotten wood with a fresh plank until […]