The Long Schoolroom

Is it irresponsible to request books from the library if they’re not checked out and they’re already in the branch where you’ll be picking them up? I got used to this in San Francisco: I’d read about a book online, want to check it out, request it from the library, then forget about it until I [...]

My College Radio Application

Dear mom and dad, I went to college from 1999-2003, where I lived, ate, breathed, and smoked college radio (WOBC-FM) all day every day. Then, with a year left, I dropped out to move to CA to work for a magazine. I worked there for the next eight years. Then I fell in love with [...]

“Spilling Juice On Me Like You’ve Got Someplace To Go”

SHANNON: Can I borrow your yoga mat BETHANY: Keep your voice down, I don’t want those boys to know I do yoga SHANNON: What boys? Who cares? B: Yoga is a bourgeois activity. Also I feel like a girl doing yoga S: U are a girl B: I know TELEPROMPTER: Hey girls I’m a journalist [...]

Let This Hangover Be Not Wasted

I’m in a book club with a whole bunch of pseudonyms: Jeremiah’d, Paulie Groundphones, Li’l Broheim, Shampoosie, et al. Maybe their pseudonyms should be taken from the book we’re reading, instead of from the jovial thin air above, since the book is already populated by hundreds of perfectly named minor characters. But I’d want an [...]

Foundering mouse,

Foundering mouse, Foundering mouse, You normally sign your emails with a single capital initial followed by a period. Your last apologetic email was so sad with its lowercased initial. The letter looked like it’d been drenched with water, hair all matted down. What letter was it? Who are you talking about? Nothing. No one. Meet [...]

Link to an Interesting Article About Twitter

SHOUTING INTERNET GUY: I CAN’T WAIT UNTIL EVERYONE LEAVES AND IT’S JUST ME IN THE OFFICE BLASTING STREAMING WEIRD INSTRUMENTAL HIP HOP AND MY TINY BOWL OF HONEY ROASTED CASHEWS RUNNETH OVER, WEARING A CRAZY WIG OF PAD THAI THAT FALLS INTO MY EYES, GCHATTING WITH MC PAUL BARMAN, GCHATTING with self-loathing people in New [...]

Language Bom

Dear future grandchildren, I’m writing this blog for you. Someday all blogs will be engraved on the bottoms of wide flat stones and you’ll slide your finger across a surfaceless touchpad and the stone will turn and you’ll read these words and think about the life of the man who begot you. Hi! I put [...]

Lingua Citadel

I work for a small nonprofit theater company; a theater festival in the Hague (Den Haag), Netherlands, inexplicably invited members of our company to a festival they are putting on but all the senior members of my small theater company got lockjaw syndrome and painful-butt disease so by the luck of the draw I got [...]

Middle initials omitted.

Officers from Beijing’s Industry and Commerce Administration stopped the sale of “ObaMao” merchandise showing Obama dressed as Mao Zedong. The Republican National Committee said that its health-insurance plan would no longer pay for abortions. The Cheesecake Factory agreed to pay $345,000 to six male employees who were sexually harassed by other male employees, the number [...]

Cy Preclops

—I haven’t had a drink since Saturday. —It’s Wednesday. —I know —You sound like an alcoholic. —I know. It still feels good not to drink. I’m going to keep going with it. —Good! That’s good. —Every time I make a proclamation like this I immediately undermine myself, but I sort of want to become totally [...]