Preamble In a 24 hour period over the course of the 26th and 27th of February, I was the victim of two forms of vehicular emoting. The first was the “daring” sort of vehicular emoting. Not quite the most one can do with anger whilst seat-belted in a moving vehicle, but an act that carried…
The Lunch Walk
The Industrial Nopes One of the reasons I became a teacher–and I know this is not what I should be saying–was so that I wouldn’t have to work in a cubicle. It was at the beginning of my teenagedom that I had suspected that the cubicle environment would not be my bag. I don’t remember…
Temporary Bones
If one deigns to walk in a park in Ohio during the winter, you will plot a course through temporary bones. You will find temporary bones reaching every which way: reaching toward the water, the sky, toward other bones, toward the ground, toward you. Your journey will not be without classification issues. There are temporary…
Fuddy Duddyism: Learning That You Might Not Like RPGs Anymore
I. Here I was, in the blizzarded-out mountains of Colorado in the 1800s, navigating a horse to some sort of hunting ground to score some deer for our starving party. A non-player character (NPC) made small talk with me while the game tried to clue me on things that it had already taught about riding…
Know Thyself
The Phenomenon Let’s say you and some other smartphone owners have happened upon the topic of sanitary napkins. Sure, a niche topic, but we often happen unexpectedly on conversations about improving our daily tools: Tools are our species’s super powers. Anyway, someone in the group has found a new tissue brand that just owns, trounces…
I Am Not a Hoarder; I Am a Hoarder
My wife spread her arms as if to point out something egregious, something obvious and no-duh-ish. Her arms seemed to be indicating our living room. I scanned it. Nothing was amiss. I squinted. This was my way of letting her continue. “Your books,” she said. “Don’t you think this is hoarding? How many have you…
SARS-CoV-2 and the Extension of Space
And, So, SARS-CoV-2 When we began our lockdown, many of us felt hemmed in with no space. We were relegated to our homes, and when we did leave, it was with a healthy dose of fear, a bottle of hand-sanitizer (if you were fortunate enough), and a homemade mask. But in this unwanted era, this…
Retail and Idealism
Working and College Like any American, I have my consumerist bent on worldly things, and while my time and focus was on college, I wanted to work a life sustaining job while surrounded with things I had a kinship with: books and computers. And like an idealistic ninny, I chose to work at a bookstore,…
Midwesterners in an Arizona Blizzard
Driving Opinions People really like to declare a city of drivers terrible. You’ve heard it, “People drive like [insert parts of speech here] around here.” The metric always changes. And I guess I can see a sort of difference in New York City drivers versus Cincinnati drivers, but Nashville versus Cincinnati? St. Louis versus Houston?…
Lions and Lions and Lions
“There,” our tour guide said. I skimmed my eyes through the yellow grass, long and swirling still even with the absence of wind. We plodded closer and in looking so close, I could see how this could resemble American prairie, the lighter color of autumn covering much vastness. Then blotches of what was flattened grass…