When I started dating my wife, one of the things I liked the most about her was that we both wanted the same things out of life.
No. That’s not true. We both wanted completely different things out of life, but the differences were so compatible they fit together like Ikea furniture. Each of us was […]

Sometimes, you decide you’re going to write something momentous, and the weight of that hypothetical essay becomes too heavy for you to move your fingers on the keyboard. My wife is going to give birth to our first child essentially any day now, and that is a Big Deal, and before the child is born […]

Mythbusting Quiz
1. If I gave you a text file full of code for your web page, and that file was named “Code to paste.txt,” what would you do with it?
   a. paste it onto the page
   b. see its name and decide to turn it into a Javascript file and put it somewhere completely different
2. In […]

Marriage is about compromise, and compromise is about occasionally sitting back and accepting things that you would otherwise never allow. Living single, my wife wouldn’t have an AT-AT in the living room, and it is highly unlikely that the bookcase by her front door would have a year’s worth of comic books piled high on […]

A week or so ago, right before Mother’s Day, the missus and I took my mom and dad out to dinner at a local Mexican chain. Getting my folks to go out has gotten increasingly difficult over the years, but the joint was having a fundraiser for the neighborhood Catholic school, and despite their age […]

It is tempting (if ghoulish) to joke that the Lord must have lifted His veil of protection and smote the Reverend Jerry Falwell today for his 4,000th stupid remark. News like this stirs up some complicated feelings. There are thoughtful people in this world with whom we disagree; there are people who are genuinely good, […]

About once a week for the past few weeks, I’ve been having these Vietnam acid flashbacks where a neuron has suddenly come out of retirement. I don’t know if I’m getting more sleep or way too little, but I will be driving to work or washing my hair and suddenly relive something I haven’t given […]

Well, we are nearing the halfway point of my wife’s pregnancy now, and I think I’m just about ready.
Oh, I know. “You can’t ever be ready.” That’s what They say. Let’s be honest, though: how often are They right about anything? Really? Everyone tells you that parenthood is a constant state of fretting, hypochondria, projecting […]

I try to make an effort to give things the benefit of the doubt, but I recognize that making an effort shouldn’t be necessary in the first place. I don’t think of myself as a particularly open-minded person. That’s especially true when it comes to the People’s art; as I get older, I find myself […]

I don’t know if I’m naive, or insensitive, or sheltered or hateful or go to klan meetings in my sleep, but I cannot believe I am still hearing about this Don Imus thing.
By no means do I mean to say that it was great of him to call college women “nappy-headed hos” because they won […]

I was reading in a recent edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the Galleria shopping mall has instituted a chaperone/curfew thing, and they have highly publicized it in an attempt to more quickly go out of business.
I say this not because I think unsupervised teens spend mad mall money; in fact, I imagine teens […]

You haven’t heard from me for a while because, until recently, I have been in the Happiest Place on Earth.
Well, no, not the East Side. The place that’s trademarked “The Happiest Place on Earth.” Walt’s place.
If I had to go to Disneyworld for every vacation until I died, I don’t think I’d have any problem […]

One thing that concerns me about the future is my never-directly-disproven hypothesis that becoming a parent turns you into a hysterical idiot within two years. Or maybe, as recent evidence has shown, it only does that to British people:
Tesco condemned for selling pole dancing toy
Quote of the day:
“This will be sold to four, five and six-year […]

My wife and I are big boosters of our neighborhood and big fans of our lives. Partly for this reason, and partly because we are used to encountering suburbanites who think we have to pack heat to take out the trash and can hear our neighbors arguing through the walls, we are in the habit […]

Recently, I have begun to participate in a lot more meetings at work. When my wife asks “How was your day?” at dinner each night, I often answer, “I didn’t talk to or encounter anyone outside of e-mail all day,” and this is understood to mean “very good,” so obviously this is a turn for […]

No longer timely, but I want to go on record:
You know how department stores and marketers supposedly try to trot Christmas out earlier and earlier every year? Every year, one of your older relatives will come home from a trip to Crate and Freaking Barrel (to buy the Trading Spaces Home Collection’s Automatic S’more Maker Cleaner […]

What a weekend that was! It’s hard to believe it’s really been 24 years since the last time the Cardinals won the World Series; it seems like we’re in the running at least as often as Nader. Fans were out in the streets banging pots and pans; everybody I knew called everybody else I knew; […]

It is easy to poke fun– obviously– but opening yourself and your own interests and beliefs up to the kind of mockery I usually dish out here is a whole ‘nother matter. You spend enough time snarking, and before you know it you’ve spent ten years online cultivating the image of a bitter old crank without any […]

A lot of people will really lose their minds when you describe something nuclear as “nookyoolar.” Sometimes it bugs me– like when the speaker actually owns and operates nookyoolar weapons– but that’s one I’m usually able to get past.
My dad and I get together sometimes after work to grab a bite and gab like two […]

Money:
Recently, the TV slot machine paid off in that wonderful way it sometimes does, namely the Free Pay Channel Weekend. You’ve gotta be on the lookout for these things all the time; they’re slippery. (If you really wanted to advertise one, how would you? On the channel your target audience doesn’t get, or on one […]

Recently, I had the opportunity to see both of Eddie Murphy’s concert films, Eddie Murphy: Delirious (1982) and Eddie Murphy: Raw (1987), for the first time since I was waaay too young to be watching them in the first place.
(My theory is that, as children of the fifties raising children of the eighties, my friends’ […]

Story I almost got to tell:
On Saturday, I walked into Michael’s Bar & Grill with my cell phone to my ear and approached the hostess’ stand, a look of serene patience on my face.
“How many in your party?” asked the hostess.
I looked up at her, bothered by the distraction from my call but still serene. […]

I normally go through about one Dumbest Thing Ever per day– the goalpost is on wheels– but this one is the current record holder at three days.
With the fall television season upon us, many of you will undoubtedly be watching NBC in the near future. When you do, look down in the bottom left hand […]

All right. All right.
Winding down the week by browsing the news, I took a moment against my better judgement to glance at Yahoo’s Most Popular News Images of the day. One of them was this:

First of all, yes, obviously. “Awwww.” Absolutely. But why? Why? Why is it a news photo? What about it is– bin […]

You know what bugs me about ninjas?
By reputation– nay, by job description– ninjas are an elite brotherhood of stealthy, silent assassins. Ask any Eastern cultural expert or eleven-year-old boy and they will all tell you the same thing: a ninja is supposed to be such a badass that one of them can creep in through […]

As a web site owner, it would appear that I am required by federal law to comment on the lonelygirl15 phenomenon. (Spend ten minutes online without seeing someone weigh in on this pressing topic, I dare you.)
Short summary: youtube, my favorite site, has made minor celebrities of kids with webcams talking to themselves. The most […]

My e-mail’s been down more or less all day, so if you’re trying to e-mail me… I hope you succeed. Godspeed with that, for both our sakes.
I had to do something at work this morning that I imagine other people are used to, but which I don’t think I’ve had to do for years (if […]

One of the nice things about city living is that it is the one thing that brings out my optimism and positivity. I am a zealous believer in– and therefore an ardent defender of– the life I have chosen for myself. The traffic past my tiny front yard that would drive my parents crazy is […]

Am I reading too much into this, or would the Old Media rather die than give the internet credit for anything?
Snakes on a Plane, a movie that is being regarded as essentially an internet-driven film with a devoted online fanbase, was the top movie in America this weekend. If you look at the wire stories […]

As a kid, from roughly age 10 to age 12, I was almost compulsively fixated on L. Frank Baum’s Oz books. Never one for the genre of storytelling that I privately refer to as Elves ‘n’ Dragons ‘n’ S***, there was something appealing to me about the way Baum combined a magical land full of […]