(Or: How astrology seems to impact the pattern of literature) Let me begin with a disclaimer: I do not buy much into the belief that where the stars are when you are born plays a large role in your development as a human being. I’m enough of a hard determinist to refrain from discounting the…
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For years, I was one of those people who looked at the glass and steel lines of a French press sitting in the corner of a friend’s fancy-dancy kitchen with about the same look of condescension that I shot at countertop pasta machines. I mean, seriously, people. Why does a simple cup of coffee require…
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(Or: Rush Limbaugh should just STFU.) I believe we are witnessing the death of hatred on the public’s airwaves. Let me start by saying that I will defend, to the death, the right of anyone to say anything they damned well please, so long as they do not represent a public threat (the classic “shouting…
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A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted that Wal-Mart is the Devil. This morning, the company’s Twitter-monitor replied. Below is the e-mail I sent to the Twitter-monitor, who asked if there was anything that Wal-Mart could do to make my customer experience better. To Whom it May Concern: I recently received a tweet-reply to a…
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Before I go any farther down this particularly dangerous rabbit hole, please understand that I am a huge Gleek. First among my loves on Glee is Miss Quinn Fabray, portrayed by the ever beautiful Dianna Agron. That being said, I’m a writer, acutely aware of storycraft and always on the lookout for those times when writers…
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Dear Howler Monkey Chorus: The current national debt, totaling some $15.9 trillion dollars, is easy to understand. One third of it, $5.4 trillion, existed prior to 2000. That means, in 11 years, the debt has gone up about $1 trillion a year. Now, of that $11 trillion, fully half of that money can be attributed…
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Or: Reality Check: 101 Let’s get real, people. Today marks the first day of the of Joe Paterno’s post-college football life. Think about how much this man’s life has changed in the past few weeks. For it wasn’t too long ago that JoePa, as he is known to Lions fans the world over, was a…
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Here’s a question: what would it take to get you to read a five or six paragraph short story every day? The stories wouldn’t be interconnected. They would have only occasionally reoccurring characters and they would appear in your inbox each morning. Once they were distributed via email, they would be archived. I’ve been toying…
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Papaw’s study is perhaps the most vivid of my childhood memories. Everything about that room — the heavy oak desk, the southeastern window, every surface piled high with papers — has a mystical pull upon the deepest recesses of my mind that walking through Office Depot will frequently turn into a trip back in time. A…
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Or: Why people ignore celebrities, even when they’re right Dear Mr. Morgan, As a huge fan of NBC‘s 30Rock, I’ve grown accustomed to your on-screen persona, Tracy Jordan, spewing any amount of stupidity. So it really came as no surprise to me when I read on TMZ.com that you had taken to the stage at…
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