My New Year resolutions started out simple — a single list of 10 things I wanted to do this year. It wasn’t anything terribly exciting; in fact, the resolution feels pretty stereotypical. Over dinner in December, my friend Melo told me, “Ten dates — you gotta go on ten dates this year.” She proceeded to… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Essays
The Erosion of Christmas
Deep inside a drawer in a cabinet in a living room in a house in a dusty town in a desolate desert in the western United States, there lies buried a set of VHS video tapes labeled with yellow tape, fading pencil markings in a mother’s hand, labeled “Christmas” and marked with a year. Each… Read more »
Restaurant Review: The Windsor (Phoenix, AZ)
Venue: The Windsor, 5223 North Central Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85012 View The Windsor in a larger map Let me begin by saying, if you aren’t the type who likes these sorts of affairs to be protracted: the place was bomb-diggity. Hella delish. Gut-busting. Our visit to the Windsor got off on the right foot. The… Read more »
Restaurant Review: Bumsted’s (Tucson, AZ)
Venue: Bumsted’s, 500 North 4th Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85705 View Bumsteds in a larger map When eating at Bumsteads, you’re reminded that, when asking how big a sandwich is, it is as important to ask how big (combining hands to indicate size of bread slice) as it is to ask how big (combining hands to… Read more »
Houses and Their Garages
I was wandering through the Rancho Sereno neighborhood, tucked away near the edge of town in Yuma, Arizona. I saw a large number of houses, sharing a small number of floor plans. Eventually, houses began to melt together in my memory – every house looked formulaic. Sometimes you would even see two houses with the… Read more »
Paris and the Beauty Contest
This essay was based in part on a speech that I wrote and delivered at a Toastmasters meeting. The speech was inspired by my reading of Homer’s Illiad, as well as Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. There was once a grand and magnificent city, in what is now Turkey – a city called Troy. But Troy was… Read more »
A Review of Bruce Sterling’s “Heavy Weather”
Heavy Weather is Bruce Sterling’s interpretation of a variation on a cyberpunk theme. The variation, in this case, is “hacking” weather, in a future plagued by global warming and extreme weather events. The book follows a group of “weather hackers” – storm chasers, adrenaline junkies, techno-geeks, and gear-heads. As you might expect, they drive around,… Read more »
Nixon Plays Chess
I. I’m bad at chess – really bad. In fact, I’m so bad, I don’t know when to stop playing. Every time I play, I’m absolutely certain that this time, I’ll manage something clever – manage a draw, maybe, or manage to last longer than 40 moves – but inevitably, by move 10, I’m struggling,… Read more »
Current Reading – The September/October Stack
The following is the first in a series of three articles describing the stacks of books sitting around my house. The Preface I am afflicted with a strange malady. Wherever I go, be it a stranger’s house, a best friend’s apartment, a coworker’s office, or even my parents’ home, I am drawn to bookshelves like… Read more »
A Visit to the Archives
Deep within The Labyrinth – or The Lab, for short – near the dark woods of CASC and the Enchanted Lake of Hausmann (beneath which live two great dragons, one blue and one white, each cautiously and perpetually circling around the other, generating enough energy to power the Labyrinth), in close proximity to the perimeter… Read more »