Misc

Mother’s Day is an especially tricky holiday for the best of us. It’s even worse when your relationship with your mother leaves something to be more than desired. And it’s the hardest thing to see‒ Facebook posts from friends that love their mothers, each one a special story about their mother and the things they’re doing to repay them. Stories about the way they never can. And scrolling through each one becomes a chore because you don’t have your own to add. This is the life of someone with aRead More
“Merry Christmas!” “Happy Christmas!” “Happy Hanukkah!” “Happy Kwanzaa!” “Happy Holidays!” “Festive Pagan Solstice!” Whichever greeting you prefer this time of year, odds are, someone will be unreasonably butthurt by it. “How dare you have a different upbringing from mine…” they’ll scoff, while lumping you in with the real terrorists, with their filthy, minimalist, “war on Christmas” Starbucks cups. Damn heathens… But no matter what their self-righteous, butthurt poison, we can all agree on one thing: our friends, families, co-workers, mechanics, pets, dentists, and Jimmy John’s delivery guys have disappointed usRead More
 Surgeon General: Turn Signals Added To List of Cancer Culprits  The ever-increasing list of activities, behaviors, and objects linked to cancer, which includes, but is not limited to, cell phones, white bread, wheat bread, rye bread, pumpernickel bread, pumpernickel yeast; plastic bags, plastic toilet handles, plastic silverware dividers; cats, dogs, parakeets, cockatoos, tortoises, hamsters; carpet, hardwood, cement foundations, and sleeping on sheets with between zero and 25 million threads, has added a new member for the first time in over two hours: your turn signals. After spearheading the multi-trillion-dollar researchRead More
College is well underway and it’s that time of the year, everybody! The time when you want to slowly smother your roommate with a pillow when they sleep because their little habits are starting to seriously annoy you, and you’re wondering why you didn’t just shell out the extra three thousand for the single suite. Interspersed with the grand moments and adventures where you find yourself really grateful that you didn’t opt to live alone, of course. But if you still find yourself sighing loudly instead of laughing loudly becauseRead More
Record 31: Monterey, Sunday, July 5th, 2015. Day. Old John does his crossfit exercises on the wharf’s edge. He does them at sunup, not only for the sake of adding a, yes, hint of drama to the retelling of his daily crossfit undertaking, but, he will tell you, because he is infatuated with the sun, and its location relative to him mid-burpee. When asked why the sun is so arresting to him, he will tell you to think of a world with no natural light. A world artificially lit inRead More
Cartoons are often toted as “childish”, and something that only people under the age of seven should participate in. Anyone who watches Spongebob past the age of 13 has to have something wrong with them, because “that’s for little kids”. But what’s usually ignored is that these types of shows are the least problematic on television. These are the shows that let a male character wear a dress and not say something degrading about it, or make the dialogue turn into one of those tired, “But those are for girls!”Read More
I never know when the outburst will occur. When tears will start rushing down my face without any barriers to block them from my lips. The saltiness of my tears tantalizes my tongue and I am brought back to the moments I want to forget. This is what grief feels like: for a death, a loss, or a departure of some sort that was not warranted or desired. Good-byes were always a wretched sound to me, even if their time was now and I should have met them yesterday. IRead More
Living with Epilepsy is like this: It’s going to a theme park with your best friends, only to pass out and have a seizure in the middle of a ride, and waking up with all of them around you. It’s asking, “how long was I out?”, in a heavy, slurred voice, hearing, “only a couple minutes”, but feeling like it was forever. It’s heavy limbs and incredible nausea, being unable to eat your favorite foods in your favorite place on what should be your favorite night. It’s the inability toRead More
On part 2 of my “Big City Poetry” series, I examine the intellectual heart valve that is Washington D.C. I pretentious it up with a bit of lame-ambic pentameter (see what I did there?) based on my experience visiting the Capitol city. Big City Poetry: D.C.’s the Brain The August recess makes this public sector hotspot feel oddly ghostlike. This isn’t the real D.C., it’s not alive enough. For an authentic experience you must wait until the leaves change. It’s then you’ll know… When bureaucrats strut through awakened streets withRead More
Ah, it feels great to be back. After a many month hiatus from the world of Writtalin, I have returned to try my hands at something a bit different. Poetry. On a recent trip to the Apple of Bigness, I decided to wet my chops in this field, and am looking to turn ‘Big City Poetry’ into a series of chronicles from cities around the states. Although I’ve never done this before, I figured it never hurts to try a hand at something pretentious. Enjoy. The Air of NYC JulyRead More
Record 30: Temecula, Friday, July 5th, 2013. Day. On the weekends we ride our Schwinn mountain bikes through the park and smile. Mother is the leader of the Schwinn bicycle trips and she signals where to turn left and where to turn right. She does this because she is the leader, and leaders of Schwinn bicycle trips know where we turn. We all smile. And follow. We sip from our individually customized plastic water bottles during our rest period at the alcove, shaded by California sycamore trees. Father explains toRead More
Summers are the one season that fools everyone. People go around talking about the weather and how nice it will be, and how much socializing they’re going to do with their friends, and all that ever happens is those same people who hyped the sun are now bemoaning its presence and sheltering themselves indoors with Netflix. There is no cure to possibility of heatstroke, and the desire to socialize is often trumped by the overwhelming urge to sleep in an air conditioned bedroom with every shade drawn. The only thingRead More