Dear America, I cannot with you anymore. I am hopeless and hapless, and that was before I learned twenty people were killed with a gun today at an elementary school in Texas. Eighteen of them were children. Last week a white supremacist with a gun murdered ten black people at a grocery store. In the last two years one million people have died from a disease we refuse to do anything about. What is your fucking problem, America? You are…
Hello Darling Ones, It’s a little after 5 p.m. as I type and I’m so hungry I’m considering eating dinner. This is 2-3 hours earlier than I usually eat dinner. I’m denying myself sustenance because it’s too early to eat and I’ve got two weeks before I can start being an early bird kind of eater. That’s mostly a joke. I’m denying myself because I want to type some things about turning fifty, also I don’t feel like making dinner…
Dear Darling Ones, When I stepped out into the cloudy afternoon light from the darkness of a mid-afternoon nap, I had only two things on my mind: people who are wrong on the internet and people who are puzzling on social media. I am the physical embodiment of the xkcd comic. I loathe letting people be wrong on the internet. There was a time in the distant past where I would not allow that to happen on my watch. I’ve…
Hi Darling Ones, Work was super stressful earlier this week and my brain still hasn’t recovered from spending 48 hours drenched in deadline-induced anxiety. I would explain the ordeal but it’s boring. Instead I present you with six tiny delights. On Saturday I invented a new project for myself called #BarsOfSummer. Since I am an old Midwestern lady this involves making a new kind of bar each week until I get bored with the project. It does not involve going…
Dear Employer, When you hear the news please save the saintly words for saintly souls. I’ll be long gone, long gone and rotting, long gone and ulcerous. A thing untold. The first time I got laid off was in March, 2008. We had a farewell party at the office, since Corel was closing up shop and it was mostly empty. I was in charge of the music and I included a live version of Jeff Tweedy’s cover of The Minus…
Dear Darling Ones, On Monday, Jason Kottke announced he was taking a sabbatical from his 24-year-old blog. This threw me for a loop. Kottke was one of the first blogs I ever read in my entire life. I’ve been reading him for as long as I’ve known blogs were a thing. I have long admired his work. What Kottke and I do are very different things. He writes about “art, technology, science, visual culture, design, music, cities, food, architecture, sports,…
