Author: Brian

A couple of weeks ago I got into a minor dustup on a friend's Facebook page because I dismissed as irrelevant to me a piece by a writer (who has a reputation as a fairly antagonistic reviewer--I've never worked with him and likely never will) who was talking about politics and yet who, in his … Continue reading On the Basic Duties of Citizenship

It seems proper to me to come back to personal blogging after nearly two years with what's basically a gripe. That's the blogging tradition, right? Find something marginal to complain about and focus too much on the minutiae? So yeah, that's about to happen with this piece by Paul Theroux in the Wall Street Journal's … Continue reading Why Yes, I Do Have Other Things to Do

Available now from the iTunes bookstore.

"This is the real drama for me; the belief that we all, you see, think of ourselves as oe single person, but it's not true: each of us is several different people, and all these people live inside us. With one person we seem like this and with another we seem very different. But we … Continue reading Final Notes on Joe Paterno

Before I begin here, I want to compliment the NY Times headline writer for slipping "testy" (testes?) into the title of this post from the Caucus on Rick Santorum's set-to with some college kids in New Hampshire over same-sex marriage. Well played. To the point of the post, if anyone out there ever comes in … Continue reading In Case of Future Santorum Encounters

But I repeat myself. A friend of mine posted this on Facebook. At first glance, it looks like it makes sense, but it really falls apart with even a little bit of thought. Here's the text. Checking out at the grocery store recently, the young cashier suggested I should bring my own grocery bags because … Continue reading Stupid Nostalgia

I was brought back to my blog by comment spam, believe it or not, so I decided to do an update post. So I'm in Des Moines now. It was 8 degrees when I woke up this morning, which has me googling questions like "can contact lenses become frozen to your eyeballs?" (apparently not) and … Continue reading Long Overdue Update

Obviously I'm not great at keeping this blog updated, but if you've been following my work over at The Rumpus, you'll know that a piece that ran on Monday titled "A Note To My Fellow White Males" has gotten a little attention. It was picked up by Jezebel and mentioned on Slate. But the big … Continue reading So…Big Day Today

When Amy and I were in Party City a few weeks ago being overwhelmed by the wedding aisle, we came across a CD of wedding songs, mostly sappy love songs. There was one really bad choice on the CD though--Extreme's "More Than Words." If you were alive in the 90's, you probably know this song--sad … Continue reading The Anti-Wedding Playlist

Vaughan Bell at Slate runs down some history on what happens to doomsday cults and the like when their prophecies about the end of the world don't come true. It's an interesting piece because Bell does a good job of explaining why it is that failed prophecies don't generally result in a loss of faith … Continue reading What Happens Post-Rapture?