Sentence of Dave
The Required Amount at the Prescribed Rate (Handcrafted From the Finest Corinthian Leather)
I've Seen The Top Chill, It Was Great . . .
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On my quest to plug the gaps in my pop-culture erudition, I tried to watch Top Gun , but I only made it half-way through-- I reached my high...
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Atonement: Cure for Happiness
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If you've got some spring in your step, if you see the glass as half full, if you've been whistling away and looking on the bright s...
Are "The Hold Steady" Sincere . . . or Sincerely Ironic?
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I'm not sure if The Hold Steady is sincere or not, but they seem like a Spinal Tap version of Bruce Springsteen, updated for the times,...
Secret Park
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I thought I knew my way around Highland Park (it's only a mile square) but-- based on some information from one of the elementary school...
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Face of a Pug, Heart of a Wolf
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The lone timber wolf and the Bassett hound in the pink doggy-sweater both howl at the same moon.
The End . . . Not Really All That Nigh
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There has been a grave miscalculation: the end is not nigh-- in fact, judging by what cosmologists predict from radio telescope data, the ...
Range Life
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Sometimes, when the kids are occupied elsewhere, I sneak into the kitchen, turn the range on low, and roast a marshmallow.
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Dave Takes an Aesthetic Stand
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Although it is certainly a shortcoming in my aesthetic sensibility, there is one thing for certain that I will never have any use for: the ...
Reflecting on the Inflection
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The problem with cell-phones is their immediacy-- there is no time for detachment from the narrative, no time for revision, hyperbole, and e...
Eight Year Olds Dude, Eight Year Olds . . .
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At the beach today, a fairly innocuous looking guy who claimed to be a journalism teacher at a high school in Pennsylvania asked if he could...
Youth Sports: They Build Character?
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While walking home from my pick-up soccer game, I saw a great moment in youth sports: a shaggy haired kid who couldn't have been more t...
Lying . . . It's What Civilized People Do
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It's all how you phrase it: when I suggested (to save some money) that I could do some of the painting for our kitchen addition, my wif...
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Tombstone . . . What the Fuck?
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I just watched Tombstone , one of the movies all my friends had seen but me (now only Top Gun and The Big Chill remain) and it's like ...
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Close Call
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Close call in Princeton: after eating a giant meal at Tortuga's Mexican Village ( I ordered three items instead of two, I couldn't ...
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My Wife Berates Me About a Fictitious Insect
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When I notice someone has the hiccups, I pretend there is a bug in their hair-- this usually gets people flustered, anxious and concerned . ...
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R.I.P. A Bunch of People
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In the locker-room after successful swim with my new Otterbox (a contraption which makes an Ipod submersible) I heard one old guy ask anothe...
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Post-Judgement Judgy Stuff
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On the way home from the beach yesterday (and there's no better way to decompress from a long weekend at the beach than by going to the ...
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The Tell-Tale Goggles
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I might have had a better chance convincing the life guard who called me out of the ocean (which was clearly marked "No Swimming")...
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Outer Banks Fishing Trip XV
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Here are some things that happened during The Fifteenth Annual Outer Banks Fishing Trip that didn't happen during the other years: 1) ...
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Perhaps None of Them
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Which is a better metaphor for life-- baseball, soccer, or Dig-Dug?
Ocean Miracles
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As a kid, the closest thing to real magic is seeing someone walk into the ocean, sink down, and then slowly rise up, until it appears that t...
Ha Ha Ha
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I will be truthful and tell you that this is not a fresh sentence-- I'm in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina and this sentence was writte...
Grandma Logic
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Yesterday, when we returned from a day at the beach, there was a cryptic message on the phone from my grandmother (this isn't unusual as...
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Dave Invents A Revolutionary New Diet
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I would like to lose a few pounds before I gain a few pounds on vacation (I will not gain them back -- I will gain some entirely new pounds...
Four Firsts
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Today, I present four "firsts": 1) Alex caught his first fish; 2) Ian caught his first fish; 3) I monitored my first kid able to...
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You Don't Ask a Tomato For Ketchup
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The recent salmonella-laden tomato scare reminded me of my favorite line in the 1978 camp classic film Attack of the Killer Tomatoes: Sam ...
The Fat Gets Fatter
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When I woke up this morning, I had a brief blissful moment of delusional consciousness . . . I thought that I didn't go out last night...
Bloggers Unite!
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John McCain may have thought he was being cute with a bunch of his constituents, but when he said, "Now we've got the cables, talk ...
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Camping Trip Gone Sideways (We Disgorge at Lake George)
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Some of the things that happened on our first camping trip with the boys: 1) the first night at the site, Alex christened our new tent with...
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The Animal That Needs Rescuing is Me
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My four-year-old son Alex frequently talks about moving to the rainforest so he can rescue animals-- like his hero, Diego-- but what he does...
The Fountain of Youth Contains Grape Juice and Vinegar?
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I play soccer every Sunday, and my body hurts when I start and my body hurts when I finish, but there's a twenty-minute window when I fe...
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Toddler Magic
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My son Alex did his first magic trick the other day-- he took a penny, showed it to me, and then placed it behind his back and asked me to g...
Raise the Bar With Alcohol
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Try Let's Go Fishin' (you know: the action-packed board game where players try for the biggest catch) with a bit of a hang-over: it...
War and People
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We watched Persepolis last night (if you haven't read the graphic novel, now you don't need to-- someone animated it for you!) and ...
The Sea Breeze Doesn't Make It to Spotswood
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Yesterday at the beach there was a cool enough breeze off the ocean that when you got out from swimming, it was downright chilly, and even w...
You Won't Like Me When I'm Angry
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King of Kong joins Hoosiers, Billy Elliot and Rescue Dawn as movies that have gotten me choked up and teary eyed-- but King of Kong (a d...
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The Sort is Happening and It Is Big
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I can't put down this new book by reporter Bill Bishop called The Big Sort ; the premise is that Americans are agglomerating into micro...
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Plenty of Action After the Movie
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The first half of Wall-E rivals films like Modern Times, Brazil, and 2001: A Space Odyssey (which it parodies in the second half) for pure ...
Gust Avrakotos' War?
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Despite Tom Hanks (who is a tool, and always plays himself) and Julia Roberts (who is weird looking and affected and always plays herself), ...
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And Groundhogs Will Try That Long Preserved Virginity
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Yesterday, on the drive home from the beach, Catherine and I saw something neither of us had ever seen before: a fat groundhog perched atop ...
Willa Cather Knows Electric Cars?
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I'm reading Willa Cather's One of Ours -- which was published in 1922-- and without any fanfare, in a line of description about the...
Dave Wrote This Sometime or Other
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I want to assure everyone (especially super-fans Squirrel and Whitney) that these sentences are as fresh as if they were just plucked from t...
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Dave Exorcises Junk Food Demons (and Sinks the Shot)
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Yesterday, there was a giant spread of junk food in the English office, and as usual, I was drawn to the worst thing on the table-- a box of...
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Flattery + Humor = Parody
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Someone drew the notable events of the year on the message board in the English office, and the parody of my blog went like this: "So I...
I Coin A Word: Tupperawareness
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Time to get all sniglety: some people possess a special ability to precisely gauge which plastic container is the right size to store the l...
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Dave Gets a Little Smarter
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Thirty eight years living on this planet, and still so much to learn-- in the last two weeks I learned three things: 1) there are flying squ...
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Fuck You, BB&T Banking
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A proud moment: we received a post-card from BB&T Banking saying that we have only one more car payment on the Subaru . . . BUT if we a...
Magical Moonlit Moose Sighting
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Summer has begun, and it makes me recall my most vivid memory of last summer: my friend Rob and I were driving back up Bolton Mountain afte...
Hey Internet! Write This Novel!
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Here's a terrible idea for a novel: the internet becomes so large and complex that it attains consciousness and starts writing e-mails ...
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Life Imitates Art?
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Life imitates art (or what Whitney and I call art, but the rest of the world calls dreck)-- and it answers an ethical question as well: in a...
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Focus Is Everything
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Several days ago I mentioned the fact that my son Ian shares a birthday with the Olsen twins, and I posted an alluring picture of the twin...
Do Cremains Inspire Brand Loyalty?
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Although Stacey thought that Dr. Fredric J. Baur (the inventor of the Pringles can) was buried in a Pringle-can shaped sarcophagus, that was...
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Dave Knows How to Steal Wry Observations (From the Population at Large)
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When I began this blog, I thought my sentences would be full of wry observations (e.g. How would the convenience store 7-11 have reacted i...
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Bosky Stringfellows
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If you don't mind sacrificing your sunny disposition, read about the Stringfellow Acid Pits-- I just read the story in an anthology call...
Dave Knows How to Behave in Line at the Pharmacy
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Although I have never seen an episode of Full House, I do know that when you get to the head of the line at the pharmacy-- especially a lon...
Happy Birthday . . . Ian, Mary-Kate, Ashley, and William Butler Yeats
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Ian turns three today; if he were a bit older (notice my use of the subjunctive tense) he would be able to rap with the Olsen twins about s...
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The Early Bird is Annoying
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The nice thing about sleeping with the air-conditioner on (besides the fact that it keeps you cool) is that you don't hear the birds in ...
Harbinger or a Test?
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To do my part for the planet, I've sworn off consuming large mammals for a few months, but when I unwrapped my number 29 from The Park D...
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Dave is RRRRIIIIIPPPPPED
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I have never felt stronger than yesterday at the gym-- but don't worry, I'm not going to bore you with a description of a ten day cy...
Alex Wins the (Mental) Contest
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Yesterday, on the way to soccer practice, Alex wanted to race his soccer ball against my soccer ball down the big hill that leads to the par...
Sorry
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It's not the heat, nor is it the humidity . . . it's the ball sweat.
Bow Down to Our Insect Overlords
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Ian's first three years could be titled Portrait of an Entomologist as a Young Man ; it's not that just that he likes to spot, coll...
Darth Vader Would Be Scary as a Whale
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My kids can sing the Darth Vader theme song in the voice of just about animal: a sheep is "baa baa baa baabuhbaa buhbabaa" and a p...
Alan Partridge: Too Droll For Some
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Whenever Catherine goes out, I plan to watch whatever we have from Netflix (now it's this show The Riches , with Eddie Izzard and Minnie...
My Children Cooperate in a Jailbreak
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Two scary things happened yesterday: 1) I learned that my red running shorts are "not sexy" and look "very eighties"-- ...
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There Will Be Milkshake Drinking
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We finished There Will Be Blood last night; at first Catherine relegated me to watching the end of the film on the laptop so she could wat...
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Don't Worry, That Guy Who Got Dismembered is Just a Minor Character
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During story time, my son got upset for a moment when the King of the Elephants died from ingesting a poisonous mushroom, but then he realiz...
The Subway Is Byzantine
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My last two trips to New York I have fared very poorly on the Subway System: previously, we took the B instead of the D on the way to the M...
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DNA, Horizontally and Vertically
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Microbial taxonomist Carl Woese says that in the good old days-- before archea, eukaryotes, and bacteria-- life shared its genes horizontall...
Pain or Sepsis?
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Just worked up a sweat removing a splinter from Alex's foot-- it took the two of us to hold him down.
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Emphasis is Everything
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The documentary My Kid Could Paint That is about a precocious four year old abstract painter named Marla Olmstead-- and there are two ways...
Do Kids Dream of Electric Robots?
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Lots of sleep-related problems this morning: Alex had his "worst dream ever" about a giant man-eating robot (which, not so coinci...
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Gladiators Make Me Sleepy
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Spartacus is the first Stanley Kubrick movie I've ever bailed on-- otherwise, I've seen them all (the furniture got me through Barr...
Did You Sneak a Peak?
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An old student spotted me while we were out Friday night, and it turns out she now teaches in Edison-- and what Catherine and the group thou...
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Naked or Nude?
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If you like looking at naked ladies in the woods, then Grounds for Sculpture is the place for you.
Women's Clothes Are Weird
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Even though Stacy is several inches taller than me, her track jacket does not flatter my figure.
Enough Already
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Last night I went to my first retirement dinner, and it made me want to retire-- would anyone like to pay me my salary so I can retire?
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Sorry Mr. Murphy
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Tomorrow is senior cut day, but it is done East Brunswick style-- the parents call the kids out sick so they don't get in trouble-- but ...
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A Pinata Made of a Plethora of Lego Pieces
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I don't let my kids watch TV on rainy days (I find it entertaining to see what they'll do when they get stir crazy); yesterday after...
Mind the Monkeysphere
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Yesterday, in my endless third period (stalled by some standardized biology test) the Levitsky twins introduced me to the term "monkey-...
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Time Travel Through Blogging
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A student of mine had a good idea for my blog, but I'll never be ambitious enough to do it; he suggested that for each day I post, I als...
The Natives Are Getting Clever
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Watching Who Killed the Electric Car made me very angry last night, but my children cheered me up this morning-- the first thing Alex said t...
I Behave In A Mature Manner
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Despite the fact that Catherine and I have been arguing about the merits of my push lawn-mower-- she claims my beloved push-mower doesn'...
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A Good (Bad) One
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We finished the BBC series Jekyll last night, and I give it four thumbs up.
Dave Does His Civic Duty (Begrudgingly)
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Jury duty effectively combined a trans-Atlantic airplane flight, the DMV, and a Kafka novel: I sat on an uncomfortable seat in a stuffy ro...
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Just Look Serious For the Camera
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After three hours of tension, nothing much happens at the end of The Good Shepherd-- but I will hand it to Matt Damon for picking the easies...
First World Decisions
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I think we're going with the Magellan green quartz counter-top.
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Teenagers . . . They'll Eat Anything
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Last week, I took some store-bought beef jerky and put it in a crumpled plastic bag, and told my philosophy class it was Alex's pet rabb...
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It's Hard to Be a Straight Man
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Friday night there were a couple of Rutger's football players sitting next to us at the bar, and the blond girl sitting with them with w...
Grolar vs. Pizzly
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Like string theorist Leonard Susskind, I prefer the sound of "megaverse" to "multiverse," but I also prefer the moniker ...
Super Extra Serendipitous Good Luck Bonus Sentence
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On the way to work this morning-- and, appropriately, it was raining-- I passed by a tractor trailer double stacked with concrete sarcophagi.
My Son Already Has a Higher Rank Than Me?
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While we walked to get some falafel Alex formulated an intricate plan to spring loose the baby pig he visits with my dad at College Farm-- h...
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Parrot vs. Human
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I just read an article in the New Yorker about this African gray parrot (who, unfortunately, just croaked) and he seems to know his colors ...
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Vocab Lesson
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I just raced to the finish of Richard Price's new novel Lush Life, and along the way I learned a few new words and terms: want cards, ...
4 comments:
Solar Flare Blues
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If you're feeling down and you don't know why, it could be a solar flare bombarding your pineal gland with electromagnetically charg...
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Happiness is Having More Fun Than Your Brother
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Alex lost video-watching-privileges last night because of his recalcitrance at the smoothie place, but while Ian was watching Dinotopia we ...
Death By Venom Is Funny
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Last night, Ian found someone willing to turn every page in his animal encyclopedia (she was ten) and with each animal he had a dire warnin...
Juno Impregnated My Brain (With a Desire For Orange Tic Tacs)
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Yesterday, on my way to happy hour, I did something very uncharacteristic: I made an impulse buy . . . I had watched Juno the night before...
The Good, The Bad, The Lies, and a Booger
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Alex told me that at school yesterday, "a tear went down my face and plopped onto the ground at lunch because I missed you so much"...
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Could You Demonstrate That Once More, Please?
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Alex was in a creative mood yesterday: he told us how he had to call the police on Catherine's mom because she crawled under the couch ...
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