From the category archives:

alcoholism

Reality Hunger

April 3, 2012

I want to be an oceanographer when I grow up. That would have a lot more credence if you’d said it before we got through watching an episode of Blue Planet. Two hours ago, you wanted to be a therapist helping people with their hoarding problems or drug addictions. And yesterday, you wanted to make [...]

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Spam for Dinner Again?

March 6, 2012

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

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Driving With No Headlights

January 26, 2012

The crushed whiterock in moonlight–at least, when the moon was full–it gave off enough glow to see by without headlights. We would drink too much and drive too fast and try to prove ourselves wrong concerning our invulnerability–our untouchability–although by then a few of us had already provided examples of what happens at the place [...]

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My Pet Albino Raccoon, Sylvester

December 22, 2011

Sylvester, sitting in the living room, watching old Sally Jesse Raphael episodes on VHS. Sylvester, dragging his balls through the Jello salad. Sylvester, running up like eight hundred bucks in phone sex charges. Sylvester, smoking up all my weed while I’m at work. Sylvester, prank-calling my ex-girlfriends. Sylvester, drinking too much and refusing to take [...]

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Professor Dan Deever, MFA (Fiction) Iowa ’83: Drying Out

December 1, 2011

No ma’am. I do not want another iced tea. I want more iced tea. Yes, there is a difference. Cassie, please. I’m having a conversation with–Melanie, is it?–with Melanie here. Just semantics? Just? The world lives and dies by linguistic interpretation. Just semantics is an oxymoron. The difference? Well, when you pay money for the [...]

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Paul Gilles, Age 40, is Confronted by Paul Gilles, Age 30

November 26, 2011

Paul Gilles, Age 30: Say that again. Please. It’s not that I didn’t understand the component pieces; at least, I could figure most of them out from contextual clues, but all put together, like: Does Not Compute. Paul Gilles, Age 40: Okay. I was just saying that if I did a session of P90X®, the [...]

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Thornton Wilder Breaks His Silence on Our Town

November 22, 2011

Am I proud of Our Town? I am, from the standpoint of successfully capturing the transitory nature of existence. Grover’s Corner is the world. Every waking moment you don’t spend in sweet reverie for the life that is, with full knowledge of the unending bleakness that is to come, well, that’s time not fully lived. [...]

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C. Thomas Howell in Soul Man Responds

September 15, 2011

You know, I was well aware that I was making a risky artistic choice when I agreed to do Soul Man. More than anything else, the opportunity to work with James Earl Jones and explore issues of race is what swayed me. Call me naive. In preparation for the role, I read Soul on Ice, [...]

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Recipe For Great-Grandma Irma’s Mexican Cornbread

August 25, 2011

When you go to the grocery to get the ingredients, make sure to pick up a twelve pack of inexpensive beer. You don’t need it for the cornbread per se, but the point of making cornbread–this is straight from Great-Grandma Irma’s mouth, and don’t let that bitch Gladys tell you any different–is to make the [...]

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Of Plumbing and Apocalypse

August 2, 2011

I’m sure the toilet paper at your friend Molly’s house is nicer than the toilet paper here. I’m sure the toilet paper at your friend Molly’s house is how you imagine it would be wiping your butt with a baby seal. I would imagine that yes, it is nice not having your fingers poke through [...]

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Teaching Moment #4 in the Life of Becca Mertz, Age 7

July 28, 2011

It’s okay to be sad, Becca. I’m not sad, Mommy. You loved Chester, and now he’s gone, and I’m proud of you for being so brave, but if you need to cry, Mommy understands. I mean, all he did was swim around. He seemed kind of lonely. Maybe it’s better this way. The passing of [...]

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Tossing Out the Caber Tossers

July 19, 2011

Everybody knows the Scottish Highland Games are for a special breed of badass. They may not be much on cardiovascular, they may not have six-pack abs, but you don’t want to fuck with them. They scream a lot. They pick up heavy shit and throw it. They drink a lot. They wear skirts with no [...]

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Christopher Walken

July 16, 2011

The guy that used to live downstairs from me when we were all in our early twenties and living in crappy apartments and always hanging out at whomever’s had the most furniture at the time–a piece of datum that could change over the course of a weekend, in the span of a single night–this before [...]

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Feliz Cumpleanos, Eli Whitney

July 14, 2011

Your “labor-saving” invention made slavery more profitable than ever. When you didn’t get rich off of that, you used your Ivy League connections to sell guns to the Continental Army. In so doing, with your standardization processes, you made possible industrialization. You made possible the assembly line. Again: the world-wide human misery that sprang from [...]

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Quotes From a Drunken Police Sketch Artist

June 8, 2011

“So I says to her I say, ‘Then why don’t YOU draw his fucking hair lip if this ain’t right?’” “I’ve drawn a Malaysian. And Cambodians. And Thai. Fuck you think you’re dealing with?” “Oh, is that how you sketch corn-rows?” “What part of ‘I DON’T do hats!’ don’t understand?!” “Well, one of you’s going [...]

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