Bloganuary ’23!

Bloganuary ’23, Day 31: Good Night, Good Luck, And Watch The Skies

Dearly be-bloggéd, we are gathered here today in remembrance of Bloganuary 2023. We all came to it differently—-one-sentence answers, or long rambling essays about spraypainted sheep and Mario Kart and ceramic panthers, or what the kids call ‘not participating’—-and will take different things from it as it passes like a body of strange weather, to…

Bloganuary ‘23, Day 30: Coolest Guy On The Block

I HAVE NO TIME TO HASTILY WRITE AN INTRO, I AM SORRY, I HAVE TO GO TO BOOK CLUB. January 30th: What would you title the chapters of your autobiography? Yeahhhhhhhhh I don’t wanna do this one, not for like personal sad reasons or anything but because it…seems a little Live Laugh Love to me,…

Bloganuary ’23, Day 29: Dial 1-800-NEWSIES

Would anyone like a terrible, SLIGHTLY MURDERATED CAT who pissed all over my D&D books in front of God and everybody yesterday? Jkjk you cannot have him; he is awful, and he is mine, and if he sets PAW near my RPG shelf again he will make, I think we can agree, a very handsome…

Bloganuary ‘23, Day 28: Reluctantly Crouched At The Starting Line

Okay so riddle my ass this though: We got an Outback gift card from my folks for Decemberween, right? And my missus has had a rough week and deserves giant carrot cake, and if I’m honest with myself and all of us I could really use some of that hot brown bread, so I pull…

Bloganuary ‘23, Day 27: [Clever Title To Be Filled In Later]

TWO BIG THINGS HAPPENED TODAY: So be prepared to hear a lot about THAT between terror-barfs in the coming weeks. MAN what a game. I use the Altman Cipher in my journal and my ARCANE DIAGRAMS to this day! Ordinarily, I’d be worried about a game’s attitude and presentation of its themes aging out of…

Bloganuary ’23, Day 26: Lingua Frankensteina

Here follows a brief exchange that will give a cursory and shallow but essentially correct example of the dynamic between the personalities in my marriage: It’s not actually depressing! By that time, humanity will either have gotten off this godless rock for good or have long since collectively quit the stage in a way that…

Bloganuary ’23, Day 25: Ten Thousand Candles In The Wind

I started up the Klingon course in DuoLingo, because the reasons to do so had finally become too many to ignore: The only thing I don’t love about it is the writing system, not because it’s brutal and ugly (a perfect marriage of form and function) but due to the problem I have with a…

Bloganuary ’23, Day 24: Parentheticals

I am TOO SLEEPY and FILLED WITH CHICKEN to do much but the actual post, and so IN LIEU of a joke-filled or anecdotal intro I will simply tell you: Go read the hell out of This Is Chance! by Jon Mooallem and/or (better and, really, they’re great in different ways) listen to this episode…

Bloganuary ’23, Day 23: Blood On The Sand

I HAVE NO INTRO TODAY, I PUT OUT TWO POSTS FOR YOU PEOPLE YESTERDAY, GO READ THE INTROS IN THOSE INSTEAD, THEY’RE GREAT. Kthxbai. January 23rd: What’s A Lie You Tell Yourself? THAT I’M GOING TO BE ABLE TO GET THIS POST DONE BEFORE GOING TO BOOK CLUB, APPARENTLY. This was a weird question, because…

Bloganuary ‘23, Day 22: Lost Continent

We had a HEATER REPAIRMAN come today, who dishonored our home by lying and saying he was born in 1998; this is not possible, because in 1998 I was playing Ocarina Of Time and Pokémon, and trying to get my parents to tell me what the hell Clinton did because my 4th grade teacher–Mrs. Crossman,…

Bloganuary ‘23, Day 21: Wherever A Bavarian Is Not Quite Full

TODAY IS MY FATHER’S ONE MILLIONTH OR SOMETHING BIRTHDAY, and he did not require surgery for his TERRIBLE GRIPPER-GOUGE after all. We are very grateful. THIS HAS BEEN AN UPDAD-DATE. What’s updad, you might ask? Not much, sport, what’s up with you? January 21st: Who Is Your Favorite Author And Why? (Obligatory reminder to subscribe…

Bloganuary ’23, Day 20: Swallowed By The Sea

Hey look I remembered to title this one before posting it! My very first concert was my then-favorite and still high-ranking band, The Moody Blues, at the Lancaster Performing Arts Center, with my dad and my best friend, The Colonel. (That’s not a euphemism; his initials were KFC and I was like this even as…

Bloganuary ’23, Day 18: Big Hug

Okay, listen: I forget how we got there, but this morning my wife said she was starting a charity for people born without butts, which she named No Butts About It. I think we all know what I’m capable of, and that means knowing that I am certainly not going to top that in an…

Bloganuary ’23, Day 15: A Tribe Called MapQuest

THERE IS A NEW FERAL CAT OUTSIDE, presumably lured by the hey-sailor charms of Mama Hallie Ween. A handsome gentleman of the tabby persuasion, we have named him Tom Hagen, for he is not a wartime consigliere, but a lovetime, if Hallie has anything to say about it. We really hope no new kittens come…

Bloganuary ‘23, Day 14: The Bleating Edge Of The Meadium

ONE DAY, when my wife was a young vet tech the mere sight of whom in her scrubs would’ve killed me outright both then and now, they got two nearly identical giant orange tomcats, both named Bill. “What are the odds?”, one might ask, and I would tell one what I tell her every time…

Bloganuary ‘23, Day 13: “Hey What Do I Call This Post?” “Done.”

Y’know, maybe I should stop just writing ‘alskfjasld;fjasl;dkfj’ in this space as a placeholder and trusting Future Me to remember to put something else here. That guy can’t be trusted! He isn’t even born yet. January 13th: If You Had A Billion U.S. Dollars, How Would You Spend It? (Obligatory reminder to subscribe to my…

Bloganuary ’23, Day 12: Y’all Punk-Ass Grackles Don’t Know Me

GANG I WALKED SO MUCH AT THE PARK TODAY, I GOT THREE MILES AND BURNED LIKE 400 CALORIES AND CAUGHT SO MANY FRIGGIN’ POKÉMON, I HAVE A DRAGONAIR NOW, HIS NAME IS ‘NAIR AUTOMATA’ WHICH IS A JOKE FOR NO ONE, THAT GYM BELONGS TO TEAM MYSTIC UNTIL THE SUN DEVOURS US ALL, AND MY…

Bloganuary ’23, Day 11: Red Shell Blues

[Exterior: the park, this afternoon] [My newphew/grandson-type-boy (shut up life is complicated, focus) and I are playing Mario Kart by running around the perimeter of the playground like it’s the Dry Dry Desert] Me: Nyoom, etc.! I’m gonna take a shortcut! Me: [cuts past a swingset to scoop 1st Place, which I will remind the…

Bloganuary ’23, Day 10: THAT IS ALL.

No intro! NOTHING HAS HAPPENED SINCE LAST NIGHT, JEEZ. January 10th:Has A Book Changed Your Life? (Obligatory reminder to subscribe to my once-monthly newsletter here, which rounds up everything I wrote in the preceding month, grants access to a curated members-only Spotify playlist, and includes a piece of exclusive bonus collectible content I will NEVER repost anywhere else,…

Bloganuary ’23, Day 9: The Aggro Craig

So this is fun, remember that meeting I was super mad about being forced to go to on my day off instead of just calling in like I asked to do? Turns out the person I sat next to in that very small, very unventilated room for three and a half fucking hours just tested…

Bloganuary ’23, Day 8: Combat Acoustics

Listen though: SOME OF THE TIMES, you stay up too late reading because you can’t stop switching back and forth between A Memory Called Empire and The Delirium Brief, and THEN you have to get up early on what’s supposed to be your day off, and ALSO you can’t have your Diet Cokes–your only goddamn…

Bloganuary ’23, Day 6: Oh God Why

Gang–homies–squad???–I had a long, rough day, and I sat down to write this without a damn thing to say for the intro. What do I tell the good people about? The new technique I’ve discovered for getting clinic managers to do what I want? What I just learned about the only reason octopodes haven’t killed…

Bloganuary ’23, Day 5: Lisztomania

GANG: It is Cloudy and Cold, the feral kittens outside chomp on the bikkies they dupe us into giving them by peeking cutely through the windows, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is keeping me company, and but for a moment, all is right with the world. Admittedly: I do have to go get a haircut…

Bloganuary ’23, Day 4: Nine For The Tomb

I HAVE JUST RETURNED from a three-and-a-half-hour work meeting on my day off, which AS ONE MIGHT IMAGINE was an infuriating waste of my good christian time. So I’m really hoping today’s topic will be something fun and–OH YOU ARE JOKING MY ASS. January 4th: What is a treasure that’s been lost? (Obligatory reminder to…