"Celebrating Molehills" - Spring 2009 ( Read more... )

"My Winter with Fictional Brothers" - Winter 2008/2009 ( Read more... )

Unlike most (OK, every) music publication, I like to reserve my judgment for a year's best music until that year actually ends. Because you never know when you're going to, like, fall in love with an album on New Year's Eve. Not that that's happened yet, but it could. Anyway, here's my opinions of the best stuff from last year, and no, I didn't get ( Read more... )

Today the line at the coffee shop is long and slow. The colorful holiday menu is larger than normal, plump with with cheerfully-worded limited-time drink flavors, so the slow crawl of progress may be due to customers unable to decide between the new Egg Nog Delight smoothies and Peppermint Surprise lattes. The silver streamers and tinsel are meant ( Read more... )

"Good Choices, Bad Decisions" - Fall 2008 ( Read more... )

"Grindstone Nosediving" - Summer 2008 ( Read more... )

David Foster Wallace took his own life Friday evening. His wife came home to find he had hanged himself. He was 46 ( Read more... )

"'08 is O.K." - Spring 2008 ( Read more... )

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One last heave on the latch and the rust cracks and snaps splintering to the ground, the iron door groaning and heaving slowly out into the night. He hasn’t been up here in ages. Apparently, neither has anyone else. He paces across the roof carefully, reverently even, stopping a few feet short of the edge. He can see most of the surrounding blocks ( Read more... )