Left to our own devices as soon as we can sit still watching TV, we become jacks of all trades. Dabbling in the ones, twos and threes of “Sesame Street” to ABC after school specials about home improvement, we pay attention to the programs that speak to us, liking what Read More…
Ugliness makes my 5-year-old niece cry. While we were taking pictures on my laptop one day, Photobooth warped our faces into disjointed flesh across the screen. I thought we looked kind of cute, but she slid off my lap crying about how ugly we looked. If beauty lies in the Read More…
Sex is overrated. Everyone, more or less, loves it. If it is not sacred, it’s a mindfuck. If it’s not about passion, it’s about not giving a fuck. If it’s not only the greatest sport to ever exist among mankind, it is at least reminiscent of televised love. Sex between Read More…
I cried the first time I drove on a highway. After I made one sharp turn after another around the backroads of Butte County, my stepdad told me to make a slight left turn, mentioning something about monkeys and freeways. I merged onto Highway 99 thinking it would be just Read More…
I found a book without a cover the other day during my shift at the library. I opened it expecting to find a puke-worthy title about business tactics or maybe something dismal about economics. Instead, I glossed over what I instinctively thought to be Chinese characters that surrounded some English Read More…
Goodbye, Telegraph. No more people watching outside my window, listening to DJ Patches rock out to the Temptations or SOAD on Berkeley’s rarefied urban avenue. After two years of pretending to be an RA in the same brick building that I had my first brush with White Russians and free Read More…
Let’s go to East Oakland — home of the hyphy movement, Oakland’s criminal notoriety and the smartest and chillest six-year-olds I’ve ever met.Twice a week this past semester isn’t enough. I’ve been working at a public elementary school in East Oakland, soothing the insecure cool out of first grade boys Read More…
While high school nostalgia, or Vegas, wasted most of us during spring break, my parents’ brand new high-definition plasma TV radiated all the real-time exhibitionism I could handle during five days of Oregon rain (and fresh crab!). Recovering from Craig Ferguson’s camera-tapping into my bereft soul, I concluded that the Read More…
I think, therefore I am.” But as the jester literati of the Heuristic Squelch once put it, “I think, therefore I am sad.” And to avoid such pensive thoughts, we plug into something — anything — to animate mundane weekly routines, and then escape into weekends of consumable debauchery. Many Read More…
Wearing sweats in public makes me think of sleepwalking. Besides the handful of times I’ve made it to the RSF, I save wearing my shapeless cotton pants for sleeping days and ones that don’t entail too much sweating. It’s not that I think sweats look (too) gross or hopeless — Read More…
