I was never a big picture guy. The future was never something I planned for, or even really thought much about. What mattered was what I could see. If things stayed the same, so be it; if something changed, I’d deal with it. It wasn’t some cognoscente carpe diem ethos; I was lazy, sort of [...]
I was in one of those bloated rubber Sumo suits the first time I saw her. There were dozens of people watching my roommate and I make fools of ourselves as we bashed into each other with a reckless abandon, trying our best to fend off laughter long enough to knock each other on their [...]
[Writer's Note: I should have given the people within these stories names by now; it would have been easier for both of us. Starting with this essay there will be names given to the characters important enough to earn the random pulling of them from a baby name book. Also, when possible, there will be [...]
So during yet another a brief hiatus from the December January Album essays I’m taking a few minutes to list my Favorite Albums from the first decade of the 2000’s. If you want to get technical, I suppose this is a Best Of list for me, considering I liked these albums the best. But really, [...]
When you’re a kid time has a way of passing with the speed and urgency of an elderly turtle with four broken legs on his way to visit his proctologist. Important events—Christmas, your birthday, the end of the school day—always seem forever fleeting, forever away. In fact, “This is taking forever” seems to be right [...]
Since the day I started writing I was a failure. I just never knew it. Teachers gave me good grades, people gave me favorable comments, and the few places I submitted or contributed my stuff to published it. I was a big fish in a small pond if only by default, but I had no [...]
Sometimes there is no good explanation for what happens in life, the ways and whys of things, how paths sometimes lead you to unclaimed $20 bills, how in certain rooms at certain times you fall in love with someone you wouldn’t otherwise give a second-look to. The same thing goes for music; it’s just as [...]
I’ll never be confused for a prophet; if I could tell the future there wouldn’t have been any heartache, any bad decisions, I wouldn’t have invested in Beanie Babies. But on more than one occasion in my life I’ve had these overwhelming feelings—a sixth sense, intuition, or whatever you call it—where I knew what was [...]
The writing bug first bit me in 11th grade. I was taking a Journalism class, and for our final exam my teacher gave me two options: interview the gym teacher about the track-and-field team, or write a short story. I had no idea what went into writing a short story, but interviewing the gym teacher [...]
I survived my first year at college. It wasn’t without scars; after deciding to return, despite the debacle at the end of my first semester, not too far into the second one I fooled around and fell into credit card debt. I got blinded by a smile. It was a damn good smile, easy on [...]
