Catching up over dinner with my brother recently, I heard about his Mountain View trip. You’d think the most impressive bit of his various meetings and networking soirees would have been him meeting CEOs and miscellaneous big names for such social networking giants as Twitter and Facebook. Yeah. Not for me. What I fell in love with was – believe it or not – Google. Yep. Anti-corporate me still loves.. Read More
Plane passenger shaming shows you the faces of (recycled) oxygen thieves
“You don’t know what that’s touched! So you shouldn’t touch it!” This on-airplane advice I get from my dad all the time can now officially be met with: “You’re wrong. And you’re 100% right. Respectively.” Because now, thanks to a beautiful new trend called “passenger shaming”, I know exactly what my tray tables, seats, and headrests have touched. And it makes me wish I could fly while I fly –.. Read More
They see me scowlin’…they mandatin’
Ever been told “you should smile” – by anyone? Once upon a time, it was indirectly said to me – by a boss I had. He sent me an article about how it “takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile”. Not one to miss a chance to spar in my favorite game of passive aggression, I replied, “Great article! I was hoping they’d add this other related.. Read More
Lauren Morelli’s sapphic epiphany and why marriage is dumb.
So, Orange Is The New Black creator, Lauren Morelli, dumped her hubby. After a sudden Sapphic epiphany. And now she’s dating an actress on the show. (To be fair, even straight girls wanna date Poussey. It’s like when Katherine Moennig played “Shane” on Showtime. It’s not the sex – it’ s the X-factor.) Ya know, this is the stupid thing about labels. When I was queef deep in marathon sessions.. Read More
Grief to go: deadsy drive-throughs may be smartest thing ever.
We don’t hafta get off our asses to eat McDonald’s, order Starbucks, or even do banking. So why should we be bothered to do it while paying respects to the dead? That’s what one Michigan dude wondered, too. And then he made a whole business out of the eternal question we’ve been asking ourselves since the dawn of obligatory post mortem ceremonies: Why should I push pause on my life.. Read More
Holiday in hellfire – man adventures into Ring of Fire volcano
“If you gaze into the abyss…” … the abyss suddenly looks like a really, really fun place to freefall into. “You go first and tell me what it’s like…” I’d ask if I’m the only person who gets the urge to jump from vertigo inducing heights or run towards a tornado, but I know I’m not. That’s just a rhetorical question I sometimes employ to hear , “No, Ashley. You’re.. Read More
What do you tell your kids about terrorists – when they ask?
Never forget. Always remember. I had to start wearing my headphones in physical therapy recently, because they play non-stop “news” in there. Just hearing it is stressful. I can’t do anything to stop murders and kidnappings. I’m powerless over the painful stories but it still makes me anxious. And I’m not just talking 9/11, obviously. So I tune it and everyone around me out. Whatever it is you believe about.. Read More
Science unmasked Jack The Ripper! Kind of!
Yay! They caught the bad guy! From one point million and five hundred years ago! That’s right, boys and girls. Before Bundy or Dahmer or Kuklinski or whatever other morbid icons I’ve left out, there was Jack the Ripper. Except – they never figured out who this guy shredding up the flesh of whores was. Until now. So get ready for me to cash in my Image GIF card for.. Read More
I’m green with…
I’ve never understood the term “green with envy”. If ever colors and feelings had associations (which if you’re a synesthetic or into the whole chakra-balancing thing, mayhaps they do), green is the least jealous-bish inducing shade I can think of. On the contrary, it’s one of the few rare things that can make me think, “I should be a little bit nicer to everyone I keep saying I love before.. Read More
Can virtual reality erase our irrational fears?
“Read to me!” I commanded my mother as we sat by the river, tanning. She frowned and replied, “Can’t you read yourself?” “No,” I sadly said, handing her an issue of Psychology Today. “I can only write – they didn’t learn me how to book.” Unamused and with a heavy sigh, my poor mother reluctantly took the magazine. Thusly, she began to relate an interesting virtual reality piece to my.. Read More