Archive for 'The Gene Pool' Category
Riding the train with my brother
10 August 2011Each May, all of publishing jams itself into the Javits center for BEA, which ostensibly occurs so we can all have meetings/ do business/ promote books. With everyone under one roof it kind of becomes an unintentional research lab for any potential Christopher Guest-style mockumentaries on books that I hope to see released during my lifetime, [...]
at an uncharacteristic loss for words
24 August 2010I only took one Linguistics class in college, and we spent most of our session time arguing about the gorilla who used sign language to say “water bird” after seeing a swan on a lake, and whether or not this represented actual language manipulation or just a mere combination of learned nouns. I rooted against [...]
all the time in the world
7 July 2010Kids, I’ve got some free time on my hands. I won’t go into the details for a variety of reasons largely related to the legal document I signed granting me all this free time and my hunch that it’s somehow contingent on me not getting all Internet Jerry Maguire about it, and also my struggle to find [...]
The Year of the Tiger
22 February 2010I have no clue whatsoever how to play golf, despite those many semesters of high school gym where I devoted as much of my energy as possible to playing it without getting sweaty because no one showered after gym in my high school, and then joining a sorority where I would forge a very close friendship with a [...]
that’s my boy
2 November 2009My older brother leaves me a lot of excellent voicemails between the hours of 2 and 6am. The younger one almost never does; the only time that comes to mind was when he talked Ted Leo into calling me and singing “Me & Mia” into my cell voicemail, an amazing gift that I didn’t discover [...]
Thanks for ruining my metaphor, compact fluorescent lighting technology
5 October 2009Good news, someone is maybe/ probably coming tomorrow to rid my apartment of everything that’s been living there that isn’t me or my turtles. It’s been a long and interesting tango with the bedbugs and I will not be sorry to see them go. Particularly since, as bedbugs are drawn out of hiding by your [...]
Always the last place you look
9 June 2009When I got an email today that said “Check out your brother on ESPN.com,” I assumed that they meant Bud and that ESPN had gotten ahold of the pictures of him doing the flyover at that UNC football game last year or something. That would have at least sort of made sense. And yet: Oh [...]
Erin’s Wedding, Part II: Toasted
21 April 2009I have a somewhat crippling fear of public speaking. This is unfortunate for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that I Sell Things for a living and my job constantly requires me to convince roomfuls (roomsful?) of people that I know what I’m talking about, which is hard to do when [...]
Erin has successfully been married off
20 April 2009Cousin Erin’s wedding was on Friday. It was amazing. The weather was amazing. Erin was amazing. It is amazing that I am still exhausted from the effort. I plan to write many extensive and amazing posts about it, but until then: This is officially my favorite picture of myself, ever. Story of my life, right [...]
Peep Show
13 April 2009Easter was yesterday. I didn’t go to mass, but I think the Risen Jesus would still be happy with how I celebrated. In short form: I did a full-building egg hunt for my friends. Here I have helpfully drawn (pun!) your attention to Egg-Searcher Jesse and the object that has been giving him the slip [...]