all about comedy, writing, and words…
I did a very bad thing last weekend. It was an impulsive moment, but I’ll be dealing with the consequences for a long time. I’m not even sure why I’m writing about it, because it was so incredibly stupid. I just need to clear my conscience, I guess, so here it is: I bought books at a yard sale. The yard sale part isn’t the problem. I’ve gotten some real bargains, like five bucks for a four-year-old printer/copier/scanner, with a handwritten tag...
Ever since I read my first book (‘Green Eggs and Ham’), I have been in love with words for their own sake. Sure, you can make some cool things out whole bunches of words, but some words are great all by themselves. ‘Effluvium.’ ‘Nexus.’ ‘Philology.’ Hell, ‘philology’ is just plain fun to say. Try it. Say ‘philology’ out loud three or four times (best to do this when you’re alone, as opposed to, say, while taking public transit). I recently discovered a...
My Muse, sometimes, is like my first girlfriend after we broke up—yeah, I could call her, we might even get together, but nothing much is gonna come of it. You try to think of topics, as a writer, that haven’t been done to death. There aren’t any. We have reached a point in civilization where everything has now officially been covered. Oh, and mocked. And there have also been pieces commenting about the mocking. It’s all been done. Move along, nothin’ to...
For the first time in a while, I’ll be teaching again this weekend. Before you start congratulating me for re-entering this most noble of professions, it’s not like I’ll be teaching about the towering figures in modern literature, or advances in higher mathematics, or, really anything with practical value. I teach stand-up comedy. There are some problems with this as a way to make money. First, I’m not sure why anyone would take a stand-up comedy class, since the stand-up ‘boom’ ended...
I’ll be the first to admit that my language, when unfettered by social propriety, is pretty salty. I never agreed with pedants who claim that swearing just indicates a limited vocabulary (see–I even used the word ‘pedants’). But sometimes, when confronted with certain situations and certain people, swearing is the only appropriate response. These situations include the following: automated phone menus that instruct you to simply say your choice but then pretend to not understand what you’ve said, taunting you like HAL...