On this, the eve of my half-life, I once again find myself attempting to shoo away adulthood with a hand not-yet-arthritic-but-most-certainly-on-the-path-to-it. I play freeze tag with seriousness until I’m cold and stiff and moving not quite at a tortoise’s pace before bursting forth with a giggle and slapping it gently on the bum. I procrastinated [...]

I recently read a very good article about the (especially) American need to be busy all the time, and to make sure to let as many people as possible know about it. Aside from musing upon idleness as a historical virtue amidst suggestions that perhaps some of the best ideas have come from the least [...]

Life as it is, encapsulated in a few short blurbs about what’s been doing. • I no longer have a normal workday, which is quite odd for a routine-based bull. I’ve been staying up very late and waking up very late, which will need to change before the end of the month or I won’t [...]

Today should have been a day about celebrating the rich history and progressive innovation of this amazing city. This weekend plays host to Doors Open Days in Edinburgh, which, as the title suggests, is an opportunity for residents and visitors alike to peer and peek within otherwise-off-limits venues and monuments throughout the area. We got [...]

Another year on and one more closer to about halfway through, if you live with that sort of temporal consciousness, which I do. I can’t really believe it. Just yesterday I was a dreamy-minded tot wandering the aisles of Toys R Us, trying to find that elusive Blue Snaggletooth Star Wars figure. My grandmother sure did [...]

These ides of April, this night of nights is infamous for many reasons, not the least of which is triggered, Pavlovian-like, for many of us by the fluttering loss of so many hard-earned dollars to a government that hardly proves its worth. It is not the only sense of loss in common memory on this day. [...]

Dear Last Day of the Year: So much has happened between us and your many forebears that I barely have the words to express how overfull of emotion I am at the prospect of leaving. It’s been one wild ride, and I’ll never forget all the changes you and your ilk have brought to my [...]

Without a normalized schedule of daily operations, time goes by much faster than what is comfortable for me. It’s an ironic fact that one wishes not to go into work every day in order to make time for other things; the truth is that the world expands to fill the gap. It’s a busy but [...]

Today is a good day, one year from the event of our wedding. As a very generous anniversary gift, even amidst all of her packing and moving and shuttling cats from here to there and then over to here, Cygnoir has seen to it that the cream of the wedding picture crop was finally added to [...]

Somehow I’ve survived the past seven weeks without Cygnoir, which was not easy, let me tell you what. If it can be helped, I would wish that this be the longest stretch of time apart that we’ll ever see again. But as long as she gets on her plane and it actually lands, I’ll be [...]

Steve left us today, and it feels like a close friend and a member of the family has gone. Understandably so, because, quite succinctly, he’s in every part of my day. He’s in my communication, my creativity, and my leisure. He’s in my aesthetic, my addictions, and my business. He’s most certainly in my inspiration. [...]

Now that I’m accepted, matriculated, and transplanted, I’m comfortable with publicly posting the details of my doctoral project. Needless to say, this has been a long time in coming, and the initial response leading up to this proposal was met with much interest and enthusiasm from a variety of sources whom I greatly respect. I [...]

I purchased a puzzle from the store last week, which is somewhat ridiculous on a couple of levels. The concept of buying product that I already own is rather odd, but it’s good for the government and it’s also good for us. But really, hoarding material goods at this point in my life, so very [...]

I think that I remember how this is done. One foot in front of the other, a little bit for you and a little bit for me. Words don’t come as freely as they once did, somehow decimated by the twits and friendfaces and the attention spans that go along with them. They modeled us [...]

I needed a day to process everything that happened this weekend. I’ve found it impossible to predict the increasing magnitude of beauty that these recent, rolling years have offered up, but I’m abundantly clear that it’s uniformly due to the most wonderful, generous, loving, and creative friends I could ever imagine. Your wishes, thoughts, gifts, [...]

Not to belabor the point to you fine, principled people. We all know it’s important to shop locally, to support the little guy. Regardless of the fact that big box stores have everything you need – and they have it cheap and easy; taking into consideration that online purchasing from Amazon, et al., is amazingly [...]

This is what change feels like, and many of us, all throughout the world, are breathing a sigh of relief. A friend told me he felt like handcuffs were coming off for the first time in eight years. It’s the first time in my life that I have earnest hope for the future of our [...]

A good place for it, and a good answer. I am a lucky man.

It’s somewhat embarrassing for me to somehow expect people to follow the things I write here when I’ve been such a miserable correspondent for the past half a year. The routines that we easily make – especially when liberally dosed with avoidance shame – only serve to cement the patterns silently affirmed by non-action. There’s [...]

On a rare day of respite from the furnace-like heat-wave of the past couple weeks, cygnoir and I left the house this afternoon to find that my car had been stolen. Going, gone, nothing there. A few heart-skips later, we called the polis and waited two hours too long to have them come by the [...]

This year, another year, whistles past like comet and streamer and bottle rocket, explosive and entertaining, a spectacle to behold in the midst of the claw along to build a better day-to-day. This year is the 35th year, consummated locally and unabashedly to the gusts of wind blowing in from the Western ocean, picnicking on [...]

Looks like ol’ Hugh Cheape is Mythbustin’ again, which is what we’ve come to know and love about him, among other things. One of the kinder, more helpful historians out there, always on the forefront of cultural sleuthing and diverse corpus-building. I think if I could choose one scholar’s portfolio to ingest that would represent [...]

I find it wholly despicable that, considering the state of the puglism/mixed-martial arts schism currently permeating these sports’ audiences, the pay-cable channel Showtime would cross-promote MMA interviews and commercials during their boxing broadcasts. The biggest flap currently in boxing circles is how the sport is losing large amounts of its viewer base to MMA, which, [...]

I’d been after a very elusive tome for the better part of a decade, a work that fits nicely within my collection of Jacobite scholarship and primary source material. Culloden Papers is the collected correspondence of Duncan George Forbes, Lord President of the Court of Session. The collation was published in 1815, but most of [...]

I can’t let pass the few words I want to say about the death of Gary Gygax, an epic-level hero to so many of us. Like others, I didn’t realize how saddened I’d be by the event, a condition which I’ve heard repeated several times over the past two days. While of course we’re crushed [...]

Strangest thing, and still wondering exactly what happened. I just burst into tears thinking about the faded glory of my country. That’s never happened in my entire life. So many people have been frustrated for such a long time at what’s been going on in America: our malevolent administration, stringent self-focus, shortsightedness, capitalist preoccupation, failing [...]

So I spent the day in our SF store today, hanging out with the boys on Divisadero and raping the place for all their sundered goodies. Thanks to Eric for being so great and helpful in restocking us from their coffers of goodies. They do have a good vibe there, after all this time, and [...]

A pleasant day, with little to do. Rarely do I sit around playing computer games all day, but today was one of those times. Usually makes me feel kinda sick inside, sort of inhuman to be plugged in for so long, but this was Medal of Honor: Spearhead, after all, and it’s really amazing to [...]