An April Fool's Commitment
April Fools’ Day is like my dad’s Christmas, his Super Bowl, his Cubs winning the World Series. "Face it. I’m the best prankster. I’ll go to the ends of the earth to make it the best. Next year I burn down the house."
Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of March 25, 2018
• Easter was canceled. They found the body.
Illinois Democrats Just Reinforced Their Level of Idiocy
For a state with democrats who really hate President Donald Trump and their current GOP governor, Bruce Rauner, they sure did elect a democratic gubernatorial candidate a lot like them both. Illinois democrats elected J.B. Pritzker because Illinois democrats are idiots. This isn’t breaking news but it’s news worth reminding ourselves of because there’s a new twist to the idiocy.
Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of March 18, 2018
• Never mistake a lack of enthusiasm for a lack of care. Sometimes displaying enthusiasm is the same as walking into battle with your flak jacket in the Jeep and your shirt wide open.
Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of March 11, 2018
• If you respond to my LinkedIn post requesting the services of a proofreader and your website has a typo in the first sentence you will break my heart. You will also not get the job.
My Unborn Child is an Inconsiderate Little Jerk and I Can’t Wait to Get My Hands On Him
So, here we are. Waiting. Unsure of what to do. We keep doing all the things that can start and speed up labor like walking and massaging and having sex with spicy food. At this point, our lives are completely out of our hands and at the whims of the ungrateful terrorist holding my wife’s body and my need for a second scotch hostage.
It's Cool to Walk Out of School
Today's ENOUGH National School Walkout is set to be one our country's most historical, nuanced and, hopefully, most effective protests. It's always been the youth who are first to take to the streets but they've never been this young before.
Millennials Will Save Us All
American history repeats itself and repeats and repeats itself with only slight differences between the generations. The time in which Millennials live in and are defining, is unlike the others. With the architects of modern America — the Greatest Generation — fading away, and the destructors of the empire — the Baby Boomers — not far behind, now is the time for action and a great shift. It’ll be an ontological shift that we won’t notice until it has already occurred, and it will be the Millennials who will get us there.
Violent Video Games Might Have Saved My Town
To be clear, I never once —ever — considered hurting a real person or thing. What I wanted was a world where I was untouchable, where I could find solace in my own kind of Fortress of Solitude. In real life, we can’t ever really escape away from everything whenever we want, or even need. Grand Theft Auto III gave that to me. It let me play God. That violent video game provided me with the one thing I could never have otherwise — total control.
Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of March 4, 2018
• I like bookstores. I like local bookstores. I like Volumes Bookcafe in Wicker Park. But Volumes is the kind of bookstore Emily Giffen would write if she was describing a trendy, punk bookstore in the hipster part of town in one of her romantic chick lit novels. “There’s a coffee bar in the bookstore and the baristas have tattoos. Claire wondered how many of those tattoos were inspired by heartbreak. ‘Maybe,’ Claire thought, ‘I should get a tattoo.’”
Black Panther’s Missed Opportunities
Despite the incredible cinematography and thrilling action scenes and beautiful costume design and magnificent acting, I was disappointed that the film missed some storytelling opportunities. They seemed obvious to me, so I was surprised director Ryan Coogler, writers Coogler and Joe Robert Cole, and producer Kevin Feige didn’t seize them.
Meghan Trainor is this Generation’s Andy Kaufman
During my afternoon bathroom break with my iPad on my lap, I dove into a Meghan Trainor wormhole to sort out exactly what was so terrible about her music. I considered the shallow, braggadocios lyrics, the over produced production, that white collar, suburban virgin girl imitating a black street thug accent she sings with, the regurgitated and repurposed musical stylings and cues she uses in each song when it dawned on me. Meghan Trainor is not an annoying musician or a pop sensation; Meghan Trainor is this generation’s Andy Kaufman, and she’s fucking with us.
Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of February 25, 2018
• My pregnant wife could pop that kid out at any given moment. People keep asking me if I’m scared or freaking out or panicking. No. None of those things. I’m ready to get on with it. I have been for months. Let’s get this little turd out and get on with the New World Order. The sooner he’s here, the sooner he’ll be old enough to come sailing with his old man and have a conversation without shitting himself. That’s what I’m looking forward to.
Armed Educators: What Your Kids' Teachers Say
I could list 50 things that could go wrong [with arming teachers] before I could list one thing that could go right. They’re going to know immediately what teachers have the guns. What if they jump you? An eighth grader could easily jump a smaller teacher. Or think about the parents. I don’t want to have a meeting with a parent and they know that I might be armed. You lose a measure of mutual respect when there’s implied violence. It develops a culture of fear and that’s not what we’re teaching. We’re teaching a culture of respect.
Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of February 18, 2017
• There’s a special sense of accomplishment, renewal and thrill of driving your brand new car off the lot for the first time. I’m glad my wife was finally able to experience that this week.
Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of February 11, 2018
• Every time I meet with a recruiter, I feel as if they’re sizing me up for how they can best exploit my talent for their financial gain. The next time I meet with one, I’m going to blast out a sonic-rattling fart then let its heat and stench consume the oxygen in the room before breaking the tension with, “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”
For Those Who Pray: God Doesn’t Care and Neither Do You
In heaven, the man meets God and asks him, “God, why didn’t you save me from the storm? I prayed and prayed that you would.”
God replies, “You fucking idiot. There were the news warnings, the car, the boat, the helicopter. You had every opportunity to be saved. What more did you want?”
Let's Not Have a Military Parade, Let's Have a Military Blowout
If Trump wants to wave his military around like a child showing you the thumb nail-size booger he just dug out of his nose, Trump should do what America has always done: Have an airshow.
You go to all the landlocked airfields across this Great Nation and you bring in the tanks and the jeeps and the bombers and the fighters and you load them up with blanks and pyrotechnics and you press play. The swooping and booming and bursting will thrill We the People and show the world that we’ve got the hardware and funnel cake stands.
Notes from the Post-It Wall — Week of February 4, 2018
• There is no guarantee or promise that your children or parents will love you. There is no such thing as unconditional love. If you love your asshole dad or child, the condition is that they are your dad or kid and there’s a natural bond. But a bond doesn’t determine love.
Notes from the Post-it Wall — Week of January 28, 2018
• I know a guy who sported a man bun for several years including years long after it was (miraculously) considered cool. He recently cut his hair and holy shit! He was bald under all of that long filthy hair. There’s nothing wrong with being bald but there is something really funny about growing your own toupee.
...that intense and deep aren’t the same thing even if you’ve convinced yourself they are. Intense is momentary and fleeting; deep is the result of time and energy.