I just want to buy a coat — I understand that I might be tricky to shop for. In fact, I spend more time shopping for myself at Christmas than anyone else. My wife and my mom want “ideas” of things I would like. I don’t like most things. In fact, I am at least as good at…

Or: Trying to Live With Nature I would like to take you down a thought train. We all have them. One minute you’re thinking about Motley Crue and what a pretentious ass you’ve become. …

This is not just a cookie jar in a junk shop. It is a Sunshine Biscuit cookie jar in a junk shop in Red Bank, N.J. I would die before I went “antiquing” but I sure love looking at junk. …

Deride domestic cleaning issues at your own risk — On the off chance my wife murders me, I want to tell you something: I’ve been dipping into “The Best American Short Stories of the Century” and wanted to quick-shout-out A Jury of Her Peers, by Susan Glaspell, published in 1917 and based on the one-act play of the same…

Everybody is somebody’s villain — If there’s anything difficult about nonfiction writing, it’s closing the gap between the story and the reader. It’s easy enough to tell what happened and why it matters, but that doesn’t bring people along for the ride. Managing a reader’s reaction means tapping into their point of view. If you…

A review of ‘Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries’ by Rick Emerson — My wife reads me a few books each year. She chooses the book, there’s no theme. She is one of those gifted individuals capable of just putting a book down, sometimes for weeks, sometimes forever. I don’t have that skill. …

The trick is to avoid feeling persecuted about it — ‎Listen to Losing the Mask Debate Was Hard, Living With It Will Be Even Harder on Apple Podcasts With mandates coming to an end living together may not get any easier. podcasts.apple.com I had my first mask confrontation recently, which was too bad because I had hoped to never have one. Mask-wearing has become such a tribal thing, we have let it become such a tribal thing, that confronting people over it is pointless.

It isn’t OK to believe whatever you want — ‎Listen to A Fake Cure for Real Problems on Apple Podcasts Orgone is supposedly a kind of energy, but it is completely made up. podcasts.apple.com One of my first insights into how fragile reality is was when I finally got a handle on how many people truly believed in the power of orgone and how diverse those people were. Orgone is a mystical element powered by such a strong delusion that it is embraced by…

Trigger warning: This story contains frequent use of the “F” word. I’ve always said that flags are bumper stickers for your house, but I never took seriously the idea that people would start turning bumper stickers into actual flags. Now, before anyone reaches for pearls to clutch, saying, “Fuck X”…