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Now a newsletterer?

After twenty years of blogging, I have followed my fellow netizens to Substack, where I am publishing a weekly newsletter. You can subscribe via the form to the left and please drop me a note with a link to your newsletter.

Taking Notes

Thinking out loud in my corner of the internets.

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I’ve been writing here for over a decade now. In hindsight, only a handful of those posts are still worth reading.

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Latest Essays

How to Make the Perfect Sandwich

Every day someone would walk behind the counter of the neighborhood coffee shop where I worked. Behind the counter and into the kitchen. I would look up, exasperated, with a serrated knife in my hand. But not this time. This time it was Mike, "Big Mike." We're talking...

Been Smoking Too Long

Booger and I are driving south. We are going to visit our grandmother and our mother. At the same time. That don't happen too much. March first cherry blossoms are everywhere on both sides of the highway, a gradient of white to pink exploding beneath central...

Who You Calling Soft?

The truth is that most people would much rather read about her personal life than recent protests in Zimbabwe. That’s not a criticism, it’s just reality. And after all, what difference does it make whether we spend our lunch hour reading about celebrity affairs or protests in some foreign land if all we do with that information is repeat it with raised eyebrows at dinner parties?

Hector Enrique Calderon Contreras

"Estación Chacao" says the pre-recorded voice. The brakes screech to a halt, the doors sigh open, and I depart. Those former lovers with whom I had been lying in bed are again strangers. They will mug me in the street and they will help me when I ask for directions....

On Freedom and Familiarity

Not long ago, UTNE Reader had a fantastic issue dedicated solely to the oppression of choice. "Too much choice" was an argument against Bush's social security reform. (Giving Americans a choice in how they invest their social security would cause them anxiety that...

Venezuela: On Subterranean Transportation

Subways, I love them. The door to the carriage opens, it closes, and your two or five or 15 minutes of silent intimacy with people you've never met begins. Like unacquainted sardines. Like a colony of seals piled upon each other in stoic orgy. We're rich, we're poor;...