April 2012
3 posts
Daughter takes 'Hop On Pop' off the shelf
Daughter: I'll read this one. [Looks at cover.] "Jumping On Pop."
March 2012
2 posts
February 2012
1 post
January 2012
3 posts
December 2011
1 post
November 2011
4 posts
spilled milk
My four-year-old’s super power is spilling milk. She spills milk like nobody’s business. Put a glass of milk anywhere on the table and she’ll spill it — always accidentally, never meaning to, somehow her hand or elbow or foot finds it and milk flies everywhere, and the dog leaps happily lappily into action, my wife and I mutter, and my daughter blushes and smirks.
When...
Telling
I like telling my phone what to do. I’ve been using the dictation feature on the phone a LOT - certainly a lot more than expected. If I am using the phone to communicate with someone electronically - a text, an email - I’ll communicate with *the phone* vocally. It’s so damn efficient. Instead of willing my thoughts into text through clumsy thumbs stabbing at glass, I just utter...
October 2011
3 posts
Think big.
Simplify, simplify, simplify.
Sweat the details.
Be bold.
Stay hungry.
Stay foolish.
Love well.
September 2011
3 posts
Why must any new product be labeled a "[competing...
Why do writers resort to this crude oversimplification as though the global marketplace was a caged octagon where only one product can stand victorious, its victim’s blood splattered across its touch-capacitive screen?
Is it because they watched Highlander too often? Boyhood infatuation with ninjas creeping into their manhood infatuation with toys?
Or is it because the overdramatization...
Watchatsween:
Twitter: The Criterion Collection, Volume III
What if Twitter… came to life… again?
In early 2010, we asked some of our pals to film their favorite tweets in 30 seconds or less. We didn’t care how they did it. They could act it. They could sing it. They could do it with puppets. Whatever they wanted. The only rules were it had to be a tweet written by someone else and it had to...
August 2011
1 post
July 2011
4 posts
sky sky sky
On the night of July 4th our six-year old sat on his bed and looked out his window and watched the fireworks go off above Lake Washington and sang the chorus from Katy Perry’s Firework over and over again.
We could hear him through a baby monitor that we still keep in his room because he occasionally suffers from night terrors.
We could hear his voice coming through the monitor, accenting...
June 2011
6 posts
the secret
daughter: daddy, come here I want to tell you a secret.
me: [puts my ear to her mouth] ok, honey, what is it?
d: ...
m: ...
d: [sneezes in my ear]
m: !!!
d: [whispers] i love you daddy.
m: [wipes ear] that's a good secret, honey. i love you too.
Sam's Law of Presentations #17
The intelligence of a presenter, implied by the content of his slides, is subsequently nullified every time he points the clicker at the screen and furiously presses the button to advance to the next slide instead of pointing it at his computer.
May 2011
3 posts
Brushing Teeth
"Were you nice to your sister today?"
"Almost."
April 2011
9 posts
I’m at the gym. There’s a guy running at the treadmill on the left, maybe he doesn’t visit the gym often, he’s breathing hard. He has on a pair of headphones and has worked up a thick sheet of sweat.
The gym is crowded, people exercising in calm, orderly fashion, quiet but for the fans and the noise of the equipment. But suddenly the guy on the treadmill starts waving his...
“Have you an umbrella in your house?”
“I think so.”
“I...”
– Winnie-the-Pooh
“Au revoir, gopher.”
– Jean Paul Sartre
Aspiration
R: Dad, I know what job I want to do when I get old.
Me: Really?
R: Yeah. I want to be the man who takes the bags from the cart and puts them on the airplane.
M: Uh...
R: But I need to go to college to learn how to do that.
M: ...
R [gazing out the window]: I wonder if I will be strong enough.
Public Displays of Affection
Stars. Hearts. Likes. All the validation currencies that pave our yellow brick social media roads.
They’re powerful, these little units of value. The valentines from Tumblr, Facebook’s thumbs-ups, the gold stars of approval from Twitter/Favrd/Favstar. Most new networks employ them: Ping, Instagram, Mlkshk, others that I’m not cool enough to know. Whether you see these currencies...
March 2011
5 posts
Made
Stop pretending you’re a robot, Troy, she said. You’re my fucking boyfriend.
I am programmed to be better than any man, Troy said. I am designed to prepare your food, provide helpful information, clean for you, listen to your concerns and pleasure you sexually.
Yes, she said, stroking her foot on his shin, but you’re not listening to this concern, Troy: stop pretending...
“The workers are being asked to make escalating — and perhaps existential —...”
– NY Times. Fifty men stayed behind while 750 from the plant were evacuated.
Did the fifty volunteer? Were they chosen? What was said between the men leaving and those remaining?
Fifty men fighting radioactive fires, alone. Doomed heroes.
after work
I open the door and take off my shoes and put my feet into my slippers and close the door.
My wife sees me come in and opens the fridge and takes out the wine and pours a glass of wine and begins to drink it. This is to deaden the pain.
The dog comes up to me and wags his tail and as I put down my bag he puts his face near mine and audibly belches. In his belch I taste sour lamb broth and I...
February 2011
7 posts
“See you on the other side.”
– Every chicken, ever.
Kada the bad fox
J: Daddy, let me tell you a story.
D: OK.
J: It's about a fox. The fox was really bad.
D: Really bad?
J: REALLY BAD. His name was Kada.
D: Why was he bad?
J: He was bad because he SCARED THE WHOLE TOWN.
D: Yes, but what made Kada bad? You need more emotional depth here, honey. Did Kada lead a troubled childhood? Who raised this mysterious Kada? Was he exiled from Austria?
J: Daddy?
D: Yes, sweetie?
J: You can go now.