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Many people have asked me why I grew it, and most of those people are my wife, and to them and to her I say: I don’t know. I’m sorry.
I cannot remember whether this was my decision or her command. Maintaining such fogginess about free will is, I think, a secret to a lasting marriage.
A mustache sends a visual message to the mating population of Earth that says, “No thank you. I have procreated. My DNA is out in the world, and so I no longer deserve physical affection. Instead, it is time for me to turn away from sex and toward new pursuits, the classic weird dad hobbies such as puns, learning trivia about bridges and wars, and dreaming about societal collapse and global apocalypse.”
All men, I think, wonder who the secret man that lives inside them is and whom they will meet in the mirror when they stop shaving. They wonder if that man is better than the one they know. If that elder sage or fantasy wizard or feral mountain man will be wiser than they, and when they are lost, if that dude will light up his staff and guide them through the dwarven mines and out of the wilderness. Based on the overall effect, the secret man inside me is the part-time bookkeeper for the Church of Satan. I’m the guy who goes in every other Monday and goes through the ledger and complains to
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onanism
Wine, on the other hand, is like religion: it’s mysterious, sometimes literally opaque, and there are too many kinds of it. You never really know if a particular wine is good or bad; you just have to take it on faith from some judgy wine priest, an initiate to its mysteries. And wine is also like religion because the people who really get into it tend to be fucking unbearable.
I consider nostalgia to be a toxic impulse. It is the twinned, yearning delusion that (a) the past was better (it wasn’t) and (b) it can be recaptured (it can’t) that leads at best to bad art, movie versions of old TV shows, and sad dads watching Fox News. At worst it leads to revisionist, extremist politics, fundamentalist terrorism, and the victory—in Appalachia in particular—of a narcissist Manhattan cartoon maybe-millionaire and cramped-up city creep
Because now they knew, and if you didn’t know, now you know: no one has more cred than John Hodgman of Brookline, Massachusetts.
It turns out that many raccoons are infected with a parasitic roundworm, Baylisascaris procyonis. By “many,” I mean that it is estimated that some 72 to 100 PERCENT of all raccoons have this worm inside them and are pooping out its eggs. If you were to accidentally inhale such eggs, say, by sending them into the air by sweeping a pile of old dry raccoon feces off your porch, they will hatch into larvae inside your body.
That quick trip from nausea to coma is for grown-ups only, by the way. If you are a baby and you get infected, you could die.
Studebaker Dictators
Remember, they were still inventing “vacation” back in 1927. Someone said to someone else, “What do you think people on vacation want?” And the other person said, “I don’t know. Nuts, maybe? Let’s say nuts.”
all kinds of Maine-ish souvenirs and gewgaws
what fudge looks like. But I will anyway: it looks like a dark, impacted colon blockage that a surgeon has to remove to save your life.
The centerpiece of the collection is a taxidermied gorilla someone dubbed “Ape-Braham” in order to correct any accidental delusion that this was an actual, serious endeavor at natural history.
the most compelling villains always think they are the heroes.
When you put enough affluent white people into a closed system, they will turn on each other eventually.
my beard is a lie if you look at it plainly. I do not look like the Church of Satan’s bookkeeper. I look much more like the IT guy for Duck Dynasty.
you are a dumb Icarus whose wax wings are melting under their gaze in their parking lot.
