Day 391: Stripped Down ‘n Strollin’

originally published January 25, 2013 “How do I attract more readers?” I asked of Lucius, my imaginary pygmy-elephant and trusted advisor. “Controversy,” Lucius replied. He was right. It’s time to stir things up. It’s time to shake the Internet’s rickety bones. It’s time to get naked! Or at least write about getting naked. I’m at […]

Day 390: Girl You Know It’s (Totally Not) True

originally published January 24, 2013 So it looks like Beyonce may have been lip-synching when she belted out the national anthem on Monday before a chilly Washington crowd at President Obama’s inauguration. Is this a big deal? Should we, the public, feel duped or deceived? On the one hand her voice may have been affected […]

Day 389: The Savory Slice On 23rd Street

originally published January 23, 2013 Growing up in a city where most of the local skyscrapers feature all the flourish and architectural zeal of a Lego brick, I was always fascinated by New York City’s style-salad of motif integration. From the glimmering ornateness of the Chrysler Building to the bulbous Guggenheim to the triumphant Empire […]

Day 388: The Ultramarathon – Not For The Feint-Hearted Or The Sound-Minded

originally published January 22, 2013 The list of things I will never accomplish in my lifetime keeps getting longer and longer every day. There was a time when I thought I might climb Mount Everest, float down the Amazon, or expose my nipple during a Super Bowl halftime show. But as the whirlpool of middle-age […]

Day 387: Canada Gets Seven Wonders Too, Eh?

originally published January 21, 2013 In 2007, The National – one of Canada’s nation-wide nightly news broadcasts – ran a competition to track down the Seven Wonders of Canada. I’ve written a few articles on the various incarnations of the ‘Seven Wonders’ concept, but this one truly irks me. Canadians voted – I didn’t, but […]

Day 386: Cookin’ Up A Mess O’ Yum

originally published January 20, 2013 If my beloved reading audience will allow, I would like to shill for a minute. While we here at 1000 Words Labs earn enough from our side income as puppeteer-superheroes to make sponsorship unnecessary, we nevertheless believe in paying tribute to those wondrous businesses who fuel our survival throughout these […]

Day 385: Zoned Out On Time Zones

originally published January 19, 2013 If you’re ever looking to torment your brain with impossible logistics and a seemingly unattainable global cooperation, I recommend you do a little reading on time zones. It has taken centuries to scrunch this mess into a workable system, and even now it’s a jumbled splatter. The theory behind it […]

Day 384: “And In Closing…”

originally published January 18, 2013 A political catchphrase can be more than a sound bite. It can capture the tone of a movement, appeal to the angst of a people, and sometimes it can be the cluster of words that defines a person’s place in history. But for every “Ask not what your country can […]

Day 383: The Salad That Eats You Back

originally published January 17, 2013 One of the easiest tropes to weave into a horror story is to make people afraid of something so innocuous and commonplace, it would be unfathomable for it ever to pose a threat. Like a motel operator who’s big into taxidermy. Or a janitor who happens to like to play […]

Day 382: Meet The New Zodiac

originally published January 16, 2013 Every so often, which is to say almost every day, I find myself writing about a topic I know nothing about, flailing desperately to sound slightly educated on the matter, when in fact I’m mostly relying on information from my dark she-mistress, Wikipedia, and the crap I make up as […]