Day 301: For The Benefit Of Pablo Fanque!

originally published October 27, 2012 There was a time, long ago, when going to the circus meant more than eating questionable food from even questionabler vendors. More than cultivating the fertile ground of potential nightmares with the acts of deranged clowns, swallowing up the air around them and coughing them back out in maniacal, psychologically […]

Day 300: It’s The Euro-Idol Winners! Save Us All! (Part 2)

originally published October 26, 2012 According to my raven-haired mistress whom I call Ms. Wiki, there have been sixty top-prize winners in the Eurovision Song Contest since its 1956 debut. That’s fifty-seven years of winners, with an ugly four-way tie in 1969. Because today is Day 300 and I foolishly believe that history cares if […]

Day 299: It’s Euro-Idol! (Part 1)

originally published October 25, 2012 Long before Simon Fuller made televised talent shows a North American addiction, the Europeans had made an annual ceremony out of it. No, I’m not referring to how American Idol grew from Britain’s Pop Idol, which evolved from Australia’s Pop Stars, which was foretold in hieroglyphics on an Egyptian cave […]

Day 298: The Shadowy Side Of Chinese Take-Out

originally published October 24, 2012 Approximately every three to twenty-one days, I endure a quiet internal churning for Chinese food. This could be a low-boil addiction to MSG, or maybe it’s just a hearty appreciation for the delicious Szechuan Chicken at my favorite place. So when I awoke to discover today’s topic was Chinese cuisine, […]

Day 297: The Ultimate Best Of Greatest Hits Gold Collection

originally published October 23, 2012 As a young aspiring music snob, I was taught to shun the Greatest Hits album. I was told to aspire to find the brilliant album tracks, to let the unwashed masses scramble over each other to merely settle for hearing the radio hits. I might have dismissed such blatant snootery, […]

Day 296: The World, Coast To Coast

originally published October 22, 2012 I promised my wife I could make an article about geology interesting. In my defense, I’d downed two delicious pints of Alleykat’s Chili-Pepper lager, and where some men get beer muscles I tend to get a beer writing ability. Plate tectonics? Hell yeah! This shit’ll be riveting! Now that the […]

Day 295: The Pixelated Madness Of Advergaming, Part 1

originally published October 21, 2012 Most of us spend our time tolerating commercials and advertisements, or avoiding them if possible. We scan through commercials on our PVRs, our thumb twitching over the button in hopes of hitting it just in time for the end of the break and feeling like a television-Jedi. We ignore flashy […]

Day 294: Serbia’s Natural Seven

originally published October 20, 2012 Last month I wrote an award-winning* article about the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. In doing so, I discovered that there are a stupid amount of lists of various Seven Wonders, and decided to see if I could make a regular feature out of it. Today’s kilograph is the […]

Day 293: Why Music Matriculation Matters

originally published October 19, 2012 When the crosshairs of impending budget cuts find their way to a school board, one of the first programs to catch a bullet is inevitably the arts. Drama classrooms get re-tiled for use as math rooms, easels get boxed up and shipped to more affluent schools, and band instruments get […]

Day 292: A Super Sexy Artikolo Pri Esperanto Per Mi

originally published October 18, 2012 Just about every known language has evolved over centuries, deriving from a culture’s extensive history of moving around and getting their asses conquered. A small handful of languages have emerged over the past 150 years and actually gained some traction among the throats of the world. There are fantasy lovers […]