Day 51: The Bird Controversies

originally published February 20, 2012 Earlier this week, in digging through the muck of the Texas Education system’s commitment to the doctrine of creationism, I generated some controversy – not here, but in between someone’s Mafia Wars request and a ‘Which Salad Dressing Are You?’ quiz on my Facebook page. Today I spit in the […]

Day 50: The Deutscher Werkbund – Making Germany Prettier For 105 Years

originally published February 19, 2012 You know, if it wasn’t for those pesky uptight goose-steppers showing up in the mid 1930s, the Germans might have experienced a peerless renaissance of inventive art. As it stands, the influence of pre-Nazi German art and architecture is still impressive. Aesthetically, some of it is nothing short of incredible. […]

Day 49: Off-Key – Why I’ll Never Be A City’s Pride

originally published February 18, 2012 The Key to the City. It sounds so glamorous. What does it open? Everything in the city? Is it a magic key? To the city’s vending machines? An unending supply of Twix and Fresca? I’ll probably never be awarded the key to any city, but the arbitrary honor remains a […]

Day 48: The George Cole Reality Show

originally published February 17, 2012 Today I’m writing reality-show style, since the genre of reality shows looks like it will never go away. Also, the shows have become so low-concept lately, it doesn’t seem that much of a stretch for me to vote off the lesser contestants until I can find the best George Cole […]

Day 47: The Texucation System

originally published February 16, 2012 How do I write an article about the education system in Texas without making derogatory jokes about the 43rd president or country music? Probably not going to happen, but I’ll try. There are a number of entries about education in Texas. The first that caught my eye was something called […]

Day 46: A Tale Of Two Sonny Boys

originally published February 15, 2012 So who is Sonny Boy Williamson? You’ll have to be more specific. John Lee Curtis Williamson, born near Nashville in 1914, became one of the pioneers of blues harmonica, or ‘blues harp’ (which is an expression that will only hold up until someone figures out how to successfully incorporate an […]

Day 45: How I Almost Sort Of Became President (But Not Really)

originally published February 14, 2012 What makes a video game fun? I’m currently in a video game narrative class, and this question has come up a lot. Surprisingly, the answer is not always “boobies”. But the theoretical hinge seems to creak between blowing stuff up in a fantastical setting or absolute immersion into real life. […]

Day 44: A Graduation Speech In Only 150 Idioms

originally published February 13, 2012 (this entire speech was cribbed from this Wikipedia page) Hello, graduates. The powers that be would bet dollars to donuts that your experience at the University of Life will supersede your time spent within these hallowed halls. Allow me to impart my two cents on the twiddly bits of life. […]

Day 43: Say, Cheese!

originally published February 12, 2012 There are 309 varieties of cheese listed on Wikipedia. I could list them here, and along with this sentence I’d be a third of the way through today’s article. But where’s the fun in that? Actually, more than 500 kinds of cheese are recognized by the International Dairy Federation, a […]

Day 42: Samuel Crompton Wrecked My Scrotum!

originally published February 11, 2012 If you had been lucky enough to have lived a hundred years ago, you might have been able to snag (there may a pun here, I’m not entirely sure) a job using a mule spinner. This was a large piece of machinery, invented by Samuel Crompton in 1779-ish, that spun […]