Day 138: Batman & Lesbians!

originally published May 17, 2012 Here’s a little soupcon of insight into how an article is born. Today I happened upon the topic of Batman. For the briefest of schoolboy in-breaths I thought I’d struck gold with my second Dark Knight-themed article. Then I looked closer. Batman is a city. A city in Turkey, to […]

Day 136: A Strange Slice Of Saskatchewan

originally published May 15, 2012 It goes without saying that anyone whose Wikipedia article describes him as a “Finnish-born sailor, farmer and Canadian madman” deserves a kilograph here. I had bungled on to the story of Tom Sukanen while researching my original topic, the Great Wall of Saskatchewan. This is a real thing. Over the […]

Day 124: Where Hell Froze Over – Ellef Ringes Island

originally published May 3, 2012 Today’s challenge is to write a thousand words about an uninhabited slab of land that almost nobody wants to visit and even the gods seem to hate. For this task Ms. Wiki has deserted me upon Ellef Ringnes Island, located in the northwestern quadrant of that hideous near-dead tundra of […]

Day 97: The THEA Awards Travel-Book

originally published April 6, 2012 Is there a better job for a writer than writing travel articles? I suppose if one hates to fly, or thinks that foreign people are “gross”, then travel writing may not be for them. But for someone like me, who enjoys portioned packages of peanuts and thinks that all people, […]

Day 70: Taking The Grand Tour – Uppercrust Or Bust

originally published March 10, 2012 I try to avoid too much repetition on this site. A couple days ago I took a meandering trip around northern New Zealand since, let’s face it, I’ll probably never do that in real life. So why am I travelling again today? Well, this ain’t your usual road trip. This […]

Day 68: Pukepoto, Smellietown & A Trip Through Northern New Zealand

originally published March 8, 2012 Somewhere in the northern corner of New Zealand, things are a little screwy. I was set to dismiss this topic right away: geography stubs are generally as thrilling and inspirational as stubs about professional soccer players (and believe me, any human who has ever been paid so much as a […]

Day 57: A Trip Down The Strip

originally published February 26, 2012 One thing that makes a great city great is its Street. Every magnificent metropolis seems to have one street that defines its culture, broadcasts to the world where the city is at, and where the rest of us will someday be. New York has Broadway, Los Angeles has Sunset Strip, […]

Day 54: Pledging Confusion To The Flags Of Burma

originally published February 23, 2012 Flags can tell a lot about a nation’s history. And the story is always that much more interesting when the nation in question has a history as full of defeat, imperialism and international bitch-slapping as Burma. This is the Golden Hintha flag, used by Burma from about 1300 to 1500. […]

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 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 […]