Day 584: Packing A Punch For The Open Road

originally published August 6, 2013 Today’s article is brought to you by the open road. For the first time in the last 584 days, I’m dropping these syllables into the milky impermanent water of MS Word whilst rocketing along the highway, the Dead’s “Terrapin Station” on the radio, the Rocky Mountains’ immature cousins rubbing shoulders […]

Day 568: Skymall’s Spectacular Bounty Of Strange

originally published July 21, 2013 If you have spent any time aboard a commercial airliner, and if while doing so you’ve been able to pry yourself away from the in-flight showing of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, edited for mature content (running time: approximately twelve minutes), then you’ve probably perused the pages of Skymall, the in-flight […]

Day 565: Ninety Minutes From New York To Paris?

originally published July 18, 2013 There was a time when I pined about the lack of flying cars in this so-called future we live in, to the point where even my dogs learned to roll their eyes when I’d bring it up. Well Rufus, I’ll have you know there was more to my childhood daydreams […]

Day 562: Happy Centenarian, Lots Of Stuff

originally published July 15, 2013 Maybe it’s simply the distorted perspective of having a daughter who believes the original Teen Wolf film is ‘old’, the Woodstock concert is ‘ancient’ and Elvis Presley is ‘ancestor-esque’, but I think our culture is in danger of losing its sense of history. This is why we curators of trivia […]

Day 556: Call It Morning Driving Through The Sound And In And Out The Valley

originally published July 9, 2013 The astute scholars of classic prog-rock in my audience will recognize today’s title as lyrics from the brilliant 1972 kick-off track from Yes’ Fragile album, “Roundabout.” This is my attempt at the clumsiest introduction in my 556 day history, as today’s topic is about that bane of so many drivers’ […]

Day 555: Hey… That’s Not A Real Number!

originally published July 8, 2013 Yesterday my mother commented that she has had the same phone number for 37 years. That’s nearly four decades and the bulk of my younger years using the same seven-digit code (or seven-tone melody) to unlock a conversation with my mother. When my son asked for her number a couple […]

Day 546: The Chef Of Chain Reactions

originally published June 29, 2013 Many savvy inventors devote their lives to looking at how we do things and trying to find an easier way. Leave it to an artist, someone who lives and breathes the abstract and absurd for a living, to create a lasting legacy based on transforming simple tasks into breathtakingly complicated […]

Day 460: The World Of Tomorrow… Yesterday!

originally published April 4, 2013 Every so often, a new technology grabs the public’s attention by the short hairs and doesn’t let go until it has gone mainstream. The iPad caused massive line-ups, earned gazillions in pre-sales, and offered the world an entirely new way to stream pornography. The first portable mp3 players showed us […]

Day 440: Strange Tales From The Hall Of Inventors

originally published March 15, 2013 If you’re wandering through the halls of the National Inventors Hall of Fame museum in Alexandira, Virginia, then congratulations, you have more free time than most of us. This is a shame, because something is lost when we forget the paths these visionaries blazed for us. We might remember some […]

Day 433: I’ll Take This Article To Go

originally published March 8, 2013 The beauty of subjecting oneself to the fickle cough of Wikipedia’s ‘Random Article’ button is that sometimes the end result reveals a fascinating slice of history, or a deliciously sparkling canvas for low-brow comedy and pop culture references. And sometimes, you simply end up with Fugitive Glue. “Am I really […]