Day One After 909: Maxwell’s Silver Hammer Of Quality Education

originally published June 28, 2014 It is the final day of classes. Just a day in the life of Mr. Maxwell, a grade six teacher who’ll be flying across the street to teach summer school next week. It’s not the end for him, just the annual hello/goodbye to this year’s crop of kids. The man […]

Day 900: All The #1 Hits Of The 1990’s, In Dialogue Form

originally published June 18, 2014 “What are you going to do for Day 900?” People have been stopping me on the streets and demanding this information for weeks now. Pretend people, sure, but then they’ve also been on pretend streets so that cancels out the white lie. Anyway, the answer is “pizza” because I just […]

Day 892: 8 Obscure Poetry Forms For The Love Of 80s Movies

originally published June 10, 2014 I have a tendency to mistrust my own ambition. One morning I felt the urge to spend that day’s kilograph using however many haikus would be necessary to fill a thousand words (eight-two, apparently). Another day had me wrestling to produce nine Shakespearean sonnets, adhering as closely as possible to […]

Day 750: The Celebrity Strangeness Quiz

originally published January 19, 2014 While in the next room my wife is no doubt running the trumpeters through a quick rehearsal of the jazzed-up fanfare that will herald the massive party she is throwing in my honor, I’m going to flex my consonants and stretch my vowels for the final 250-day sprint to the […]

Day 700: What The Hell Drugs Did I Take? – A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story

originally published November 30, 2013 When that girl at the party slipped you a tablet of something she described as “kind of like E”, you simply went with it. After all, you’re young, you work out, and that bacon-laced poutine you ate for dinner should keep anything you ingest in check, right? Except that you […]

Day 660: Generational Labels – A Primer For The Young’uns

originally published October 21, 2013 Good morning children. I know what you’re thinking – you’d rather be outside, frolicking in the gumdrop sunshine, knocking a hoop down the street with a stick or catching a picture show at the local nickelodeon, but this will only take a minute. You see, you don’t yet realize that […]

Day 650: There Once Was A Law About Naming…

originally published October 11, 2013 There once was a thought for a game: To write about laws about names. And just for a gimmick, To write it in lim’rick Though some will turn out rather lame. It’s been quite a while since I tried A full kilograph longer than wide. I could do so much […]

Day 624: Lipograms – Or How To Avoid A Lttr For 1000 Words

originally published September 15, 2013 Ambitious? Yup. Crazy? You know it. How can an author concoct a full-on book whilst omitting that most popular ASCII swirl – that which shows up in an almost full swath of our words? You know what I’m talking about: it turns ‘bit’ into an act of chomping; it turns […]

Day 587: Describing My Beer Using 35 Figures Of Speech

originally published August 9, 2013 This is a fantastic beer. No, I mean it. This is the kind of beer you write home about, so you can tell the people living there to set fire to the place, collect the insurance money, and spend it all on this particular brand of beer. This beer is […]

Day 500: The Chains Of Deceit – A Piece of Wikipedian Noir Fiction

originally published May 14, 2013 As a one-day deviation from the normal, I’m going to cast off down the waters of fiction for Day #500. Having always been a fan of Raymond Chandler / Mickey Spillaine style hard-boiled detective fiction, that’s the direction I’ll be pointing my shadow-blanketed fingers. Imagine the chiaroscuro lighting, the weather-beaten […]