Author: Justin

When I was a kid we had detached garage that had at one point been a barn.  In other words, it was quite large.  Feral cats would move into it to birth kittens, and then we’d be stuck with not only feral cats, but feral kittens.  My mom was big on trying to tame the kittens, so we’d take a saucer out to the garage and fill it with milk.  The kittens would eventually creep out to it, and with time they wouldn’t even mind if you sat nearby watching them.  That’s how we tamed cats—with a trap. I mention…

I love my home state of Kentucky, but I can’t say I’m surprised to discover it tops an index for unhealthiest behavior.  I’m not exactly sure what they mean by unhealthy behavior, but I have a few guesses. People in Kentucky love to run around in the woods with guns.  They often do this early in the morning at or just before dawn.  This doesn’t strike me as particularly healthy behavior. Tobacco is a huge cash crop in Kentucky, and part of harvesting it requires one to fire cure or “smoke” it.  This basically means that each fall the air…

Wasn’t it great when Taylor Swift had a pitchy performance on the Grammys? That’ll show that young woman not to write her own music and connect with millions of fans. Jerk. It might surprise you to hear that I detest snarkiness. My wife and I currently subscribe to four magazines—The New Yorker, The Week, ESPN the Magazine, and Entertainment Weekly. Of those, only Entertainment Weekly routinely lowers itself into the cesspool of snark. There’s a weekly column grading the dresses celebrities wear to events, with comments along the lines of, “Her bust line was as low as her acting ability.”…

What qualifies as normal is one of the great mysteries of life. Everyone has little quirks that they’re just not that sure of. For example, do other men shave first before showering? I do, but if everyone else doesn’t I suppose it makes me abnormal. The reflex is to shout, “There is no normal!” You know who says this? Weird people, and those suffering from Tourettes. Obviously there is weird and normal, or else you’d never nudge your friend and with a nod say, “Check out what that weirdo is wearing.” It’s called a bolo tie, and you’re going to…

Tough Guy: “Whether or not you stay or you go, it doesn’t matter—you’re already dead.” Me: “Did you poison me?” Annoyed Tough Guy: “What? No.” Still Me: “Am I Bruce Willis?” That small exchange of dialogue would be me in any given action film. Men in action films always have great tough dialogue, but even cooler is the abstract conversations they have with one another without any explanation. See, Tough Guy Alpha can tell Tough Guy Omega that the days of disco are slowly coming to a close, and Tough Guy Omega knows that means the orphans are stashed in…

It seems to me that our culture is moving to a Super Bowl mentality. More everyday people seem like cogs in a PR machine, each touting every action as some grand shared accomplishment. Below are several accomplishments that should never be assumed shared. 1. “We won the Super Bowl last year, and we’re going to do it again!” No, a team won the Super Bowl. You did not help. Unless you were on the field, you claim no credit in this. 2. “We’re having a baby.” No, she’s having a baby. No man should ever claim ownership of this action.…

This may sound strange, but I wish my enemies were more competent. A statement like this, of course, raises a couple of perfectly valid questions. First, how do I know my enemies are not competent? If they were, don’t you think I’d be dead by now? I’m not talking people who simply don’t like me. Over the years I’ve accumulated plenty of those through school, work, family reunions, etc. But those people, at worst, simply have a passing interest in my personal failings—not an active role. Real enemies should want to personally see to my destruction, and frankly, they’re slacking…

Now that Christmas has passed I can write more freely about the shopping process. In particular, the process of shopping for my wife. See, while Santa might give parents a break, childless married men are left to fend for themselves in shopping for their wives. Worse, without children we’re expected to devote extra thought to our wives’ gifts. This is our story. Upon arriving in Pittsburgh I realized my Christmas buffet of presents perhaps wasn’t quite up to measure yet with the parade of boxes from Amazon.com being delivered to my wife. She’d nonchalantly point out that just because she…

Compiling a list of the ten best of anything is always a bit of a leap in the dark. For example, list the ten best golfers in the world today and do you include Tiger Woods? Two months ago that was a no-brainer, but in the middle of his self-imposed break is he still as competitive as ten of the other best players? Despite how it seemed, Tiger never won every tournament he entered at the height of his game. And now? Top ten lists fall victim of the flux of time. What’s an acclaimed film now loses some stature…

Christmas shopping is the worst. It’s a slow, drawn out death by degrees. It’s a solid month of trolling through malls and web pages searching for that one certain gift that won’t make someone resent you for a whole more year. Bah humbug. “But surely you can see that you’ve lost the true meaning of Christmas,” you say. “Refocus on the meaning of the season and you’ll soon realize that gifts don’t matter.” You know what? You’re just the kind of jerk that spews that nonsense and then goes into a catatonic shock when I buy a medium instead of…