I lived with a guy from Kenya one winter in Iowa. My other midwestern roommate and I would come home and he’d have cranked the thermostat to the maximum every day, and we’d die in the heat. One day we decided to open some windows just for relief and you could feel the thermocline at waist level - the temperatures were…

I went the birdsong route for a little bit on my phone, then got one of those Phillips sunrise alarms with birdsongs on it! It’s great, both the sunrise simulation followed by a quiet crescendo. I spent over 30 years being jolted awake by crappy digital alarm clocks and I couldn’t be happier.

My big DF story that I tell is the time I domesticated a dragon. One day the dragon wandered into the alcohol storage area and spotted a vermin of some sort (denoted in the ascii as a single period . ). The dragon decided to eliminate the vermin with its fire breath! That’s the day my fortress died when several…

My wife used to be an ER nurse, and she seen some shit. If you do get something stuck up your ass, just be straight with them immediately. It’s just going to piss them off to find out exactly why your stomach hurts after running tests and all the other bullshit. You know, and they’re going to know, so just get the…

I find the garbage compactor sequence funny, because George Lucas grew up in Central California. It is hot and dry and feels like the middle of nowhere; the kind of place a kid would feel stuck working on their uncle’s farm. In the area where he grew up, driving around like in American Graffiti, there’s a country road…

I bought Betrayal at House on the Hill earlier this month. We played a 6-player session and it was a disaster. The rules are very if-this-then-that rather than universally applied. It’s supposed to take 1 hour for a playthrough but we instead gave it up in a draw after 2.5. I saw the potential, but I’m pretty sure I…

Iowa State (Jack Trice, represent) has indestructible goal posts. I’ve been on the field and watched them bend nearly horizontal with several dozen drunken kids hanging off them. It’s one of the many un-fun things that have happened to ISU since the mid-90's - my older brother helped a mob throw goal posts into the…

**INTERNET PEDANTRY ALERT** I just spent a bit of time thinking about why I didn’t like your ‘straight line’ connection. It’s because that’s the same thing as saying there’s a straight line between humans and gorillas. Feathered theropods are rad, to be sure though.

I would eat 7-up salad in an instant, but I’m white and midwestern. Guaranteed a double batch would get finished at a family gathering.

I moved to a spot down the street from a really good farmer’s market, and on a whim 2017 was the Year of Pie in my new home. I’ve made some pies I’m proud of, but damn do I need to step up for 2018.

I found out today that you can only cash out $50k worth of bitcoin weekly. I’m curious what that would do to the inevitable crash - I can’t quite game it out in my head.

It’s like fortune telling. “OK, the gas station bathroom is on this corner of the building, there’s a water meter over there on the street... oh, look my wires twitched!” It’s also like how a Ouija board works in that the person moving the thing doesn’t consciously move it so it feels like magic.

I’m an environmental geologist that cleans up polluted gas stations in California. We often have subcontractors come out and find pipes with all sorts of instruments so we don’t break them while excavating. In my experience, about 40-60% of those guys will pull out their magic witching wires when they can’t find…

I’m still trying to figure out exactly how I feel about all this - Franken screwed up and should be shamed and punished. One thing that makes me sort of understand the story is that SNL makes a joke of a massive, over-the-top makeout with tongues and wide-open mouths once or twice a season. As someone who wrote at…

I don’t know Indiana, but the 99 counties in Iowa look like that too. I was taught that they were created that size in order to let a person get to the county seat in one day’s travel by horse.

My dad grew up on a farm. His father gave him a broken-down Plymouth when he was 10 and told him he could keep it if he got it running, which he did and proceeded to tear ass around the countryside.

My favorite is when you do stop all the way at a stop sign, put your foot on the ground, then ‘polite’ person decides to wave you through and waste everyone’s time. Then I feel the obligation to step harder to get through faster and now I’ve wasted effort as well. Minor peeves, but it’s a thing.

About 10 minutes ago, someone around the corner down the hall sneezed in my office. I barely heard it, and New Guy in the cubicle next to me shouted, “BLESS YOU!” Fucking New Guys.

I grew up Protestant and didn’t know a Jewish person until college. The only difference between Midwestern Methodists and sitting shiva is Jews have a name for it (where I’m from it’s Just A Thing You Do). I suppose also that you’ll generally see a baked ham on the menu, so there’s two differences.

I am deeply intimidated by the idea of GMing this game. I can do D&D, Rifts, GURPS, whatever, but man, driving my PCs mad seems really tough to do well.