Years ago, a friend told me that sweeping is the worst possible chore. My God, she was wrong. I took a screencap of her being wrong and would show it to other people, and they would gaze at it and say, “My word, look at that person being wrong.” That’s how wrong it was. Everyone agrees laundry is objectively the worst…

Every reporter has a patter for talking to people in a crowd. I start with a nakedly aggressive challenge—usually questioning or condemning their parentage. Alternatively, if they are bigger than I am, I say “gimme a dollar” and see if they comply. It tells me they’re easily cowed.

People hated the 2012 presidential election, too. They publicly prayed for its end. It was irritating and stupid; the discourse was cheap and disappointing. Like every other election of our lifetimes, it was, all agreed, the most important, yet somehow comprised a handful of seemingly randomly-chosen and insipid…

When we speak of spring and baseball, we speak of renewal. New shoots of grass, possibility, the warm rays in Florida. We rarely mention the game's antipodal force that dwells there too, a darkness that consumes joy—its unblinking saurian eyes unevolved for 37 million years, unregenerate in its predation on all hope.…

If you're like the average American, your experience of major horse races centers on one: the Kentucky Derby. Perhaps you know a bit more about the sport and follow the Preakness and the Belmont as well, putting a bit of money down in the same spirit in which you'd pick a bracket and talking up Triple Crown winners…