1. Fap.
2. Fap.
3. Fap.
4. Fap.
5. Fap.
6. Fap.
7. Dress up a clown and terrorize the shit out of elementary-age kids in your neighborhood.
8. Go home.
9. Fap.
10. Watch Donald Trump’s town hall.
11. Fap.
12. Fap.
13. Take a break to drive to a construction site and yell racial epithets at the Messican flagger, who is actually of…

I watched Audrie & Daisy* last night on Netflix. At the end of the film, during an interview with one of the perpetrators, the filmmakers ask him what he learned from the experience of being arrested and convicted of the crime of rape. This was his response: “Girls, they gossip...and you know, guys are more laid back…

Thank God for Cablevision. They haven’t started capping—yet.

I also keep a bar chart of month-to-month spending and the percent change between the current month and the same month one year ago:

I maintain an Excel spreadsheet into which I enter my account information at the end of each month. The spreadsheet is divided into sections: cash accounts, retirement, and investments. It’s amazing to see how much the numbers in the cash accounts fluctuate from month to month, while the investment accounts remain…

We can laugh all we want, but I teach middle school, and some of my students are truly afraid of these sick and stupid idiots.

If you’ve never read Lipstadt’s books—particularly Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust—drop whatever you’re doing and hit up Amazon. Not only is she a brilliant writer, but she holds up no sacred cows. Everything is on the table.

The recent album she did with Babyface, “Love, Marriage, and Divorce,” was stunning. She’s in my thoughts.

He’s actually Elena Ferrante.

I have a friend who knows Thomas Pynchon. He wouldn’t give up what he knows about Pynchon for anything. I value that kind of...honor? Respect? I don’t know what to call it, but I value it.

I’m so sorry. My dad was also an accomplished and popular writer; toward the end, when he lost language completely, he would scribble nonsense on the backs of the cards I sent him each month. (I began to write to him once a month for the last two years of his life because he loved it when his partner read to him; I…

My dad died from a form of Parkinson’s that was at first misdiagnosed as LBD. It is a horrifying illness to watch unfold, but for Dad, who was a physician, it must have been absolutely terrifying.

I’m becoming more of a descriptivist as the years go by, although I still think it’s important that I teach my students the basics of writing for an audience. I’ve become convinced that “Each student should put their backpack in the corner” gets the job done; I no longer correct the “their” but instead use the…

No reference; just years of practice. I maintain that his meaning would’ve been clearer if the parenthetical citation (such as this one) had been moved to the right.

From Wednesday’s story on Morning Edition:

I can see your point; I think we’re reading it differently. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like the way you’re reading it is: “Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting—and she’s disgusting because of her sex tape and past—Alicia M become a U.S. citizen...” something that sounds almost exactly like the way he talks,…

I didn’t mean to come across as being gruff—your point was well taken!

As written, the parenthetical is sitting next to “disgusting,” not “Alicia M.” It reads—at least to me—as though the phrase is modifying “disgusting” (that is, saying that the sex tape and past are disgusting) rather than modifying “disgusting Alicia M” (that is, saying that Alicia M. is disgusting because of the sex…

It doesn’t read right to me. He could’ve written “Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting Alicia M (check out sex tape and past) become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?” and been clearer. (I mean, still wrong, but clearer.)

It doesn’t matter if you’re “doing well” or “doing good”—we all agree that Trump must be stopped!