The Little Words Mean the Most

You Know You're a Writer...

...when you'd gladly die in exchange for writing a book that would reach 100,000 readers. Though, yes, a million readers would be better.

Male Laramoop

The Bentley Cocktail

The Bentley: recipe courtesy of Eric Felten's sweet, sweet journalistic enterprise, his How's Your Drink? column about cocktails in the Wall Street Journal's Saturday edition.

Some Comfort

The thing that bothers you most is often the least of your real problems, I've come to see.

Relax. You can safely stop obsessing, is the message I'm getting.

Raising minor irritations up into vengeful demi-gods determined to sack your happiness and drain you of joy is unrealistic.

I have a friend in town, she's a teacher. Her old boyfriend was so abusive to her that he ended up in prison for five years. Where he remains insane and possessive and stewing. He has already, from the inside, put out a contract on her life. Which some people pretended to take so they could shake down the family for protection money. This year her boyfriend's due out, nobody can stop it.

Now that's a problem worth obsessing over.

Or my close professional colleague whose son, she freely informs me, will kill himself eventually. Sooner rather than later, actually. She fully expects it; and she's not hyperbolic. He's mentally ill. He's hugely successful in his job but deeply depressed and occasionally psychotic. He will not take his medications and has been hospitalized this last year. Every day's the same for him: he goes to work; is productive for his company; comes home to his just-as-depressed wife and their two young girls; and goes into an immobile, stubborn state of misery that is unendurable. Sooner or later.

Evolve If You Don't Like It

As I exit the shower, after a day of burning brush in the snow, I detect even without my glasses motion on the floor of the bathroom. A little leg waves like a pompom. Another western coniferous seedbug has found its way inside from the sills. These large, slow-stepping, kite-shaped insects emit a vinegar odor when alarmed. I've learned many ploys to be un-alarming. I talk to them, for instance. Reasonably.

But I am the larger life form. And only a part-time Buddhist, with ready access to toilet paper and a monumentally efficient flusher. I've stopped counting how many have regretted my comforting pinch. I've dispatched hundreds. You, insect, smell. You, insect, poop. I once drank your nectar in my coffee; thank you for the nice surprise. You want to survive indoors? Evolve a more pleasant je ne sais quoi.

Neologism, Incoming

Call it a "trendency." A trend and a tendency. Now use it in a sentence or two. Not written, either. Conversational. "There's a trendency I can't stand, I am perfectly comfortable saying! No offense." I ask you, silent commentators: Does the English language have a new word to love? To like? To toe away under the carpet?

How I Personally Proved the Theory of Displacement

Martini
Five large olives

Happy Valley Day

Writers: You Understand