What brought us together was a love of nature, or, more specifically, of catching things and unintentionally killing them.

It’s safe to assume that by 2085 guns will be sold in vending machines but you won’t be able to smoke anywhere in America.

overed”?

The landscape is best described as ‘pedestrian hostile.’ It’s pointless to try to take a walk, so I generally just stay in the room and think about shooting myself in the head.

Look at yourself on the day that you graduated from college, then look at yourself today. I did that recently and it was like, ‘Yikes! What the hell happened?

It’s from Scandinavia!” This, we learned, was the name of a region, a cold and forsaken place where people stayed indoors and plotted the death of knobs.

Why refer to Lady Crack Pipe or Good Sir Dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied.

but I have no mind for business and considered staying awake to be enough of an accomplishment.

It’s a common mistake for vacationing Americans to assume that everyone around them is French and therefore speaks no English whatsoever. […] An experienced traveler could have told by looking at my shoes that I...

It’s astonishing the amount of time that certain straight people devote to gay sex – trying to determine what goes where and how often. They can’t imagine any system outside their own, and seem obsessed...

If you aren’t cute, you may as well be clever.

Certain motherfuckers think they can fuck with my shit, but you can’t kill the Rooster. You might can fuck him up some times, but, bitch, nobody kills the motherfucking Rooster. You know what I’m saying?

My first semester I had only nine students. Hoping they might view me as professional and well prepared, I arrived bearing name tags fashioned in the shape of maple leaves.

Cover your glass in France or Germany –even worse, in England – and in the voice of someone who has personally affronted, your host will ask why you’re not drinking. ‘Oh, I just don’t feel...

I hate you’ she said to me one afternoon. ‘I really, really hate you.’ Call me sensitive, but I couldn’t help but take it personally.

The word phobic has its place when properly used, but lately it’s been declawed by the pompous insistence that most animosity is based upon fear rather than loathing…. I hate computers. My hatred is entrenched,...

The woman spoke with a heavy western North Carolina accent, which I used to discredit her authority. Here was a person for whom the word ‘pen’ had two syllables. He people undoubtedly drank from clay...

On Undecided Voter?s: “To put them in perspective, I think? of being? on an airplane.? The flight attendant comes? down the aisle? with her food cart and, eventually,? parks? it beside my seat.? Can I...

Or would​ you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broke​n glass​ in it?”To be undecided in this elect​ion is to pause​ for a moment and then ask how the chick​en is cooked.

stressed out”.

The walking tour guides one through the city’s various landmarks, reciting bits of information the listener might find enlightening. I learned, for example, that in the late 1500s my little neighborhood square was a popular...

passing out,” a phrase that carries a distinct hint of judgment.

For as long as I can remember, my father saved. He saves money, he saves disfigured sticks that resemble disfigured celebrities, and most of all, he saves food. Cherry tomatoes, sausage biscuits, the olives plucked...

The way I saw it, if my students were willing to pretend I was a teacher, the least I could do was return the favor and pretend that they were writers.

He’s as nutty as a vegan T-bone.

The trouble with aggressive nonsmokers is that they feel they are doing you a favor by not allowing you to smoke. They seem to think that one day you’ll look back and thank them for...

The houses looked like something a child might draw, a row of shaky squares with triangles on top. Add a door, add two windows. Think of putting a tree in the front yard, and then...

If you’re looking for sympathy you’ll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.

I haven’t got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.

It was one of those situations I often find myself in while traveling. Something’s said by a stranger I’ve been randomly thrown into contact with, and I want to say, “Listen. I’m with you on...

I asked her, dreamily, if we had met, and when she told me that we had not, I gave her a little finger wave, the type a leprechaun might offer a pixie who was floating...

Though we were forbidden to speak anything but French, the teacher would occasionally use us to practice any of her five fluent languages.”I hate you,” she said to me one afternoon. Her English was flawless....

At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself that if I failed, at least I took a few...

My mother was, for the most part, delighted with my brother and regarded him with the bemused curiosity of a brood hen discovering she has hatched a completely different species. ‘I think it was very...

It bothered me that the bag bothered me more than head did, but what are you going to do? A person doesn’t conciously choose what he focuses on. Those things choose you, and, once they...

Hugh consoled me, saying, “Don’t let it get to you. There are plenty of things you’re good at.”When asked for some examples, he listed vacuuming and naming stuffed animals. He says he can probably come...

The rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate.

Every gathering has its moment. As an adult, I distract myself by trying to identify it, dreading the inevitable downswing that is sure to follow. The guests will repeat themselves one too many times, or...

I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity.

‘¦ [I] recall thinking that the computer would never advance much further than this. Call me na ”,ve, but I seemed to have underestimated the universal desire to sit in a hard plastic chair and...

After a few months in my parents’ basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of these things are dangerous, but in combination...

between the disfigurement and the muzzle, it’s nearly impossible to catch what she’s saying. Always, though, while tripping and stumbling to the music, she looks out into her audience and tells the story about her...

There was my life before I told a strange woman in a negligee that I was a homosexual, and now there would be my life after, two chapters so dissimilar in style and content that...

I’m the most important person in the lives of almost everyone I know and a good number of the people I’ve never even met.

I’ve often lost faith in myself, I’ve never lost it in my family

I love things made out of animals. It’s just so funny to think of someone saying, “I need a letter opener. I guess I’ll have to kill a deer.

I like the trail that the Internet created. For example, I was watching one of those Douglas Sirk movies, and I noticed that Rock Hudson towered over everyone, and I typed in “How tall was”...

Owl love you forever

In Japanese and Italian, the response to [“How are you?”] is “I’m fine, and you?” In German it’s answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by “Not so good.

My conscience is crosswired with my sweat glands, but there’s a short in the system and I break out over things I didn’t do, which only makes me look more suspect.