Three Bees who buzz around my brain. Beckett, Barthelme, Bukowski I like to think that literary fiction and physics share at least one common characteristic. That what Richard Feynman said about quantum mechanics; “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t.” That this also applies to literary fiction. Which, at its best, is the study of life and human…

Four nights with the strippers of Reno. — Exhaustion is a key word here. Something you probably didn’t know: your average stripper works (as a stripper) about seven times a month. If you find that confusing, monetarily, why not work more to make more money? Exhaustion has everything to do with it. …

Christopher Hitchens Why Women Still Aren’t Funny — YouTube I start writing articles in my head before I write them. I’m sure this is exceedingly normal. As such, when I first started writing, I imagined needing a type of disclaimer about why I think women are actually funny. But upon…

Trying to describe to an acquaintance why they would enjoy How To is a difficult task. It’s from the viewpoint of a guy who goes around shooting random odd footage in NYC. It is then stitched together, with the help of a few other writers doing the obviously sweaty…

(Aka, if Dan Savage was a biological philosopher.) — To write something this filthy takes some getting used to. It’s difficult to imagine other people’s responses. The idea is not titillating. Not imaginative, not really. Yes it makes you think about sex … and there’s something vaguely sexy about crossing that threshold in your brain. Lots of people like…

I’m going to try to keep this short and simple. The other day I heard that there is such a thing as aphantasia. The inability to imagine. I had always presumed that everyone had some capacity to imagine, but apparently this is not true. The source from which I heard…

and it makes me kind of sad — But the good kind of sad. Like a resigned sigh. Well, that’s just reality. I prefer reality because I’m lazy. Constantly managing my own delusions seems like too much work. Though I know there are still misconceptions bumping around in the noggin. Like the one I had about the possibility…

The worst impulse of every writer is to want to become a lawyer. I succumb to it too often. Pitching truth against delusion. Having feverish conversations in my head about the upward slope of human progress. What happens when we reach the peak? That’s the question hopefully avoided by circumventing…

On the farmer poet Matthew Bowman — On Saturday mornings in Old Town Pocatello you can stop and get a fresh loaf of artisan bread and regional organic produce that’s as good as anywhere in the US (if they haven’t sold out). Pocatello might not have a lot of other “big city” accoutrements going for it, but…