February minutiae
This 28-day month thing really needs to change. If I were February, I would insist the short-month responsibility work on some rotational basis in which the short month got passed around. June gets awfully...
Author: Brad Willis
How Otis got his T-Pain back
The weird part isn’t that I have a friend named F-Train. The weird part is that he and I were both sober and having a semi-intelligent conversation about the vagaries of home ownership, professional...
Racing the flight attendants
You remember the movie “Outbreak.” And surely you remember Patrick Dempsey’s role as the hapless slacker who jacks a monkey from some port warehouse. And you certainly cannot forget his performance as “sick dude...
The man who gave me King Cake
Knowing what a King Cake is makes me feel special, even though it’s only special in the way that anyone who has ever been to Mardi Gras is part of the club. Nonetheless, knowing...
The Brett Favre of parenting
Guilt is a byproduct of selfishness. Guilt, that tightness around the heart and lump in the throat, reminds us that, but for satisfying our own wants and desires, we might not have overlooked something...
On pretense and population
The reason it’s so easy to remember that people largely suck and are more often than not idiots is because there are so many of them. This is as evident in Chinese smog as...
Thank you, Mr. Bin Laden. That will be $5.
Sometimes when I lie awake in bed, when the covers feel too hot, when I could use the loving touch of a diabolical revolutionary, I think of Osama Bin Laden. I like to picture...
It’s what we do
It’s chilly out–somewhere in the 40s–and we’re not wearing jackets. The Super Bowl will kick off in two hours.The boy and I stand across from each other and he screams, “Run!” And so I...
Continuing adventures in health care
I don’t answer the house phone. If you know me well enough to need me, if you have my cell phone number. Today, the house phone rang and listed the caller ID from an...
Responsibility, the internet’s condom
If you have the clap and somebody wants to get in your pants, whose job is it to tell that person that you have the clap? That’s the question I posed this morning as...
January analytics
I’ve found that quests for personal betterment are usually easy to derail with a little unconscious rationalization. A little concession here, a little laziness there. By the time August rolls around, it’s easy to...
I got yer infrastructure right here
Our flashlights have batteries. Our lantern has propane. My wife is presently picking up a few more essential items: nonperishables, water, and firewood. Somehow I forgot to put Maker’s on the list. This is...
Lost letters
I was cleaning up my laptop this week when I ran across something that bore my younger son’s name. I didn’t remember creating the document, and when I opened it up I didn’t recognize...
Picture your year
The problem with Shane getting back into blogging (and knocking off the rust much faster than any writer should be allowed) is that I am back to living inside my head a lot. One...