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If it weren't for all the blurred vision and buzzing ears and whatnot I'm sure John Sampilgremson would have appreciated the irony to a much greater extent. Being a bit up a tree in the metaphysical sense and at the same time being at least partially on a tree in the he'll-be-needing-a-tow-very-shortly sense and all. I'll give you the proverbial heads up that this tale is headed nowhere good and if you're of questionable mental constitution or just plain having a bad day you might want to give this one a miss. It would be misleading to state that this adventure started off innocently enough because at the root of it all the innocent part isn't quite as innocent as the word innocent would lead you to believe. Tricky word innocent. It started off with John driving down a road at high speed bellowing a song. Not any song mind you but a song seemingly designed for bringing Johns...

(The scene: August of 2004 in a boardroom somewhere in Cincinnati) Fred Wilson shifted uncomfortably in his chair. That innocent-looking vine he had so cavalierly pulled out of his zucchini patch recently had indeed turned out to be the poison ivy his wife had warned him about seeing lurking in his vegetable garden and now he had raised red welts covering his arms, stomach and left thigh. It was his thigh that held his full attention now as he tried to nonchalantly claw at it through the Comme Des Garcons pants he was wearing. Outside observers would mistake his endless shifting and adjusting as nothing more than nerves… the same fidgeting movements that those observers would recognize among almost every man and woman seated at the enormous conference table on this hot August afternoon in Cincinnati. It was not a good day to be seated at a conference table at the offices of Gillette. Rumor had it that Schick...

I would start this by saying "there once was a girl" but the truth is although there once was, in the sense that she did previously exist, she also exists now so it would be more accurate to say that "there is this girl". Although that doesn't sound much like the beginning of any fable I ever heard. Sounds like something you'd casually say to a friend when describing some completely mundane girl followed by a crushingly normal story. Whatever. There once was and continues to be this girl. You could never tell by looking at her but she not only has a fear of fire (arsonphobia) but also has a touch of pyromania, not so much the setting of fires but she is fixated on finding and extinguishing them. She also has a fear of pyromaniacs. And a deep distrust of firemen in general. I hope I didn't forget anything there. If you are unsure exactly where this mix of fears...

If you look at the history of dwarfs in literature and folklore you'll see what began in Germanic mythology as hearty creatures that dwelled in mountains and were associated with mining has continued to this day with them being portrayed as a rugged, strong and willful race. Nowhere in any mythos have I seen them depicted as big-headed, gnarly-handed, bowed legged humanoids who can't run for more than 2 feet before they either fall over or have everyone wondering when the fuck they are going to fall over. Why do I bring this up? Well it appears that The Little People of America, a non-profit group that apparently isn't satisfied by the fact that we no longer hurl baby midgets off cliffs as soon as we see they aren't going to end up taller than 3 foot tall, are upset because the movie Snow White and the Huntsman decided to use normal-sized actors to play dwarfs instead of 'little...

I hate funerals and what I hate more is when it's somebody I'm close to and what I hate even more than that is when I'm asked to say a few words during the proceedings when I'm not prepared. On the drive over I'd been thinking about something so I tried to work it into my opening remarks but I couldn't figure out a good metaphor for the fact that drinking milk is good for your teeth because of the calcium but if you drink a glass before going to bed without brushing your teeth it is very bad for your teeth because of the acidic pH. I know there is a milk life lesson buried in there somewhere but for the life of me I couldn't come up with it. Clearly this was not the eulogy people were expecting and it got even less eulogyish when I mentioned that I thought Sean Penn is only thought of as a...

So earlier tonight I'm hurrying around doing all the things that need to get done before a big storm, the last of which is to run the recyclables out to the garbage can. It had to get done because dark clouds sat on the horizon like a fat girl coming out of a donut shop (what?) and all the local weather stations had pretty much put the chance of precipitation at 108%. As I hurled my empties into the can my eye couldn't help but be drawn to a spider. Not just any spider but a great whopping argiope aurantia better known as the Golden Garden Spider and one of three local species of argiope orb weavers. As I watched I realized he was just starting the tedious task of building his web for the night. The ol' spinneret was cranking out proteinaceous silk like nobodies business and those 8 arms were feverishly at work putting up the insect-catching structure....

Both scientists and philosophers have wondered how the universe will end. Will it be a bang or a whimper? Fire or ice? Expanding forever or a big crunch? It would of great interest to both parties to know that the answer to that very question would soon be decided by Doug Casseber, a 17 year old living near Phoenix, Arizona. It all started when Doug was 11 and developed an interest in astronomy. Doug was not a normal 11 year old, he was a very gifted student and his attention to detail was savant-like. When he was 12 he decided to put the night sky on the ceiling of his room. Unlike most stoners who had a similar idea and went out and bought a few Day-Glo stickers to throw up over their bed he divided his ceiling into hundreds of quadrants and then painstakingly recreated the visible night sky in each, capturing every perceptible star within 100 million miles...