How about keeping scripted telephone greetings to about a 15 syllable maximum? Nine times out of ten when calling a business you have a very specific request that could most likely be taken care of in a 10 second phone call, but you have to sit through a 30 second combination greeting/sales pitch. You: *Calls [...]

I’m just about finished up with Richard Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker, a book that explains how the various dead ends and fuckups along evolution’s path reveal how design-less the universe really is. But I had to take a quick break when I learned, in a short digression of his, about a mutation that is possible [...]

So aside from shooting photos at the Church of Scientology protest, this weekend the excitement whale breached the surface of my ocean of existence, which in this analogy has been covered by a thick layer of ice representing the boredom of tagging MP3s and trying to find the worst-sounding chord on guitar. Unfortunately, the surface [...]

There’s a column in one of Portland’s many alternative publications, The Mercury, into which anonymous people can send rants and raves. Sometimes the column is entertaining — most often it is not. I like to think I’m a fairly competent bitcher. A good rant strikes a balance between effectively driving a relevant point home with [...]

Coffee Shop Girl: So who are you rooting for today? Me: ??? You mean on Tuesday? Coffee Shop Girl: …the Superbowl. Me: Ohhhhh… I forgot that was coming up. Haha, honestly wasn’t trying to be smug; I seriously thought she was talking about the primaries, not football. How un-American of me. Anybody that knows me [...]

Though unlikely, if you can get your hands on Almaza, do so. It’s a pilsener, a bit like Heineken*, from Lebanon that I can ONLY find at this Lebanese restaurant downtown. It’s the best goddamn beer I’ve ever had, and if I have to take out a loan to start a distribution company so I [...]