The LinkedIn Post About Failure and the Job I Left Out of It There is a genre of LinkedIn post that begins with a confession and ends with a promotion. The confession is always specific enough to feel brave and vague enough to be safe: I was let go. I was burned out. I made […]
Category: Blog
The Cat at the Door: What a Doorbell Notification Actually Says About Us
There is motion at your front door. The words arrive in a white rounded banner, bell icon first, the way a phone would say it. Below the banner, inside a circular frame tinted the green of a cheap night-vision feed, an orange tabby has pressed its face almost against the lens. The eyes are wide. […]
The Silly Goose Mugshot and the Fantasy of Being Booked for Joy
There is a white bird in an orange jumpsuit. It holds a black mugshot board. Above its head, in letters that look like they were stenciled by a sheriff with a sense of humor, are the words GOT TOO SILLY. The bird does not look sorry. That is the first thing I notice. The second […]
The 1000 Pound Club Shirt and the Membership You Can’t Return
The shirt says 1000 in letters tall enough to read from across a parking lot. Underneath, in a lighter weight, POUND CLUB, and beside or behind it a weightlifting graphic, pale against the dark fabric. That is the whole design. No asterisk, no fine print, no date of induction. Just a number and a noun, […]
The Slow-Living Videos I Watch at Two Times Speed
The exhibit It is 9:47 on a Tuesday night. The laundry is in the dryer, which means it is technically done, which means it has been done for two days and is now a warm wrinkled brick I will re-fluff at 11:15 and then ignore again. The rent check is on the counter where I […]
The ‘Meh’ Shirt and the Small Rebellion of Not Having a Take
Editorial note: This publication and Quirky Cotton Collective share an owner. There is a period at the end of the word. That is the first thing I notice about the shirt. Not an exclamation point, not a question mark, not a winking emoji or a little shrug rendered in punctuation. Just meh. — lowercase, bold, […]
The ‘Meh’ Shirt and the Tyranny of Having an Opinion
The shirt is almost aggressively unremarkable. On a dark background, centered, in very small lowercase letters, it says: meh. With a period. No animal. No rainbow. No ironic wolf. Just the word, the period, and a lot of dark fabric around it. The period is doing more work than the word. The word shrugs; the […]