Summer is supposed to be the best. Unlike winter, which is aggressively mad at you, summer thinks you’re great — it’s always down for a good time and loves hanging out with you. So when you’re depressed in the summer — because it’s summer — it’s particularly unbearable....
“Welcome to the Den of Horrors.” Leslie Knope, the go-getting super-administrator in the peppy sitcom Parks and Recreation is telling it like it is to a group of costumed children at the Parks Department Halloween party. “Where’s all the scary stuff?” asks one of the kids, perplexed. “The scary...
For 54 straight days, Colin O’Brady lived as an ascetic on the icy, impossibly white desert known as Antarctica. The endless, 24-hour sun blurred the edges of time, giving him a Sisiphean backdrop as he arose, trudged for 12 hours and then sat huddled in a tent,...
“I was working in a San Francisco office building, and the news came on saying that the government was rounding up old people and killing them,” says Jackson, 26. “The government was saying that they were taking up essential resources and were going to die anyway. This...
“I hate cooking,” exclaims Michael, 27. When California, his state of residence, enacted a stay-at-home order in response to the spreading coronavirus, he frantically stockpiled frozen dinners. “I usually get food at work on weekdays,” he explains. “We have a fully stocked kitchen, catering or a $15 work expense for lunches....
As I’m writing this, I’ve been in self-quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic for a few weeks. I am, of course, worried about getting the virus. Or maybe more so about it being dormant inside of me and passing it to someone else. But as I spend more...
Eric “Mean” Melin, Air Guitar World Champion, has been strumming make-believe strings for as long as he can remember. His earliest memory is set at a small family home in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, where he and his cousins donned KISS masks that they made with crayons and paper, assembled...
Occasionally, doing research for articles leads me to question some of my core beliefs. For example, I thought it was normal to use the same towel for days on end, and just the other day I learned my showering habits were all wrong. What else am I doing wrong?...
Because I’m not a parent, my general policy on parenting-related topics is that my opinion is worthless and that everything is probably a lot more challenging than it looks. I do have a seven-year-old niece who I wish was my child (if my sister is reading this: watch...
Imagine, if you will, that Jesus Christ returned to Earth and found himself in the same exact ethical conundrum as millions of Lent-practicing Americans will experience over the next few weeks: Is it okay to eat veggie burgers? Or should the Son of God hop on a...
One of my favorite peeing-in-a-closet stories — and I’ve heard a lot, for journalistic research and because I went to college — doesn’t involve any pee at all. In the spring of 2004, a woman named Erica (she requested I withhold her last name) took her friend...
Obviously, nobody likes being rejected. But are women better equipped to deal with it than men? Or more to the point, are men even able to admit that they’re being rejected, or do they think women are just a boombox serenade away from returning to them? According...
