NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE-

A birthday is a miserable God-forsaken thing unless you are seven years old with red velvet cake and a Slip and Slide.

I turned seven once, with red velvet cake and a Slip and Slide and I told my mother I wanted nothing at the party but girls and I am sure she felt I would either grow up to be a flaming homosexual or a whoremonger.

My birthday came around, a lazy overcast day with lots of young ladies from school, Katie Collie with her hair in pigtails, Sherri Murphy and Hott Bridgette Brock, Rebecca Anne Denny and some of their girlfriends even and then some boy cousins and a few neighbor guys showed up and my mother let Donald Aspern, a completely loud and irritating boy who stood too close when he talked, cut the cake.

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COLUMBIA, MD -

The trip north from Maryland to upstate New York can take anywhere from six to nine hours…it all depends upon your final destination and how many horrible drivers you’re forced to share the road with.

I leave Columbia in the middle of a biblical flood on Friday morning, bright and early as the clock strikes 6:30, and I head north on the back way to the Adirondacks.

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COLUMBIA, MD -

It’s spring and the Earth is green and for the first time in what seems like forever I can feel it moving beneath my feet again.

We went from barren limbs, to blossoming branches, to glorious green canopies in only a few short weeks. I know this because my allergies have finally tapered off and I can breathe without worrying that my lungs are going to collapse from the weight of the pollen in the air.

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LOS ANGELES, CA-

On November 13th, 2005, in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, an electronics technician named Dale Airsman was attacked by his four-year-old llama named Charlie.

The first indication of potential danger came early that morning, when Mr. Airsman walked out onto his property and heard Charlie let out an unusual growl, which then evolved into a high-pitched squeal.

Charlie then spit, flattened his ears back, and bared his choppers, which included three sets of razor-sharp “fighting teeth,” which llamas use to rip the scrotum (more…)

*This post is by Greg Boose and Claire Bidwell Smith.

CHICAGO, IL and LOS ANGELES, CA -

GREG:

It’s common sense; it’s not just something you are told as a child and then realize is bullshit by the time you’re nineteen.

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THE DEEP SOUTH-

At the break in the cinder block wall there was a red dirt hill, tall as the pinewood balconies behind the apartments where my daddy lived.

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SAN DIEGO, CA-

On Friday morning, January 21, 2007, my friend Giavanna died.

Perhaps you can imagine how horrible I find that.

How incomprehensible.

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CHICAGO, IL-

The Federal Aviation Administration is not investigating a report that a group of United Airline employees swore they saw a UFO hovering over O’Hare Airport last fall, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Some of these employees were pilots, a fact that pleases me, and these pilots said that the object in question didn’t have any blinking lights (or tractor beams or little round windows with green monkey faces pressed up against them), but that this thing did hover in one spot over an airport terminal before shooting straight up through the clouds.

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SAN DIEGO, CA-

How’s that for a back-handed apology?

Maybe I could be a politician, after all.

So as you know, I went to Eastern Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving weekend.

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SEATTLE, WA-

In twelve days I will be thirty years old. 

If the current life-expectancy projections stand, and if I don’t do anything stupid that would end my life sooner, I should keep ticking for another 47 years. I suppose that’s not so bad considering all the things that could happen over the course of that time. I’m sure that I have many eventful days ahead of me. (more…)