Writings

Well. This is supposed to be the centerpiece of the site, though I haven't gotten much written yet. I'll keep at it. Most of these were written several years ago, and I've only recently gotten back to writing new material, but the old stuff that didn't hold up at all I removed entirely. I want to point out that many of these pages do not have links off of them. This shouldn't be a problem; most people know how to operate the Back button on their browser. But, I'm warning you anyway, just in case. So, what have I got for you? Well, take a look.

Non-Fiction, Rants, and Commentaries
Fiction, Fantasy, and Other Assorted Lies
Poetry and Other Things That Didn't Seem To Fit The Other Two Categories

An Apology For Nancy
A small companion piece to The Scars Of High School, about an incident that has bothered me since the day it happened, over half my life ago.

The Scars Of High School
Most everyone I've ever talked to describes high school as a miserable experience in their lives. I feel much the same, and this explains why, and talks about who was primarily responsible, and how the damage done at that age continues to affect us long after high school ends.

An Open Letter To The Trapped Massey Energy Miners
At the time I wrote this, there was hope the miners trapped were still alive. Though it wasn't intentional, most of this would fit in well on The Onion.

The Last Two Survivors
Sometimes I think I read too much into things, but an encounter that lasted less than a minutes stuck with me for days, and finally it led to this.

Why I Hate The Yankees
The Yankees are evil. Just stating that kind of lacks power, however, so I set about trying to explain why they're evil. What I ended up with was a history of my life as a baseball fan, set against the 2004 postseason. It paints a pretty clear picture of why I feel the way I do, and why a lot of other people feel the same way. Also it makes clear that the Yankees are evil.

Customer Service Tips
I've worked customer service for longer than I'm proud of, and in that time I've learned a few things about how the system works and what does and doesn't work when the customer contacts the company. I put this together as a basic primer that I hope is entertaining and informative without getting me fired should my bosses ever see it.

Rocker and Racism
Just before the year 2000 started, Atlanta Braves relief pitcher John Rocker, in an interview with a Sports Illustrated reporter, made a series of homophobic, racist, and similarly offensive comments. This has resulted in a firestorm with him at the center, but has the reaction been any better than what sparked it in the first place?

The Post-Game "Celebration"
College students love college football. They love their college's team. And they love to celebrate when the college's team wins a big game. After one such win, I decided to join the mob to see first-hand what exactly this celebration entails. All I'm gonna say here is, it wasn't pretty.

The Less Obvious Tragedies At Columbine High School
I'm sure most of us know about the deaths of fifteen people in a suicide attack on Columbine High School in Colorado (and despite my initial belief, this one is still remembered; must be the combination of the suicides and the live TV coverage). Most of us have our thoughts on the matter; here are mine, which seem to be a bit less common than those I'm hearing through news agencies.

Thoughts About STRAIGHT
About two years ago, a "pro-heterosexuality" group was accepted as an official Penn State organization amidst a firestorm of controversy. I wrote this the day I read that the organization was to disband at the end of the semester.

Billy Joel, In Concert
On November 1, 1998, I attended a concert for the first time. This is the story. It will probably not be made into any sort of Made-For-TV Docudrama anytime soon, so this is the only place you're going to be able to hear about it.

The Eye Injury
Okay, so this might not seem real interesting to you. But, it was the worst I've been hurt since I had a broken arm back in seventh grade, and I decided to write a little about it. At least I have a sense of humor about it. (Really, it's humor, not petulant whining, I swear.)

The Meteo 421 Exam
This is about an incident that I consider a great example of the sort of thing that gives education a bad name. Remember, knowledge of the material and ability to get the answers isn't important; you just need to pass the exams.

The Baseball Essay
I wrote this about the end of the 1997 baseball season, minutes after the regular season ended, and posted it in a few places. Thanks to Patrick Furlong, who sent me the copy archived in the Gotham News, since I lost my copy. Whoops.

The Debate Page
This rather peculiar set of pages chronicles a discussion me and Nightwing—or "Nightwing and I" for those of you out there picky about correct grammar (Hi, Mom!)—had about accountability for one's own words.

Things I Find Offensive
Go on, guess what this page is about. I dare you. Seriously, if you can't figure it out on your own, then quite frankly there is something wrong with you. I sincerely mean that.

A Eulogy For Andrew
After writing Suburban Palladium (see below), I decided to write about the same issue, only this time play it seriously instead of for laughs. It turned out to be one of the longest stories I've ever written, but also one of the best.

Role Reversal
There was a contest on a website in which people wrote stories on themes and then visitors to the site got to vote on the best story, with all but the lowest vote-getter moving on to the next round. The contest was done in by idiots who spend all their time bitching about everything, but I was inspired to write a story on one of the themes, "Deals With The Devil." I went way over the word count the contest called for, but I wasn't part of the contest, so I don't care.

A Shot In The Dark
Hey, what do you know? I can even write a story about normal people in normal situations dealing with normal feelings, as opposed to stuff that makes people I know wonder just what the hell's wrong with me. I'll even tell you the lesson up front: Sometimes, you just have to be honest with people, especially yourself.

Any Port In A Storm
The second of two stories about forming relationships that has a cliche as a title because I couldn't come up with anything more original or relevant. It's not as hopeful as the other one, but it's one of the few things I've ever written with no clue at any point where the next paragraph would lead where I was happy with the end result.

Suburban Palladium
This is a typically bizarre story about an ordinary guy in an ordinary family who gets some lessons in home safety from a fairly unreliable source. The two people I showed it to before it ended up here each independently compared it to a vicious episode of The Simpsons, which I take as high praise. To date, this is one of my favorite efforts on the fiction front. And yes, the title is intentionally pretentious.

The CARD GAME Page
This page contains my world-famous post to the Gotham News about the most memorable night in the history of the Gotham Gossip.

Zippy Whizzle
These next two are a bit... odd. Back in eleventh grade, which seems a lot farther back than it really is (was?), I took a class in journalism that I didn't take real seriously, for reasons that would be obvious if you had been in the class. ("BURRRRRKE!" Heh. Long story.) But anyhoo, in the space of two weeks, we were assigned to write both a short story and a children's story. What this has to do with journalism is completely beyond me, but those were the assignments, so I had to do them. This is the children's story. And not to toot my own horn, but I definitely deserve several Nobel Prizes for coming up with such a wonderful name for a children's story chipmunk as Zippy Whizzle.

The Assassination Attempt
This is the short story. It's about an attempted Presidential assassination. I got a 95% on both of these stories. My guess is, the teacher had no idea what the hell I was trying to accomplish with the stories (which would be only fair since I didn't, either) so she just gave me a good grade to avoid an argument. These two may be fairly incomprehensible to you—it would be only fitting, since they don't make a great deal of sense to me, either—but hopefully you can appriciate them for their sheer goofiness.

Precipice
Now comes a rather serious short story (yes, I am capable of writing serious short stories, despite what those last two links may have you believe) called that I wrote over a year ago. It's probably the best writing I've ever done. Sometimes the best things come spontaneously. And I personally like the fact that the word "precipice" appears nowhere within the story. (I gotta say, though, that looking at it now, some years after I wrote it, I feel it clearly needs to go through another draft or two.)

A Poem To Be Forgotten
I wrote this for a class in seventh grade. (Yes, seventh grade.) That's all I have to say about this one. (Not much in this category so far. And people have the nerve to say that Micellaneous is always the largest category.)