Who wants normal? Not me

I’m starting to grieve the idea of going back to normal. Not that I think ‘normal’—meaning the way things were—is achievable, ever again. We won’t come out of this and return to what we had, ever. But some things will return, for sure. Some I’m happy about. Others I’m not looking forward to at all. …

FML17: A person in all but name

I need to know the identity of FML17. Not for any particular reason. He’s nothing to me. Not now anyway. He’s dead. Died on Friday, after falling from his bunk bed. Who does that? Falls from a bunk bed and dies? My daughter fell from a bunk bed once. We were watching a movie in …

When God took Job’s teeth: Tommy Tiernan tells a Bible story

No one — NO ONE — tells Bible stories like Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan. That he tells Bible stories at all says something. Something about his Catholic upbringing, perhaps, and definitely something about where his faith is now. As he said in a recent interview on Irish television, ‘It feels to me that we're born with an …

We are not like this: No?

I apologise beforehand for any offence. This is just rage.   I gotta be honest though, I hate the fucking Facebook profile sticker that says, This is not who we are. Sure, we’re not America, we don’t do this every day, it’s not a pastime or a sport or a way to fill the news …

Assisted suicide: a Valentine’s Day poem about love

  No need to load the bullet Or knot the rope I’m gone already If I found knowing, then what is this? What ignorance, tormented If I found life, then what is this? What else did I find? The room and the keys A vision of what will, what could Be But everyone sang In …

Rick Wilson: Never short of a word or two

There's an entire journalistic enterprise these days trying to tell people who don't sit in trailers all day watching reality television whilst shoveling down corn syrup-and-soy-based salty-sweet Walmart-brand bacon-cheese snax into their maws about how the Other America is the Only Real America. —Rick Wilson, Everything Trump Touches Dies