There’s a sort of emotional relief in a nasty flu. Somewhere amid all the throbbing, hacking, sweating and occasionally wishing for death (or, at least, forced hibernation), you realize that you’ve finally reached a deep quiet. The germs pillaging your healthy cells have shut down the unnecessary sections of your brain, the ones that run [...]

Many thanks to the informed and erudite readers who sent me this article, providing the juice for this piece on Eat The Press. Keep it up, oh knowledgeable tipsters, and I promise to keep smearing on the flattery.

The following was sent to me by a reader in Australia. It’s a set of exerpts from a “reflective journal” he and his fellow associates were required to keep during their first few months as newly-crowned lawyers (you have to love these perky HR schemes meant to “encourage reflection on the learning derived from your [...]

Boyfriend and I consider ourselves reasonably intelligent when it comes to language (”reasonably” being a term packed with wiggle room). Combined, we’ve solved Sunday crosswords, aced AP English, won eighth grade spelling bees and written college papers on Nietzsche’s influence on modern literary theorists. Over the course of two beers and a sandwich, he [...]

I’m home for the holidays and it’s Christmas Eve day, meaning time for the obligatory sojourn to visit our grandmother in the “assisted living facility” (”It’s not a nursing home!” she growls, as if the words denote a maximum security prison). Reaching the entrance, a stately awning that looks just like every other seasoned apartment [...]

I wrote this for Eat The Press a while ago, in the center of the gaping vortex that swallows all time and energy around Christmas and New Years, so I figured I’d resurrect it after the madness had passed. The contrast between the tone and angle of the two Times articles is pretty jarring. On [...]

Thanks to several readers for sending me this article in today’s New York Post. Yup, more and more of us over-educated astronomically-paid chattel are fleeing midtown highrises en masse, in a desperate exodus to just about anywhere that isn’t a fluorescent-lit cubicle. The sad part of it all is that the hordes of slavering [...]