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One in a Million

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When I was a kid, maybe eight years old, a case of Diet Pepsi showed up on our front door unannounced.

To many, this might not seem like a memorable moment. But we were a Coke family in a Coke city—a city where “Coke” was the generic term, instead of soda or pop. My mom didn’t drink coffee in the morning, she drank Diet Coke. And she kept drinking Diet Coke through the day, until evening fell, when she’d switch to Caffeine-Free Diet Coke.

Diet Pepsi on our doorstep? How did that get there? Continue reading

The Mile-Sigh Club

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As I type these words, I’m thirty-thousand-something miles aloft in the air, somewhere over middle America, en route to Florida for a family gathering that I suspect will confirm one of my long-held theories about my family’s dynamics. (That will be a different post, if it’s a post at all.)

But the point is, unless there’s a remarkable coincidence going on in this metal tube in which I’m currently constrained—and I wouldn’t consider it impossible by any means—I am a thousand miles and counting from anyone I’ve dated for the first time in months.

My friends—or, honestly, anyone who’s a) ever resided in Seattle and b) had more than three conversations with me—have all heard plenty about my Extras Theory, which states that there are only 200 actual people in Seattle, and everyone else is background noise. The story behind its genesis is long-winded and nearly seven years old; the most recent evidence for it isn’t even a week old. Continue reading

Her Eyes Were Just Blue, Okay?

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Three things I’ve known to be true for a long time now:

  1. The Postal Service’s “We Will Become Silhouettes” is a much different song if you assume the phrase “pictures of you” in the first verse refers to the classic Cure song instead of actual photographs.
  2. Blake Sennett’s guitar solo in Rilo Kiley’s “The Execution of All Things” encapsulates the post-breakup he-said/she-said dynamic better than most lyrics about that subject.
  3. Any popular work of art will be misinterpreted as much as, if not more than, it’s properly interpreted.

All three of these things came up yesterday, and all three are manifestations of the same problem. Continue reading

Resolutions and Reasons

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“What’s your resolution?” she asked.

“To not make any stupid resolutions I’m going to break in a week,” I answered. Everyone at the party agreed it was the best resolution anyone there had offered.

That was moments into 2004; seven years later, I offered the same reply to the same question, because it’s pretty much the correct one. (This is not unlike how I tend to answer questions that start with “Why” which I don’t want to answer with “Reasons.”)

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