I’m sleepy and anxious and thankful and confused. A few weeks ago, owing to mounting exhaustion and general malaise, I terminated the gaming column I’ve written for years in my local paper. It was sort of a shitty thing, always prepared in the early morning hours the day it was due, but material from that column supplied the bulk of my contribution to...

Wow. In this episode’s action items segment, Gann and I manage to complain about ourselves, our friends, our co-workers and our family for the better part of an hour. The interpersonal noise is some bleak and draining stuff, and it might be enough to turn you off for good, but we eventually do get on to the business of video games. Prepare for gushing about...

My roommate lives in a dull, colorless universe, and I’m making it my problem. No, let’s not talk about my roommate. But really, let’s. He’s as devout a videogame enthusiast as I am — hour for hour, he probably plays more than I do — and he’s been my best friend for 15 years. I saved his life once (short story: narrowly averted aquatic disaster), which...

(I’m writing these words as the regrets strike me; please pardon whatever form they take.) I work Tuesdays through Saturdays, but most of employed America works Mondays through Fridays. Consequently, no one gives a shit about Mondays, and neither do I, save for the fact that people’s expectations of me are even lower than they are later in the week. Today, a...

When I was a junior in college, one of my journalism professors organized an entire lesson plan around the Pulitzer Board’s decision in 2004 to award no prize for feature writing. The submissions that year were so derivative and so dull, she said, that the Pulitzer people, rather than honor the best of a mediocre crop of stories, chose to make a statement about the...