Adam Ellis's Blog

Whenever either Kristin or I go on vacation, we play a game. There’s only one rule: no actual texting, only pictures. We have to get creative in how we communicate. Recently I went to Japan for two weeks. Here’s our correspondence:

 
And then one more, for good measure:

I recently set up an Instagram account to collect all the messages we send to each other. Give it a follow if you wanna see new stuff!

Shut up, everyone, shut up. Summer if over. Bye, summer. I hate you. I'm super pumped for autumn and here's why.

1. I get to layer again.



Fall is fantastic because I get to wear extra clothes and cover up that late-summer belly pooch I developed from too many swanky rooftop cocktail parties slurping vodka on Kristin's balcony while she suckles wine in her jammies and then tells me I need to leave at 10:45 PM because she has spinning in the morning.

Also, my weird tan lines will have a chance to fade in private.

2. Autumn means cozy midnight bonfires! ❤




Whether I'm stealin' kisses with my boo on the beach or summoning the devil to do my vile bidding, a crackling bonfire makes it a night to remember!

Also, I love it when you sit too close to a bonfire and your jeans start to get really hot to the point of being almost unbearable, but you stay there and weather the pain because how do you know if you're really alive unless tears are streaming down your face due to sizzling denim and melting flesh?

3.The slow decay of Mother Nature is lovely to behold.



Crunchy leaves sound so satisfying under my feet—the last vestigial cries of a a dying world. I'll sip my syrup-laden espresso drink, stare around me at the pallid sky and moribund treeline, and think, "This is so pinteresting." And then a homeless lady wrapped in a blanket will probably cough into my mouth.

4. Fall means Thanksgiving is close, which is great for one simple reason: turkey leftovers for WEEKS, BRUH. YAAAAAAASSSSSS.



I actually sort of hate Thanksgiving. I'll inevitably consume an entire casserole dish of that sweet potato/marshmallow nonsense and spend the next 24 hours in agony, but the weeks following Thanksgiving are bliss because there's always an endless supply of cold, juicy leftover turkey.

With any luck, I’ll have enough turkey to last me through the cold, lonely winter, which is crucial, since it might be the only flesh my lips will touch until spring, when the hotties crawl back out of the sewers to begin a new mating season.

5. By last winter the mere sight of pumpkin spice anything revolted me, but enough time has passed that pumpkin is new and exciting again.




(Side note: why exactly does everyone get fucking loony bin crazy for pumpkin spice every year, considering how little we eat real pumpkin? Has anyone ever eaten an actual pumpkin? Definitely not. Show me one person who ate a pumpkin and lived. Pumpkins are weird alien gourds and if lattes were made with real pumpkin, we’d all collectively vomit until dead.)




6. It gets dark earlier in the fall, which sounds like a bummer, but it's not. I can start drinking with purpose at, like, 4 PM. Gone are the days of feeling guilty for getting drunk in broad daylight like I did all summer.



Fun fact: daylight savings time was invented by drunk twenty-somethings who wanted an extra couple hours a day to get wrecked. Whatever you’ve heard about farmers needing more time to tend to crops is a lie.


7. Autumn is the best season for cooking shows. Our Lord and Savior Ina Garten will probably have entire episodes devoted to obscure squash.



Here are my predictions for the landscape of cooking shows this fall:

Martha Stewart will decorate her entire studio space with tiny pumpkins, probably with googly eyes hot glued to them. She'll wear a witch hat in at least one episode.

Giada De Laurentiis will somehow manage to pronounce the word noodle with an Italian accent.

Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson will rise from the dead to host a new show on BBC Two.

Paula Deen won’t do anything because she is dead to me.

8. No more reruns! All my favorite shows are returning, plus a plethora of new shows which will all be cancelled by November.



Most likely, I will get hopelessly attached to a Jenna Elfman vehicle that will be cancelled after 13 episodes. It’ll be replaced midseason with a CSI spin off, which will run for eleven years.

9. All the emotional Oscar bait movies come out in Fall. I’ll get super excited, but in the end I’ll only see the one starring Sandra Bullock.



By the time the Oscars roll around, I’ll lament that you’ve barely seen any of the nominated films, and yet somehow yI’ll still be able to accurately predict about 80% of the results. 90% if David O. Russell releases a movie with Jennifer Lawrence in it.

10. Autumn means early morning fog. I can pretend I'm in a Twilight novel! Or a Silent Hill game. Whichever.



Both are equally romantic.

Spooky music has been provided for your pleasure.


When I was five, I attended pre-kindergarten in a large, two-story Craftsman Colonial that had been converted into a school. The school had an ominous, vaguely totalitarian name—something like "The Children's Rectification Academy for Progress"—and I hated it there.

 
Everything about the school was suspect. The walls were painted a faded, sickly green color and the gray carpet was rolling up in the corners of what was once the living room. In lieu of playground equipment, the backyard was littered with giant wooden cable reels.


Lunchtime was an exercise in cruelty. Every Tuesday the students were served sauerkraut with cut-up hot dogs. On Halloween I was greeted by a wobbly piece of black jello cut into the shape of a bat. I remember once biting into a dense white slice of what I thought was an apple, only to discover it was a turnip. At that point in my life I'd never actually eaten a turnip or probably even seen one, but there I was, my mouth full of turnip chunks and feeling more betrayed than the time I found one of my baby teeth in my mom's purse and she explained, "Oh, the tooth fairy and I are friends."

Had I been a bolder child, I would've organized a protest.


Worst of all was that the school had a certain ominous pall that instilled an acute sense of dread in the pit of my stomach. The school itself was relegated to the house's first floor and consisted of several large open rooms, a single unisex bathroom, and a makeshift cafeteria in the kitchen. The second floor was a complete mystery, shrouded in darkness, and the source of my daily terror. A wide staircase stood in what used to be the living room, a million creaky steps leading up into utter blackness. The school's director was Ms. Pope, a dour woman with an endless supply of charcoal gray pencil skirts who reminded us every week the the second floor was off limits and that we'd be punished should we break that cardinal rule. I assumed "punished" meant something like "you'll be fed to the dragon that lives upstairs," so I made sure to obey.

Everyone knew there was something strange about the second floor. I'd seen Ms. Pope disappear upstairs on several occasions. Sometimes I'd hear a floorboard creak or water rushing down through pipes in the walls, and I'd concoct elaborate fantasies in my head to connect the dots. Every day when I'd pass the stairs, I couldn't help but stop and stare up, imagining what sinister secrets the darkness might hold.

 
In the Spring of 1990 there'd been a murder at the college campus my mom taught at, and seeing as that's not something parents really discuss with 5-year-olds, I'd only heard the story secondhand, mostly from other kids a few years older than me. Over time it had twisted and contorted into something absurd, like out of a horror movie. Of the half-dozen tales I'd heard, the rumor that seemed to have the most legs was how a serial killer was on the loose, having narrowly escaped police custody, and he just might be living upstairs.

 Personally, I had a more sinister theory. My grandmother let me watch horror movies whenever I'd visit her ranch, and one weekend she recorded Blood Diner on satellite for me. The movie's chief villain was an evil disembodied brain in a mason jar, so naturally I assumed that the second floor of my prekindergarten must also harbor similar evil.

In 
December, just before Christmas, I uncovered the truth.

It was after lunch and the 25-odd children who attended The Children's Rectification Academy for Progress were eager for recess. We were gathered in the foyer, wiggling into puffy snow pants and fumbling to zip up winter coats with mittens sewn to the sleeves. I'd barely managed to slide a single winter boot over my tiny foot when something terrible happened: I got the flu, right then and there. As sudden as a snowball in the face, the flu struck. That's the thing about the flu a lot of the time. It settles in unannounced and then eight hours later your body decides to quite literally explode. I kicked off my boot and switched into survival mode, making a quick beeline for the bathroom at the far end of the kitchen.

When I reached for the doorknob, it refused to turn. A small voice on the other side muttered, "Someone's in here," and my panic turned to straight up dread.

 
My stomach lurched and it took all my worldly power to keep down that day's lunch of blue box macaroni with SPAM chunks, a meal that certainly wasn't helping to calm my sudden onset nausea. I knew time was short and my options were limited. I couldn't wait for the bathroom's occupant to leave—I just didn't have time. I glanced toward the living room, my gaze fixating on that shadowy staircase, its countless steps seeming to multiply in front of me. My stomach lurched again, and my mind veered to the only remaining option: the upstairs bathroom. I knew there must to be one somewhere up there, and I knew I had to either brave the danger of the second floor, or let loose right there on the carpet. I scrambled down the hall through the empty living room, and without thinking I leapt up the stairs, taking them two at a time, little bits of vomit escaping the corner of my mouth as a hurtled skyward.

 
The second floor was dim and still and silent. Mercifully, there was a bathroom just off the landing, so I flung the door open and rocketed myself at the toilet. It's difficult to accurately describe the explosion I unleashed, but I imagine it would be similar to filling a balloon with Spaghettios and then popping it with a safety pin.

I finished, flushed, and kneeled on the floor, my ears ringing from the force of my expulsion. I felt immediately better, and for a minute I simply sat in the darkness, catching my breath. My breathing slowed to normal the the ringing in my ears faded, but the relief I felt was cut short when it dawned on me that I'd actually ventured into the forbidden zone.

I inhaled sharply, suddenly aware of my crime and utterly terrified. I was about to get up and scramble back downstairs when I heard a faint sound coming down the hall—a high pitched creaking, interspersed with another, more unfamiliar noise—something akin to air escaping a bicycle tire.

 
I was certain I was going to die. This was the end.

The odd creaking was coming closer, though I could hardly hear it at this point over the thumping of my own heart. I felt like barfing again, except this time out of fear. Ever so cautiously, I peered around the corner of the bathroom door, into the dim hallway.

 
I could see something, but the dark coupled with my crippling terror made it difficult to see exactly what. I could make out a curious silhouette, just several feet from me by now and coming closer, but before I could make sense of what it was, I burst into tears.

I sobbed, eyes shut tight, anticipating the worst—my head to get chopped off by an axe murderer or maybe to be engulfed by whatever beast had surely discovered me intruding on its lair. But nothing happened. My crying faded to a whimper, and I cautiously opened a single eye.

A wrinkled hand was outstretched toward me, a single chocolate mint hard candy resting innocently in its palm.

 
I opened my eyes fully and saw that the hand was attached to an old man in a wheelchair. A slender oxygen tank was affixed to the side of the chair, and a tube ran from the top of the tank up to the old man's face and under his nose. He was smiling, baring two rows of crooked teeth. I looked down at the candy he held, hesitating for a second, then plucked it out of his hand, unwrapped it, and popped it in my mouth.

"I thought you kids weren't supposed to be up here," the old man croaked. His voice was raspy and strained, but kind. "You don't want to make my daughter cranky." It took me a moment to realize he meant Ms. Pope. I had never really thought about adults being children themslves and having parents of their own. I shifted the candy in my mouth from one cheek to the other, eyeballing the old man, still not entirely trusting this whole situation. He winked at me and said, "You should run along before Sandra catches you."

Ms. Pope was at the bottom of the stairs when I returned, her arms folded. She looked at me pensively, but she didn't seem angry. For a moment I didn't say anything back to her, then simply uttered, "I'm sick. I need to go home."

 
I looked up my old school on Google Street View recently, and it doesn't look nearly as institutional as I remember. I scanned around back to where I used to play on cable reels, and while they're still there, they don't seem so dangerous as they used to. They actually look sort of fun, but that might just be my inner Etsy Girl talking. It made me think how much thinks are distorted when you're a kid. Everything is bigger, weirder, scarier.

And y'know, sauerkraut isn't actually that disgusting. I had it on a hot dog this summer and it was pretty good, all things considered. Plus, sauerkraut is loaded with dietary fiber and vitamin K, did you know that? Because I sure didn't.

I sat alone in my college amphitheater, poking at my fries. A crisp breeze rustled the branches overhead, just chilly enough to remind me that winter had only barely dissolved into spring. The blizzard of ‘05 was still fresh in my memory, and if I closed my eyes I could still imagine snow piled up around the trees.

My fries had gone cold, so I started eavesdropping on the students sitting around me discussing their Spring Break plans. Many of my classmates were wealthy kids from private schools in the Northeast, and I listened as they casually rattled off their swanky plans.


I had no spring break plans, and I’d been trying to dodge conversations about it for days. Truthfully, I couldn’t afford to go anywhere, even if I wanted to. With just a single semester of college under my belt, I was still trying to figure out what it meant to be “on my own,” and I was discovering that “on my own” meant poverty, essentially. Flying home to Montana for the week was out of the question, so my plan was to stick around the dorms and try and get better acquainted with Boston. At that point I had a pitiful lack of knowledge concerning the city I lived in, save for “doesn’t have any Taco Bells” and “the Orange Line is gross, don’t go on the Orange Line.”

Besides me, the only other person in my dorm who was staying behind was Darla, a quiet, intense girl with dreadlocks who, up until that point, I’d never so much as spoken to. My first (and only) interaction with Darla had come late one night the week before break. Sometime after midnight I’d ventured downstairs to the the student lounge to grab a soda and found Darla bent over the sink, chopping off her dreads with a pair of scissors by candlelight. She jerked her head up, seemingly annoyed that I’d intruded.

 

I might’ve been more weirded out, but this was art school, and I’d seen far stranger. One time I’d walked into the communal bathroom to find a kid scooping out the insides of a pig head and dumping the excess into the sink; his only explanation was, “I’m making a mask for a photo shoot.” So Darla’s impromptu haircut was par for the course, and I didn’t think much about it at the time.

Two days later, Darla disappeared from campus and never returned. The rest of the week was thick with gossip about where she’d gone — some said rehab, some guessed she had a breakdown and went home to Iowa. I was too anxious about my encroaching week alone in the dorms to give Darla’s absence much thought. With her gone, it meant that I’d be solo for the next nine days, and that notion unnerved me. I made myself a promise that if I saw even one set of creepy twins holding hands in a hallway, I’d make a break for it and join Darla on whatever Island of Misfit Toys she’d escaped to.

On Friday afternoon, I watched my dorm mates pack up and leave one by one, until I was all that remained and the building was cold and silent like a citadel. Night fell, and in the quietude I pretended the world had ended and I was the only man on earth.



By day two, I was bored out my mind.

The subway stopped each night around midnight, and as a natural night owl who liked to explore, I found it stifling and more than a little bit rude. With the whole week left of smothering ennui, I struggled with ways to fill my nights. Literally everyone I knew had fled the city, if not the state entirely, so my options were limited. I decided I’d scout out the Newbury Comics down the street and browse their used movies section.

The next day, after an excursion down Boylston, I returned to my dorm with a handful of cheapo horror flicks: The House on Haunted Hill, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, and Night of the Living Dead, all for less than ten bucks. A scary movie night seemed a suitably sad way to pass the time, so once the sun set I brushed an old Sunchips bag off the lounge’s crusty DVD player and popped Night of the Living Dead into the disc tray. I settled into one of the big green couches, popped open a can of Pillsbury Supreme Buttercream frosting to eat with a spoon, and tried my hardest to convince myself that this wasn’t The Lamest Spring Break In History™.

   
I’d somehow lived for 19.5 years without seeing Night of the Living Dead, and I foolishly thought a movie from the ’60s couldn’t possibly be that frightening. I was dead wrong. I spent the the entirety of the movie on the edge of the couch, white knuckling the TV remote until all the blood left my hands and I could no longer feel them.

I slept poorly that night, and I dreamt of zombies eating my flesh.

 I woke abruptly at dawn to a loud crash above my head. I jolted upright, my brain still swimming with thoughts of the walking dead, and glanced around my room nervously. Everything was bathed in the orange glow of early morning.

I stayed motionless in bed, puzzled over what could’ve yanked me from slumber, when I suddenly heard a floorboard creak directly above me and I froze, feeling immediately nervous. Darla’s old room was right above mine, but she’d left a week ago. I thought maybe someone from the school staff was clearing out her room, so I kept still, held my breath, and listened. There was no more movement, and I eventually drifted back to sleep.

The next day, I heard footsteps again. This time I was in the hallway, heading back to my room with a bowl of Annie’s pasta I’d made with someone’s few-days-expired soy milk when I heard another creaky floorboard, quickly followed by the dull thump of something heavy hitting the floor, and the muffled voice of someone who was definitely not a teenage girl. I stopped in the middle of the hallway and tilted my head like a dog, wary of danger. There was silence for a minute, then footsteps again, then a door opening. Someone had gone into Darla’s old room.

Something was wrong. If Darla had come back to school, I would’ve seen her in the building or at least around the deserted campus. Besides, it wouldn’t make sense for her to return in the middle of Spring Break, so I decided to investigate. I crept upstairs and gazed down the hallway. Darla’s old room was a good distance down the hall, but I could already hear thuds and thumps spilling into the hallway.

 
The door to Darla’s old room was ajar and pallid light seeped into the hallway. I approached, trepidatious, and peered around the corner.

There was a man in Darla’s room. He was an older guy, scruffy and clearly homeless, and he was muttering to himself. He’d piled half a dozen bulging trash bags around the room, which were accented with other odds and ends: a few loose bricks, a hub cap, a cinderblock. I could see a couple empty beer bottles and something that might’ve been a glass pipe, but I was too startled to know for sure. When the man noticed me, he stiffened and furrowed his brow at me.

“What are you doing here?” I blurted.

 
“Darla?” I said, “She’s gone. She left. Were you staying with her? Are you… friends with her or something?”

“Mmff,” the guy grunted, which I assumed meant yes. I wondered how long he’d been staying there with her. He reiterated, “She said I could stay here.”

“Ok, well, she’s gone now. You gotta go.” I heard the words come out of my mouth and thought, I’m probably going to die tonight.

“But she said…” The man trailed off. For a brief moment I considered letting him stay there until school started again, partly because I felt bad for him but mostly because I hate confrontation of any kind.

“She’s gone,” I replied after a moment. We stared at each other for what seemed like ages, and I briefly wondered if I was going to be murdered and possibly crammed into a trash bag. Eventually the man mumbled something, sneered at me a little, grabbed a couple of bags and shambled out of the room, muttering all the way down the hall. I watched him disappear, then gazed out the blinds in Darla’s room to make sure he’d actually left the building.

 
I lingered about for a moment, feeling a lot of things but unable to focus on a particular emotion. I marched down the hall to the communal phone in the stairwell and dialed downstairs to security. It rang eleven times before someone answered.

“Yeah, hi, sorry to bother you, but there was a guy living here in the dorms. Like, not a student? I think was homeless.”

“OK, we’ll send someone up.” The tone in his voice made it seem like this was a weekly occurrence. 

“No, I mean, he’s gone now. He left. But I just thought I should, like, I don’t know, tell someone?” 

“Oh. He left? Alright then.”

“Yeah, he’s gone. But…” I trailed off. “Yeah, he’s gone.” There was a long, awkward silence before the man in the security office spoke again.

“OK, do you need anything else?”

 
I didn’t know what I expected from that exchange, but this wasn’t it. I felt rattled, and I wanted someone to care about it. I wanted someone to tell me how brave I was and give me a cupcake and maybe a parade for being so damn courageous, even though I hadn’t really done anything that gutsy. Mostly, I was annoyed that something had happened that felt important and nobody had witnessed it. In a weird way I felt like I was actually on my own for the first time in my life.

When school started again, Darla’s old room was cleared out by the staff and someone from security changed the code on the building’s electronic lock. After a few weeks I almost forgot about my secret roommate, and I guess that’s the most profound thing I took away from the experience: stuff happens, it’s weird sometimes, but you deal with it and get over it.

That’s sort of what being an adult is, I guess. It isn’t a single big moment where you get to announce, “Sup, I’m an adult now!” It’s a lot of little moments where you learn to cope, and if you’re lucky you have help but sometimes you don’t. Shit happens, you deal with it, and then you go finish your pasta you made with expired soy milk.

A few weeks ago I got a second kitten. His name is Maxwell, and he's only got three legs. They don't know how he lost his arm, but I assume it was a shark attack, like that surfing girl in Hawaii.

I've been making tiny hats for him out of construction paper, because I don't know what else to do with all this damn construction paper. So yeah, I'm not just a writer and illustrator, I'm also a friggin' milliner. Are you jealous of my skills? Are you impressed I know the word milliner? I thought so.

I regularly upload new hats to my Instagram. Gimme a follow!

So dapper. Ladies don't even notice his gnarly stump leg.
Gotta catch 'em all bat at them half-heartedly and then take a nap.
Don't drink the tea, it's full of bugs.
He's a big fan of Final Fantasy, even though he can't work the controller.




Pepper was feeling left out. She ate the tiara afterwards. Rude.
Unlike the original pilgrims, he brought the natives a half dead mouseinstead of pox blankets.
Arrrrrrr.
I don't actually know his birthday, but whatever.Like he even knew what was going on.
Ugh, Maxwell. Cultural appropriation is NAGL.
I had to make sure Pepper still knew she was KWEEN.

Well, it's finally happened. I've adopted a kitten of my own. Her name is Pepper and it's all I can do to not bake her in a quiche and eat her, she's just so cute. Even when she's sinking her teeth into my arm flesh, which is approximately 100% of the time.

Here are seven reasons adopting a kitten is awesome. Mostly.

1. Inviting a kitten into your home is a great way to relinquish control in your life.

It takes roughly 12 seconds for a new kitten to lay claim to your home and all your possessions. For the next 12-18 years, there will be a tiny creature in your home who believes it is the boss of you (which, over the years, you will begin to agree with).


I can't eat a sandwich anymore without allocating a portion of my turkey to the cat. I can't sleep comfortably anymore, because she requires the exact center of the bed, meaning I have anywhere between 1-3 limbs dangling off the edge of the bed. Sometimes while she sleeps, in order to make myself feel better, I whisper to her, "I saved your life, I can take it away."

2. Kittens teach you to be flexible in life. 

This is mostly because kittens are so physically flexible themselves. It's a well known fact that kitten bones are made of chlorosulphonated polyethylene, and they will essentially take the shape of whatever container suits them.


It's impossible to not draw parallels to your own life after watching a kitten melt and take the shape of a gravy boat or that sawed-off human skull you bought for six dollars from an Aghori guru while on vacation in Nepal. You look at the kitten and think, "I should learn to compromise more. Maybe I shouldn't have shoved Karen off a cliff in the Adirondacks because she wanted to go hiking and I wanted to smoke weed in the tent and eat Sun Chips. And I definitely shouldn't have hacked her corpse up and buried it in a shallow grave. Hmm. You live, you learn, I guess."

3. Owning a kitten is a great way to channel your maternal instincts into something without actually having to commit to birthing a human and raising it for 18 years.

If I'm honest with myself, this is probably the main reason I got a kitten. I need to channel my love into something that doesn't actually require a lot of upkeep, unlike a spouse or a '61 Thunderbird. And kids? Please. I can't imagine being a parent.


4. Kittens will help you get over your body issues. 

At some point your kitten will see you naked, and it straight up won't care. You could parade around your living room wearing a woman suit while blasting "Goodbye Horses" and your kitten won't so much as bat an eyelash. Side note: do kittens even have eyelashes? I'm suddenly freaking out that I don't know the answer to this.

My kitten has taken to watching me shower. It was awkward at first.


She wouldn't stop, so in retaliation I started singing 98 Degrees songs at her while she pooped. We agreed to respect each other's privacy in the future.

5. Kittens cure loneliness. 

Having a kitten around is a great excuse to talk to yourself without feeling like a loser. I mean, you'll still feel like a loser, just less of one.


It's sort of like going on a date with someone in a medically induced coma. Maybe your words aren't really sinking in, but it doesn't matter. You get to talk uninterrupted, and when it comes right down to it, isn't that what matters? It reminds me of the time in fourth grade when I had to give a speech and I chose to talk about Sailor Moon and I went over the allotted 10 minutes but I didn't want to stop talking because I had barely started explaining Sailor Saturn's seizures, and I really wanted to tell everyone about how she gets possessed by Mistress 9, but Mrs. Hawk said I needed to wrap it up, and I was so mad that I didn't even get to touch on the Dead Moon Circus, and...

6. Cats will love you feel indifferent toward you unconditionally, no matter what.

It's nice to know that I can gain 200 pounds and grow a long, greasy wizard beard, and my cat will never leave me (mostly because she can't figure out doorknobs, but let's not split hairs).


7. Kittens teach patience. 

Any cat owner knows you have to be on the ready with your camera phone at all times, because when a cat does something cute you have to be quick, lest you miss out on literally tens of Instagram likes.



I actually filled up my phone with cat photos and videos. Like, to capacity. I got an error message that said something along the lines of, "Really, dude? Enough with the cat pix. There's no more space. Go for a walk. Look at your life choices. Maybe catch a matinee. I hear Fruitvale Station is great." Or something like that. I forget. 
Follow me on Instagram to be inundated with kitten photos.

Ladies and gentleman, we are living in the future. Stem cells can essentially be programmed to become any type of cell in the body. HIV is no longer a death sentence. There's even a chick in Georgia with bionic hands.


Medical and technological breakthroughs are happening every day, but none of this compares to the fact that you can now order food on your phone without having to actually talk to anybody.

My phone has essentially become a food ordering device, and I'm not even ashamed a little.


Having food delivered is an exciting experience. It makes me feel elite, like Tywin Lannister or Suri Cruise. It's summer, so my giant standing air conditioner is always on full blast, and because it's noisy I don't always hear the delivery guy knock on the door. To combat this, I'll position myself at the front window so I can see anyone approaching. I'm on the first floor, so I have a perfect view of the sidewalk outside.


Yesterday, while waiting for my spicy tuna rolls to be delivered, I noticed a portly woman approach my building and take a seat on my stoop. This didn't bother me, as I'm used to my front steps being utilized by the public. I live a block away from a 24-hour nightclub called COMPLEX, and on the weekends, there's a steady stream of drunks collapsing on my front steps to call cabs or take quick naps.


I don't mind the drunk folks pausing on my steps at night to smoke cigarettes or give each other Rusty Trombones (or whatever they do, it's dark, gimme a break). They typically don't linger, but it was a different story on this particular afternoon. I stared out the window at the woman, sitting on my steps like an old tater tot. "You better bounce before my food arrives," I muttered to myself. "I ain't sharin' my spicy toons."

She remained there, and about fifteen minutes later the delivery guy arrived on a scooter. I was about to hop up and run around to the front door when I noticed the man say something to the woman on my stoop. I couldn't hear him, but he pointed to the food. I watched as the woman waved her hand at him, seemingly annoyed. The man looked around confused, said something else to the woman, who threw up both her hands and shouted something back. The delivery man furrowed his brow and left. Since I couldn't hear the conversation from behind the glass, I had to estimate.


What it boils down to is that this woman sent my food away because she did not personally order it. I had never felt so utterly betrayed by another human being in my entire life. Flummoxed, I leapt to my feet, wheeled around to the hallway and out my front door to chase down my food. On my way I made sure the stoop goblin knew I was displeased.


The delivery guy had already hopped on his scooter and was buzzing away, so I had to actually run in order to catch up to him. Luckily he hit a red light at the end of the block and I was able to intercept my food. He searched his pocket for a pen, I signed the receipt, took my bag of food, and trudged back toward my apartment.

Approaching my building again, I could see a small crowd had gathered on my front steps. The same woman from before was still there, but she'd been joined by another woman who looked like she might be related, along with a chubby young boy. Either this was the woman's family, or she had somehow started multiplying like a gremlin after midnight. I preferred to imagine the latter, because it allowed me to hate these newcomers and assume they were treacherous villains.

Fun fact: this is also how Kardashians are created.
I assumed this woman and her relatives had chosen my corner to meet up before heading off to someplace else—probably Century 21 or a cave full of orange Fanta and a hundred VHS copies of Encino Man. The woman from earlier had slid down the stoop to make room for the kid, who was seated next to her playing a Nintendo 3DS.  I stood for a few moments, waiting for the lady to notice me hovering over her and make some room so I could march up the steps and get back into my apartment, where I planned to angrily eat my lunch while glaring out the window at this family of stoop stealers, but the woman didn't even glance my way. She just stared off into the distance while I waited impatiently. She seemed to be almost pointedly ignoring me. Finally I became fed up and craned my neck down at her.


"You're blocking the way to my building," I replied coldly. "Please move." The women let out the most laborious sigh, and scooted a mere six inches. I glared at her and wedged past.

I ate my food at my desk in rapid agitation, the rich flavor of tuna barely registering on my tongue. The bitter taste of loathing was too powerful for any savory dish to penetrate.


The Stoop Witch of Astoria and her band of gremlins soon disappeared, and haven't returned since. I feel like I should take some precautions against future problems, though. Does Amazon sell bear traps?
Author's note: Well holy shit, Amazon does sell bear traps.

My book The Blunder Years is released today! To celebrate I got a new kitten. Her name is Pepper and she sneezed into my coffee while I was typing this.

Here are some handy dandy links to purchase my book, which has been called "hilarious" by friends who are hoping to get something out of me.

Amazon - Amazon.ca - Amazon.co.uk - Powell's - Barnes & Noble - Indiebound

As a kid, I had poor critical thinking skills and rarely considered the consequences to my actions. When I was six, I spent half an hour spitting into a dime store squirt gun, and then for some inexplicable reason, squirted it back into my own mouth. I became so nauseated afterword that I threw up in the parking lot of a Safeway. Honestly I'm gagging just remembering it.


I'm not sure what my thought process was with that one. I actually can't even begin to explain why I thought it would be a fun idea, but then again I don't know why I did most things.

In third grade, my antics started to land me in trouble. I had a habit of disrupting class, especially during science. I couldn't be bothered to learn the difference between herbivores and carnivores, or what caused rain. In my mind, "rain is magic" was a suitable answer for weather patterns, and I spent most of the daily science lessons drawing pictures and quietly passing them to the girl who sat next to me in class, Lee Sugars.

I had a crush on Lee, but I also hated her guts, and I think the feeling was mutual. As a result, every note I passed her was either mean, or disgusting, or both.


I had a tendency to take whatever recent lesson was being taught and turn it into an inappropriate doodle: Helen Keller with giant torpedo boobs, two Martin Luther Kings making out (sometimes with torpedo boobs of their own), and so on. Because of this, my teacher Mrs. Bateson hated me. She sent me to the principal's office literally every week, and even though I usually deserved it, I still felt like a child martyr and detested Mrs. Bateson for what I deemed to be unfair prosecution.

She also looked like a thumb, which only added to my dislike of her.

Mrs. Bateson finally drew the line in October that year. The class was making jack-o-lanterns out of construction paper and she'd put on a CD of Halloween sound effects—rattling chains, crackling thunder, yowling cats and the like. When Derek Stevens got squeamish at the sound of beating hearts and nervously asked Mrs. Bateson to turn the CD off, I loudly told him to "quit being a pussy."

In my defense, I didn't even know what a pussy was. I barely knew what a vagina was, let alone its noms de guerre. Hell, I still thought girls peed out their butts. I thought "pussy" was a gently mocking term, synonymous with "wimp" or "wuss," so I was baffled when Mrs. Bateson lost her shit over it.


I wasn't sure how to respond. I truly didn't know what was so offensive about what I'd said, but Mrs. Bateson wasn't having it. At recess, she made me stay behind to discuss my behavior.

"Adam, you can't use that word," she told me. "It's not a nice word."

"Yeah, ok, sorry, I won't do it again. Now can I go? I can hear them starting foursquare and—"

"We have to discuss your punishment." I narrowed my eyes at her suspiciouly. There was a field trip scheduled that afternoon to tour the Hancock Ice Cream Factory, and everyone in class was excited for the ice cream we'd inevitably get at the end of the tour. I was nervous my punishment might involve the field trip. Mrs Bateson continued, "I think it's only fair that during the field trip this afternoon, you shouldn't be rewarded with ice cream like everyone else."

I couldn't muster any words, I could only stare at Mrs. Bateson, who herself seemed unfazed. I could almost make out the hint of a smile on her thumb-face.


I knew from experience that I couldn't argue with her. I pouted through lunch, scowled through the van ride to the ice cream factory, and lingered in the back of the group frowning while a cheery, elderly woman in an apron pandered to us about how interesting the history of ice cream was.


At the end of the tour the cheery lady handed out cones to everyone—except for me, of course. Mrs. Bateson took the ice cream lady aside and explained that I was a demon child and didn't deserve treats, so I was forced to watch everyone else enjoy ice cream around me. I was stewing in disgruntled self pity when Lee Sugars sauntered up to me, a cheshire cat grin plastered across her face.

"You can have my cone, Adam," she said sweetly." I don't even like ice cream." I gave her a cautious side-eye, but my gluttony overtook me and I accepted her offer.

My tongue had barely touched the chilly sweetness of Huckleberry ice cream when Lee turned away from me and hollered to Mrs. Bateson.


Mrs. Bateson turned and shot daggers at me with her eyes.


As the group was ushered out into the parking lot, I leaned in and whispered into Lee's ear.


During the van ride back I kept my eyes fixed on Lee, willing her to spontaneously burst into flames. I fantasized about the van crashing into a semi truck of toxic waste, which would spill on Lee and burn her skin off. The entire time, she grinned back at me like a smug weasel.

When we arrived back at school and one of the chaperones opened the van's sliding door, I unbuckled my seatbelt and angled toward Lee before hopping out of the vehicle. "This isn't over," I told her. She glared back at me, her stare icy. I shifted away and scooted across the seat but before I could hop down to the sidewalk, I felt a forceful pair of hands on my back and before I knew it I was flying out of my seat. I hardly registered that Lee had pushed me—I was falling, face first, toward the pavement. It was only a few feet, but to a child it seemed an eternity. Time seemed to slow as I careened toward the concrete.


I landed on the right side of my forehead. The sound from inside my own skull was sickening, like having your head inside ceramic vase and someone whacking it with a hammer, except my head was the vase and the earth was the hammer. After the collision I remember little. Chaperones clamored around me, kids murmured and were shooed away. The aftermath is a blur, but I recall being seated in the nurse's office, a kindly young redheaded nurse holding a bag of ice to my forehead, and myself screaming and screaming with tears running down my face.

In retrospect, I don't accurately remember the pain, just shrieking nonstop like I was dying because the pain was so severe. "Your mom will be here at 3:30," the nurse told me. "Just try to calm down until then." I glanced at the the clock. It was only 2:30. I could see the principal in his office. He was talking to someone on the phone, laughing jovially like nothing was wrong. Why was nobody worried about my injury? Why wasn't I in the hospital? I might've had a concussion, or maybe cerebral edema. There might be internal bleeding!

I thought of Mrs. Bateson, up in room 227, chuckling to herself that her least favorite student was downstairs dying from massive head trauma.


Nobody took things seriously in the 90's. Teachers didn't need to worry about their shortcomings being captured on camera phones and uploaded on YouTube. Kids were too busy huffing scented markers to notice they were being neglected by their caretakers. It was no wonder the administration couldn't care less. If they just kept me contained until the end of the school day, I'd be my mom's problem.

When my mother did arrive to pick me up, I barely noticed because I was too busy howling.


The office aide told my mom that I'd fallen out of the van, even though I'd spent the last hour screaming that Lee Sugars had shoved me.

I probably should have gone to the hospital, but like I said, it was the 90's. This was before Gwyneth Paltrow taught us that bread is poison, before we knew measles vaccinations caused children to mutate into lizard monsters.

The next day, I had a big bump on my forehead where I'd landed. The swelling went down, but the bump never disappeared completely. It actually changed the shape of my skull slightly, and the lump can still be felt.

I feel like that bears repeating. I'm 26, and I still have a bump on my head from when I fell out of a van eighteen years ago.

Is it too late to sue? What's Gloria Allred's email? I'm assuming it's xXxKoRnFan69xXx@hotmail.com.

Last week I went on vacation to Puerto Vallarta in Jalisco, Mexico. This is how I chose to communicate with my friend Kristin back in New York.


I created my final message the night I arrived home. Fun fact: I was still reeling from my flight meds when I crafted that last message, and my drugs have a bit of an amnesic effect. The next morning I saw the words still spelled out on my desk, and for a minute I thought, "Who the fuck did this? Is somebody in my apartment? SHOW YOURSELF."

Then I remembered it was me, and I laughed to myself, and ordered a ham pizza on Seamless for breakfast.

If you like this, check out Kristin's blog. She's funny!