Explicit language

Why and How to Carve Your Name Into a Brick Anonymously

Anonymous Brick

We all like to think we will have left a trace when we die. We want to leave a legacy, memories someone will hold onto, chunks of mineral someone will cherish. So we make gravestones, and bricks, and that sort of thing. If you’re an artist, maybe you can paint a self-portrait, but for the […]

How to Cope with Holiday Cheer

This time of year, you hear many people saying things like “Happy holidays!” and “Merry Christmas!”, usually with big grins and sometimes wearing floppy red hats with pom-poms on top. You also hear lots of happy, wintry, Christmas-y music playing over PA systems in stores, and you might even find yourself surrounded by carollers who […]

Horoscope Contest!

A white triplane flying in a rarely seen reddish-blue cloud formation.

Horoscopes – and a Contest! Do you like free fortune tellings? Do you like free bumper stickers? If you answered YES to these and other questions, then, boy, have we got a deal for you! To celebrate the almost-anniversary of our twenty-somethingth anniversary, we are prepared to give away three (that’s 3!) free bumper stickers! […]

Vocabulary to Impress

Do you find yourself spending hours of your weekend reading the dictionary to learn new words? Do you feel a need to expand your vocabulary to impress others at work, parties, or cultish ceremonies? If so, we have some words and usage tips that are sure to improve your persona. We’ll talk about a few […]

New York Newspaper No Longer To Use Four Letter Words

In a landmark blow for linguistic and orthographic equality, a famous New York newspaper has made the decision to eliminate all words of four letters. “For a long time now,” says director of publicity and propaganda Bob Brzezinszki, “we have illegitimately discriminated against a small group of four letter words, to the point of excluding […]

Writing Fiction with Gender-Neutral Pronouns

Internals of a house, showing floor truss, drain pipe, and spider webs.

This story will introduce the reader to writing fiction with gender-neutral pronouns. If you haven’t already, please read our companion article, Proper Use of Gender-Neutral Pronouns. The Architect’s House Once upon a time, there was an architect named Sal.1 Sal designed his/her own house, all by his/her self, since he/she had a degree in the […]

Ten Things Your Plumber Won’t Tell You

Our Best Issue Yet! After reading our articles on Ten Things Your Doctor Won’t Tell You and Ten Things Your Dentist Won’t Tell You, hundreds of readers have requested that we write one on plumbers, whom they also find all too reticent. So, here we have all ten things your plumber won’t tell you: . […]

Have a Desert for Dessert

Desserts in the Desert

A Desert for Dessert? A common spelling mistake in the English language is to confuse the spelling of dessert with that of desert, and desert with that of dessert. For example, I once had a manufactured appliance whose label called it The Great American Desert Machine. I never could get that thing to make any […]