From my understanding: a mansplanation is when someone who identifies with the male gender (from here on we'll call them men) gives an unwarranted, yet concise response to an emotionally charged situation. Someone, a woman perhaps, finds themselves in a difficult situation and seeks out sympathy, but instead receives an apathetic response. It has devolved … Continue reading Allow Me to Mansplain: We Stopped Caring About That Awhile Ago

  "Comparison is the thief of joy." — Theodore Roosevelt The waiter disapperared. We watched the confetti fall from the sky, skip acros the ground in the breeze, and tumble into the canal. "Kind of hard to believe anyone could ever find that annoying," Augustus said after a while. "People always get used to beauty, … Continue reading Thieves of Joy: Finding Motivation through Spite

i Her name was Smidge and I didn’t know her very well. I was okay with that because the more I knew, I realized the less we had in common. Smidge spent a lot of her time on social media, and of that time a large portion of it was dedicated to Tumblr. When anyone … Continue reading Brief Lessons in Nurturing Self-Loathing

i When I used to work at a pawn store, I became very good at reading people. With a glance, you could get a pretty good idea about someone’s habits, socio-economic status, and if you want to get really into, how many kids they had and what ages they were. A sane person would call … Continue reading Tinker, Tailor, Swindler, Smith

I knew a guy once, we’ll call him Matt because I never bothered to remember his name and for that, I’m sorry Matt (but really I’m not and in another way, I’m sorry for that, too). Matt was a coworker of mine while I worked at Sears. It was supposed to be a new beginning … Continue reading No One Cares About Your Novel

I like musicals. How much you ask? I sat through Cats. And if that doesn’t prove my dedication, I don’t know what will. Like everyone else my age, who has been prescribed the Millennial generation label, my first interaction with the genre was from the Disney Renaissance. Movies like The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Beauty … Continue reading Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and the Disney Generation

When I told myself that a blog was necessary, I was initially apprehensive about content, or rather lack thereof.  “But Ruben,” you may be asking yourself, “aren’t you a writer, dedicated to your craft? Don’t you write every day, slaving over words, furiously typing until the sweat beads on your brow?” Well, as it turns … Continue reading Autoneurotic Asphyxiation

Three years ago, I very nearly died, and the man who very nearly killed me (whether in shock, or more likely saving his own skin) left the scene, as well as his almost conscious brother among the pieces of two shattered cars. A manhunt was launched. The man (who will be hereby called the Jerk-Off, or … Continue reading The Jerk Off

Ultimately it was because of a blanket. Some potential Christmas present that I googled for reference, only to be reminded that bedding is really, super expensive. I logged into Facebook to send a message from my phone and there it was, an ad for Boll & Branch Bedding and Luxury Sheets. And that’s it. The … Continue reading Burning Down the Church