I would rather be bacon than a pasty office worker.

dramatic chipmunk.

Because it's been that kind of day.

(Props to John and Annie, who always find the best stuff on the Internet.)

This is what arrives in your work inbox when your aunt gets a hold of your email address.

favorite reasons to be in New York in summer.

If you're here this summer, just say yes.

Central Park Summerstage. Because I worked there. And because there's something funny to me about sitting on turf in the middle of Central Park.

P.S.1 Warmup. Because I love me a daytime dance party. Plus there's beer and good art.

Metropolitan Opera in the park[s]. Because you can drink wine in public, and because opera rules. No, seriously.

Gowanus Yacht Club. Because it's down the block from my house, and because they have five different kinds of hot dog/sausage. Also because I always meet randoms there, and that's hella.

a post's post.

I'm starting to wonder whether or not all bloggers, at some point, become apologists.

It's been impossible in these last three months to figure out how to divvy up what little creative energy I've got at the end of the day between this here blog, my lonely moleskin journal, and the collection of short stories I'm really supposed to be writing (and really doubting that I can).

I've put a temporary patch on the last of these problems by joining a brief 6-week writer's workshop with Rattawut Lapcharoensap, a writer my age, already successful in his own right, published in Granta and Zoetrope. He's a good writer. And disciplined. He tells us that he gets up at 4:30 every morning to write, when the city that never sleeps is as still as it ever gets. I've joined his class in order to infuse a little discipline into this grant project I've been so jazzed about. In fact, I have a story due on Wednesday that I should really be writing now instead of this blog post.

But that's the thing. There's always somewhere I'd rather be using my words. At work, it's wanting to write personal emails. At home, it's wanting to write to myself, or to you.

Then there's the issue of reading. I'm lucky I don't really have a working television to speak of, but by the time I get home from a day of scouring the news for story ideas and inspiration, it's hard to pick up another journal, or a book, and enjoy it as it should be enjoyed. What then, do you read in the precious 45 minutes of a commute, or before you fall asleep? I sometimes defy the literary types on my subway line by flashing an old trashy magazine, or doing the crossword, a weed in the fertile field of Dostoyevsky and Delillo bookjackets. Oftentimes, early in the week, I succumb and read The Economist (who needs another newspaper?), or if I'm feeling particularly insecure about my intellectual life, I'll break out the Harper's, making sure that people can make no mistake about my subscriptions to both. See my address label, hear me roar.

In sum, I don't think I've ever seen an Oprah Book Club jacket on the F train in Brooklyn.