friend of the built environment

Nearly three years on, I often find it strange how well I get on with my husband. I hear all these voices out there about how marriage is such hard work, how “love hurts”, how much politicking people do in their relationships… And I really just don’t understand. Am I just lucky that I’ve managed to [...]

I’ve searched hard, but no song in my vast goth collection seems sad enough…
I’m searching for an appropriate requiem for the bravest woman who ever graced the American business world. Her history is tragic - not because of her shortcomings, but because of her virtues. I wonder if her true story will ever be understood… the story [...]

I started listening to The Cure when I was 10 years old. My sister had bought a few tapes by them, and within a few months I had approriated them and they were on endless rotation in my little cassette player. I was in love. Robert Smith was my hero. The Cure saved me from a possible [...]

David’s car was broken into Saturday night for the second time in less than a year. He is always careful not to leave anything of value in the car to avoid tempting unfortunate people with Earthly delights. However, the person or persons that have broken into it these past couple times don’t seem to have [...]

“Jesus died for our sins. That sacrifice should not have been in vain. Thus, let us all go forth and sin as much as we possibly can.”
- “Anonymous” post at InTheFaith.com

It’s like nails on a chalkboard every morning when my coworker asks me if I want any coffee from Starbucks by asking “You need anything from the cafe?”
I think of a cafe as a small restaurant which serves breakfast and lunch. Starbucks is just the fast-food of foofy coffee. It’s like calling McDonald’s “the diner” [...]

From LiliBat:
“I will miss SF, but I rarely go out. Most of what I do is come home and play games and the way things are now I can’t afford a lot of games OR going out. The cost of livivng here is so high I can’t afford to live so what’s the point?”

How David managed to spend 13 years of his life in the City so far I’ll never understand. I had a rather severe nervous breakdown last night after an abortive attempt at finding anything comfortable or cozy about this city once more. It’s a semi-annual affair since I moved here. I think I try REALLY hard to [...]

The Big City means high-end urban areas such as NY, SF, LA, Philly and Chicago. Places where owning a single-family detatched dwelling is not feasible for the vast majority of residents. This rules out up-and-coming cities with rational real estate such as Charlotte, Raleigh, Austin and Denver. It also rules out most of the rust [...]

My Political Compass position:
Economic Left/Right: 6.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.00

Contemplating the possibility of a future move to the Beautiful American South (land of evangelicals and baptists, birthplace of lynchings and the conformity of “rebellion”), I sometimes pause a moment to consider how my attitudes and behaviors might need to be modified in relation to my distance from the closet.
This essay, of course, refers to [...]