Tell you a funny story. This old man has two daughters, see? One is beautiful, demure, obedient and everybody wants to marry her, while the other is loud, opinionated, strong-willed—your basic nightmare. So the old man sets up an arranged marriage for the “shrew” daughter, offering tons of money if anybody will marry her. Well, this guy takes the challenge. He—get this—he acts like a crazy man around his new wife, deprives her of food and sleep and decent clothes until sh

The Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Sultan Paul Porfirov, late 1800s In the collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum This is my second-favorite piece of art of all time. Even before I learned the story behind it, I loved it, and in the five years since moving to Cincinnati, I viewed it every time I visited the museum. It is so expressive and evocative that I made up my own stories about it, which turned out to be close to the truth. You can read about it in detail h

They say a magician NEVER reveals the secret. Magicians love secrets, especially knowing them. We love thinking we're smarter than everyone else in the room. We giggle to ourselves about it, in fact. We love to smirk when people say, "How did you DO that?" We love it so much that the International Brotherhood of Magicians (yes, it's a real thing) wrote it into the Code of Ethics so we can say, "Sorry. Can't tell you. Union rules." A MAGICIAN NEVER REVEALS THE SECRET. It

When I show my writings, my drawings, or even my magic to people they will (I hope) admire it, and then they'll often say something like: "Gee, I wish I was creative." The assumption they make is that creativity is a binary state, a condition that either exists or not, and because they cannot or do not make things just like mine, their personal creativity circuit breaker is flipped. ("Right here's your problem; ya got this thing set to 'Uncreative'.") Even more disheartenin

It may seem counter-intuitive. You join a karate dojo to learn fighting techniques, and you get married (presumably) because you love someone. Kung Fu practitioners kick boards and their mouths don’t match their dialogue, while married couples have babies and stop going clubbing. But matrimony and the martial arts have a lot in common. Both are highly stylized, ritualized forms of combat best done in loose clothing—but it goes even deeper than that. Here are five things

I never thought I'd start a blarg. Now that I have, you deserve to know who you're dealing with. This is me in cartoon form. Why "The Blarg"? Because I'm not sure what's going to land on this page, and "blog" denotes some measure of confidence and planning. It's an onomatopoeia of ideas hitting the internet, and that's what I expect--I'll serve up ideas in my own way; you decide what to do with them! #writing #cartoon #karate #art #magic #gaming