A n n a r c h y

Greetings all staff and stakeholders of Coddled Teenage Boy Enterprises:
It has come to my attention that there has been some confusion about your roles and responsibilities within the organization, which has led to infighting, yelling, and name-calling—this happened just yesterday, prior to 7 AM. Such behavior is both unprofessional and upsetting, and it is my [...]

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Eddie Field had ears that stuck out like mug handles from either side of his head and a face that was a constellation of freckles. He wore his hair in a Boy’s Regular barber cut, cropped close to his head, which only served to give emphasis to both the freckles and the unfortunate angle of [...]

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I’m spending this week on the coast of southern Maine. If I had a choice, I’d spend most of the week as I am right now: in a low-slung beach chair, toes buried in the warm sand, and book propped open on my lap, pages ruffled by the strong wind off the water.
Every few minutes [...]

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My friend Rachel emailed me an article the other day from Yankelovich, a market research company. The article, produced just after Mother’s Day, heralded the arrival of “Beta Moms” and their “newfound acceptance that being a ‘just good enough for my family’ mother…speaks to a more forgiving, laid-back approach to parenting.”
Unlike “Alpha Moms” (or, as [...]

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Last week I signed on for the Comcast triple play, which brought our triumvirate of phone-internet-TV under Comcast’s wing. It also simultaneously catapulted us back to the Land of DVRs (Digital Video Recorders), a place from which we had reluctantly decamped after our last TiVo box died months ago.
With DVRs, we’ve learned to start the [...]

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When I was a kid, in the 70s, I used to swipe my older brother’s Mad magazines. A lot of the humor was over my head, but that only added to the allure: This was a peep show into an unknown world, and I was lusting to grow up.
One Mad feature I did get, however, [...]

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