Voicenote – What I learned this year: Never say, “I don’t know what to do!”(Technical correction regarding the voice clip:We didn’t experience a hurricane. It was a landspout tornado.I could brush up on my meteorological literacy.The storms we experience here…
I sometimes revisit old essays and think, ‘What a load of shit.’ But this piece still retains the essence of what I felt a year ago, almost to the day. The Loneliness in December. Drop a mail if you want…
There was no orchestrated mayhem. No drums, bonfires, or initiation rituals. I joined a support group for males during a low point in my life. And the experience was great. Instead of getting my token for the ancestral sweat lodge,…
“Jesus Dude!” The guy in red sidestepped to the left. But The Crusader hadn’t lunged at him; he fell to the right, into the industrial-strength foliage growing on the curb. His makeshift cross suffered no damage. I should have borrowed…
I have always been fascinated by non-Latin writing systems. Chinese characters, Japanese kanji, Arabic calligraphy, and Korean hangul feel dense and meaningful. Each symbol looks like a small object, not a thin line in a sequence.To me, Western letters feel…
I graduated from university with majors in English and psychology. This dude was geared to infuse the mundane thoughts and creative exploits of everyone “out there” with his newfound armamentarium of excellence. But first, before I could take my brilliant…
Corporal Rockjaw was unusually amicable that day. He told us that if anyone thought the mess hall food was shit, they should write their complaint on a list, add their force number and ID, and the matter would be escalated…
Some questions cut back. They keep returning, century after century, generation to generation. They will stalk us as long as we are human and still failing at being it. Even when the machines rule, the dead walk, the stars swallow…
I was in a crowd. We were being herded like sheep. Maybe not. Maybe sheep got better treatment. I remember military intake with a clarity I wish I had for the rest of my life. Funny how the moments that…
[video width="720" height="720" mp4="https://mattlr.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Ammonia-Avenue-Album-Radio-Advert.mp4"][/video] Only the Alan Parsons could make a record as innovative, as exciting, as Ammonia Avenue! That’s a bold statement, but hey, it was the mid 80s! The clip is from a radio commercial. Some of the…