Camping and canoeing are all about self-sufficiency. The sensation of our own competence on the land lets us feel our own strength directly, rather than through oblique measures of success like social status or money. So it’s hard to accept when some trips are just so out of our realm that they require a guide. […]
Month: July 2017
July 24-28, 2017 This week LWON responds once again to the ludicrous alarmism of Shark Week. Our fifth annual Snark Week reveals the viciousness lurking in the most adorable of animals, if you’ll only lean in closely enough to hear their villainous scheming. Raccoons, for instance, have had it in for us since they first […]
Welcome to Snark Week 2017! “Dirty . . . disgusting . . . filthy . . . lice-ridden boids. You used to be able to sit out on the stoop like a person. Not anymore! No, sir! Boids!” The dialogue comes from the Mel Brooks movie The Producers. The super of a walk-up is […]
Welcome to Snark Week 2017! A peaceful summer day. A glittering, blue lake and a sky full of billowy clouds. And on the path below, a young woman rollerblades. She zips from side to side, enthusiastically mouthing the words to “Baby Got Back.” Then, out of the corner of her eye, a glint of something […]
Welcome to Snark Week 2017 A few years back, the Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis asked a foolish question. A question best left buried in the deeper recesses of the mind, or thousands of feet below the ground, or at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. And they sang it so casually, in a goddamned music […]
Were I to fall and die in my kitchen some unfortunate morning, my youngest dog, Geddy, would definitely eat my corpse. Maybe not that very minute, but pretty soon after I slumped to the floor he’d be nosing around, checking my pulse. He’d probably give me a couple of hours to rise up from my […]
Welcome to Snark Week at LWON. A number of years ago, when my wife was still in college, a prowler tried to break into her tiny bungalow in Berkeley, California. She heard him, first on the roof then at the door, furiously trying to get in. Normally she would rely on the dogs that lived […]
2017 seems to be shaping up to be the Year of Fear. Fear of terrorism, fear of too much Donald, fear of not enough Donald, fear of economic collapse, Brexit, socialism, fascism, fanaticism, cultism, existentialism, euphemism. All of it is very scary and all of it deserves endless hand-wringing on cable news. And this week, […]
