Hey, my story "Tennis, Anyone? Tennis Mubarak?" is featured online at Southwest Review! I would love for you to read it if you have the time as it's very dear to my heart. It's about the sweet, perverse thrill of lying to people about who you are and where you're from. Cheers 🍸

Tonight’s shed scotch is Macleod’s 12. Cheers.

wrote a thousand words this morning on the pirate novel/I'm mistaken for a Cypriot porn star novel. I'm glad I combined them. It's more fun this way. Who was it that said "Art is serene." I have to avoid certain restaurants and grocery stores. I guess this guy owes a lot of money

like, what is the alternative? I guess you let your kids watch the first hour of The Deer Hunter.

children should be welcome at weddings. I learned so much at weddings as a child. how to order scotch from watching my dad: three fingers of Chivas. how to tie a tie. what aunties really thought about inter-faith and interracial marriage. I learned how the world is.

ejected from my local for loudly insisting that i knew the woman the steely dan song playing on the system was about, that i have met rikki, that we are, not in the broad sense, but very specifically, peers and colleagues.

I heard The Band’s cover of “Atlantic City” on the bike trainer and had a complete fucking breakdown. Didn’t even make it to the shed.

The Great God Tarkus by Avee Chaudhuri Columbo At Tanagra by Ian Maxton Letters to Hans by ZH Gill Shed Drinking In America by Benjamin Golly

Guess I’ll jump on the bike trainer and do a bunch of push-ups so I can drink whiskey in a shed later. Life is about balance.

But a lot of us were infatuated with the bad lady from The Rescuers.

This is the shed where I drink whiskey while my wife watches her programs.

Something happened! Thanks so much @LAReviewofBooks and particularly editor @_ntj

I wanted a job where I made 500 dollars an hour. And given the fact that I don’t grade anything, don’t answer emails and teach the books I would read anyways for my own pleasure and erudition, this is about how much I make as a university lecturer.

I hope my friends and family will appreciate the brown stock I made and I hope they understand why I couldn’t be there at Thanksgiving cuz I’m on a bender and that it’s more important for me to cultivate a sense of mystery about myself than to be present in their lives.

I'm going to set fire to my drinking shed and collect the insurance money and give it to these guys.

Strained and now reducing the stock. I just want Thanksgiving Dinner to be delicious so no one will mind that I’m on a bender.

Making stock. It’s not very soothing. There’s a lot riding on this. Thanksgiving Dinner for one. My reputation is already shot to hell because I drink in a shed and am writing ‘genre’ fiction.

Hey, I’m not giving up on the pirate novel. Sorry I had a crisis of faith last night. I ate this terrible German health bread that’s super high fiber and I just felt incredibly bloated and then all the whiskey I drank after had this compound leadening effect. I’m sorry.

I think there’s a way to combine the novels. I mean Cyprus is an island after all. Also I keep writing about the captain’s “estimable shoulders” so that’s gotta be something.

I’m thinking of abandoning the pirate novel for another novel where I’m mistaken for a Cypriot porn star. I mean how many fucking times can I write “the captain’s mad leer” without losing my goddamn mind.

Forgot to tag @andrewbertaina.