ArcaMax

With the summer Olympics approaching in 2024, it's time we buckle down and start perfecting our individual athletic categories. Please tell me yours. Artistic Passive Aggression? Downhill Laundry Ignoring? White Claw Crushing? I will be competing in Short Arms Drive-Thru Window. After years of preparation, these are the events in which I hope ...Read more

"The end better be freaking nigh."

This message sailed into my texts via a group chat last week followed by a link to a piece in The New York Times. Naturally, I figured some new atrocity had befallen the world, another violent geopolitical disaster my shriveled raisin brain would be forced to comprehend against its will and capability. If ...Read more

Fact: Opening any social media app means inviting mayhem into one's life. Dramatic? Perhaps, but when world events become inflamed, as they are now, internet cohabitation goes especially bats.

Let's review the options: Elon Musk looked into the eyes of Twitter and said, "I am Dorian Gray and this is my portrait." Now X, a once-vibrant online ...Read more

Let's talk about a concept called "collective effervescence." It was coined by the French sociologist Emile Durkheim to explain what happens when people come together and do the same thing at the same time -- laughing, crying, clapping, dancing, singing in unison, you name it. This joint activity triggers a euphoric response, unleashing a ...Read more

This weekend, I found myself unusually jazzed to walk the dog. Although Rocket is sweet, personable and a svelte 5.3 pounds, he can be stubborn on his little trots. At the mere suggestion of a twig, he goes from Algernon to Shrek, an immovable two-ton swamp beast sniffing with the tenacity of the Watergate investigators. He performs this ...Read more

Flipping big news for fans of notoriously bloodthirsty manatees: Recently, we learned a movie called "No Wake Zone" is in the works.

This pitch from production company Toxic Pictures, per a film incentive application in Hillsborough County, Florida, is for a comedy-horror about a mutant manatee that terrorizes Tampa Bay while a "grizzled ...Read more

Hello? HELLO? Can you hear me? Can you hear me now? We're going deep on the topic of the telephone in hopes that you win a free basket of wings at your local trivia night. Here's something I learned recently:

The word "hello" wasn't used as a greeting until the invention of the telephone. Before then, people said "good morning" or "good ...Read more

If you are terminally online, you have no doubt heard of the following trend: Women ask men on camera how often they think about the Roman Empire. The men overwhelmingly reply with versions of the same answer: a lot. A ton. Monthly. Weekly. Daily. Constantly.

Experts posit that the Roman Empire invades so many Man Brains because the centuries...Read more

We are all unimpeachable business owners in our fantasies, right? We are business geniuses! For instance, my imaginary restaurant has three Michelin stars and sandwiches under $10. The workers are paid ethical wages and tipping is not a confusing moral gymnastics act. The chips and salsa are unlimited, and no, it is not a taco spot.

I leave ...Read more

Do you ever look up and realize you are standing in the middle of a fully functioning Spirit Halloween? Do you ever find yourself on a woefully sweaty day on another endless afternoon shimmering in the sun's punishing gas, looking at Pennywise costumes for a small dog? Do you ever ask yourself, how did I get here, studying a "possessed nun ...Read more

You may have noticed it's a touch, hmm, sultry out. Maybe it's the persistent low-grade headache. Or the palpable lack of motivation to accomplish a single task. Or the way your dog, forced outside for 30 seconds, glares up in an uncanny Jack Nicholson impersonation.

In these dark days of repeated temperature advisories from the National ...Read more