I’m Bryce. There’s so much happening right now and my schedule is crammed to the gills that suddenly I went all genius and realized I needed to make one big, epic post to cover all I need to say. Get this: I need a job, am looking for a place to live, have a demo of my music I’m willing to give to anyone who can truly appreciate it, and I want to know who that sexy chick was at the gas station yesterday. I think we had a moment, so hopefully you check out Craigslist on the regular, sweetie.

Raymond Chandler once said that chess was as elaborate a waste of intelligence as you could find outside an advertising agency. Still, it had always been a human waste. As a last redoubt of the rarified mind, it was an irresistible target for programmers and purveyors of the new “thinking machines.” By the 1980s, computers had reached a level of sophistication that allowed them to challenge a grand master. As it happened, the world’s greatest chess player in the mid-80’s was a restless genius named Garry Kimovich Kasparov (pronounced “Gary” in Russian).

Good evening, internet audience. My name is Nick Hilbourn and, yes, I am a father and a competent authority on parental advice. It came to my realization around 2:34 am this morning that children ask many, many questions. They are curious beings. As parents we should usually encourage these questions, although we should discourage stupid questions.

I know what you’re thinking: hey, Stephen, you’ve been with your girlfriend for about seven months now, and even though you talk about her all the time, I bet the sex is starting to cool off. Sure, I’ve heard that old cliché about relationships—the beginning is steamy and adventurous, then settles into routine. So I can imagine why you’d think that about me and Kristi.

I overheard what I think was a three-person writing group in a coffee shop the other day. There was a woman talking about all of the interesting things that had happened to her in her past, and how whenever she tried to write them down, the “voice” was wrong; it came out all wrong and it wasn’t any good. I thought, why didn’t she just write that down instead of saying it to her friends: that was, the way she told the story, just then, was surely as good as the story was ever going to be, so why not write it down, or record herself telling it and transcribe it later, and look at it to see if it’s a good story, or nearly as good as it would have been if, when you’d written it down, the voice had been right and it had been good.