Your Official Guide to The Best Things

This site is on indefinite hiatus. It is on indefinite hiatus for several reasons.

1. After writing some every week for two years, I am kind of out of ideas.
2. Also, I am tired.
3. As I am now a young, urban professional, with my student days behind me, it is well-past time to move on from noble, not-for-profit ventures like this site and instead roll the fuck on into a mountain of riches and jewels and money and more riches.

Does this mean graphicmatt.com is dead? Of course not. Dead implies finality — an ending. Graphicmatt.com is merely changing. Like a caterpillar into a cocoon or Wilford Brimley into a Cocoon, great transformations are in store. This site is about due for a redesign and a change in direction and all of that will be happening before the year is out. Just not yet.

In the meantime, I’ve got a few other project ideas kicking around in my head. Some of them are logical, like setting up a freelance writing company online and seeing what kind of results that gets me. Others are completely ridiculous and so destined towards failure that I hesitate to even mention them here. (So I won’t! I won’t mention my gnawing impulse to resurrect sports-den, or at the very least a sports-den-like site!) It’s not as if my current job leaves me a lot of free time towards these endeavours, but I have a really annoying entrepreneurial itch, and I doubt it’ll go away before I experience failure several hundred times. So we’ll try and get the first couple of failures out of the way as soon as possible.

Before any of that, though, there’s still the matter of coming to terms with the past. What follows is an official index to The Best Things, a weekly column I started over two years ago, in the summer of 2004. It wasn’t always weekly, and it wasn’t always good, but it was there, time and time again — and, as I always say, being there is the best part of being.

Whatever that means.

TBT Index

1. TBT #1: The Beginning - “This is something positive” - July 29, 2004 (blog)
2. TBT #2: Feeling Forgotten - “It’s affectionately dedicated to all those people who misuse the word ‘literally’. You’re all literally kings among men” - August 05, 2004 (blog)
3. TBT #3: Too Much TV - “Maybe the colour on both of our TVs was messed up, but Blue Yoshi looked Purple, so we called him Purple Yoshi. And he was the best.” - August 12, 2004 (blog)
4. TBT #4: How’s Your Summer Gone - “The game itself was nothing special, notable only for involving no actual skill or talent beyond random guessing, but the commercial was great because it ended with the snappy legal tagline: “Game cards do not actually talk.”” - August 19, 2004 (blog)
5. TBT #5: Brush with Fame - “How cool is THAT? Next stop: Liner Notes! (Maybe a little picture of me in the liner notes)” - August 30, 2004 (blog)
6. TBT #6: Back to School - “I’ve seen enough prison movies to know that jail is not a pleasant place unless you’re like a serial killer cannibal in which case you get a nice private cell with a bunch of books.” - September 03, 2004 (blog)
7. TBT #7: Subtitled at Long Last - “I’m thinking you’d love me forever if I just said the right words, but so far all I can think about is cartoons from the 1980s, and the quiet hum at the end of this song.” - September 10, 2004 (blog) ((This was, in fact, the first TBT to have a subtitle — and to dispense with the “Top 5″ countdown format of the early editions. I just made up subtitles for the first 6 because I am sneaky and duplicitous.))
8. TBT #8: What do they know about magic? - ” In a paper entitled “Negatively-charged neutrinos in subspace where positive ions are present, and the existence of Unicorns,” Glasgow-based physicist Dr. Andrew Berk makes a very startling discovery: unicorns, long thought to be merely the stuff of myth and legend, do exist.” - September 17, 2004 (fiction)
9. TBT #9: There Is No Such Place - “Two years from now, I’ll likely read this and think it sucks. “What the fuck!” I’ll say. “Who wants to read a bunch of paragraphs about fucking cocksucking asslicking etymology?” (I’ll likely be far more profane in two years time.)” - September 24, 2004 (blog)
10. TBT #10: Superheroes - “Things are getting worse. Everything that was superheroic about me is being washed away by petty dislike and long conversations behind people’s backs. I’m losing touch with maturity, much less heroism, and I’m becoming increasingly worried that I might not be a good person after all.” - October 01, 2004 (blog)
11. TBT #11: A Relationship - “We got closer to the ocean, and I noticed how we reflect so nicely in lit storefront windows. A ghostly image, gloriously unfocused and without detail, like I’d love for us to be.” - October 08, 2004 (fiction)
12. TBT #12: Senseless - “She loves me! Every time she says it I lose some respect for her. I’d love to say goodbye to her in an airport, leaving a perfect image of character that she could carry with her forever, without me.” - October 15, 2004 (fiction)
13. TBT #13: Space Stories - “And then Sandy accidentally crossed the border into the forbidden zone of Jupiter and was shot with a space laser and vaporized. There were no stars where she died. Pieces of Sandy floated towards him like solar dust, sticking to his spacesuit as he tried to breathe.” - October 22, 2004 (fiction)
14. TBT #14: Halloween Frightacular - “They never threw milk down a sewer grate again, after that, because they had learned their lesson. And, also, because they were dead.” - October 29, 2004 (fiction)
15. TBT #15: Arguments - “The kitchen smelled like burnt eggs.” - November 05, 2004 (fiction)
16. TBT #16: Spoken Word - “We talk about my failed math tests and the way your parents won’t stop fighting. I mumble quiet responses and look straight ahead when you try to cry. In late April we sit on a hillside on a Sunday afternoon and make plans to go around the world.” - November 12, 2004 (fiction)
17. TBT #17: Return to Randomness - “I thought I posted this last night, but apparently it did not post! Perhaps because I was kind of half-drunk at the time and also eating a sandwich made with at least eight different kinds of meat. It was really good. The sandwich, I mean — not the update. The update sucked.” - November 19, 2004 (blog)
18. TBT #18: Five Things You Should Do - “When George W. Bush was re-elected three weeks ago, the blog part of the internet lit up with a bunch of “Oh god what are we going to do!” sort of messages. All the Americans claimed that they were moving to Canada, while all the Canadians claimed they were going to beat up the Americans” - November 27, 2004 (blog)
19. TBT #19: Doth Protest - “It scares me, honestly. Maybe I’m just not seeing the other side of this, but the idea that people — college students, especially — have completely lost their voice by being so loud worries me.” - December 04, 2004 (blog)
20. TBT #20: My Favourite Photos - “I look at these five events — the hurricane, the snowstorm, the end of first year, the end of second year and Mike dressed as Spider-Man — and I can’t help but feel these are moments that will, pictures or no pictures, stay with me for a long time.” - December 10, 2004 (photo)
21. TBT #21: Some Stupid Quiz - “In conclusion, things I did in 2004 that I had never done before included celebrating my 21st birthday and living through the first privately-funded space flight. They did not, unfortunately, happen on the same day. Nor did I celebrate my 21st birthday ON the first privately-funded space flight. Mostly because I’m not sure how time zones work in space. Is there some sort of, like, space time?” - December 20, 2004 (blog)
22. TBT #22: Merry Christmas Everybody - “With falling snow and shining stars we celebrate today because once there was a child who was also God, I think. And, in the end, he died. But it wasn’t a big deal because, dude, he was God. And he came right back to life. But, still, if he hadn’t died you’d go straight to hell for, like, gluttony or greed.” - December 25, 2004 (blog)
23. TBT #23: Really Stupid Ideas - “The question he asked, then, was whether there existed a team of men and women who engaged in sexual activities with these terrorist suspects in order to win their trust and extract information.” - December 31, 2004 (fiction)
24. TBT #24: Really Doesn’t Matter - “I’m stuck taking some stupid Canadian History and poetry classes, but at least I can finally say that my weekend is longer than my week. I’ve finally achieved one of my five life goals. The other goals all involve naked tetherball and/or diving into a giant pool of money so those I’m still working on.” - January 09, 2005 (blog)
25. TBT #25: Successive Failures - “I want to write! I want to create! I want to sleep in until noon though that’s rather incidental to my becoming a successful writer.” - January 15, 2005 (fiction)
26. TBT #26: An Ending - “I smiled, searched my pocket for the car keys, looked at her again. She was humming a little tune, skipping softly, tilting her head to the sky to watch the snow fall. God, she was so fucking annoying.” - January 21, 2005 (fiction)
27. TBT #27: Top 10 Films of 2004 - “If a director gets a good performance out of Marky Mark, he’s made a good film, and he’s probably a good director. So Paul Thomas Anderson, David O. Russell — you’re good directors! Tim Burton — you fucking suck!” - January 29, 2005 (reviews)
28. TBT #28: Supervillain Advice Columns - “However, your description of an “Eiffel Tower” fills me with great doubt. How could such an activity have anything to do with love, the emotion that so moved me?” - February 5, 2005 (other)
29. TBT #29: So Lie, and Tell me You Miss Me - “So one day, after that, he’s telling his friend about his idea for a club for people who misuse the word ‘arduous’. The friend sort of just says ‘oh’ because, seriously, how else do you respond to the idea for a club for people who misuse the word ‘arduous’? So the friend says nothing, but the original guy continues. “Yes,” he says to his friend, “finding people to join has been a really arduous task.”” - February 13, 2005 (blog)
30. TBT #30: On Falling In Love in The Face of Certain Doom - “Benjamin choked on his words. “Friends,” he asked, “to the extreme?”” - February 19, 2005 (fiction)
31. TBT #31: It’s In His Eyes - Blast From The Past - Missed Connections - First Aid Kit - February 22, 23, 25, 26 (guest articles) ((Series of guest articles by Pearle Tuason — her life philosophy is similar to the marketing slogan of Lay’s potato chips, meaning it is physically impossible for her to do anything just once. ))
32. TBT #32: In Cuba - “I feel that unless a story involves a cosmic crisis, a dinosaur or a melancholy declaration of love, it’s probably not worth telling. Where’s the hook? Where’s the excitement? I want to dazzle you.” - March 04, 2005 (blog, photo)
33. TBT #33: There is Nothing That Has Not Been Said About Infinity - “You would see yourself doing everything that you are capable of doing. You would see love. You would see God. You would see the meaning of life spelled out on the side of a speeding train.” - March 14, 2005 (fiction)
34. TBT #34: Human Interest Story - ““Considered it,” he tells me, “But what would I write? ‘Gone to die in space?’ They’ll figure it out. Smart people out there.”” - March 21, 2005 (fiction)
35. TBT #35: The Longer You Stay - “She’s all “Whatever, Luka!” And he just fires back with “You’re not that pretty; you’re not that special.” And FUCK, man, what a good line that is.” - March 28, 2005 (blog)
36. TBT #36: The Evolution of Me - “Plus last night an hour of time was STOLEN from me. Time was simply WASTED like a wino on a street corner or a mafia snitch after being found out. I wasn’t just annoyed when it happened; I was angry. And yet there’s nothing I can do as far as revenge goes! What am I supposed to do? Beat up time? Impossible!” - April 04, 2005 (other)
37. TBT #37: True Stories - “This friend and I got lost, taking a wrong turn down by the water and ending up about as far from our destination as two regularly intelligent people should be able to get.” - April 11, 2005 (blog) ((I love that this is #37; it might be my favourite TBT.))
38. TBT #38: …Never Worn - “I shove backwards out of the bathroom. He’s too young to be here! He’s too young! I’m drifting through the crowd again. The two men have the words. They’ve got them! “Won’t you help to sing!” says one, “These songs of freedom!”” - April 18, 2005 (fiction)
39. TBT #39: Because I Love You - “So the weekly The Best Things became the weekly TBT and the format fell by the wayside, where it currently attends class with Todd and the Three Erics and that one new kid wearing a bunch of raincoats who was actually a rat.” - April 25, 2005 (blog)
40. TBT #40: I Can Make You Feel - “I’ve been saying to myself, convinced that whenever summer DOES start, I’ll get out there and make it great. But I’m not sure it ever WILL start. At least not in the six-friends-working-at-a-resort, burying-Screech-in-the-sand, kissing-Stacy-Kerosi-during-the-Fourth-of-July-fireworks sense.” - May 02, 2005 (blog)
41. TBT #41: Voice Inside Mister Ed - “Remember Chief Quimby on Inspector Gadget? Do you think that was an elected position, or something he was appointed to? Because, honestly, he was not great at dodging exploding letters.” - May 10, 2005 (blog)
42. TBT #42: The Man of Tomorrow Tomorrow - “God, I couldn’t say it. I can’t say it. I’m trying to remember if I have freeze breath, son. I am trying to remember if I can FREEZE things with my ultra-cold breath!” - May 17, 2005 (fiction)
43. TBT #43: Unclaimed - “The airport lost and found doesn’t have it, airport security thinks I’m an idiot, the lost and found here is fucking METAPHYSICAL or something and everyone I talk to is named MARCIE!” - May 23, 2005 (fiction)
44. TBT #44: Saint Francis of Assisi and the Frantic Pacers - “A man and a woman fall in love but keep forgetting why exactly” - May 31, 2005 (blog)
45. TBT #45: The Magnificent - ““Look what I found in your ear,” he announces quietly, pathetically, brandishing a shiny silver coin.” - June 06, 2005 (fiction)
46. TBT #46: Zombie Story (Tell Her You Love Her) - “I tell her I love her. I burst into flames.” - June 10, 2005 (fiction)
47. TBT #47: Mixed Metaphors - “I will not wonder where you are now. Loading boxes into car trunks, dropping coins into fountains, throwing tennis balls to myself, staring at a mirror, cracking at the edges.” - June 12, 2005 (fiction) ((The only poem(ish) piece to be a TBT, and winner of the runner-up prize for the University of King’s College Inkwell Award for Poetry in 2006.))
48. TBT #48: My Starship has no Windows - “Catching your own eyes in a rear-view mirror, becoming filled with anger. Then disappointment. Then sadness.” - June 23, 2005 (fiction)
49. TBT #49: And You Will Know My Name - “The sound of groaning springs, the softness of a woman, bad pop music being the soundtrack to holy sacraments, crossing from street-corner to street-corner. I used to be this, I thought.” - July 09, 2005 (fiction)
50. TBT #50: The Fiftieth - “That sort of faux-enthusiastic humour peppered with bizzare references to early-90s Canadian popular culture that don’t inspire laughs as much as they inspire that “Hey, I remember that! That was lame” reaction that I love so much.” - July 17, 2005 (blog)
51. TBT #51: A Concise History of Everything Bad That Has Ever Happened To Me - “Mr. Bucket who — when you really think about it — was not a very good bucket by any stretch of the imagination. There was a hole in him that not even Dear Liza could fill.” - July 25, 2005 (blog)
52. TBT #52: My Multiverse - ““I needed to experience loss,” I exclaimed, as he bashed his fist across the back of my head. “I needed to feel this!’” - July 31, 2005 (fiction)
53. TBT #53: Our Conversations - “There’s also James Joyce, who begins Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man with his characters talking with (relatively) realistic dialogue but by the end has them engaging in passionate debate about the didactic nature of art and whether aesthetics are the true measure of creative talent. And then he just sort of gives up and finishes the book in point form. It’s really funny.” - August 07, 2005 (other)
54. TBT #54: Do You Think It Matters - “Seriously, have you seen her? She’s hot! I would DO her. “Diplomatically”! It would be a “goodwill tour”! She would “meet with my ambassador”. We’d “discuss globalization.” She’d “Give me a tour of Rideau Hall!” We would “fuck like crazy.”” - August 15, 2005 (blog)
55. TBT #55: My Pet Monsters - “The monster groans and grasps and throws his body against the door. I don’t have it, goddammit. I don’t have the key anymore.” - August 22, 2005 (fiction)
56. TBT #56: Help I Have Done it Again - “The future has hit me like a moose on the highway and sent my car (it’s a metaphoric car as I could not afford car insurance) careening off towards rivers and mountains and other such empty symbolism.” - August 29, 2005 (blog)
57. TBT #57: Half Way Undone - “Bowling out of Winnipeg. A parade in Berlin. They’re seeing Jesus in Mexico City. They’re playing sad music in Rome. I watch her eyes search mine.” - September 06, 2005 (fiction)
58. TBT #58: Mia and Mya - “And I keep going back to Mia and Mya, who have only a tiny chance of being special. It makes me sad, to think of unique things that blend together, that lose themselves in another.” - September 12, 2005 (blog)
59. TBT #59: Go, Levitate - ““The levitation. You know that one, right?” He nods. “Do that one, then. It’s my favourite, Nick. The best illusion. So go, levitate.”” - September 21, 2005 (fiction)
60. TBT #60: Finding and Killing Contemporary Pterodactyls - ” We’re going to get one of these sons of bitches. And we’re going to bring it back home, show it to the TV reporters and once and for all everyone will know that God’s Word is Truth.” - September 27, 2005 (fiction)
61. TBT #61: A Meeting of Lovers - “Writing about love, however, is bullshit precisely because writing about that kind of love is kind of, well, false. It sounds nice and it makes the reader feel nice and hopeful but it does not do a very good job of capturing most of the feelings that come with love. Real-life love.” - October 05, 2005 (blog)
62. TBT #62: Things That Could be Wrong with my Eye - “I’d probably get a glass eye, allowing me to final get the newspaper headline I’ve been longing for all my life: “Local Man subdues fleeing purse snatcher by throwing glass eye at him”" - October 13, 2005 (blog)
63. TBT #63: Where is the Madness that you Promised Me - “And then I felt bad about it. Because the story is about murder. Grizzly, pre-meditated, intra-family murder! And here I am laughing, because it’s just so god damn funny.” - October 19, 2005 (blog)
64. TBT #64: Burn Out - “Ducks are stupid! And I mean that in the most literal sense because I love ducks. I just think they are all unintelligent. Quack Quack Quack and all.” - October 26, 2005 (blog)
65. TBT #65: Road Trip - “Still others theorize that the season is named in tribute to the Albert Camus novel “The Fall” (La Chute) wherein, through a series of monologues, a self-proclaimed ‘judge penitent’ Jean-Baptiste Clamence reflects upon his life to a stranger.” - November 03, 2005 (blog, photo)
66. TBT #66: How to Write a Novel Just Like Me - “I read something like “You dodge the wizard’s deadly staff and strike him with your sword!” and I immediately think “There is no way I could do that; there is no way I could beat a wizard.”” - November 10, 2005 (blog)
67. TBT #67: Appreciating your Skylight - “Wow, a skylight.” - November 17, 2005 (blog)
68. TBT #68: Frazzled Bedazzled - “Except in my version of RENT everyone will die in the end due to a meteor and then afterwards they will all stand up and sing “METEOR!” followed by “No Day But Today” and then “METEOR (Reprise).”” - November 25, 2005 (blog)
69. TBT #69: My 22nd December - “Instead, now I know that time travel will inevitably result in people disappearing from photographs and also maybe bizarre incestual relationships being forged. And also, later, an adventure in the old west and a time travelling train.” - December 03, 2005 (blog)
70. TBT #70: The Best Job I Ever Had - “She holds her credit card in one hand and her hair in another. “Why do they name so many hospitals after cyanide?” she asks. I’m at a loss and I stutter and stammer and cough” - December 10, 2005 (fiction)
71. TBT #71: 5 Songs in 2005 - “You are all suckers. I have decided to make this list of five songs six songs long. And I do so not only because that is such delightful phrasing.” - December 18, 2005 (blog)
72. TBT #72: Bob Barker’s Place in History - “Bob Barker. Bob Barker, grinning, smiling, chatting nicely with the obese woman with breasts like a bouncy castle, and making me a toothbrush that sat on the tip of my finger only to fall right off.” - December 23, 2005 (fiction)
73. TBT #73: Light it Up Forever - “And get this: she named her child London. So bad news for people who have their hearts set on naming their kids after major cities: Paris and London are taken. You’re going to have to name your child Detroit. I’m sorry.” - December 30, 2005 (blog)
74. TBT #74: Oh, Snow - “It is better summed up with oversized snowsuits that smell like a crawl-space, a nature walk through untouched snow, a former girl-guide speculating at every hole in the ground that maybe — just maybe — an animal lives here, and the force against your back, sending you toppling towards the ground that says, yes, I was just tackled by my roommate.” - January 08, 2006 (blog, photo)
75. TBT #75: So What Now? - “Sometimes she works. Sometimes she lays her head against her desk and names imaginary cats.” - January 15, 2006 (fiction) ((Winner of the 2006 University of King’s College Inkwell prize for Prose. Not that I’m bragging or nothin’))
76. TBT #76: Elect Someone - “…the kind of advice Dr. Phil dispenses. Which is, you know, like regular advice, except slowed down a lot and repeated seventy times until the person getting the advice starts to cry.” - January 23, 2006 (blog)
77. TBT #77: Forever and the Two Earths - ““I hope the sun’s not evil!” thought Foreverman, the quintessential questioner of all things quizzical, arcing widely around the burning body.” - January 31, 2006 (fiction)
78. TBT #78: Plant Diaries - “How it would have been pretty funny if, when Stephanie Tanner was all messed up on meth, she had accidentally driven her car through the wall of her house and into her kitchen. The whole time she’d be having this really weird deja vu feeling, I bet.” - February 08, 2006 (blog)
79. TBT #79: Top 10 Films of 2005 - “I don’t like the comma in the title but I like everything else.” - February 16, 2006 (reviews)
80. TBT #80: West Coast Photojournal - “Stellar Sea Lion (That was what the tour guide called it. I am not sure if “Stellar” is a type of Sea Lion or just a really nice adjective; these sea lions were more stellar than others I have seen)” - February 23, 2006 (blog, photo)
81. TBT #81: A Whole Bunch of Nothing - “Haha, you see, because ‘dirigible’ sort of sounds like something you might feel but in reality it means some sort of warship. And also a feeling, sort of. But nobody uses that definition any more that I know of!” - March 03, 2006 (blog)
82. TBT #82: This is the Day - “Look at us and who we are: made happy by cheery little pop songs, so in love with the sun, we’re hardly deserving of so much much angst.” - March 09, 2006 (blog)
83. TBT #83: East Coast Photojournal - “So I spent a good half-hour generating colourful muscle men. This is an extremely cool and heterosexual thing to do.” - March 17, 2006 (blog, photo)
84. TBT #84: If Love Could Kill, it’d Kill Us All - “I don’t know what exactly that asshole is trying to say, Sandra, but I’m pretty sure it means you’re a fucking whore.” - March 23, 2006 (fiction)
85. TBT #85: This Things I Believe - “So me, I am done with school. I have no further scholarly aspirations except maybe being awarded an honourary doctorate given to me entirely because they like my style” - March 31, 2006 (blog)
86. TBT #86: Razed Potential - “But then I think that if I could see out of this place it would fall right down. It would have fallen down years ago.” - April 09, 2006 (blog)
87. TBT #87: Fitting the Profile - “Your Weakness: Bullets! And searing heat! And his song and his words.” - April 16, 2006 (blog)
88. TBT #88: Boys Just Leave - ““I expected you to just walk away,” she wrote. “You were a boy, after all. Girls go away with soppy cards and hugs and tears in their eyes - usually. Boys just walk away.”” - April 23, 2006 (blog)
89. TBT #89: How to Write An Essay Just Like Me - “In the end, it all comes back to confidence. Writing is an egotistical enterprise regardless of how you feel. If you were a humble person, you’d just let someone else do it.” - April 30, 2006 (blog)
90. TBT #90: Synecdoche - “I remember it was so beautiful that fucking day in the park.” - May 08, 2006 (fiction)
91. TBT #91: The Edges of Foreverman - “But I barely remember those days, those daunting days of defeating those that defiled. I have no words that fit. I just closed my eyes and listened to the waves.” - May 14, 2006 (fiction)
92. TBT #92: The Watchers - “We’re so similar, you and I on this park bench. Our words blend and merge, our thoughts converging like rain drops in a puddle, everything falling and coming together. We’ve always had this.” - May 22, 2006 (fiction)
93. TBT #93: Blood Loss - “Wendy smiles and tells him it was nothing, waving her hand in his face.” - May 30, 2006 (fiction)
94. TBT #94: Nineteenth Century Russian Novelists Discuss Life’s Little Things - “Then he pretends his lengthy beard is actually the underside of a cow, grabbing two fistfuls of hair and ‘milking’ them like udders, inexplicably.” - June 07, 2006 (fiction)
95. TBT #95: Countdown to Infinite Crisis - “I guess I could shoot for further success in terms of all that following my dreams stuff but, you know, why not just collect DVDs instead? It seems way easier.” - June 18, 2006 (blog)
96. TBT #96: Little Secret Earthquakes - “And then she said the words that changed his life: “You love liars. You seek out liars. You find then and know them and love them too.”” - June 25, 2006 (fiction)
97. TBT #97: Reader Mail - “I am looking to lose a great deal of weight all at once — somewhere along the lines of 230 pounds in eight seconds.” - July 04, 2006 (blog)
98. TBT #98: The First Half of 2006 in Review - “X-Men 3 is like the friend who pretends to like everything you like in a vain and transparent attempt to win your favours. And in the end the friend just vomits all over you with a ridiculous bridge-moving scene and an end cameo call-back that implies a character flew across the fucking country in less than three hours.” - July 12, 2006 (blog)
99. TBT #99: Dedication - ““Oh wait,” she adds quickly, leaving me no time to reply. Contractions are bad. I hate contractions. They leave so much out.”” - July 18, 2006
100. TBT #100: The Forevermen - “This is something positive!” - July 27, 2006

Rejected TBT Titles

• TBT #41: Ruminations on Degressi Junior High, Part I
• TBT #93: Confessions of Soft Hands
• TBT #95: Sir Charles Tupper