Stories

I love science, and I’ve always thought that I might have become a pretty good doctor, except for one thing: the sight of blood immediately makes me nauseous and faint. (more…)

One day, I realized that bananas were disappearing from my desk at work. Were my co-workers eating them? Were they stealing them to be funny? Was the nighttime clean-up crew throwing them away? I didn’t make a big stink about it, because they were, after all, just bananas. (more…)

It was 11:30 AM on a Sunday, and I was at my friend’s condo. I was a little groggy, having spent the night before drinking hard. I desperately needed to pee, but the restroom was being used, and I could not find the restroom in the condo lobby, so I decided to take a quick whiz outside on the way to my car. (more…)

Back in college, I was a social recluse and Internet junkie. I sat in my dorm room and chatted online with strangers on IRC (a text-based online chat service) every night. It wasn’t like Facebook or even AOL, where user names are tied to accounts and profiles. There was simply no way to confirm anyone’s identity, so you could be whoever you wanted. Quite often, especially in the local LA chat rooms, users would pretend to be celebrities. It was probably never true. Or so I thought. (more…)