"All sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story"

So there are people like me who need to Google things for reference. Sometimes it is imperative to our understanding of a given topic being able to see just what the hell people are talking about. Recently that thing I was trying to understand was the character of Zombie Dom ( Dom-bie would be better, but video game companies hate solid suggestions): the undead, alt version of a character from Gears of War 4. Very Important Person, or DOM for short.   From what I've heard from Outside Xbox , Dom is some guy in a video game series I've not played for longer than 15 minutes. Apparently he was the bee's knees to John DiMaggio's character and people really dug it. There. Background. Covered.  I like scrolling through Google images. I like scrolling so far down that the images don't represent the subject that I was originally searching for. Sometimes the irrelevant items are more interesting than the subject I was researching. In the case of Zombie Dom, I got ...

(Originally posted on OutsideXbox.com by some fool. Me, most likely.) I was standing in the garden a few days ago feeling worse for wear after a stay in hospital when a Blue Jay burst from the trees and alighted on the lawn. Standing tall in brilliant azure blue his head turned to regard me. Our eyes locked and I felt the world shift below my feet. All of the fear of my illness was washed away in the blue oceans of his feathered embrace. My insecurities forgotten as I buried my face in his snowy chest. Flying over gridlocked cars in New York, our freedom expressed in swoops and dives, the exhilarating and terrifying movement causing my damaged heart to pump new life through my veins even as his heartbeat never quickens, is steady and comforting as a Swiss watch. Stood on the deck, staring at a bird, I decided to get closer. In the moment between decision and movement a blur of brown shot past me and pounced on the Jay. A startled squawk, an explosion of feathers, ...

In the Fall of 1978 I started a job in programming for a local PBS affiliate out of Plattsburgh, New York. Our goal was simple: edutainment with a splash of whimsy. In one night Nooky and I came up with the biggest kids show to hit the East coast: NOOKY COOK LOOKS AT KOOKY BOOKS. You know the expression, “From little acorns mighty oaks grow”? Well god damn did it grow. Suddenly we were rocking a 3.0 in the demographics, kids were telling the socks on Sesame Street to take a fucking hike and I was pumping fists with the biggest wigs in public broadcasting. But before all that, it was just Nooky and me. When I met her she went by the name Lydia Nookidarrow. She was waiting tables at a real dive on the pier called Slappy's Pizza. Don't bother looking for it, place burned down in '87 as did most of the pier. City rebuilt and gentrified the whole damn area. Real ritzy these days. They've got a new place there called the Naked Turtle. Can you believe that? Fuc...