Miscellany

Some of my favorite words:

Crepuscular. Schadenfreude. Verisimilitude. Palimpsest. Galactagogue. Erstwhile. Kerfuffle. Umbrellabird (along with other odd bird names, such as Bananaquit and Ovenbird—why yes, I did have a bird-themed page-a-day calendar). Taco Cat.

You’re likely to find me reading:

Longform journalism at Longform.org. Books and articles about the human brain and the practice and history of medicine. New York magazine / The Cut / Vulture. Dystopian novels. The Washington Post. Entertainment Weekly. The New York Times. Nonfiction books about cheery topics like the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918 or a group of hikers who disappeared in the Russian Ural Mountains in 1959.

A few of my fun side projects:
  • Movie posters + cats + puns = this.
  • Art + cats = this.
  • We Love Rochester invited people in my hometown to share what they like about living here. I shared posts from more than 100 contributors before putting the blog on indefinite hiatus.
My 15 minutes (or rather, few minutes) of fame: 
  • My tweeted contribution to #RuinARealityShow in June 2014, part of Hashtag Wars on Comedy Central’s @Midnight, was deemed “one of the funniest” by StyleCaster. (I’m prouder of this than I should be.)
  • A Change.org petition I created in 2015, which asked Apple to remove racist ringtones from the iTunes Store, garnered about 2,300 signatures. The San Francisco Chronicle interviewed me for a story — and Apple removed the ringtones soon after (which I choose to believe wasn’t a coincidence, but who knows). I even got mocked on San Diego talk radio, and how many people can say that?
  • The abovementioned We Love Rochester blog has gotten some press mentions, and in 2016 it gave me the chance to talk about Rochester on local TV.
  • I was included in The Rochesteriat’s blog post, “You Should be Following these 7 Creatives.”
  • My name happens to appear in a 2009 amicus brief filed for a Supreme Court case. (The brief was filed by the Humane Society of the United States, where I once worked, and referred to an article I wrote in 2006.)