I just saw the Yayoi Kusama exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art. It’s the pumpkins in the mirror box, speaking plainly. The entryway outside the exhibit had the artist’s statement printed on the wall. She has been making these jazzy pumpkins for a while, inspired by what she called “the dignity of such pumpkins […]
Read MoreAuthor: Heather McKinney
The Bagans Chronicles
What Even Is This Place? For all its glitz and glamour, the last time I was in Las Vegas in summer 2024, the most bang I got for my buck was a virtual reality ride at a mall. We had driven in from Arizona on the Sinisterhood Full Moon Energy tour, stopping briefly at a […]
Read MoreThis Bloody Spectacle
I make more than my fair share of mistakes on the air. As a recovering perfectionist/lawyer, it used to haunt me. Now I realize I can’t know everything, and even all that I do know doesn’t always come out just right. Yes, I know Neptune is a planet. Canadian coins are called loonies and toonies […]
Read MoreLaundry, Barely
The other day, I needed something, and without even knowing it @28lesbian on tumblr delivered. I wasn’t even on tumblr when I saw it, in fact. I saw it how I saw a lot of stuff I see online – in my feed on Instagram. Now, I am happy to give credit where credit is […]
Read MoreWhere You’re From
This week, Paris’s grandmother died. She was 90 years old and had been diagnosed with Stage IV liver cancer just a few weeks ago. I hate to say she “lost the battle” with cancer because that necessarily creates the dichotomy of winners and losers. Is sticking around here a real prize? The true prize is […]
Read MoreCuriouser and Curiouser
I’m hurtling through space at a couple hundred miles per hour somewhere over Mississippi. I’m in the last row of first class on an airplane not much larger than a Dodge Caravan. Christie and I are flying home from traveling for the podcast. She’s back in steerage, and I’d be sitting right beside her, but […]
Read MoreA Sense of Security
I pulled a knife out of my mailbox this week. To be clear, it wasn’t a threat. I was expecting this knife. It came in a white padded envelope all the way from Huntersville, North Carolina. A woman named McKenzie texted me earlier in the week to tell me that my knife was on its […]
Read MoreThe Gospel According to Bieber
Mid-morning on a Tuesday, I am sitting in Well Grounded Coffee trying to get my morning pages done. At once, I am surrounded on all sides by people. The first is a man in his mid-40s, taking a seat at a table just to my right. He opens his laptop and starts typing on a […]
Read MoreSobbing and Rocking
I should be watching the concert in front of me. I can’t. I can’t focus on anything but the couple across the aisle. A diminutive pair, the man is wearing a short sleeve white shirt with a blocky black floral print. His jeans are skin tight. His hair is slicked back. I am across the […]
Read MoreReal Characters
For awhile in the late twenty-teens (what do we even call the years between 2010 and 2019?), I was miserable. Just absolutely down-in-the-dumps, ready to drive my car into a highway median. I didn’t want to die, exactly, but I just wanted to shut it down for awhile, spend a little time laid up in […]
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