If you’re the type of adult who would strip all belief in magic & wonder from a child, you’re a vile bastard and no one should ever love you. I tweeted that the other night, after Trey let me know that someone told him Sesame Street is for babies, and that the characters are just puppets. I guess by itself, that’s not entirely a bad thing. I mean, Trey is six years old now and it’s probably time to put...

It’s time to talk about The Christmas Problem again, which I did last year and will repeat a bit this year, but most of it’s fresh. Or at least not dead-horse-beaten quite yet. Or maybe it is. I can never tell. Last year, I was in the dumps mainly due to a lack of both funds and sons, with the former having been stretched like a sheet of elastic putty over the newspaper comics so thin that the fat kid from Family Circus went...

This post is intended for graduating high school seniors and the parents of graduating high school seniors. You know who you are. My Commencement Speech To The Graduating Class Of Whatever-The-Hell-Year-It-Is-When-You-Read-This I will never be your commencement speaker, but if I were your commencement speaker, I would commence to speaking one thing and one thing only: You do not need something to fall back on. If there’s one piece of...

It’s Tuesday, which means Coquetting Tarradiddles is back to its regular posting schedule. I apologize for all the confusion while I got my feet wet with my first experiment in the serialization of my novel, Snowflakes In Autumn, but things should go smoother from here on in. I’m wrestling a bit with the Donate / Contribute / Whatever button right now as I try and persuade the demons chained to the walls of the PayPal basement...

Hello, kiddies. This is my first essay since I started posting Snowflakes In Autumn, so I probably have a lot to say. However, I’m going to keep things relatively brief today before we move on to the last two installments of Chapter Two later in the week. My days of late have been filled mostly with work, writing and party planning for Trey’s 4th birthday extravaganza. Due to his unwavering adoration of all things Super Mario,...

I’ve been thinking about Father’s Day coming up in June, so today I’m giving you a short and sweet guide to being a stepfather. And, while this may seem like a fairly specific sort of thing that has the potential to alienate a large chunk of my readers and drive them away to other websites filled with less niche-related bibblebabble, I promise you it’s not. It’s good advice for any parent, step or otherwise. It...