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...

Yesterday, William Shatner woke up the crew of Discovery with a re-working of the Star Trek opening. Tomorrow, the shuttle will land for the last time. But today, I’m just sad. The end of the shuttle program heralds not just the end of an era in spaceflight, but rings out the last, tinny echoes of hope from a chorus that once sang of all that was bright and wondrous in this new world of technology and promise. Or, at least it was a...

With my previous hipster essay continuing to be one of the most popular things I’ve ever written (second only to this), I thought I’d take another stab at the topic to better explain how I really feel about a counterculture movement defined by indie music, thrift store fashion and vintage video games. With a little luck, I’ll cut through the ambiguity of my last attempt. With a little more luck, I’ll make even...

I think it’s time we talk about the Christmas Problem. Or, more to a point, it’s time that I talk and you listen. And agree, unless you’re a hypocrite – in which case you can just go right on and have yourself a merry little bowl of shut the hell up. I’m going to skip through the usual Christmas hate, bypassing altogether the hand-wringing over the commercialism, the wanton spending and strange disconnect from...

As you may have noticed, Coquetting Tarradiddles is no longer running new content on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This is because I’ve decided to slightly alter the publication schedule to ‘whenever I damn well feel like it’. This is a minor change and absolutely no one should send me hate mail about it. Or, for that matter, thank-you notes. And, with that bit of business out of the way, let’s go ahead and jump right into...

Things have been quiet here at Coquetting Tarradiddles for the past few weeks. There are reasons for this, but they’re nothing too out of the ordinary. Let’s just say that things have been both Busy and Interesting, which is not always an altogether pleasant combination of activities. Some unfortunate and unavoidable legal issues arose with Brittany’s ex that needed to be dealt with, in addition to car trouble, work...