When you stop missing the dead, that’s when their life loses meaning.

“I just have so many acid stories,” is my favorite thing I heard this week.

When we almost die, we “cheat death.” It can also be said that when we die, we’ve “cheated life.”

Ricky stood in the snow with one sneaker untied and his backpack hanging far too low on his back. His breath misted in the frigid December air. He shook, but not from the cold. His mother taught him to layer up, making it almost impossible to catch a chill.

No, his shivers were from fear. A fear he had every year. But this year was going to be different.

Time for another installment of Required Watching where we knock you out of your comfortable routine of TV and movies to show you a documentary that's weird for the sole purpose of making you a better person. Knowledge is power.

The older kid is heading off to pre-k in Chicago Public Schools next week. So here we are… I’m handing off my child to one of the most dysfunctional government organizations in our dumb nation. I can’t help but feel like a terrible parent.

The final horrors await you just inside the door…

There’s an odd disconnect between dealing with legitimate grief and typing “budget cremation wichita” into the search bar. 

Death liked Nelson, but Nelson wasn’t exactly sure why. Perhaps because they’d spent a lot of time together. At their last meeting, Nelson asked Death how he was able to remember their meetings. He’d done weeks of research, trying to find others who claimed they’d met Death. He had only found whackos.

We tend to take it for granted that living a long life is an inherently good thing. A desirable outcome to living is to live as many years as we can get.