If you'd asked me a year or two ago to have a look at a wood-bodied fountain pen, you'd not have gotten much more than polite interest.
I mean, where do you find wood in vintage pens or among modern makers? Wood, I figured, was for home hobbyis...

Everyone (or pretty much everyone) dislikes school to a certain degree, whether it be the long and early hours or the huge amount of homework being assigned everyday. High school, especially, can be one of the worst and stressful things for everyo...

Everybody has those bad habits that they're constantly trying to get rid of but just cant. Whether it be biting your fingernails, always being late, or procrastinating: these small bad habits are extremely annoying but just so hard to get rid of. ...

With the visit to Beijing by Kim Jong-un, it's looking more likely that a Trump-Kim summit will take place.
The meeting may even take place in Beijing.
Getting a North Korea deal is important to Trump, and given his loose play with facts, it w...

For most people, it is a STRUGGLE to find a balance between maintaining your social life, while also being academically driven and focused. I have seen so many people who are such extremes, either being completely focused on their social life and ...

C'mon. This doesn't need to happen. If Apple can build a bazillion dollar headquarters down the road, somebody can come up with the peanut shells to keep the Oasis open.

The news broke a couple of days ago. People are now lining up in mourning ...

Using multiple pen names has a long tradition among writers. But the digital age has made it harder to create and present work under different names.
Platforms like Facebook and Wordpress let you create a single persona and expect you to produc...

Taylor Swift has turned into Donald Trump.
Ah, shit. It's only entertainment and very finely constructed, but listen to what she has to say.
I Did Something Bad

They say I did something badThen why's it feel so good?They say I did something...

It's All-Star season again so time for some fun at the expense of the Warriors. 
Team Steph didn't win. Team KD did. Klay didn't win the 3-point trophy. Draymond made all his points from the line.  Did he even take a shot away from the basket?
...

Going to be honest, I am not a organized person at all when it comes to my physical things; my room is a MESS. But I almost always make sure I have a mental list of what needs to be done, which is kind of staying organized, one way or the other. 
...

I have talked to so many people that have told me their horrific experiences that happened to them while they were on stage either performing, or giving a speech. I have a few to tell myself, but personally, stage fright has never ever been a prob...

I'm sure you have heard all about how a dog is "a mans best friend" and all that romantic exaggerated stuff people say about their dogs. Well, I have a dog and it is definitely not like that at all. 
My dog is needy, stupid, and very very small, ...

I want to start off with the fact that I am personally not a very good dancer: but definitely one in learning. I have never found 'not knowing how to dance' a huge problem (except for in school dances, of course) until I started to do theater. 

...

The media these days put makeup and beauty products on an extremely high pedestal, and sets unreachable goals of images of what a women "should" look like. 

Everyone should have their own way of expressing themselves, and it's completely fine a...

So many people nowadays are learning new languages the make their resumes look better, to get into a better college, as it is considered extremely "convenient" to have another language learned in their back pocket. 
As a person who has grown up...

You can’t judge a book by its cover, but a compelling presentation makes for a terrific start to bringing readers into your fold.
First Impressions Matter
Readers judge how deep they want to dive into a work by the title and first paragraph. C...

After the Warriors blowout in Utah, @utahjazz tweeted this.

But minutes later they deleted the tweet. I'm not sure why. It's a classic. The Warriors should put it on a wall.
The Jazz came to play and the Dubs were discombobulated. To their cre...

This is a VERY debated over topic, especially with those of us in the music community. Everybody has a different preference whether it be listening with playing these types of groups. 

Chamber Music (Quartets, Octets, Duets) usually involve muc...

Well...not exactly, but as long as you know what you're doing, it can easily be pulled off. 

One of the main things to make sure before you do any sort of (formal) public speaking: i.e speeches, presentations... you HAVE to know what you are ta...

OK. Yes, we all love to see the marquee Warriors: Steph, KD, Klay and Green
But tonight against Memphis, we got to see another group that has gelled into something special in their own right. On the court in the fourth quarter, they could have br...

Going to the gym to me always seemed like this great big commitment that required a lot of mental and physical strength to maintain, which is why, with my busy schedule and lazy attitude, gym-ing never became my thing, until it suddenly became req...

Women around the world are speaking up and revealing the magnitude of the problem of sexual assault and harassment. Men too.
WriterShelf is a place where you can share your story, big or small. The privacy of a pen name can help you take the fi...

I came to this after reading Richard K. Morgan's Takeshi Kovaks series and finding myself in search of something to follow on.
Somewhere amongst the comments on goodreads, I ran across the recommendation that if one had not yet read Neuromancer...

It was my first good knife. I can almost picture the the out-of-the-way tool store I bought it at, there being no fancy kitchen shops where lived. I certainly remember the kitchen job where I used it. The place was a madhouse.

Digging my thum...

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People are angry that the Russians interfered in the 2016 US elections. Rightly so. The idea that Putin's Kremlin worked to put a thumb on the scales is almost unthinkable. But are elections fair game in modern warfare? Reading Rosa Brooks' How ...

I grew up listening to KZSU, a small FM radio station broadcasting from in some basement at Stanford university. Wikipedia says the station was 10 watts at the time, so it reached maybe 30 miles?
The station was all about music. They ran as lit...

One of the most problematic things for kids and teens these days is: lack of sleep. Yes, it might be because they are up late watching TV shows or procrastinating and doing whatever to put off their homework, but ultimately, it leads up to the com...

Noir cyberpunk science fiction is Richard K. Morgan’s speciality and he’s damn good at it. This stand-alone work is the best of his I’ve read so far. Published in 2007 as Black Man in the UK and Thirteen in North America, the book won the Arthur...

“Choose a job you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life.” 

Well, maybe just the weekends.  That said, we do spend most of our adult waking hours working and many of us continue to work into our mid-60’s.
But there are those...