Last week 20sb announced the nominees for this year’s Bootleg awards and I came home to some awesome emails and @replies because (1) Childhood Trauma was unopposed for Best Group Blog (!!!) and (2) I was personally nominated for a few things. Taking a look at the full list, I was a little bit excited. […]
It isn’t really the holiday season until the Sweeney family piles into the car with a bunch of suitcases, a few canvases, and some gigantic frames for a minimum of six hours. My little sister is about to be seventeen, and we are not exactly a tiny family, so we get some real quality bonding […]
Of all the shit I have purchased since my arrival in Paris, the €20 coffee maker was probably the best. (In perhaps a bit of a contradiction, I would say that splurging on a nice duvet was probably the second best purchase.) I have very little to report on life in Paris because I spend […]
I remember sitting in my back yard with a bucket of chalk, long after the sun had set, drawing nonsensical things and trying to make jokes about my impending move. At 14, being told to leave LA for a small town in Missouri was roughly equivalent to my life coming to an end. My best […]
My phone rings and I know it’s my mom — she’s the only one who has my landline number, aside from the automated French recording that calls every so often. “Derrik was arrested in Cairo.” I didn’t know how to respond to that information. It was a short phone call — she wanted to make sure that I heard […]
Last week was nothing short of insane. It was an emotional and informational roller coaster for my entire family. While I have lots to talk about on that front…that’s not what I’m going to do today. I will, soon, I promise, but not today. I want to talk about censorship and regulating the internet, and […]
If you know me at all, you may have heard that it has been a trying day. My family is exceptionally close. My siblings are my best friends. My younger brother is currently in the fall of his junior year at Georgetown University, double majoring in Arabic and Psychology. Last night he was arrested in […]
As research paper writing begins to consume my soul, my will to actually type things for this blog is waning. Instead, I spend free time I don’t have tinkering with the layout and recording silly videos. (Admittedly, I’m a little giddy about the product of the layout changes.) Today I bring you a brief look […]
My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Lieber, made our class of 34 kids stand up. One by one, she read off the list of reasons that people were killed in the holocaust. We were told to sit down when the description applied to us. In the end, I was one of two people left standing. It’s […]
Let’s take a breather, shall we? I sat down to start typing and there are a million thoughts, and I couldn’t seem to find the focus to pick one. This is how my entire life feels right now. This is when I start baking. Even though I was only in Budapest for five days, I […]