I hate lying... except when I do it, in which case it's fine and I understand its value. The difference is when I lie it's usually about small, inconsequential things like telling someone their hat makes them look cool when it doesn't or telling my neighbor that the kid who lives down the street smashed their mailbox with a bat when in reality it was me. Those are little lies designed to make my life easier, not massive widespread deceptions intended to mislead the public. That brings us to snowflakes. If you think back to your earliest school days, one of the first useless facts you ever learned — long before calculus or the preamble to The Constitution — you were told that no two snowflakes are the same. You sat on the floor in wide-eyed wonder at such an incredible piece of information and would go on to regurgitate for years to come. I remember this piece of information was backed up by the story of Wilson Bentley , who in 1885 at the age of 19 began photographing snow

Nothing feels like a warm, creepy, claymation-y hug quite like a Rankin/Bass holiday special. Even if you're not familiar with the name Rankin/Bass, you'll no doubt be familiar with their filmography which boasts classics like Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, The Year Without A Santa Claus, and  The Little Drummer Boy. The company is synonymous with Christmas, but they have a little-known gem to their catalog for the Halloween season:  Mad Monster Party. Released in 1967,  Mad Monster Party ( sometimes inexplicably written as Mad Monster Party? with a seemingly superfluous question mark)   tells the story of Baron Boris Von Frankenstein summoning all the monsters to his Isle of Evil (which oddly enough is in the Caribbean) to tell them about a major discovery he has made and inform them that he will be retiring from his position as the head of the Worldwide Organization of Monster. In attendance are Frankenstein's Monster (who is sometimes refe

Ever since I was a young kid I've loved watching ghost documentaries. I find them fascinating and always held out hope that someday we'd be able to scrounge up some proof as to whether or not there is life after death. However, thanks to a recent revelation, I've finally accepted the fact that the whole ghost thing isn't real. It all comes down to one simple question: Why aren't there any new ghosts? Every ghost documentary I've ever seen follows the same formula. There's an old building (almost always a hotel or bed & breakfast for some reason) in which some Civil War soldier clomps through the hallways with his ghost boots. But therein lies the problem; It's almost always a Civil War soldier or anyone else who happened to live in the 1860s or within 80 years or so in either direction.  In addition to Civil War specters, you also hear about Revolutionary War soldier ghosts, Turn-Of-The-Century Prospector ghosts, woman who is sad because her fiance d

We are inundated with rules everywhere we look. We have "laws," which are rules that apply to everyone and keep you from doing fun things like speeding or yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. We also have social rules that dictate when to bring a gift to a party and why you shouldn't call someone's new baby ugly no matter how true it may be. While most rules are followed, there's no set of rules ignored — even scoffed at — like pool rules. Swimming pools are like the Wild West. Yeah, there are rules, and even people to enforce them, but those people are a lot like a Dodge City Sheriff — easily paid off and usually too busy talking to floozies to notice anyone running afoul of pool law. Upon arrival at any pool, there's always a big metal sign that screams "POOL RULES" at you with a laundry list of do's and do not do's that are trying to harsh your pool mellow. Fortunately, as divided we are as a nation when it comes to anything else

If you find yourself awake at some ungodly hour you may spot some colorful blob floating above the horizon without a care in the world. Hot air balloons are seen as relaxing and even romantic by some. I think those giant, colorful nylon sacks are terrifying. First, archaic technology freaks me out. There's a reason we progressed from a technological standpoint. We wanted to make things faster, more efficient, and less likely to be deadly. Hot air balloons are seen as a novelty, much the same way horse and buggies are. If you want to get anywhere on time, use a car. Horse and buggies are only used by anyone who isn't Amish so they can kill an afternoon and post the pictures on Instagram. Look how much fun we had in Lancaster. We held up traffic all afternoon, it was great! There's no practical reason to go for a hot air balloon ride. They're not faster than planes; they're not even faster than zeppelins for God's sake! They're only useful if you find yourself

On Friday morning, we all woke up to shocking news, Food Network stalwart and the most competitive man to ever stand behind a grill, Bobby Flay, was leaving the network after 27 delicious years. If you look at the Food Network roster like a hockey team, Guy Fieri is the flashy goal-scorer, Giada De Laurentiis is the goalie who says certain words in weird ways, and Bobby Flay is the enforcer. Enforcers are competitive by nature and no one in the world of food (save for competitive eating legend Joey Chestnut) is more competitive than Bobby Flay. There's something inherently fun to me about food-based aggression. Not necessarily a school lunchroom food fight, but adults running around a kitchen "stadium" yelling obscenities because their ice cream machine isn't working fast enough is hilarious. Over the years he appeared on Iron Chef, Iron Chef: America, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and Beat Bobby Flay . And those are just the ones I could think of. What do they all have

By now, you've at least heard of Squid Game, the new Netflix series from South Korean writer Hwang Dong-hyuk. If you haven't congratulations on not being tethered to the internet 24/7.  It tells the story of 456 people who have been selected to play children's games for money, the only catch is if they lose a game, they're shot immediately. I don't want to get into spoilers because people on the internet are incapable of handling that, and I don't want to overanalyze the show because that — much like many of the characters on the show — has been done to death. I think we should just enjoy the show, and leave it at that. Let's not run it into the ground like we have so many other things. Listen, just because I like a show doesn't mean that I want to be inundated with it until I have no choice but to hate it. Since we're approaching Halloween and  Squid Game is the most popular anything at the moment, there is already a rush on getting magenta coverall