Monthly Archives: December 2019

2019, Professionally Speaking

It was an interesting year, and on paper, a good and useful one. I wrote or at least assembled two books in 2019, one of which was published (A Very Scalzi Christmas, which is doing well (thank you!), although naturally I expect the sales to dip soon) and the other of which, The Last Emperox, […]

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The 10s in Review: Krissy, in Photos

Many of them taken around Christmas, because apparently that’s when I take pictures of my wife (I mean, aside from all the other times). In mostly chronological order, starting with Christmas 2010. Yes, she can take a good photo. Also, I love her a whole lot. But you all knew that. The fact is I […]

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The 10s in Review: Athena, in Photos

Photos of my daughter in the last decade, in roughly chronological order, starting and ending with birthday photos from 2010 and 2019, respectively. It’s been a privilege to be here as she’s grown up. I wouldn’t have missed a moment of it for all the treasures of the world. I can’t wait to see where […]

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The 10s in Review: Whatever Best of 2010 – 2019

It’s been a fairly momentous decade for Whatever — it had some of its highest trafficked years in 2012 and 2013, and while direct daily visitorship to the site has declined as people migrated to Facebook and Twitter as those two sites took over the Internet, Whatever still manages to make a splash when I […]

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Thoughts On a Year of Exercise

A year ago today, weighing nearly 200 pounds and feeling physically run down, and also feeling somewhat depressed about those facts, I hauled my carcass up on the treadmill we have in our basement and started walking on it. I did about 20 minutes worth of walking that day — not a lot, just enough […]

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Whatever Best of 2019

And here we are again on Christmas Eve, which is my time to take a look back on what I’ve written on Whatever over the year, and pick out the pieces I think have some special merit — whether because of the writing, or because they characterize events, or because they note some (usually goofy) […]

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Review: The Rise of Skywalker

(This review will be spoiler-free, but the comment thread will be allowed to have spoilers. If you’ve not seen the movie yet, tread lightly there.) In the digital era of music, there have been complaints about something called “Dynamic Range Compression” — a production tactic that levels out the sound in the a recording so, […]

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DRDF: It’s a New Reality; or, Dorm Room Rock, Circa 1987

So, in high school I was in a band called DRDF, which was short for Dead Rats Don’t Fly, which was formed because our friend Tommy Kim wanted to record some songs he’d written in order to send a cassette of them out with his college applications (spoiler: It worked in at least one case). […]

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Impeachment Thoughts

For the record, my thoughts on the president being impeached, because, oh, my, he certainly was: * It was inevitable, not (just) because the Democrats were gunning for the president, but because Donald Trump is a crook and was one even before he came into office. Also he’s incompetent, and also he’s disdainful of any […]

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The Big Idea: Matthew Hughes

When cultures meet, is there always a “clash” — or is there a way for disparate peoples to not only get along but thrive? This was a line of inquiry that Matthew Hughes is interested in, and pursues in his new novel What the Wind Brings. MATTHEW HUGHES: Back in 1971, when I was an […]

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The 10s in Review: A Musical Playlist

What was I listening to during the 10s? Here’s a 40-song playlist on Spotify, alphabetical by artist. For this playlist, I used the following rules: 1. Every song was put out in 2010 or later. 2. One song per artist; generally speaking, my favorite song from that artist during the 10s. 3. I actually had […]

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