ArcaMax

"This is junk food, Mommy."

That's what my 6-year-old told me as he sat down to his pre-swimming lesson snack. I'd given him peanut butter pretzels, fruit snacks and a piece of leftover Halloween candy.

"It's bad for me, and I'll get tired in a half-hour," he went on, starting to cry. "I don't want to get tired in a half-hour."

As I talked ...Read more

Now that the 2024 presidential election has come to its inevitable if protracted conclusion, can we turn the page? Donald Trump won so we won't have to sit through years of conspiracy theories about how Democrats have been training tiny monkeys to live in the ballot scanners and reject all Trump votes, but there are plenty of other matters I'd...Read more

Wake me when the election is over.

Actually, don't only wait until the election is over, wake me up when the campaign-related complaining, conspiracy theories, insults, protests, riots, bad jokes, lawsuits and death threats are over. Just to make sure, wait until after the votes are certified and the inauguration has safely concluded.

I ...Read more

There's a great gulf of silence in our country, a yawning chasm of "no comment" from Republicans on the shocking, disturbing and bizarre things that former President Donald Trump has said and continues to say.

That lack of criticism -- born from fear of retribution not only from Trump but from his minions in and out of political office -- was...Read more

Despite Americans in 2024 having access to more high-quality, well-sourced information on every topic known to man, somehow, we're seemingly also the most ill-informed people in human history.

I turn for evidence to a statement that a member of Congress was forced to release in response to what he called Hurricane Helene "response myths." The...Read more

The last thing I expected while watching a Korean cooking TV show was to confront my childhood feelings about my Greek heritage, but that's exactly what happened.

That I settled on "Culinary Class Wars" on Netflix was no surprise. I'm a sucker for reality cooking competitions, particularly ones that lean heavily on the contestants' cooking ...Read more

I asked my husband the other day how the vice presidential debate went. Because I no longer subject myself to torturous events that have absolutely no bearing on my life, I hadn't watched.

"Not good," he said.

He was worried that J.D. Vance's smooth performance against Tim Walz meant trouble for the Democratic ticket.

"Don't worry," I told ...Read more

It's hardly even fall, but already I'm looking for airline tickets for Thanksgiving, my jaw agape in horror at the prices.

It's never been cheap to travel during the holidays, so I can't tell if I'm just getting crotchetier about the cost or if flying is truly getting that much more expensive.

Whatever the answer, I'm committed, begrudgingly...Read more

I took the kids to the beach today.

It was a school night, they hadn't started their homework yet and I had a mound of laundry the size of Godzilla dropping in the basement, but when I picked them up from school, I looked up at the cloudless sky, saw the temperature was an unseasonable 83 degrees, and said, "What the heck."

I asked myself ...Read more

The least funny joke told during the most recent presidential debate was former President Donald Trump falsely accusing Haitian immigrants in Ohio of eating people's dogs and cats.

Oh, sure, it was hilarious at first. Vice President Kamala Harris even laughed when he said it.

I mean, how could anyone think immigrants are stealing people's ...Read more

Is no one else tired of this?

That's what I asked myself Wednesday morning as I watched the news of yet another school shooting -- this one in suburban Barrow County, Georgia: four dead, nine others injured at Apalachee High School.

The images on TV were too familiar: shaking children describing the sights of their friends and teachers ...Read more

In case you've had occasion to forget it in the last 30 seconds, Donald Trump and the rest of the GOP commentariat would like to remind you that Kamala Harris is a woman. She's also Black, they keep saying, and Indian.

Trump recently shared on social media posts that have suggested Harris traded sexual favors for career advancement and that ...Read more

I hate Jonathan Franzen.

I know, I know, he's a Great Author(TM). Super talented, apparently. But I don't hate him on literary grounds. My hatred also has nothing to do with professional jealousy (I don't think. Though if that's an underlying reason, I'm fine with that, too).

The man could be the next coming of William Faulkner, Toni ...Read more