Watching old commercials is like watching a sleeping America dream about itself — Much has been written about my generation, the one suspended “between Gen X and Millennials” like an incomplete thought. Analysts have long groped for our defining traits: We are old enough to have morosely watched “Nirvana Unplugged” when it aired on MTV, but not too old to post Instagram stories…

I wonder a lot about how Jane ended up. When we were small we did everything together. “She’s just like you,” Aunt Cissy kept insisting, and Jane was, in that her birth parents were, for the most part, out of the picture. We also both liked fantasy books and hated…

An ‘algowave’ short fiction — For the past few weeks, I’m pretty sure I’ve been seeing another me. Wednesday afternoon I left my apartment to walk to the train and I saw her — me — crossing the intersection at the top of the hill, walking briskly. Then over the weekend I was washing dishes…

On stock photography memes and the illusion of reality — Around 2013, a relatively new meme format went mainstream. Stock photography juxtaposed with lines of surprising text was suddenly comedy gold, as Redditors proved — particularly when they took the benign and made it dark. But there’s a lot of life in stock photo memes besides rude subversions. The “distracted…

The Unearthing is a piece of fiction written in 2014 about that year’s public excavation of Atari games that had been infamously buried since 1983, and which I, working at the time as a ‘game journalist’, did not actually attend. All events and persons here are invented except for Ian…

When your lived reality is repeatedly denied, why not believe in a harmless crystal or two? — This is going to sound strange, but bear with me: I think a lot about witchcraft and computers, specifically the concept of magic in digital space. Common assumptions hold that the world of technology is rational, scientific, a business, while magic is insubstantial fiction — but virtual spaces have long…

Massive on YouTube, these viral videos are colonies of forms and formlessness in rainbow hues — I can spend hours watching disembodied hands inject silicone molds with clear or tinted fluids. Sometimes syringes of glitter are involved, or gelatin. Often, there is slime. Coca-Cola features prominently, injected into the kind of membranous and fragile balloon you make from a tube of goo. Or there’s kinetic sand…

I’m putting less energy into social media and more into creating physical artifacts from my life. It’s an act of political rebellion and joy.

I am an American woman who has decided to marry an English man. Wow! I’ve got lots to say about this. I mean, I have a lot to say about it. I’m really trying to hang onto my own speech patterns, but it’s tough. …