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As I’ve mentioned before, I live in a very silly place. This town is full of weirdos of every description. Listening to their conversations at the park, library, grocery store, post office, goat-fighting arena, and ice cream parlor brings no shortage of material for doodles, cartoons, and poems. Here are a few of the things I overheard this week…

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

We’re bringing back WATERCOLOR WEDNESDAYS! Starting this week, for paid subscribers (don’t worry—the Sunday Balderdash! remains free), we’re bringing back our midweek segment dedicated to the profound wisdom only attainable through watercolor. Thanks to all of you beautiful paid subscribers—you help keep the lights on here at Balderdash!. And to any and all soon-to-be paid subscribers, thanks in advance for being part of that essential community of enablers my therapist keeps warning me about! Smooches.

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We did it! We launched a website. You can check it out…HERE!

This is something that I was supposed to do in graduate school about a decade ago. In my Creative Writing Masters program, we were all encouraged to make an author website where readers, potential publishers, and folks planning live readings/events could learn more about us and do the whole networking thing.

I didn’t do it because I am shy and thought it was dumb.

When I started my PhD in Literature, we were all encouraged to create a website for ourselves as scholars and academic writers. These sites would be places where fellow scholars, readers, potential publishers, and folks planning conference presentations/panels could learn more about us and do the whole networking thing.

I didn’t do it because I am shy and thought it was dumb.

But since leaving academia, there have been a lot of things I miss about teaching creative writing classes and supporting fellow creative types as a reader, editor, and reviewer of new work and work-in-progress. So it seemed like an important moment to stop being shy, to stop being dumb, and to make a friggin’ website.

The idea of the website is pretty simple. It’s an author website. You can find a list of my books, online writing, and “coming soon” projects (keep your eyes peeled as we get closer to November…hint hint). But it is also a place where you (1) schedule a visit from me with my workshop “Drawing the Line: Doodle-Journaling in the Digital Age” or (2) request my services as a Writing Consultant & Reviewer. These are little things that I’ve wanted to try out for quite a while. Freelance education and editorial work are very rewarding to me. And I’d like to make these things bigger parts of my life.

As you know, I’m a big proponent of the power of writing and doodling. I deeply believe that scribbling, scrawling images and ideas with pen on paper, is an important exercise in preserving our human creativity in the digital age. The hope with this new chapter is that, maybe, I can reach a bigger audience with this message: you should write and draw without AI.

Like most of my dreams, I wouldn’t have been able to get this thing done without my wife, Jennifer. Sensing my distress about web design and knowing that I am a technology moron, she stepped in like a gorgeous, brilliant superhero. While I wrote the content and made the visuals, SHE figured out how to make everything look classy. The layout, the navigation, the links…that’s all her. My assignment was to upload the pieces and then draw pretty pictures of how I wanted the web pages to look. She took it from there.

In the end, I think it looks pretty darn great. Is there too much writing on each page? Maybe. But we all need to be reading more in 2026. Are there too many doodles and not enough flashy animations? Irrelevant. That’s not how I roll. Shut your stupid mouth.

So, if you or someone you know could use some guidance on a writing project OR if you know a library, community center, class, etc. that might like a visit from a quirky creative writing/doodling workshop (just in Michigan…for now), let us know! Excited to see where this goes!

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Balderdash! will return next week!

…maybe not Randy, though.

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As a 30-something-year-old man with his own home, I am increasingly under pressure to remove my childhood crap from my parents’ house. This week, I brought home several boxes of my old papers…including much of my early artwork. Among the many embarrassments was a portfolio of cartoons that I had made between junior year of high school and freshman year of college. Some of these (I think) were first published in my high school newspaper.

They’re not good. But I was delighted to find that I actually kinda still like most of them. There is a very obvious Christopher Hart influence. I was learning from his retro-style cartooning books.

Also…I guess I had teenage ambitions to become a political cartoonist. This was 2006-2008. And my budding liberal sensibilities were taking shape, especially in my holiday-themed efforts.

Because I love you, you may look at this stumbling sampling of the pretension and whimsy of my youth.

(Yes, that’s supposed to be a Schulz-ified George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.)

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Everyone loves a good mystery. Murder. Theft. Scaring locals away from a real estate scheme. Using a story, smarts, and skills of observation to solve a puzzle is something that excites many of us.

But WRITING a good mystery can be hard. Placing all of the evidence in a convincing and narratively interesting way is a major challenge unless you’re an Agatha Christie or a Harlan Thrombey. And, if you’re an aspiring mystery writer, you might need a little help getting started.

This week, your friends at Balderdash! have compiled a list of Mystery Story Prompt mini-comics. We provide the title, the important clues, and the linchpin question for solving the mystery. YOU provide the story. All of the pieces are here on the corkboard. You just need to spin the yarn between them…

1. “THE SHACKLES OF BENNINGTON WEAVE”

2. “THE UNSEEMLY AFFAIR”

3. “MIDNIGHT AT THE REST STOP”

4. “TWELVE PRAYERS FOR SISTER CARTWRIGHT”

5. “THE SLENDOR MUFFIN”

6. “SPITTLE IN THE SHOEBOX”

7. “THE GHOUL OF GASBAG JUNCTION”

8. “AN HORS D’OEUVRE TOO FAR”

   

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For a while now, I’ve been sketching out and starting and stopping and reimaging and talking-about-but-not-doing a specific book project. It’s a tricky one. Other projects, ones that I have clearer ideas about, have taken over. And this special, challenging project keeps getting pushed to the backburner.

But I’ve been thinking about it again this week. And I arrived at the revelation that one of the problems has been how the written text appears on the page. Up ‘til now, I’ve been keeping the language tidily isolated away from the visual images. But it’s possible that an important part of the book’s concept will necessitate words being integral do the visual world.

Duh. That’s a no-brainer. That’s Picture Book 101.

But it’s taken me a long time to realize that I have been working on an illustrated poetry collection when, actually, it’s supposed to be a picture book.

While they aren’t pages from the project, these scribbly nonsense exercises helped me think about how to use the page…when I finally get my act together.

PROMPT:

Your turn! Create a doodle in which written text pulls the same visual weight as the figure(s) you have drawn.

(1) Start with a figure. Draw a character in the middle of the page (make sure that you have plenty of surrounding white space to play with).

(2) Fill that white space with words. In this exercise, try to allow not only the idea conveyed by the language but ALSO the visual presence of the lettering to compete with, surround, physically overpower, etc. the character.

(3) Step back and reflect. What is possible in a world where drawn figures and drawn words are in conversation as equal visual characters? What tensions can your create? What subtleties can you craft?

(4) Show your friends!

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At this point in my creative endeavors, I’ve pretty much found myself using the same kinds of writing/drawing tools every day (typically an Paper Mate “Ink Joy” gel pen or a Uni-Ball Vision Elite). But sometimes, when I’m in the grocery store, I am overcome with a nostalgic longing for one of those BIC 4-color ballpoint click pens. The ones with black, blue, red, and green ink. I dunno. I think I associate them with childhood doodling in the margins of my worksheets and notes for class.

This week, I coughed up the $3.00 (I had to dip into my children’s savings accounts) and got myself one. The magical thing about working with an instrument nontypical to your practice is that you discover characters you might not otherwise have met had you not broken your scribbling routines. Over the last few days, I’ve grown to know Ballpoint Bill really well. In fact, I think it is safe to say that he might be the Oscar Wilde or Mark Twain or Dorothy Parker of his generation…

PROMPT:

Your turn! Use a drawing/writing instrument you don’t typically pick up…

(1) Pick up the instrument.

(2) Fill a page with faces.

(3) Find a face you really like.

(4) Fill a new page with variations on that face.

(5) Give them things to say. Figure out who they are.

(6) Show your friends!

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On Wednesday, my daughter (6 years old) sat against the dining room wall. She was sobbing. She had just written a poem and decided that it was “the most terrible, stupid poem ever written.” I asked if I could see it. She told me, “You’ll never get to to see it because the words are right but the poem is bad.”

“Well, that’s a good place to start,” I said, “If you were to keep the words you like, but change something you thought was ‘bad,’ what would that thing be?”

“I’d throw it in the trash,” she said.

First off, it should be noted that this was NOT her first poem. She is already an award-winning published poet having gotten first place for kindergarten in our library’s annual Young Poets contest this year. But, because she has natural creative talent in a number of artsy areas, encounters with imperfection, obstacle, and dissatisfaction hit her pretty hard.

“Y’know,” said I, “I used to teach creative writing. And a lot of my students would feel this way after they wrote a first draft of a poem. Actually, good writers SHOULD feel the kind of thing you’re feeling right now. We use that, react to it, and grow from it.”

“I’m never writing another poem again,” she said.

My daughter is currently in rehearsals for a local community theatre production of Annie. She’s playing Molly—the tiny, cute orphan. “Y’know how, in rehearsal, the director asks you to do a scene or a dance a bunch of times and maybe asks people to do it a little differently each time?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Well, writing is kind of like that. If you want something to be the best possible version of itself, you have to try different versions of it. And each time, keep the parts you like and get rid of or change the parts you don’t like.”

She gave me a high-pitched grumble à la Miss Piggy. But later that afternoon, she scribbled a few new pages in secret.

I think that we all need consistent reminders about the iterative nature of creative work. Nothing (or maybe “rarely anything”) is perfect in its first-draft stage. We need to give ourselves the space, grace, and liberty to make mistakes and experiment multiple times before we get things “right.”

And it’s possible that kiddos with creative inclinations especially need such reminders. Artsy kids make stuff and get praised for their creations because, as adults, we want to build confidence in imaginative and expressive endeavors. But part of being an artsy kid is that you also develop a nuanced sense of taste a bit earlier than other young people. If you are 6 years old and making poems or comics or sculptures because you like poems or comics or sculptures, you already have a sense of what “good” and “bad” are as you try to mimic the gestures of those things and make your own original contributions.

PROMPT:

I want to outsource a prompt/activity this week, one I think is important to show the kiddo artists in your life. Illustrator Greg Kletsel has some excellent videos on YouTube. His “Finding Your Illustration Style Through Illustration” is particular good.

(1) With the young artists in your life, WATCH KLETSEL’S VIDEO…LINK!

(2) Find a photograph of a person, animal, or object that speaks to you.

(3) Now draw that thing 7 times. Each time, do something different with it. Simplify. Complicate. Heighten the angles. Smooth parts out. Maybe use different materials. “Make small changes OR big, big leaps.”

(4) REFLECT: Look at these 7 versions. What happened between them? What elements did you keep? What did you change? Why did you make those changes? Which versions do you like? Which ones do you not like so much? Which versions do you think are the most YOU? (Those ones are approaching or reaching your own unique style).

(5) Keep this exercise in mind the next time your kiddo artists are being hard on themselves about their creations. I think that filling a page with doodle iterations is a low-stakes, low-pressure lesson in the power of revision. Show yourself and your young artists how bright and capable we are when it comes to pushing a core idea in multiple directions.

(Here’s a quick set of doodles I did using a photograph of Edward Lear…)

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Happy Fourth of July weekend! As is our tradition, the Balderdash! staff is off visiting family this week. But, in honor of the nation’s 250th birthday, we managed to squeeze in a few doodles of everybody’s favorite Founding Father—the party-loving Enlightenment Casanova of the Second Continental Congress, Dr. Benjamin Franklin!

We all know that Ben Franklin was a pioneer in multiple fields. He created America’s first volunteer fire department, lending library, and public hospital. He invented bifocals, made important discoveries in electricity, and drew America’s first political cartoon. The list goes on and on. BUT! Did you know that Franklin—an infamous party animal—is also credited as the first American to just, like, totally get LIT?!

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We’ve been living in our house for a few months now. And we’re finally experiencing our first summer as homeowners. This means that we’re out in the yard more—playing soccer, building a garden, setting up bird feeders, and doing general maintenance on our house and yard.

Being outside also means that we’re connecting more with the other folks in the neighborhood. For the most part, people are great! On a scale from Mr. Rogers to Charles Manson, most neighbors clock in somewhere between Paul Hollywood and the Grinch.

In an effort to better understand our neighborhood and its people, I’ve taken to keeping track of my interactions in, of course, the form of doodles…

PROMPT:

Your turn! What is YOUR neighborhood like? Create a collection of character studies of the people who live around you.

(1) Go enjoy some of this summer weather by wasting your time with menial tasks in your yard. Put a fresh coat of paint on a board no one ever sees. Rip a beautiful plant out of the ground simply because other people categorize it as a “weed.” As you go about these pointless chores, neighbors will stop by to tell you how you’re doing them wrong.

(2) When a neighbor is in your personal bubble, try to ask them about their life, work, and interests. Make a mental note of stuff they tell you. Filter out all of the normal or boring things. Try to catalogue only everything that is weird about them.

(3) After 2-3 hours, the conversation will finally be over. Go back inside where it’s safe. In your sketchbook, distill the information you’ve gathered into a charming portrait of the individual using both words and images. Feel free to embellish for comedic effect. Don’t worry if your caricature is accidentally unflattering. It’s not like anyone is going to see this.

(4) Show everyone you know!

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The kids spent the week at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. It sounds like they had a lot of fun! But as someone who works from home and homeschools his kids, I realized very early in the week that I am very dependent on them for structure.

This was me at 7:30 AM on the first day they were gone:

Here I am at noon:

And 3:00 PM:

The second day, I toyed with some ideas:

I thought that tackling some house projects would help:

But by Wednesday, I began to figure out healthy things to do with my free time:

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As you probably already know from TV, movies, expensive therapy sessions, the only poem you read in high school, NPR, and Steve Gutenberg's Instagram reels, self-reflection is SUPER important. The world is messed up, bro. And you've gotta know what's going on inside of your own brain and heart and habits in order to grow. It's important to keep in mind that the present version of you always sucks a little bit. And self-reflection can help you blossom into a version of yourself that learns how to not suck as much in some ways while inevitability sucking in other ways. I have found that there are TWO methods for inviting self-reflection into your life in a more robust and thorough way:

(1) GET MARRIED TO A LOVING BUT SLIGHTLY MEAN PERSON: If you select the right partner to share your life with, that person will have no qualms about telling you (with tremendous specificity and enthusiasm) how you are living said life incorrectly. They will do or prompt much of the self-reflecting FOR you.

(2) KEEP A DOODLE-JOURNAL: The more you write and draw about the things you’re doing and the stuff you’re thinking about, the more evident your flaws, ignorances, stupidities, shortcomings, and failures will become.

Here’s a few of my self-reflection epiphanies from the week!

PROMPT: Your turn! What reflections, epiphanies, and revelations have YOU made this week? Scribble them out. Show your friends!

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As a parent, one of the most important things you can do for your children is throw them out into the tick-infested forests to commune with what remains of the natural world.

To be an even better parent, throw your kids in the woods with limited supplies. No granola bars. No compasses. None of these “water bottles” you Gen Z/Gen Alpha aquaholics are so addicted to. Just a pen, paper, and a kiddo-style sense of curiosity and adventure.

To be an AWESOME parent, you might preface abandoning them in the woods with a tutorial in nature journaling, the art of engaging with the wilderness by placing our observations, inquiries, and connections on paper. Back when I taught college writing classes, I used prompts from the brilliant John Muir Laws and his Nature Journal Connection books and colleagues. I find that they translate well to helping my kids frame their curiosity and translate the things they discover into notes and sketches that we think about in the moment AND return to in the future. Laws’ recommendation of using the statements “I notice…” (your sensory observations), “I wonder…” (your curiosities and questions), and “It reminds me of…” (your connections and comparisons) leads to fruitful attention and critical thinking about the pieces of nature we find.

But to have the best possible time (and maybe learn something yourself, y’boring old geezer), have your kids be the ones leading the nature journaling adventure. When they want to wander further, follow them. When they have a question they want answered, invite them to be the ones putting clues together. When they give directions about what to observe and how to observe it, follow those instructions with attention and enthusiasm. They are pointing you in the right (write) direction.

While we do nature journaling in our main journals often, this week, we made special zine-style booklets for the task and tried to add something to them every day. Here’s how mine turned out:

On Friday, we had something of a grand finale for the week. We visited a lake where we often take walks. But this time we found a trail that we’d never noticed before. My plan was to only venture in a little ways. But the kids kept pushing us further and further onward. I’m glad I followed them. There was a treasure at the end of the trail:

I definitely recommend nature journaling with the kids in your life this summer. There are lots of ways to turn the practice into a game, too. Here’s one:

PROMPT:

Play the John Muir Laws game “Secret Plant” (or a variation on it):

(1) By yourself (make sure no one else is looking), find an interesting plant in your yard, park, nature trail, etc. Draw a picture of it. Be as detailed as possible, but your drawing doesn’t need to be perfect. I didn’t use coloring tools this week, but I think colored pencils, crayons, or watercolors will certainly help.

(2) Around your picture, add notes that help explain what you’re seeing. Use those guiding ideas—”I notice,” “I wonder,” and “It reminds me of”—to fill the page with tangible observations, emotional and intellectual questions, and literal or figurative comparisons that help (or will help) you understand the plant further.

(3) When you have a full page, find your nature journaling friends and hand them your journal. Using your sketches and notes, make them find the plant.

(4) Repeat this until everyone’s had a turn to both create the journal clues and hunt down the mystery plants. Together talk about what connections, disagreements, amendments, etc. each of you can add to the original journaler’s ideas. Leave the plant only once you’ve got a satisfying collection of starting points to build upon with research later.

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1. The day was grey. And grizzly, too.

2. Albert lost all will to “do.”

3. Charlotte spun her gossamer.

4. Snootus turned philosopher.

5. Tall Fitzwilliam dreamed of socks.

6. Small Witzfilliam screamed at rocks.

7. Corvid Christie kept his word.

8. Helena Handbasket watched a bird.

9. Randall Tiptoe died of chill.

10. Snoozin’ Susan showed her skill.

11. The maple, lonely, lost its leaves.

12. Phyllis felt. And now, she grieves.

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This week, I showed my daughter a short video posted by the brilliant cartoonist and writer Steve Brodner. He’s been talking about a workshop he’s leading this summer and showing examples of some of the exercises he’ll include. My daughter was really interested in the ones that involved looking closely at the model/subject while NOT looking at the paper (”blind or half-blind contour drawings”). We played around with drawing this way.

Later in the week, my son got involved, too. We all started doing contour drawings. I thought, given the kinesthetic lyricism of the activity--feeling the image onto the page--there might be an opportunity to pair our pictures with rough drafts of haiku. In three lines, we attempted to quickly capture an emotional or intellectual *something* in relation to the image:

A few of mine:

While the ideas aren't fully formed yet, I think contour drawings and haiku pair well together. Both forms are about connecting with an image and conveying that connection with concision, impression, and invitation. When repeated, this exercise led to lovely conversation about what is possible and what is difficult about rendering what we see in different kinds of lines.

PROMPT:

Your turn. Create a contour drawing and pair it with a haiku.

(1) Find a comfortable place to sit with your sketchbook. I think outdoor places work best for this. But anywhere you can stare at an object/model with unbroken concentration.

(2) Select a something to look at and draw: a tree, painting, a sleeping cate. Without looking at the paper, move the pen on the page, tracing the outline of the figure and perhaps a few details (branches, eyes, whiskers). Your hand and heart will tell you when it’s time to stop.

(3) Look at your picture. What do you notice about how you translated the image? What does your image make you notice, think, or feel about the model?

(4) Transform these ideas into a draft of a haiku. Three lines: 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables.

(5) Repeat steps 1-4 a few times with a new object/model. This is one of those activities that shows you different things the more you repeat it.

(6) Show your friends!

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What a rough week, friends.

On Wednesday, I got an email from Ron Schnerfson, the executive producer of content at Quaint Media Productions, Inc. (the same folks who create and distribute the educational cartoons Cuddles McSnugglebutton and The Marvelous Mages of Math). My pitch for a new animated series has been officially...REJECTED.

I thought it was a pretty cool idea: Dr. Dash’s Grammar Time. Following in the footsteps of legendary programming like Schoolhouse Rock!, the show would have been a lively anthology of hand-drawn animation paired with songs about basic grammar rules and tips about the writing process. Inspired by my work as a writing tutor for graduate students editing their dissertations, the project would have been targeted toward adult scholars. You know—people slowly losing their minds in the pretentious, soulless hellscape of academic writing. These folks are often too distracted by multitasking data analysis and basic human hygiene to remember comma rules. My show could have served as a handy toolkit for such troubled wretches.

But Dr. Dash’s Grammar Time was apparently “too radical and intellectually nauseating” for Quaint Media. A grammar-and-proofreading show is, admittedly, pretty punk-rock in these hyper-illiterate times. It was foolish of me to dream, but I couldn’t help myself. Before I burn all of the evidence, I thought I might share some of the concept art and drafts of song lyrics with you.

PROMPT:

Your turn! What’s your favorite grammar, math, science, history, anesthesiology, or physical education fact? Let’s turn it into a memorable rhyme for educational purposes:

(1) Decide which fact you want to render into art and verse. Think about the facts or rules or equations that folks commonly forget OR that they might not have ever learned in the first place.

(2) Pick out the key terms from this concept—“quadratic,” “semicolon,” “inquisition,” “mitosis,” etc. Use these terms as the anchors for lines of the poem, perhaps even for the end/internal rhymes themselves.

(3) Compose a four to eight-line piece of verse articulating your education fact.

(4) Draw a clever picture to accompany the rhyme and help burn the concept into the memory of your unsuspecting pupils.

(5) Show your friends! (Golly knows they could sure use a little help in the smarts department).

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Happy Mother’s Day to those who celebrate!

As you know, moms are one of the most privileged demographics in the world. I mean, who else gets to spend their whole life bossing you around just because they went through a few hours of unspeakable physical agony that one time to give you an existence that you didn’t consent to? But most moms I know wield this power with great responsibility. And that’s worth celebrating!

As you also know, this upcoming Tuesday is the 214th birthday of the world’s greatest living poet, Edward Lear. Bird enthusiast, nonsense spellcaster, and all-around limerick bad boy, Edward Lear is something of a hero to the light verse-lovin’ staff here at Balderdash!. As is the annual tradition, we’ve risked overshadowing Lear’s special day by combining our weekly post with some thoughts about mothers. Please enjoy these brand-new, maternally-themed limericks!

PROMPT:

Your turn! Give Mom the gift of your further nonsense by crafting a bespoke limerick of her own:

(1) Read some limericks! Get the rhythm and patterns of the form lodged in your brain. I recommend starting with Lear’s The Complete Nonsense Book.

(2) Now think of something really special to say about moms. Your mom, the mother of your children, your mother-in-law, that one lady who brings her toddler to the bar wearing a t-shirt that says “Mommy’s Little Wingman” and introduces him to everyone as her “designated driver.” They’ve all done so much for us. Distill all of that magic into a single idea, image, or situation.

(3) Write the limerick! While you’ll see variations, they are usually written as a 5-line stanza. Limericks follow a rhyme scheme of AABBA. The first, second, and fifth line typically have three feet of roughly three syllables each (8-9 syllables). And the third and fourth lines have two feet of roughly three syllables each (5-6 syllables).

(4) As you know from experience, your words alone will not convince Mom of anything, including how special she is. So be sure to include a handsome drawing to help the verse along.

(5) Wrap your limerick up in pastel-colored tissue paper and present it to the mom(s) in your life! But as a back-up in case she hates it, also buy some flowers or tickets for a cruise or something.

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We’re a very bookish family. As voracious readers, we’re each often bouncing between several books at a time. And while this means that we get through many in a week, we need a surplus of bookmarks to keep track of everywhere we’ve left off.

This week, my wife had the brilliant idea to have everyone craft a pile of homemade bookmarks. We are now adequately resourced to meet our ADHD-readerly ambitions.

As I developed MY contributions to the bookmark bin, I felt that emotional abuse and shaming were the messages I personally needed in order to ensure my return to a given book:

PROMPT:

Your turn! Make some bookmarks!

(1) Cut a sheet of paper into strips. In our house, we like thicc bookmarks (1/3 of your standard 8.5”x11” sheet of printer paper). But you can cut thinner ones if you want to go ahead and be a stupid dork.

(2) Using whatever drawing supplies you delight in, create a design on the bookmark. A character, a landscape, an occult symbol, etc.

(3) Try to include a written message that will compel you to return to the book soon. Or perhaps even one that will inspire you to avoid the temptation of taking a break from the book in the first place.

(4) Leave your bookmarks in an accessible place near your favorite reading location: nightstand, side-table near your armchair, the back of the toilet, etc.

(5) We live in the golden age of performative reading. So make sure that you show all of your friends and fellow coffee shop patrons your bookmarks while you smugly flash the copy of Infinite Jest or House of Leaves you’re trying (and ultimately failing) to read for the thirteenth time.

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I think we’re going about this body positivity thing all wrong. The other day, some pseudo-hippie told me that “everybody is beautiful and every BODY is beautiful.” And I was all like, “Lady, have you SEEN toes lately?”

While its heart is in the right place, the unity-driven thesis that we’re all beautiful is profoundly flawed. We ALL have nostrils. We ALL poop. We ALL chew with that stupid saliva sound as we slosh around our mouthful of boiled egg and mayonnaise.

Bodies are gross. Human beings are a disgusting abomination and, frankly, an embarrassment to evolution. I mean, KNEES, for crying out loud! Have you ever really looked at a knee? Stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.

That’s why I propose the following paradigm shift: NONE of us are beautiful. Let’s all move through life with the knowledge that we’re 8 billion instances of something disappointing to look at. I think it might help things.

PROMPT:

Your turn! Write about your weird physical self:

(1) Look at your knuckles. Like, REALLY look at your knuckles. What the heck is going on there? Why do they have to look so messed up? Like ten old men laughing at you when you pick up your boiled egg and mayonnaise sandwich.

(2) Draw a picture of the horror.

(3) Write a poem about the maddening absurdity of having knuckles.

(4) Repeat the process with different body parts as long as you can stomach it. (Oh, geez! Stomachs are freaky, too! Big, goopy barf bags that are already INSIDE of us. Ugh. Awful.)

(5) Show your ugly friends (which would be ALL of them)!

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As one of those “Journal Dads” you keep reading about on social media, I think it’s important to push kids to carry notebooks with them to experience the magic of recording thoughts and observations analog-style. This week, my kids and I went out into the world to practice the ancient art of people-watching.

Our task was simple: In a non-creepy way, stare at passersby, draw flattering pictures of them, and record any of their utterances. The goal of this exercise was to notice (1) the ways in which people are similar to or different from ourselves, (2) how they are living their personal narratives, and (3) that humanity is a beautifully varied collage.

We tried to do this in our own town. But people here only talk about their cardiovascular issues.

Things were starting to get a little repetitive. So we gathered our gear and traveled to a much more interesting city (my favorite one), Ann Arbor. There, the people are nuts. But a politically progressive, empathetic kind of nuts. The people of Ann Arbor think WITH their hearts rather than simply ABOUT them:

PROMPT:

Your turn! Go people-watching.

(1) Grab your sketchbook and something to draw-and-write with. Leave the house (you can do it!).

(2) Pick a comfortable public place with space to lay your paper and materials in front of you. Coffee shop table near a window. Park bench. Display sofa at the furniture store. Wherever there are people to watch and a spot to plant your buns!

(3) Watch people. You don’t have to be weird about this. A series of glances and open ears will do the trick. Which features of your fellow humans catch your eye? Which ones spark curiosity? If a person is stationary, obviously you’ll be able to notice more elements. But if they are walking through your field of vision, allow yourself to be aware of which aspects remain in your memory once the person is gone.

(4) Assemble a drawing out of the salient components of this person. But don’t necessarily feel pressured to capture their likeness with realism. They can be cartoonified in your own personal style.

(5) Be sure to record anything they say in writing. OR if they talk too fast or incoherently, try to record any approximation/interpretation of what they say. OR if they say nothing, what’s something that you think they MIGHT say?

(6) Once you’re content with the faces you’ve gathered, try a new spot. Repeat this in lots of different places.

(7) Show your friends!

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