Trent's Blog

The PowerBall lottery jackpot was up over $200 million yesterday, so I bought $10 worth of tickets. That is totally irrational and I realize this, but it’s nice to dream sometimes. I thought about what I would do if I actually won, and I realized that I would like to take up writing on a more regular…

My dad was a believer. He didn’t like religion, and in particular, he didn’t like being told not to question received wisdom, but he believed in God, and he believed in life after death. I don’t think he would’ve liked having his beliefs labeled, but when he took the Belief-o-matic quiz on beliefnet.com a few…

I just got back from a road trip to the East Coast. I drove many hours on Interstate 70 from Missouri to Pennsylvania, and here are some of the things I noticed. Shredded tires everywhere. Who the hell is having all these blowouts? Everything seems to cater either to agriculture or to truckers. Turns out…

So here I am sitting on a wooden chair in the politics and travel aisle of Half-price Books waiting for the 20-something hipster kid with the big beard up at the front of the store to judge how much five milk crates full of my books are worth. It would have been a depressing enterprise…

I’ve got this daily habit of printing out a form I created in Google Sheets that serves as a combination calendar, to-do list, and checklist of daily habits. And on this form, I handwrite mantras and affirmations to keep reminding me of the things that I claim to value. You would thing that if I…

So, here I sit in my basement at 10:10 in the evening. I should be in bed, but I promised myself that I would do some writing tonight. But I don’t know what to write about. I’d prefer not to write depressing shit or complain so there goes a whole bunch of topics right out…

I had a bad date last night, and I need to talk about it a little bit. I’m a single, lonely, healthy middle-aged man, which is to say that I would like to have some female companionship. So, a few months ago after I broke off my last relationship, I downloaded the Tinder app to…

“Seveneves” is the latest epic novel from the master of the form, Neal Stephenson. It’s set in the present, and the end of the world has arrived. The moon shatters into pieces and mankind has to get off the Earth before the chunks of moon rock start crashing into the planet and wiping out all…

Oh, how I love thee, my Facebook “Hide” button. For how else could I avoid seeing updates from people who are only friends because I needed a bigger mafia for Mafia Wars? How else could I passively/aggressively pseudo-punish people that I think are too religious? (Seriously, all the fucking Bible quotes really just rubs me…

“What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures” is a collection of Malcolm Gladwell’s “New Yorker” articles. The book came out last year to capitalize on Gladwell’s increasingly high profile after hitting the best-seller lists in recent years with “Outliers”, “Blink”, and “The Tipping Point”. Although the book is new, the articles are from throughout the…