• Steampunking’s Greatest Hits Leather, Lace, and Laser-Powered Lullabies

    steampunk noun /ˈstiːmˌpʌŋk/ A genre and aesthetic combining 19th-century steam-powered technology with futuristic inventions, often set in an alternate Victorian-era world and characterized by retrofuturistic fashion, machinery, and design. Once-rebellious rock anthems from the ’70s and ’80s are hitting that awkward phase, somewhere between timeless and timeworn. What once shook stadiums now barely stirs a Bluetooth speaker, as the Spotify…

  • The Agony of Appointment #2 This time it's personal

    There’s something uniquely sinister about the second doctor’s appointment. Something dark, cold, and vaguely antiseptic that sets it apart from the friendly handshake of the first and the resigned acceptance of the third and fourth. The first appointment is often a warm-up, a meet-and-greet with a stethoscope. You show up as a mystery, an unopened file, a symptom in a…

  • A Farewell to Flavor Mourning 25 sandwiches that betrayed taste during the Great Depression

    In an era when soup lines stretched longer than congressional filibusters and flavor was something you remembered from your dreams, America held tight to the one thing she could still make at home without a permit. The sandwich. These were not your mile-high masterpieces or artisan sourdough statements of privilege. These were Depression-era survival slabs. Culinary betrayals pressed between slices…