My latest piece over at The Awl:

As crazy as it seems now, when I was a freshman in high school I was convinced that my life was going to end, healthy and unadulterated, sometime before December 31st 1988. Of course it’s common for sensitive teens to consider their mortality during those tumultuous years when the hormones start to kick in. But I was different. While other kids pondered death in the conventional fashion—that is, contemplating suicide while listening to the Smiths’ “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”—I came to terms with my mortality the old fashioned way. I learned about it in church.

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A new piece on Krampus by yours truly over at The Awl:

Christmas is nearly upon us and, with all its commercialism and saccharine rituals, it’s all too easy to forget the true meaning of the season. Thankfully, the sanctity of this glorious holiday is still appreciated in parts of Germany and Austria where good, hardworking folk remember that Christmas isn’t merely about the gifts; it’s about dressing up like a cloven-hoofed demon, terrifying children with violent, demonic folklore and drinking 180-proof licorice-flavored liquor until you puke. For centuries, our central European friends have scared the bejesus out of their children with tales of Krampus, a hairy, seven-foot-tall, horned fiend with a suggestive, Gene Simmons-esque tongue who accompanies Saint Nick on Christmas Eve to beat the hell out of naughty children with whips and branches from a birch tree.

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