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Grammar purists look askance at casual usage of the word “thankfully,” as in, “Thankfully, my car wasn’t damaged.” They point out that my car wasn’t thankful at all, as it’s an inanimate object. (Same goes for “hopefully.”) And given that I’m agnostic, Christians could rightfully ask me to whom (or Whom) I’m grateful in a…

I’ve been thinking a lot about theme parks these last few years. Partly that’s because I love them with all my heart and imagination. I grew up in L.A., and Disneyland was a regular part of my childhood. Years later, when I moved back from Illinois, I held a season pass to Universal Studios Hollywood…

I spent many hours this week on a project to transfer our old, disintegrating VHS tapes onto DVD. I found a tape my mom made of several of my old TV appearances from 1997-98, the year I spent doing extra work in L.A. I wasn’t planning to transfer them, but my wife chided me until…

Hi, I’m Christian Carvajal. You may know me from such blogs as this one, last updated several months ago. I’ve been busy. For example… As most of you know, I got married on 28 May. The bride was beautiful, I was presentable, and the weather was unexpectedly gorgeous. In fact, and I say this as…

Thursday, February 17, was huge for The Weekly Volcano, as it celebrated the debut of our Best of Olympia edition. Far more important to me, however, was the impending arrival of a certain long-awaited piece of bling. My girlfriend Amanda and I planned to celebrate a postponed Valentine’s Day the following night, Friday, with a…

I was killing time in the library yesterday when I passed a copy of Wizard magazine and leafed through it. If you’re not familiar with Wizard, it started as a glorified comics guide twenty years ago, then expanded to cover all of Western pop culture. Sadly, both Wizard and its sister publication, ToyFare, ended publication…

If there’s an expression that crawls under my skin faster than “Too Much Information!” I find myself at a loss to recall it. I’d rather be called a racial slur any day of the week than have “TMI!” thrown in my face. Just when the conversation gets interesting, some insensitive dimwit has to pipe up…

My research for Novel 2.0 has taken me down some colorful paths, but none more bizarre than a 2006 book by David Levy called Love and Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships. In some ways, this topic is an extension of previous reading, especially The Singularity Is Near (2005) by Ray Kurzweil, an…

I was planning on blogging about something completely different today. Then I read your story on CNN. I hope my friends are familiar with the story, but if not, they should read it right now. We can wait here till they get back. The truth is, Katie, I’m not known far and wide as a…

I grew up carefully not observing Thanksgiving. Jehovah’s Witnesses are funny about holidays. In each state I’ve ever visited, any time I meet an ex-Witness, we laugh about this. Somehow Witnesses always squeeze in a turkey dinner, oh, somewhere around the last Friday of each November. “It’s when turkeys go on sale,” they insist. Now…