- New Nouns
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- Everything according to Plans.
Everything according to Plans.
Luke's apron / fish on a plane / eggs
I think we’re living in a mad lib.
New conspiracy theory.
We aren’t living in a simulation. We’re living in a mad lib. The structure seems to make sense, but it feels like someone replaced some of the words with… other words.
This week, President Donald Trump (celebrity name) gave a speech in the roof (room name) at the White House. It was a confusing (adjective) speech for everyone there. The President was also recently in the news for visiting sex island (place), a tile floor installation (event name) in the White House Rose Garden, and for a new project to build a nuclear reactor (building) in the moon (city or state)!
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⭐️ The Nouns of August 8, 2025 ⭐️
You betta believe you can take your live fish on a trip. For e-fish-iency purposes, it needs to be swimming in a clear, spill-proof container. The vessel can be larger than 3.4oz. and will be visually inspected at security. Check with your airline for their rules.
— TSA (@TSA)
1:48 PM • Aug 29, 2023
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Never schedule a meeting again.
Meet Skej — your new scheduling assistant. Whether it’s a coffee intro, a client check-in, or a last-minute reschedule, Skej is on it. Just CC Skej on your emails, and it takes care of everything: checking calendars, suggesting times, and sending out invites.
Everything according to Plans.
Twenty years ago, Death Cab for Cutie released their sixth studio album, Plans.
A few months after that, I sat at my grandparents’ lake house on a cold December morning and unwrapped a few CDs my aunt and uncle had given me for Christmas. Though I didn’t know the band, I flipped Plans over in my hand, and noticed that one of the tracks was called What Sarah Said.
My cousin, eldest daughter of the gift-giving aunt and uncle, was named Sarah, so naturally, we popped upstairs to the monkey room - my dad’s childhood bedroom with monkey wallpaper - and gave it a listen.
And it came to me then
That every plan
Is a tiny prayer to father time
As I stared at my shoes
In the ICU
That reeked of piss and 409
And I rationed my breaths
As I said to myself
That I'd already taken too much today
As each descending peak
On the LCD
Took you a little farther away from me
Away from me
Amongst the vending machines
And year old magazines
In a place where we only say goodbye
It stung like a violent wind
That our memories depend
On a faulty camera in our minds
And I knew that you were truth
I would rather lose
Than to have never lain beside at all
And I looked around
At all the eyes on the ground
As the TV entertained itself
'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous paces bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes round
And everyone lifts their heads
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said
That love is watching someone die
So who's gonna watch you die
So who's gonna watch you die
So who's gonna watch you die
I remember sitting on the floor of that bedroom listening to Ben Gibbard and realizing what writing was.
Learning that words can hold a shape. They can bend, and cut, and be heavy and weightless at the same time. A few simple words, when placed in the right order, can save your life, or make you laugh, or teach you about the Civil War, or seep deeply into your soul like summer rain into cracked soil.
I went back and listened to the whole album.
The first song, Marching Bands of Manhattan, is my favorite song to this day. I have sung it on stage to a crowd of hundreds, and to my daughter hundreds of times while she has drifted to sleep.
Eleven songs later, Plans was cemented as my favorite album of all time.
As important as it is to me, it was one of the first shared interests that connected me to my now wife.
On Tuesday, I was lucky enough to stand next to her in the audience at the Chicago Theater and listen to Death Cab for Cutie play Plans from front to back, in its entirety, on the 26th anniversary of their first show in Chicago in 1999.
Maybe it was the nostalgia, or the place, or the 10 hours in the car, but I’ve caught myself doing an inventory of those 20 years in my life.
If you were to ask me in 2005 where I would be in 20 years, this would certainly not be it.
Maybe parts of it.
But so much of the last 20 years has been shaped by the things you don’t dare think about as a kid.
I moved to Chicago, went to college, fell in love, got a job, got fired, got another job, got fired again, moved to Louisville, got a job, got fired again. My parents sold my childhood home, moved, then got divorced. My dad moved to Buffalo and got remarried. My mom stayed put, but got remarried too. My grandfather died. Then my grandmother, and my other grandparents one by one. They sold that lake house where we all would meet for Christmas, but I got married, and bought a house of my own. I got a dog, and a second dog. I had a daughter, and a second daughter. I started a business, and another business and another and another.
This wasn’t the plan.
Maybe because there was no plan.
Maybe because the very idea of having a 20-year plan when you’re 14 means acknowledging that the most important things in the world - the ones that you rely on to draft that plan - will fade away. Only to be replaced by beautiful, messy, unpredictable new growth. Like the vines that grow to cover an old building. The enemy of the brick layer, but the soul of the building.
Or maybe that’s the plan.
Squeaky swings and tall grass
The longest shadows ever cast
The waters warm and children swim
We frolicked about in our summer skin
I don't recall a single care
Just greenery and humid air
Then Labor Day came and went
And we shed what was left of our summer skin
On the night you left I came over
And we peeled the freckles from our shoulders
Our brand new coats so flushed and pink
And I knew your heart I couldn't win
Cause the seasons change was a conduit
And we'd left our love in our summer skin
You can’t taste a memory without tainting it with who you have become.
My daughter starts kindergarten next week.
So that’s horrifying.
At least we’ll finally be able to get this damn house clean.
be good
z
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