Brian Kenneth Swain

Introduction The following observations are presented in no particular order, save for that in which they occurred to me. Which is to say that no one item is any more or less important than another, unless of course there is a specific safety issue being discussed, in which case I will make that plain, and expound as necessary. The only preemptive statements I will make by way of establishing credibility in the home repair field are to observe that I own a formidable collection of tools, both manual and powered, and yet I still possess all of my appendages, digits, and assorted extremities, which is more than I can say for my seventh-grade shop teacher. Safety Since I’ve brought it up already, a few quick words about safety are in ...

Following is the complete unedited transcript of an extended interview conducted by Rolling Stone Feature Editor Marvin Foxtrap with Detroit Lions punter/place kicker Ryan Mitchell, following his team’s 45-6 loss to the Dallas Cowboys, during which game Mitchell missed 3 field goals, made 2, and punted an NFC single-game record 18 times, of which 3 were blocked, averaging 26 yards per punt. MF: Ryan, I want to spend a bit of time talking about tonight’s game, but before we get into that I’d like to hear your overall take on the job. Place-kickers get a lot of criticism for having the lightest job on the field. What’re your thoughts on the job? RM: You are absolutely right. Kickers take a lot of shit from their teammates. But ...

We who are alive must make clear, as she could not, the distinction between creativity and self-destruction. Denise Levertov Let me begin by stating, for the record, that I was more than a little hacked off when I heard about David Foster Wallace hanging himself last year. Just to be clear, this initial reaction wasn’t a sad or mournful thing; I was genuinely pissed: at him, his doctors, his family, anyone who could plausibly be blamed for his abject failure to successfully handle a life replete with talent, fame and money, all things so many long for and so few actually have[1]. Wallace, however, spent much of his life in some state of depression, much of it heavily medicated, and he, not surprisingly, had a difficult time writing ...

When a complete stranger voluntarily spends enormous amounts of time and energy working to convince you to spend money on something you neither need nor want, that’s marketing. It is the very essence of capitalism, as vital to the free flow of wealth (from you to them) as the invention of cash[1] itself. And no matter how you feel about marketing—supportive, jaded, or ambivalent—it is absolutely critical that you understand how it works, because whether you acknowledge it or not, it is taking place all around you, every minute of every day. In fact, it is being done to you, whether you want it to be or not. And the people who are doing it to you aren’t only the professionals, though there are certainly plenty of those. It is also ...

Being the good industrious New England boy that I was, raised in the Puritan tradition of all-work-and-no-play-makes-one-a-Mainer, I began work—actual compensated work—at the age of eight. That would have made it 1965 or thereabouts, a couple of years after the tragic events of Dallas, and still in the early stages of what President Johnson was rapturously referring to as his New Society, a utopian age in which no one would want for anything nor be asked to do much to get it. There was only one problem with this incipient euphoria, at least as it related to my life. Johnson hadn’t spent much time in Maine, his only visit so far as I am aware, having taken him through the little borough of Topsham, which fact is marked to this very ...

There is no such thing, nor should there be, as American “exceptionalism,” i.e. we are no better than anyone else on earth in any way, shape or fashion. And while we have a system of government that works reasonably well for us, that does not mean that it is “the right” system or that we should have as our mission imposing that system on others, particularly if they demonstrably do not want it. It is extraordinarily hypocritical to espouse democracy but to then fail to accept the wishes of those who exercise that privilege, simply because we don’t like who they elected. All capital punishment is wrong, without exception. Those who support and implement it are as morally ...

There would seem to be something inherent, perhaps even genetic, about the need to face in the direction in which one is traveling, i.e. forward. Some of us have occasion, once in a great while, to travel while facing in another direction, and having done it a bit myself, I find it not only unsatisfying, but actually borderline unnerving, in that same hard-to-explain-to-someone-else-without-sounding-like-a-lunatic way that walking up or down a broken escalator is unnerving. It’s as if there are certain mobility-related patterns that get more or less permanently implanted in our minds at a young age, which when countermanded later in life, lead to all sorts of discomfort. I don’t know why this is. I don’t even know why or if it is ...

I cannot say what put me of a mind to delve into this particular topic, fraught as it is with emotion and history. Suffice it to say that the subject matter has troubled me for ages and I feel the need to get something down on paper, if only to concentrate my thoughts and bring a bit more focus to how I feel about it. I accept as well that precisely the opposite may be the result and that I may come away even more hazy and uncertain than when I began—a risk I am prepared to take. I should state at the outset as well that it is not my objective to change anyone’s mind with this treatise, nor is it in any event a likely outcome, since the topic is one so firmly entrenched in each individual’s psyche, either positively or otherwise. It ...

I was moved—more like compelled—to write this essay in response to watching Houston Texans place kicker Kris Brown miss an extraordinarily high percentage of the field goals he attempted during the 2009 season, many of them from quite close distances, chip shots in the sporting vernacular. We are not talking baseball here, where the mark of excellence is failing to get a hit only two out of every three attempts. Place kicking in football has evolved to the point where it is now considered largely automatic, particularly for kicks of less than, say, thirty yards. And again employing the baseball analogy where hitting is but one of several tasks entrusted to the players, the field goal kicker does nothing else whatsoever for the team, ...

Preamble – How on Earth Did We Get Here? I suggested to an associate recently that it is possible to write a respectable essay on virtually any subject one can imagine, no matter how abstruse or quotidian. I then made the tragic tactical error of inviting him to select any topic at all, in response to which I would strive to craft a collection of cogent thoughts, and possibly even some advice. He, opting for the banal, challenged me to expound upon the making of a grilled cheese sandwich. So let’s get this over with, shall we? The Essay Proper I will preface this treatise by confessing, right from the get-go[1], that I am no cook. I survive largely on restaurant food[2], take-out, and the occasional freezer-to-microwave entrée, the ...