The Observer

The Observer has always been the optimistic type. Our Magic 8 Ball just keeps coming up “Ask Again Later” these days.

What are the odds of finding the same guy's wallet twice?

Anyone who regularly drives down Kavanaugh has seen the chicken man. David Boyett regularly sits on the Promenade near the Allsopp Park entrance, where he has the world’s smallest petting zoo, consisting solely of a couple of chickens. He also sells eggs and officiates marriages. 

The Observer grapples with an ear catastrophe.

The Observer(s) tell stories of passport woes, pickleball players hogging the gym and anxiety.

This is the story of how my mid-life crisis sent me to the ER.

Jordan imparted the valuable yet unsanitary lesson that the gross green olives in the fridge could be legitimate snacks if you suck the delicious red pimentos out of the bitter oval fruit before discarding the pimento-less olives back into the jar, The Observer writes. "I still do this from time to time, but rather than putting the olive back in the jar, the pimento serves as a kind of amuse-bouche to the olive."

When savored in isolation, my favorite condiment had an awful, mouth-twisting aftertaste like rubbing alcohol. I sampled it over and over again, expecting the intruder to go away, but it didn’t. What was up?

A collection of New Year's resolutions from deputy Observers.

On The Observer’s second day of work at the Arkansas Times, while still clueless about such necessities as the location of the office bathroom, I was tasked with covering something called Young Storytellers, which sounded innocuous enough. However, what was quickly revealed by The Observer’s boss, through a grin so tiny it almost didn’t register as mischievous, was that this would be an immersive — nay, participatory — opportunity.

There’s something about a first job that makes an imprint on the memory. Some go the traditional route of babysitting, or wash dishes at a local restaurant. But The Observer thinks back on fond days of brisk autumnal nights at a Southwest Missouri corn maze.

Observer and I hit the road recently for a late summer vacation that we could have used about two months earlier. Trips for June and July were unexpectedly canceled and we were left wiling away most of the summer in scorching hot Arkansas waiting for our time to get away. 

Mr. Meowington rules the roost.

A quiet cooling on the airwaves

If your internet goes out, as The Observer’s did recently, it’s likely the cyberattack comes not from the Russians, but from forces much closer to home. That was the case in the Kingwood neighborhood in early June, when a cluster of five houses suffered the extremely First World problem of a temporary lack of access to Netflix. 

Doing Mirena math.

At the intersection, but not intersectional.

The hole gang bailed, but The Observer persisted to provide you with this review.

Winter-pale and world-weary from clawing our way through a Greek alphabet of virus variants, The Observer has learned a thing or two about thriving online during The End Times, and we’re happy to share the wealth. 

What is the opposite of nostalgia? Camper, we found it.