First things first: Murder is wrong, OK? But let's say, hypothetically, that you're considering committing one anyway: how would you do it? Practically everyone wants to murder someone. That jerk that got the job you want. That guy who gets all his books reviewed while your books don’t even get published. That handsome, horrible dude everyone loves when only you know he is a complete fraud who must be exposed. Jonathan Franzen. Maybe you want to murder novelist Jonathan Franzen. Let’s say you do. You want to stand over Jonathan Franzen's wrecked body as it bubbles over with his own blood. You’re laughing and he’s just kind of lying there, gurgling. You beat him to death with an iPad and now there won’t be any more sprawling family angst novels from Mr. Handsome Fake Genius Man. Maybe that is who you want to murder. Maybe you would really enjoy wringing his skinny Brooklyn neck. His skinny, pretentious, overrated, Brooks Brothers neck. Hypothetically. Here are some things to think about while you're totally planning the fake murder you have no intention of actually doing and by reading this sentence you hereby absolve the writer of any complicity in the crimes you will in no way go out and commit here comes the period and Jim is absolved. READ MORE

This essay appears in Deliriously Happy: and Other Bad Thoughts, out this week. READ MORE

Out of compulsion, obligation or your own neurotic drive, you are hosting Thanksgiving this year. You know you have the experience and talent to pull it off, but you also know that the complexity of it—and your own high standards of performance—can sneak up on you, making the final hours before Thanksgiving dinner a tear-streaked melodrama of anxiety and disappointment. READ MORE

Poetry occupies a cultural space in Contemporary American Society somewhere between Tap Dancing and Ventriloquism. People are certainly aware that poetry exists, but this awareness comes upon them only vaguely and in passing moments. During commercials, mostly, which feature corporate poetry. When people think of a poet, perhaps they imagine the finger-snapping beret-wearing beatnik. Or the slammy mike-wielding poet-ranter. Both proud poetic traditions. But most people who write poetry are people just like yourself. Scruffy, broken wordpals. In the age of Twitter, casual word-shaping may be at its all-time high worldwide. As we attempt to fit all the meaning and emotion we can into a few short lines, no doubt Maya Angelou and Walt Whitman and Bashō are looking down from heaven and smiling. (I know Maya Angelou isn’t dead. She just lives in heaven.) READ MORE

Have you caught up on the terrible story of Christopher Ryan Smith? The Internet entrepreneur was traveling in Africa all throughout the second half of last year, according to the emails he was sending his family. Unfortunately, he was dead the whole time, having been killed by his terribly secretly shady business partner. Horrible story! Also, how stupid: you buy yourself six months to get away with a murder by posing as the poor dead fellow, and you don't even flee the country? Moron. Still, gives one ideas.

In Miami we braced for a hurricane every year or two, latching down the Bahama shutters, stocking up on canned goods, and filling the bathtubs with water. But as storm after storm fizzled out or swept off to ravage the Gulf Coast or the Carolinas, we started to feel cocky and impervious. The big one didn’t strike until I was away at school, when Andrew rolled in. READ MORE

In addition to being somewhat crazy—a shrink once diagnosed me with borderline personality disorder, which I thought was a bit of a stretch until I realized that, like everyone else, he just wanted to have sex with me—I am a yoga teacher. I don’t know what your idea of a yoga teacher is, but should you, recoiling in horror as you read along here, find yourself asking, "But how does someone like this become a yoga teacher?"—the short answer is that I gave a man with a beard and his hot wife $3,200 dollars. The long answer is… well, I’d like to say that it's because if I hadn’t gotten obsessed with yoga I’d probably be dead, because that’s what people always say about things like this: “If I hadn’t discovered writing, I’d be dead,” “if I hadn’t found Alcoholics Anonymous/married my amazing wife/started making autumn-inspired hand-knit legwarmers and selling them on Etsy, I’d be dead.” But saying, "without yoga I would probably be dead" would be, frankly, a little overdramatic. Let’s just say that if I didn’t do yoga everything bad about me would just be worse, and what is bad is already bad enough. READ MORE

New York City has a 24-hour-subway system, gay marriage and David Chang. What we don't have are rolling suburban lawns on which to accommodate Charbroil Offset Smokers when we want to char the hell out of some animal flesh. With Labor Day fast approaching, 4th floor walkups and a lust for a perfectly grilled ribeye will soon collide, and an urban grillmaster will have to adapt. Here’s how (with bonus Beer Can Chicken recipe)! READ MORE

In which we give advice to newcomers to New York City. READ MORE

I’m all ready to make this week’s Mr. Wrong column, but sometimes I can’t remember what I want to column about, you know? I mean, c’mon, I always have some sorta Topic, and no, I do not sympathise with any of this “Writer’s Block” stuff people whine about, like that article I looked at in READ MORE