I guess when you’re young, there are some things you don’t understand. When you grow up, you think about them again. In my case, it was Father Dodo—which just happened to be what everyone called him. I think his real name was Father Van Tellie, but now that doesn’t matter much. Even the Catholics said […]
Charlie Fast had been a card mechanic at eighteen, back in the day when a spotless cuff and a calm hand could part a fool from his paycheck without anyone feeling insulted. He never rushed a move. He slowed everything down. Freeze-frame slow. No jerks. No flourishes. No misdirection. He wanted you to see exactly […]
The Subscription That Wouldn’t Die For at least two years, possibly longer, a company I barely remembered was charging my credit card. Not aggressively. Not loudly. Just… faithfully. The company is called 10Web. I’m sure it provides something useful to someone. Perhaps to many someones. But to me it had become one of those modern […]
I have reached a point in my life where I believe every problem I encounter—particularly those that are not my fault—can be solved by hiring a 19-year-old Swedish au pair. This is not a whimsical conclusion. It is the result of years of careful observation, reflection, and several avoidable incidents involving jackets with 35 pockets. […]
I like to reassure friends who are down on their luck. I tell them, very sincerely, “If I win the Mega Millions jackpot—say a billion dollars—I’m buying you a cup of coffee.” They look at me the way you look at a man who has just offered you a single peanut at a […]
At my age, every modern platform begins with the same smiling promise: this will be easy. That is the first lie. Somewhere deep inside Fiverr, where timers tick softly and customer-service language is polished until it can blind a man at twenty paces, there appears to be a system designed to make accidental approval much […]
“Back in my day,” said Leon Purvis, who had done enough time to qualify as a public landmark, “a man could at least trust his poison to be honest.” Darnell, who was twenty-three and still wore the baffled expression of someone who had not expected life to end up as a concrete bunk and an […]
Oversalted beef bourguignon leds to a French endorsement and a business built on temperature confusion. Lately the world seems to be in a foul mood. Every time you turn on the news, somebody is bombing somebody, two governments are threatening a third government, the economy is making the sort of noises a transmission makes just […]
Kate and I once lived between two families who each had 243 children. One family was Chinese. The other was Russian. We were the neutral zone. Now, before anybody gets the wrong idea, Kate and I love children. We married late, found each other at just the right time, and decided there were already plenty […]
A long time ago, when America was still capable of being shocked by an ice cube, a man named Wilson Bryan Key wrote a book called Subliminal Seduction. He argued that advertisers were hiding naughty little messages in magazine ads and liquor layouts—tiny visual smirks tucked below the threshold of awareness. If you stared hard […]
A nervous young writer meets Chuck Connors, idol of The Rifleman, and watches a childhood myth collapse into laughter, profanity, and charm—opening a documentary-sized window onto celebrity, memory, and America’s rough-edged old Hollywood masculinity.
A young West Point graduate meets Walt Disney over breakfast and is offered a glimpse into a future inside the Magic Kingdom—until one honest answer ends the opportunity, leaving him decades later reflecting on the cost of perfect timing.
At breakfast, a husband tests a joke on friends—but the payoff reveals something deeper: the timing, patience, and laughter that keep a marriage alive after forty years.
Forty years ago in Calcutta there were establishments promising a great time for ten cents. I did not go. Not because I lacked curiosity. I simply lacked the ten cents. This was during a period of my life when my finances were not so much “tight” as they were “philosophical.” I believed money should circulate […]
How to Hack Time (Using Science, Energy Drinks, and a Chatbot Named Steve) “You want time itself to slow?” asked Tucker, seventeen, slurping a quadruple energy drink through a bamboo straw. “I’m creating temporal drag.” “That sounds like something you’d get arrested for,” he said. “No, no. Temporal drag means making time feel slower on […]
Since 1776, every heir in the Dumfus dynasty shares the same name—and the same birthday—when an IRS auditor finally investigates, he uncovers America’s strangest tax loophole… and a family determined to protect it.
In jaunty rhyme, Freud’s couch confesses cocaine habits, dream decoding, and humanity’s quarrel between id and superego—suggesting beneath our polished manners lurks a bargaining child with complicated desires.
In a mischievous tour of dopamine, nicotine, and romance, Jaron Summers dissects how humans become habit-forming to one another. Blending neuroscience with Alberta marital timing, he reveals the mechanics of emotional addiction—and argues it’s far nobler to be oxygen than a cigarette.
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February 28, 2026
After hearing Charlie Munger’s advice about avoiding the place you’ll die, a wealthy widower hires experts to calculate his fatal coordinates. In dodging death, he nearly avoids living—until he discovers the safest place to die is wherever he finally finds peace.
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February 27, 2026
In his private journal, an absurdly earnest sex therapist reveals “The Neptune Surge,” a comic strategy for boosting male confidence through strategic breathing. A satire on ego, applause, and marital choreography, it suggests love sometimes begins with well-timed oxygen.
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February 27, 2026
By brewing coffee at home instead of buying daily Starbucks lattes, I heroically save thousands per year, protect our financial sovereignty, and transform each humble 22-cent cup into a steaming monument to compound interest and marital devotion.
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February 26, 2026
After mishearing his pastor’s advice, a 101-year-old tycoon concludes that eternal life depends on shoe reinforcement. Titanium soles, flattened hills, and cautious concubines follow. Unfortunately, death is unimpressed by traction — and deeply sensitive to vowels.
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February 25, 2026
I woke to a breeze slipping through our tiny condo a few miles from UCLA and watched my Post-it notes lift off like a coordinated air force. They rose from the desk in disciplined formation — grocery lists, reminders, fragments of dialogue, one ambitious note that simply said “EMPIRE?” — and drifted across the […]
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February 24, 2026
When a tremor disrupts a BYU preparedness class, an overcautious accountant and a quick-acting Californian collide. As they navigate rivalry, faith, and attraction, they learn that some foundations shift quietly—and some risks are worth taking.
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February 23, 2026
Jaron Summers has written novels, screenplays, essays, and at least one extremely valuable grocery list.
He believes in ownership, rhythm, and reading contracts slowly.
More at jaronsummers.com.
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February 23, 2026
When I was younger, I believed in conquest. Not the sword-and-sandal variety. More the tidy American kind. Conquer the market. Conquer the critics. Conquer obscurity. Conquer cholesterol. Conquer time. Time, especially. If you could just outrun it, outwork it, outwrite it — you could win. Then one day, without so much as a drumroll, […]
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February 21, 2026
When a modern dentist calls it “old work,” memory opens wide. A craftsman’s sweat, a father’s silence, and a generation that believed in pressure and permanence return. Sometimes what lasts longest isn’t the filling—but the glow it leaves behind.
Bridge to the next piece:
In the next essay, I look more closely at what my father’s generation packed tightly away—and what happens when the capsules finally open.
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February 19, 2026
The Idaho Zone W…ritten by jaron summers © 2026 At 103, she eats one pound of hamburger a day. Six potatoes. Eggs. Unpasteurized milk. Butter applied with agricultural authority. Meanwhile, I require a spreadsheet to approach a muffin. The internet insists longevity lives in Sardinia, Okinawa, and somewhere near a Greek olive tree that charges […]
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February 19, 2026
In a town obsessed with straight lines, one quiet medical curve humbles millions—approximately 43,000,000.5 of them. A darkly comic fable about pride, aging, carrots with opinions, and the awkward discovery that geometry eventually negotiates with us all.
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February 16, 2026
W…ritten by jaron summers © 2026 I used to think great films required great budgets. Studios. Sound stages. Lighting grids. A small army of people arguing over coffee while someone quietly adjusts a lens by half a millimeter. I loved that machinery. The drama behind the drama. Then one morning the Chinese released a fifteen-second […]
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February 16, 2026
We measure life in miles, mortgages, and business-class beds — but the only number that really counts is the space between two chairs. Civilization isn’t GDP. It’s passing the soy sauce without standing up.
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February 15, 2026
An email declares my life “PERMANENTLY INCINERATED,” so I check my fingers—since Gmail needs a fingerprint. The dark web hasn’t stolen anything but attention. I delete it, and Kate asks if I’m done panicking yet.
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February 14, 2026
A missing two-dollar pen leads to surveillance reviews, economic math, municipal overreaction, a $4.7 trillion Great Wall, and drones. Conclusion: most crises are migrations, not invasions — especially when the empire in question is my wife, Kate’s purse.
A wild bipartisan experiment pairs voters from opposite parties to live in each other’s homes, snoop for clues, sing songs, and hug it out—proving democracy might just be saved with casseroles and karaoke.
W…ritten by jaron summers © 2026 When I, at the age of seven, arrived in Coronation strange things began happening to me. This was unfortunate, as I was not prepared for them and had not been consulted. I knew no one. I missed my friends in Victoria, British Columbia. I longed for the Pacific Ocean, […]
A cheerful reckoning of light and death: how candles taxed curiosity, electricity cheapened killing, and modern comfort spends pennies to see everything while measuring nothing—with a wink and ledger.
meet Elara: Newton’s silent counterweight, a mind no one had ever heard of until now, who outthought him by seeming harmless—questioning gold, immortality, and solvents, and proving that wisdom sometimes wins by thinking like something too innocent to fear.
Raised between penicillin and the Pill, a man with aching knees encounters modern medicine, then accidentally cures himself with a gel heel cup—proving that progress is impressive, but sometimes wildly overdressed.
A floating farce about rich people who believe international waters suspend consequences. One napkin map, one yacht, and a series of polite disasters reveal that responsibility sinks slower than money—and dignity sinks first.
Two lovers. An L.A. dream condo. Fraud, lust, leverage—and fire as the only honest exit.
At a marina bar, a smug explainer redraws America and Canada on a napkin, declares borders imaginary, laws optional, and vibes sovereign. Cocktails sweat, tempers flare, a yacht launches, and the soggy napkin proves geopolitics dissolves fastest in alcohol first.
Misdirection is my confession: I don’t hide thieves; I hide reality, letting confidence sprint headfirst into a fire hydrant, where criminal ambition meets municipal iron, physics, and the sudden moral clarity of pavement—forever laughing.
A darkly funny, heart-warming family tale about survival, scarcity, and inherited wisdom—spanning two world wars to modern kitchens—where love is rationed, humor endures, and one family learns that sometimes the secret to happiness is simply knowing where to point.
I added a beard and lost my senior-citizen privileges. Once escorted to seats, I’m now judged for keeping them. A crow beside me went unnoticed. Apparently, wisdom grows faster than feathers.
A satirical sci-fi comedy in which a writer interviews at a toy conglomerate that turns human quirks into dolls—only to discover the ultimate product is him. Brazil meets Barbie, skewering empathy, capitalism, and identity with dark humor.
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December 28, 2025
A small-town dentist mixes dental fillings in his sweaty palms, downs Crown Royal like water, teaches his son ancient goldsmithing secrets, and pulls his own tooth to prove pain is forgettable—then makes one final, unforgettable exit.
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December 16, 2025
Patterns of Life and Death w…ritten by Jaron Summers © 2025 There was a time when humans survived without cell phones. This is not because they were more virtuous or better informed. It is because their brains worked faster than explanation. A person alone in a jungle before cell phones did not possess […]
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December 14, 2025
Writers, of course, prefer certainty. They like rules. They like checklists. Syd Field offered a life raft. Howard Suber offered an ocean and said, “Swim.”
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November 16, 2016
Gaudi’s cathedral is a work in progress like our marriage
Our friend harvests and roasts the best coffee in the world.
The bad news: he only has 200 pounds each year.
He and his wife produce Kona coffee for their
family and friends each Christmas….
According to Michael Powell, head of the FCC, effective June 1, 2003, California will be the ninth state to ban walking while talking on a cellular phone.
Mr. Powell said the annual 2,600 deaths caused by drivers who use cell phones is trivial in comparison to those who walk & talk.
Our crew on the Olympia Voyager had warned and re-warned us of the perils of exploring the 166-square mile island-country on our own, emphasizing and reemphasizing that the only safe way to explore the home of the world’s oldest rum (Mount Gay—300 years and still going strong) was under the guidance of a certified Oylmpia Voyager excursion
