Q: What do a 10-year-old boy and a 4-month-old dog have in common? A: When you ask them to do something they don’t want to do, they just look at you like they’re unable to understand human language . . . Read more →
February 2004
Phraseology
“Pride goeth before a fall,” my son says, as he stuffs a slice of pizza into his mouth. “Really?” I ask. “What does that mean?” Read more →
Issue of the Day
People my age or a little younger may remember some years ago, when the issue of burning the American flag suddenly became the most important issue in the country. People were so riled up about it that a constitutional amendment was proposed to make flag burning illegal. Read more →
Rainy Day Women
It’s been pouring rain in Southern California last night and this morning . . . Why does every local TV news show have to send some poor female reporter out to do live remotes, to stand in the biggest deluge they can find and tell people something they already know? Read more →
Leadership Questions
Do you find that when one person is appointed Leader, other people in the group then expect the Leader to do things that they could do perfectly well for themselves? That they expect the leader to function as a sort of surrogate parent or playground monitor? If you are the Leader, what, if anything, do you do to encourage or discourage this? Thus spoke The Programmer. Read more →
Mass Confusion
The biggest problem I find is that many black people don’t support the gay and lesbian civil rights movement because they don’t see black people as gay. And I think a lot of that comes from what they see on television because there are one or two characters who are both black and gay. — Jasmyne Cannick, board member of the National Black Justice Coalition, quoted on PlanetOut.com Now that’s the looniest statement I’ve heard today — although I do think the number of people unable to distinguish television from real life has been trending sharply upward . . . Read more →
A Lot of My Problems
I went over to a floor lamp and pulled the switch, went back to put off the ceiling light, and went across the room again to the chessboard on a card table under the lamp. There was a problem laid out on the board, a six-mover. I couldn’t solve it, like a lot of my problems. — Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep Read more →
I’m in the Mood for Soup
I’m looking at the 5-day forecast for Irvine: little rain cloud icons for Wed, Th and Fri. Rain always puts me in the mood for piping hot chicken noodle soup. Makes me feel like a kid again! Although I usually get the chicken noodle from Trader Joe’s now, not the old-fashioned Campbell’s Soup . . . Read more →
Love and Marriage
Love and marriage Go together like a horse and carriage. Ha Ha Ha! What a joke! To young people, gay people, young gay people, I would say this: Don’t confuse “I love you” with “I want to marry you.” Read more →
Adventures in Housebreaking
We lead the puppy to the carefully arranged newspaper. He’s four months old now, and to my way of thinking, he should be starting to get the hang of this by now. Read more →
Doggie Love
My wife was talking to a fellow dog-walker at the park this morning. The woman asked her, among other things, does she work, and my wife said no. That was good, the woman replied, because it really raises her hackles when people buy a dog and then leave it alone all day while they’re at work. What an astounding statement! Read more →
Genius or Geek?
I was explaining to my boy how to generate a web page from a database, so I can display it different ways, add new stuff, and not have to rewrite the HTML . . . “I can see why you’re excited about that,” he said, “but I can’t really get excited about it myself because I’m not a computer gee—genius.” “Did you just say ‘computer geek’?” “Almost.” Read more →
Who Doesn’t?
Italian police seek huge breasted woman — Ananova Read more →
Hideously Uncomfortable
I was making myself hideously uncomfortable by not narrowing my attention to details of life which were immediately important, and by refusing to believe what my neighbors believed. I am better now. Word of honor: I am better now. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Breakfast of Champions Read more →
Happy Valentine’s Day
What do you seek, so pensive and silent? What do you need, Camerado? Dear son! do you think it is love? — Walt Whitman, “Starting from Paumanok” Read more →
Profiles in Management: The Tank Commander
In the military, when I was in tank warfare and I was actually fighting in tanks, there was nothing more soothing than people constantly hearing their commander’s voice come across the airwaves. Somebody’s in charge, even though all shit is breaking loose. . . . When you don’t hear [the commander’s voice] for more than fifteen minutes to half an hour, what’s happened? Has he been shot? Has he gone out of control? Does he know what’s going on? You worry. And this is what Microsoft is. These little offices, hidden away with the doors closed. And unless you have the constant voice of authority going across the e-mail the whole time, it doesn’t work. . . . You can’t do anything that’s complex unless you have structure. . . . And what you have to do is make that structure as unseen as possible and build up the image… Read more →
Dead Poets
For after all Humboldt did what poets in crass America are supposed to do. He chased ruin and death even harder than he had chased women. He blew his talent and his health and reached home, the grave, in a dusty slide. He plowed himself under. Okay. So did Edgar Allan Poe, picked out of the Baltimore gutter. And Hart Crane over the side of a ship. And Jarrell falling in front of a car. And poor John Berryman jumping from a bridge. For some reason this awfulness is peculiarly appreciated by business and technological America. The country is proud of its dead poets. It takes terrific satisfaction in the poets’ testimony that the USA is too tough, too big, too much, too rugged, that American reality is overpowering. And to be a poet is a school thing, a skirt thing, a church thing. The weakness of the spiritual powers… Read more →
Wholesome Authority
Then there were the Romans — whose greatness was probably due to the wholesome authority exercised by the head of a family over all its members. Some Romans had even killed their children; this was going too far, but then the Romans were not Christians and knew no better. — Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh Read more →
My Favorite Valentine Movies
Most Favorite Annie Hall Casablanca The Graduate Lost in Translation The Music Man Least Favorite An Affair to Remember Ghost An Officer and a Gentleman Titanic When Harry Met Sally . . . Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Read more →
Atkins Died
Dr. Robert Atkins, who died last year, made a nice living promoting the effects of diet — specifically, a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet — on health. According to his widow, however, Atkins’ own history of heart attack, congestive heart failure and hypertension was “completely unrelated to his diet.” Go figure . . . Read more →