Iceland has overtaken Norway as the world’s most desirable country to live in, according to an annual U.N. table published on Tuesday that again puts AIDS-afflicted sub-Saharan African states at the bottom.

— Reuters, Nov. 27, 2007

Iceland?! You can tell by the name that it’s not a good place to live: Ice Land. Land of Ice.

You’re stranded in the middle of the ocean. It’s like living on Gilligan’s Island, but without the pleasant climate.

As for Norway, my brother has the command of an Air Force base in Norway. He says when the sun is shining, it’s the most beautiful place in the world.

The other 335 days of the year, not so great . . .

On second thought, we have a family member who perceives things that cannot be seen, so #7 may be more indicative of mental illness than enlightenment . . .

Last weekend, we had dinner at a Chinese place with some of my in-laws. As usual, my son and I were left at one end of the table to entertain ourselves while the rest of the group chatted with each other in Thai.

Near the end of the meal, the boy started reading through the fortune cookies and ad libbing the messages: “‘If you’re reading this, you’re most likely Asian, which means your mom will yell at you a lot.’ ‘This fortune cookie is stale. You’re not going to like it.’ ‘You will fulminate in 10 seconds.’”

“Fulminate?!” I said.

“It was one of my vocabulary words.”

My wife is talking about the possibility of a Christmastime family trip to Thailand. She’s from Thailand, lived there through college, and still has relatives there.

I’ve never been to Thailand — I hate to travel, for one thing — but our son has been over there with her on a few occasions.

Here’s his reaction, punctuated with frantic screaming:

“AHHHHH! It’s people who can’t speak English in 170-degree heat!”

I don’t think this boy has a future as a travel agent.

“They haven’t seen you in a long time,” my wife tells him.

“Can’t we do a video conference?”

A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.

— George Orwell

I have relatives like this — people who are either so dishonest or so lacking in self-awareness that all they seem to gain from any experience whatsoever is an inflated sense of their own self-importance.

I also have relatives who can’t remember that they’ve already told you the same story on 10 previous occasions, forcing you to grit your teeth and nod appreciatively for the 11th time.

Then there are the relatives who fall into both of the above categories. These people are hell on earth.

“Don’t buy us anything expensive for Christmas this year,” my mom says on the phone. “Save your money.”

I diplomatically omit the fact that every year as the Yuletide approaches, my wife starts rummaging through the closets for things she doesn’t want, then wraps them up and gives them to my parents as Christmas presents.

A christmas card from my brother-in-law, who lives with my wife’s sister and their two daughters outside Sydney:

The sun is shining. The days are long and hot. We are in the first weeks of summer and the bush fires have just started. It must mean Christmas is just around the corner.

Grandma died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure.

Just kidding; it was yesterday, but I never get tired of that joke.

Grandma was 94 years old. She was quick-witted almost to the end.

She died at St. Jude Medical Center, the same hospital where I was born. She was 47 when I was born, the same age I am now. It’s the circle of life.

Grandma was a Presbyterian. Everyone else in the family, except me, is Catholic. The Catholic chaplain at St. Jude anointed Grandma before she died. I’m not sure what that means, but I know that my mom asked the priests at her parish to do it and they wouldn’t because Grandma was not a Catholic.

It reminded me of a scene near the end of James Agee’s novel A Death in the Family:

“He said he was deeply sorry,” Andrew savagely caricatured the inflection, “but it was simply a rule of the Church.”

“Some church,” he snarled. “And they call themselves Christians. Bury a man who’s a hundred times the man he’ll ever be, in his stinking, swishing black petticoats, and a hundred times as good a man too, and ‘No, there are certain requests and recommendations I cannot make Almighty God for the repose of this soul, for he never stuck his head under a holy-water tap.’ Genuflecting, and ducking and bowing and scraping, and basting themselves with signs of the Cross, and all that disgusting hocus-pocus, and you come to one simple, single act of Christian charity and what happens? The rules of the Church forbid it. He’s not a member of our little club.

“I tell you, Rufus, it’s enough to make a man puke up his soul.”

One of Grandma’s brothers, who died at the age of 21 many, many years ago, is reputed in family circles to have had the highest IQ ever tested. Some family members believe he was the world’s smartest man, with the possible exception of Einstein.

How did he die? He stepped in front of a moving car.

True story.

There’s more to life than a high IQ, you see. I, for example, am a person of average intelligence, but I always look both ways before stepping into the street.

As we were walking out of the hospital last night, my wife, who’s Asian, said, “I’m not much about dying.”

“I’m not sure what that means,” I said.

“Chinese doesn’t like it,” she said.

She insisted on stopping at a restroom on the way out to wash her hands, not because of germs, but to get the spirits off. She made me do the same.

“You can’t bring that into the house,” she explained.

When we got home, she made me take all my clothes off and run them through the washer.

Via PostSecret.

Two men within a mast length of Rick Hedrick’s homemade 32-foot sailboat have toiled away on their boats for 30 years each. Another for 25 years. Another recently died before his life’s work saw the briny sea.

By comparison, Hedrick, 61, of San Clemente, has practically set a land-speed record. He only had to give up 17 years - working every weekend and two or three nights a week after work to complete his life’s dream. . . .

“Yes, I’m anxious,” Hedrick said last week at the Boat Yard, where men dream of water, sometimes for half their lives. “The only thing I have ever wanted to do is go sailing. But now that I’m here, I’m reflecting on everything. I’ve spent so much of my life here. I haven’t lived a normal life. I’m never home. I’m 61. I wonder, did I pay too great a price?”

— Orange County Register, “O.C. man spent 17 years building his dream boat”

Continue reading Building a Boat

Over Thanksgiving dinner, my dad is explaining how he’s trying to count up all his assets and figure out if he’s got enough to retire.

“But,” he says, “you know what’s missing from all this retirement planning? The one thing you really need to know but you don’t know?”

Continue reading My Retirement Plan is a .45

Somehow at dinner the subject of moving to Texas comes up . . . not a discussion so much as a stream of consciousness monologue by my wife, who has relatives in Texas, and it’s much cheaper to live there than it is here, and so on.

“But what would you do for a job?” she asks me.

Continue reading My Next Career

It’s taking a long time for our beverages to arrive at El Cholo, one of our favorite dining establishments. (Try the Sonora-Style Enchilada.)

“The drinks are taking a long time,” my wife says.

“Yeah,” my son agrees. “Drinks are supposed to come fast. I’m going to file a complaint.”

“Who are you going to file a complaint with?” I ask.

“Grandma Sylvia . . . she’s a lawyer.”

There was a profile of Jerry Buss, the owner of the Lakers, on TV the other night . . .

Buss spent very little time with his family when his kids were growing up. When he and his wife separated, they didn’t tell the kids, and it was five years before any of them noticed the difference.

True story!

Clearly, I have not been nearly as ruthless as I could have been at disregarding my family in my pursuit of success.

The National World War II Memorial opened today in Washington, D.C.

My dad served in World War II. He’d be so proud and excited if he hadn’t been dead for 25 years.

Continue reading World War II Memorial Opens

There can never be defeat if a man refuses to accept defeat. Wars are lost in the mind before they are lost on the ground. No nation was ever defeated until the people were willing to accept defeat.

— George Patton

Continue reading Lost in the Mind

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

My dad’s almost 70 now. He’s been a role model to me in terms of aging gracefully, without complaint.

“How does it feel to be 45?” he asked me the other day. “Feel like you’re getting old?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Wait until you get to fifty-five,” he said.

Thanks, Dad!

At a family gathering a few years ago, a couple of my nieces were experimenting with makeup — including bright red lipstick — when one of the maiden aunts told them that girls with red lipstick look like whores.

Well, that made quite an impression on these girls . . . now at any family get-together that the aunt attends, every girl — from high school seniors down to 5-year-olds — puts on the tawdriest shade of red lipstick they can find.

At Thanksgiving this past week, one of the girls added some ghastly white face powder, for the total painted lady look . . .

Have you ever had a house guest — an in-law, perhaps — who thought that your life would be a lot better if you ran your business the same way she does, lived where she does, managed your money the way she does, ate certain foods in certain portions because she does, put on a sweater when she gets cold, and so on?

Well, I have . . .