“I pity the fool who talks calumny about me,” my son informs me. I question his pronunciation of the word “calumny.” “I pronounced it right,” he says, “but I’m down wid it either way. I’m apathetic about it.” OK . . . call me Kreskin, but I’m predicting that a new list of vocabulary words just came out at school. Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Between the Two of Us, We Know a Lot of Stuff
My boy repeats something he just heard on the Angels-Twins telecast: “The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.” Sensing a teaching moment, I ask him, “Do you know who Hubert H. Humphrey is?” “No,” he says. “But you do, so it’s all right.” Read more →
It’s a Guy!
My son’s looking over a Guy Kawasaki blog post that I printed out . . . “What’s this gay Kawasaki stuff?” he asks. “It’s Guy Kawasaki,” I say. “It’s somebody’s name.” “Guy Kawasaki is someone’s name?! What a loser! Hey, Guy! How’s it going, Guy? That guy over there is a pretty cool guy, don’t you think so, Guy? His parents must be losers too. Who names a kid Guy? Congratulations, it’s a guy!” Read more →
101 Ways to Say No
My son’s got a seemingly endless number of ways to answer no to the question “Are you done with your homework yet?” Some recent examples: — Pretty much all done, yeah. — Yes I am! (Long pause) Except for a little reading… — What? Read more →
We Are Not Responsible
We’re having dinner at the Irvine Souplantation when my kid notices a posted sign: We Cannot be Responsible for Lost or Stolen Items. “Oh really?” he says. “What if they’re your items? Can I walk out of here with this cup? How about some plates and silverware?” “I see your point,” I say. “That soft-serve yogurt machine would look great in our kitchen . . .” Read more →
My Kid Asks for Money
“Give me money or give me death! And if you give me death, I’m going to give you death, so I recommend giving me money. “And if you kill me, when Mom gets home you’re going to have to make up some lame excuse like ‘Somebody broke into the house and killed him.’ So again, I recommend just giving me the money.” Read more →
First Tennis Lesson
A Day at the Art Museum with a 7th Grader
I took my son to the new Landscape Confection exhibit at the Orange County Museum of Art today. I don’t know much about art, but I do have a couple rules of thumb: Read more →
Winning Through Intimidation
My wife is a sales agent for Auto Club insurance. She’s using a little after-dinner quiet time to review the monthly Top Producers document. She’s always around the top, but because she took a two-week vacation recently, she dropped down the list this month to around number 30 — still not bad out of hundreds of agents. Our son, however, is not impressed. Read more →
No Pants
My 12-year-old son just got out of the shower and settled into his bed for a few games of Solitaire on his iPod. His mom is not happy that he didn’t bother to put any clothes on. “Wear some pants,” she says to him. “No pants!” he yells. “I’m free!” Read more →
A Pessimist Looks at History
…Let me get this straight, we sent how many tanks and planes over there, it’s already been one full day and they still haven’t made it off of those beaches. Give me a break. How much money is being spent on that army again? Well I know I won’t be cheering for the abolition of fascism in Europe if this continues… — Posted on June 7, 1944 Read more →
Inspirational Quote of the Day
There is one bright spot at the back, at the beginning of life, and afterwards all becomes blacker and blacker and proceeds more rapidly—in inverse ratio to the square of the distance from death. — Leo Tolstoy, “The Death of Ivan Illych” Read more →
Another Sign That Civilization is Circling the Commode
Fantasy NASCAR Read more →
Earthquake Preparedness
A colleague of mine had a vacation planned, visiting some friends out of state. Then a psychic told her that an earthquake would strike California during that week, so she cancelled the vacation to stay home with her family. If I really believed that an earthquake was going to hit on a certain date, I’d make sure that I was out of town. Of course, I’d hope that my child made it through okay. And my dog. As for my wife, there’s nothing wrong with our relationship that a couple tons of rubble wouldn’t fix. Read more →
Ask a 7th Grader
My son is dancing around the family room with a football in his hand, some sort of wild, extended touchdown celebration for no reason at all that I can see. “Shouldn’t you be using this time to study for your social studies test?” I suggest helpfully. Read more →
Why I Don’t Own a Hatchet or a Gun
I’m in the processing of converting all the old content here into WordPress, which among other things, lets me assign categories to each item. I filed one item, principally about a woman who ran over her husband with a car, under several categories, including Murder and Kids. My son, who’s sitting next to me on the sofa doing homework, says, “You’re posting stuff about murdering kids?!” I say, “No, it’s about murdering husbands.” “You’re posting stuff about kids murdering husbands?!” “No, it’s about wives murdering husbands, which happens a lot, unfortunately.” “It would happen around here if Mom had a hatchet or a gun.” “That’s exactly why we don’t have those things.” Read more →
The Bright Side of Bruin Football
Sure, they just absorbed their worst defeat in 75 years, but at least they’re not suffering through the kind of mortifying off-the-field incidents that characterized the Bob Toledo era! Well, except for placekicker Justin Medlock driving around drunk at 3 A.M., rolling his car over on the 405 freeway, and walking away from the wreckage with a seriously injured girl still inside. Read more →
USC 66, UCLA 19
I’m glad it was a blowout. Most of the season, I had to listen to “what a great job Karl Dorrell, Drew Olson and the Bruins are doing.” I didn’t think they were doing a great job at all. They were 9-1, but given all the last-minute, come-from-behind wins over bad teams, they were pretty close to being 5-5. Hence the lack of respect in the polls and the 21-point spread on this game, which turned out to be way too low. Read more →
My Retirement Plan is a .45
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?” Read more →
Happy Birthday, E = mc2
E = mc2, the world’s most famous equation, is 100 years old. According to this BBC article: Einstein showed in a handful of lines that as you accelerate an object, it not only gets faster, it also gets heavier. That in turn makes further pushing less fruitful so that eventually nothing can be accelerated beyond the speed of light. Read more →