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 →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
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 →
Are People Getting Fatter?
My wife’s car has preference settings for each driver. When I drive it, I get in, push a button, and the seat moves into position automatically — no manual effort required. “In the future, people are going to be really fat,” my son says. “People are pretty fat now,” I point out. “They’re going to be fatter because they don’t have to do anything.” “George Jetson isn’t fat.” “He’s kind of fat.” “He’s not fat.” “Maybe I’m thinking of Fred Flintstone.” “Fred Flintstone is fat, but he’s from the past — which kind of discredits your theory, if you think about it.” Read more →
Secret Griefs and Fears
The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears. — Francis Bacon, “Of Parents and Children” Our son turned 12 in July . . . “I almost cried today,” my wife says. “Every year, I take Casey to the pumpkin patch and I take the best photo, but when we drove by today, he didn’t want to go . . .” Read more →
The Dog Who Has Everything
Today is our dog’s second birthday, my son informs me. “Every day is a birthday for that dog,” I say. “We didn’t get him any gifts,” the boy says. Read more →
USC Business School
I was happy to see the USC business school get a Top 10 national ranking in the Wall Street Journal Guide to Top Business Schools, ahead of Stanford, ahead of Harvard and, of course, ahead of UCLA. Read more →
Which Side Are You On?
There are only two serious attempts at swamp-draining currently under way. In Afghanistan and Iraq, agonizingly difficult efforts are in train to build roads, repair hospitals, hand out ballot papers, frame constitutions, encourage newspapers and satellite dishes, and generally evolve some healthy water in which civil-society fish may swim. But in each case, from within the swamp and across the borders, the most poisonous snakes and roaches are being recruited and paid to wreck the process and plunge people back into the ooze. How nice to have a ‘peace’ movement that is either openly on the side of the vermin, or neutral as between them and the cleanup crew, and how delightful to have a press that refers to this partisanship, or this neutrality, as ‘progressive.’ — Christopher Hitchens Read more →
Free Advice . . .
. . . for anyone thinking of handcuffing themselves to a tree: If you handcuff yourself to a tree you would die fairly quickly but maybe not as quickly as you would like. Read more →
Great Orators of the 7th Grade
I can’t really hear what my son is holding forth on downstairs — just snippets about tyranny, racism, slavery, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, civil rights and child abuse — which means his mom must have asked him to turn off the TV and get started on homework . . . Read more →
Dogster
Someone sent me a link to Dogster. OK . . . I just looked at the doggie diaries a little bit. Some people are waaaay too into their dogs. Now, don’t get me wrong . . . I love my dog, but anyone referring to pets as “kids” or to themselves as the “mommy” or “daddy” of an animal should be euthanized. Read more →