I was trying to get my son to think ahead a little in Bejeweled instead of just clicking on the first match he sees. Result: He clicks as fast as ever, but he now adds a running commentary in a dopey voice whenever I’m in the room: Should I click here? Or should I click here? Or should I just sit here thinking and not click on anything? Thinking is better than life. Well — when you put it that way, you have to be alive to think. But still, thinking is the best . . . Footnote: My high score is still way better than his. Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Management 101
I saw the new Jackie Chan movie today . . . it was pretty bad, but the thing that resonated with me was that the movie, like all movies of this type, had an evil villain, and the villain would gather his evil henchmen and say things like “Which one of you would like to explain this latest failure?” He sounded just like one of the managers I work with . . . Read more →
Self-Portrait
A boy en route to Amarillo, holding a camera . . . Read more →
What’s for Breakfast?
“You want waffles?” asks Mom. “Bacon,” the boy replies, without looking up from his GameBoy. “How about bacon, and I’ll cut up an apple for you?” “Bacon.” “You have to have fruit with it. How about grapes?” “Bacon.” “Bacon and fruit.” Pause. “Is bacon a fruit?” Read more →
Worst Band of All Time
Blender magazine has named Insane Clown Posse as the worst band of all time, although I personally think this does a great disservice to Rush — the band, not the radio guy. Read more →
Slapstick Science
According to the British Journal of Ophthalmology, wearing a too-tight necktie may increase the risk of glaucoma by boosting blood pressure inside the eyes. Ouch! Who volunteers for this kind of thing? Choked blind with your own necktie!? Read more →
EppsNet Goes to the Movies
I was buying movie tickets with my 10-year-old boy when a woman with her 20-something daughter smiled at us and said, “When you get older, your kids will take you to the movies.” Later, in the snack bar line, I asked him, “So are you going to take me to a movie when I get older?” Read more →
Introducing a 10-Year-Old to Poetry
Me: (reading aloud from syllabus for UC Irvine Young Writers class, in which my kid is enrolled) “We are going to be doing a variety of activities, including a facade poem, a four season poem, journal writing, and a memory snapshot story.” Him: Poems blow. Read more →
Undercutting the Offshore Bid
Primate Programming Inc. Read more →
Kids in America
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average child care worker earns $9.57 an hour. This is less than we pay people to cut our hair ($10.40 an hour), shine our shoes ($9.95 an hour) and park our cars ($9.87 an hour). Repeat: Kids in America are being raised by people earning $9.57 an hour. That explains a lot . . . Read more →
Happy Birthday
We celebrated my son’s birthday yesterday by going to his favorite restaurant of all time, BD’s Mongolian Barbeque in Irvine, only to find that they’d gone out of business, finally beaten into submission by the ultra-popular BJ’s Restaurant & Brewery next door. Fortunately, 10-year-olds bounce back from these kinds of setbacks pretty quickly, especially when they get the Kung Fu Chaos game they really, really wanted . . . Read more →
2 Fast
Costa Mesa, CA. — Michael Allen Hanson was cruising at 100 mph in his new Porsche on the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway when a black car zoomed past Tuesday night. So Hanson, president of his mortgage company, hit the gas. Read more →
Misinformed
RICK BLAINE: I came to Casablanca for the waters. CAPT. RENAULT: The waters?! What waters? We’re in the desert. RICK BLAINE: I was misinformed. My wife and son are in Amarillo for a few weeks visiting relatives. I’m not sure I want to be in Texas in July, but they told me the temperature was in the 70s, so I decided to fly in for a few days. When I got there, it was 104, although it did drop into the 70s at night . . . Read more →
Another Reason I Never Put My Kid in Day Care
LANCASTER, California (AP) — The foster mother of two young boys who died after being left five hours in a sweltering sport utility vehicle was arrested for investigation of child endangerment. The woman’s occupation? She runs a day care center. I’m looking at a picture on CNN.com, and the vehicle appears to be a Cadillac Escalade, so at least the kids died in a nice car . . . Read more →
Overheard
You can’t beat that with a sharp stick! Why does the stick have to be sharp if you’re just going to beat something with it? Read more →
Life Imitates HTTP
I took my family to the airport today. Their flight was scheduled to leave from Gate 404. We couldn’t find it. Read more →
The Joys of Retirement
It looks like Dominik Hasek may be ending his retirement. That’s big news at my house because he’s my son’s favorite goalie, but also another blow to the theory — held by my wife and others — that lots of money plus lots of free time equals major satisfaction, even if your life lacks any real direction or purpose. Now you might say that Hasek loves to play hockey and that’s why he’s getting back into it. And I say: If he was having so much fun, why did he retire in the first place? Read more →
Runaway Train
Railroad workers in a Montclair switching yard lost control of 30 freight cars loaded with lumber yesterday. The cars rolled out of the yard in the general direction of Los Angeles, which is about 30 miles westbound and downhill from Montclair. The cars eventually reached a speed of about 50 miles an hour, so rather than let them rocket into the downtown area, Union Pacific decided to derail them into a Mexican neighborhood in Commerce. Read more →
Something Sad About Parenting
I see things around the house, like a bike that’s too small now, and think about the kid who used to ride it, and how I loved that kid, and now he’s gone . . . Read more →
Brain Teaser
This was posed to me in an interview. I don’t know if there’s a “right” answer, or whether it’s just intended to probe the thinking process of the applicant. You have 50 white marbles, 50 black marbles and two bags. Your task is to arrange the marbles in the bags so as to maximize the probability that a person making a blind selection from one of the bags will select a black marble. Read more →