A puppy with something to chew on is as happy as a kid with an Xbox.
And when you come right down to it, anything can be chewed on . . .
Happy puppy!
Happy New Year!
Today is Chinese New Year. Why the Chinese can’t celebrate the New Year on January 1st like everybody else, I don’t know . . .
According to my wife, Chinese New Year is celebrated by eating good food and avoiding unnecessary work.
I try to do that every day! I’m lovin’ it!
Let’s party!
Dogfood
NEW YORK (AP) — Olivia Goldsmith, a best-selling novelist whose book First Wives Club was made into a movie starring Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton, has died. She was 54.
Goldsmith had been in a coma since last Wednesday after complications resulting from anesthesia during plastic surgery . . .
The Way We Are Living
The way we are living,
timorous or bold,
will have been our life.
Ugly in Tinseltown
It’s tough being ugly in Tinseltown . . .
Even when a movie — like Monster — requires an unattractive woman in the lead role, they cast a gorgeous woman and make her up to look ugly!
What is the point of that?!
Why not just cast an unattractive woman in the first place — like that Meredith girl from The Bachelorette, for example?
A Moron’s Guide to Success
You could easily conclude from reading profiles in OC Metro that there’s not a single businessperson in Orange County with an ounce of wit or self-awareness.
Case in point: A profile in the current issue of “surfing banker” John Lynch, executive VP of Secured Funding Corp. in Costa Mesa.
The hook is — he’s a banker but he surfs every morning before work, and he says things like “Hey bro,” “We rock,” and “I never took a day of college.”
Pursuit
A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: ‘There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.’
That we pursue something passionately does not always mean that we really want it or have a special aptitude for it. Often, the thing we pursue most passionately is but a substitute for the one thing we really want and cannot have. It is usually safe to predict that the fulfillment of an excessively cherished desire is not likely to still our nagging anxiety. In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued.
Fun With Obituaries
Several ordinary life stories, if told in rapid succession, tend to make life look far more pointless than it really is, probably.
Is that a fact? Let’s try it and see! Here are some excerpts from this week’s obituaries in the Irvine World News:
When Technology Falls Into the Wrong Hands
Here’s what happens when a 10-year-old gets hold of a digital camera. And there’s lots more self-portraits where that came from, including the ones he took of his own butt, which are his personal favorites.
Quote of the Day
Wesley Clark on affirmative action:
Not everybody’s born on a level playing field.
That is undeniable. I, for example, was born in a hospital . . .
Albert Camus
On this date in 1960, Albert Camus died in a car smash outside Paris at the age of 47.
The incomplete manuscript of The First Man, the autobiographical novel that Camus was working on at his death, was found in the mud at the site of the wreck.
What a finish!
Quel tableau!
Overheard
One cow to another:
They’re not booing. They’re saying ‘Moooo!’
Happy New Year!
The rest of the family got up early and went to the Rose Parade. I stayed home and watched it on TV with the dog.
This is what the parade looks like to a 10-year-old.
More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of
Hugh Hefner
As if the Carl’s Jr. commercials weren’t bad enough, I saw one of those “Celebrities on the Town” shows where “Hef” is getting out of a limousine with his entourage of girls, shambling into a club like a doddering old man in what appears to be a bathrobe, his hair sticking way out in back like he slept on it the wrong way and nobody bothered to tell him . . .
Pathetic — hurry up and die.
Why I Hate Stretching at Home
When I do my stretching regimen at the gym, I don’t have a self-appointed, jive-talking personal trainer, age 10:
— You call dat a stretch? We got a big problem here.
— Is dat da best you can do?
— What in da name a Jimmy da Jet kind of a stretch is dat?
— Who’s Jimmy the Jet?
— I dunno. Who is he?
My Kid Got a Dawg for Christmas
My kid got a dog for Christmas — a Pug. His name is Lightning. The dog’s, that is, not the kid’s.
Pugs take the cake for “cute,” judging by the reaction of every woman or girl who sees one.
Oh, he’s so cute! Oh, he’s so precious!
A Bruce Lee Christmas
I’ve been reading Bruce Lee’s Tao of Jeet Kune Do, in which he says that most athletes are not willing to drive themselves hard enough, and that only through extraordinary effort can one unlock the potential of the human body.
The Waiting
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!
The Nutcracker
I’d never seen The Nutcracker — or any other ballet for that matter. It turns out that ballet is just mime with better sets and costumes.
Reverse Performance Anxiety
My son had a very nice piano recital last weekend. He played the right notes, he played the quiet parts quiet and the loud parts loud . . . and yet he had never once, to my knowledge, practiced the piece at home without playing it too loud, too fast, and having a simulated nervous breakdown if anything was said to him about it.
I’ve Googled this all day and I can’t figure it out . . .