Our genderless spirit counselor, who art in everything, honored be thy many names. Thy new age come, thy will be manifested, on this and all cosmic planes. Break with us our daily gluten-free unleavened bread, and forgive us our bad karma as we forgive those who project their bad karma onto us. Lead us not into negative vibrations, but deliver us from organized religion. For ours is the coming cosmic unity, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever.... Read more
Check out this sign, attached to a quaint, white church-type building in downtown Encinitas, CA. Encinitas is the New Age capital of the universe; just about every other downtown area business is a an aura repair place, or a harmonic balance restorer, or chakra adjustment center. While-U-Wait Crystal Buffing While-U-Wait. Drive-through cosmic alignment. All that sort of thing. It’s pretty amazing. So the Chapel of Awareness Spiritual Church is definitely right at home in downtown Encinitas. If you can’t read... Read more
One of the things in life of which men are most acutely aware is that there are women everywhere. Today, for instance, I’ve already seen five or six different women. And that was just looking out my living room window. And no, I don’t stand in my living room, blatantly ogling people as they walk by. That’s tacky. What I do is spy at them through the blinds. It’s the only polite thing to do. And if spying on my... Read more
Last Friday I wrote about a certain … well, even now I can barely discuss the traumatizing affair. Read the piece if you’re interested. (Fair warning: the word “lubricant” makes a disturbing appearance.) By way of commenting on that post, many women wrote in to observe that men have no right complaining about anything bodily, since they’re not women. “I do not feel one bit sorry for you,” wrote reader Judy. “Women have much worse to go through and more... Read more
The day Martin Luther King was assassinated I came home from a baseball game I’d been playing to find my mom absolutely distraught. Through her almost violent crying she told me that her hero Martin had been murdered. I knew who King was, because at that time my mom was a college student at San Jose State University, and was very actively involved in the political and social turmoil of 1968. I was ten years old. I of course tried... Read more
My doctor is young. Really young. He looks like he’s maybe in college. And yesterday, Doogie (not his real name) changed my life forever. In the air of his examining room yesterday I felt something between Doogie and me shift the moment he snapped on a blue latex glove, hauled out from a drawer a tube of lubricant that would fit into a caulking gun, and said, “Go ahead and put your elbows on the table here.” “Excuse me?” I... Read more
My wife Catherine is a fantastic manager. In her 30-plus years as a … well, boss at work, she has learned how to do it right. She’s pretty much guaranteed to be the best boss anyone who’s ever worked for her has ever had. Here is her list of 10 mistakes even good managers make: (more…) Read more
Right now, in a federal courtroom in San Francisco, a judge presiding over a nonjury trial is deciding whether or not states have the right, under the federal constitution, to deny same-sex couples the right to marry. At issue is whether or not California’s November 2008 passage of Proposition 8, which amended the state’s constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman, was a violation of the federal constitution’s 14th Amendment rights to equal protection... Read more
As I wrote about here, this weekend I had to take an 8-hour traffic class. Here are the ten most interesting things I learned there: 1. You know those traffic cameras they use at intersections to catch people running red lights? All throughout Europe today those same type of cameras are installed on freeways to catch speeders. Pretty soon they’ll be installed on American freeways for the same purpose. They’ll be everywhere. 2. The average speed driven on a California... Read more
Thinking ahead to my next real blog post, I’m just now writing down the things I learned at the CA traffic class I took yesterday. One thing I was reminded of at the class that has nothing whatsoever to do with driving correctly is that whenever I see a person who’s about my age (51), I pretty much never think of myself as the same age as that person. Instead, I always automatically think the same thing about them that... Read more
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