A lot of people took my recent post, Looking For Mr. Right? You’re Missing the Point, Missy, to mean that I’m anti-marriage. But I am most definitely pro-marriage. I’ve been happily married for 27 years. Me being anti-marriage is like Pavarotti being anti-singing. It just wouldn’t make sense. I think everyone should get married. But I also know the only way to find Mr. or Miss Right is to absolutely quit looking for them. Hey, man. I don’t make up the rules. I just... Read more
In the desert town of Lancaster, California, I once attended a silent auction fundraiser for a charity, and was so struck by the fairly large (28 x 24 inches) painting above that I took what for me then was quite a leap, and bid $80.00 on it. Weirdly enough (to me anyway), no one else bid on the painting. When I went to pay for it afterwards, I was told the painting was by the boxer Muhammad Ali, who had also autographed it. Who... Read more
Yesterday my wife Cat and I were driving on the freeway when she said, “The slogan of the truck we just passed is ‘Always Late.'” “Take a picture!” I said. “Take a picture!” Being a Superior Human Being Who Always Gets It, Cat immediately started scrounging around in my bag for the camera I keep on me for those occasions when life insists I make fun of it. “Got it!” she said, triumphantly holding aloft my Kodak Cynico-Matic. I cleverly maneuvered alongside Mr. Party... Read more
Single women (in the 27 to 40-year-old zone, mainly) have lately been asking me what generally boils down to this: “What do guys want? I’m a pretty, intelligent, good-hearted woman who has a lot to offer any man. But all the men I meet invariably end up having some sort of congenital aversion to commitment—to settling down, getting serious, getting married. Why is that? I’m a fun, sweet person. I make my own money. I have lots of rewarding relationships in... Read more
Here’s a toy somebody donated to the thrift store today. Made of rock-hard plastic, it’s about twelve inches high. I was going to make a joke about how unsurprising it was that it looks brand new, since no one could have ever played with it … but now I feel kind of sorry for ol’ … Horno. Or Zeetmo. Or Splacko. Or whatever in the world the poor thing’s... Read more
So today I was sorting and pricing books at one of the thrift stores run by my wife. (Same as I was doing the other day, when I came across the book from which I excerpted the poem and scanned the image I then used for “The Dumb Soldier”/”George W. Bush Thinks Of His Soldiers”, a post o’ mine that, if you must know, I thought heartbreakingly poignant and discouragingly under-appreciated. But whaddaya gonna do?) While working through the books, I was thinking, “Wow. People sure are interested... Read more
Two days ago I posted What Would Jesus Do if Invited to a Gay Wedding?, a simple enough little piece in which I rather cursorily addressed the question of whether or not I should attend the wedding of some gay friends. A preacher’s wife snorting coke during a televised Easter service wouldn’t generate as many comments as that blog post did. I wouldn’t have gotten any more responses if I’d written that I’d discovered absolute proof that Jesus was a schizophrenic Muslim magician.... Read more
Today my wife Cat and I found out that the offer we made on a townhouse over which we’ve been ga-ga was accepted. (I wrote a bit about making the offer here.) Below is a picture of our home to be. The tall part and everything to the right of it will be ours. It’s three stories, 1515 sq. feet, two-car garage, built in 2003. The fall in housing prices has been a sheer blessing for my wife and me. You... Read more
The other day I was reading through Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic book of children’s poems, “A Child’s Garden of Verse,” when I came across the poem below. It’s entitled “The Dumb Soldier.” Having read it, there was no way I could stop myself from imagining an alternative title to this poem being “George W. Bush Thinks Of His Soldiers.” WHEN the grass was closely mown, Walking on the lawn alone, In the turf... Read more
Yesterday a reader wrote to ask, “John, would you comment on something I heard last night at church — that is, on the very real possibility that God uses people to deliver messages? The idea is that the delivery is usually made by someone who has no clue what the message means, to someone who is desperate for the message.” Well, since you asked [hi, Dan!], I do think God uses people to deliver his messages. I think that’s the whole point of... Read more
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