True Things I Shouldn’t Have Said Anyway

KID: When are we going to be at Grandma’s? I want to get out. WIFE: It’ll just be a couple more minutes. ME: If we survive. There are more than 30,000 traffic fatalities a year in this country.

A Life Examined

When I see the violence my children do

I am reassured the world will be the way it is for a long, long time to come.

Frontiers of Knowledge

Unconventional Funding Source Puts Researchers in Limbo

The provost of Gulf Isthmus University has been forced to resign and three professors affiliated with its marketing and psychology departments are under investigation after a scandal involving a source of research funding. Allegations were first raised in an anonymous letter to the university’s student newspaper stating that the researchers—Heather Intsunds, Derrick Elbium, and C. […]

The Cynic's Notebook

All you need to see the goodness in humanity

is a little imagination.

Correctives

The One Thing You Should Do before the Election

The presidential election season is heating up. Partisan emotions are reaching a boil, and many of us are filled with a passionate intensity. The comment cannot hear the commenter. Yet the election is more than three months away. You need to do something with all that energy. You want to make a difference in this […]

The Cynic's Notebook

It’s hard not to be hostile

when people think they don’t deserve it.

The Cynic's Notebook

If you love something

that doesn’t love you, call it promiscuous.

The Cynic's Notebook

If you really love something

that doesn’t love you, call it again.

The Cynic's Notebook

If you love something that doesn’t love you

despite your repeated attempts, blame its past.

Frontiers of Knowledge

Museum Damaged by Outraged Patrons

Several windows were broken and five original artworks sustained “significant, possibly irreparable damage,” when a riot broke out after a constituents’ meeting at the Golga Gallery. Two people were taken to the university hospital for treatment—one a 68-year-old professor emeritus who sustained a fractured hand while allegedly punching a hole in an abstract expressionist canvas; the other a 42-year-old homemaker and philanthropist who threw out her back while attempting to push over a sculpture that turned out to be welded to the floor.

A Life Examined

A Middle Manager Faces Down Defeat

What do you mean, “error”? What error? I need this printout for the meeting. No, don’t freeze up. Not now. Come on, print, damn it. Print! The executive vice president is going to be there. Not now. It can’t be. How can this happen to me? Oh, it needs paper.

A Life Examined

A Middle Manager in His Berserker Rage

What the hell is happening up there? We haven’t moved in, like, five minutes. There, the light just turned again. Damn it! Damn it all to hell I’m late already! AAhhhhhhh! Aaahhhhhhh! Aahhhhhh! Ouch. That steering wheel is harder than it looks.