A Ritual of Destruction Hidden in the Everyday

We have recently had occasion to observe a ritual that is rampant across the United States. It is one that, in our opinion, speaks to deep fissures in the civilized psyche, but it is seldom recognized or understood for what it really is.

A Life Examined

True Things I Shouldn’t Have Said Anyway

ME: I know what I’m about to say will piss you off—

WIFE: So just stop.

ME: But I always know that and I always say it anyway.

A Life Examined

True Things I Shouldn’t Have Said Anyway

KID: Mommy, when I grow up will I be pretty like you?

WIFE: Of course, sweetie. But remember it’s what’s inside that counts.

ME: Although studies show that attractive people make more money and are happier.

A Life Examined

CEO Apologizes for Extramarital Affair She’s About to Have

To my husband, I want to say that I’m very sorry that I will get caught. Eleven months from today, I will not suspect that some nobody at a convenience store would sell their parking lot and interior security footage to a tabloid. Twelve months from now I will have no idea investigative journalistic work will have begun that will eventually lead to the publication of grainy but still humiliating images of me snogging with what the tabloids will call my “young stud.”

A Life Examined

Tao skyrockets 1,000 points!

Buddhists shrug.

A Life Examined

Two months into the new year,

and the resolution FAIL is palpable….

A Life Examined

March 1 is simply too late

to send that stack of New Year’s greeting cards you so thoughtfully prepared.

A Life Examined

The IT Department’s User Support Manager Gets His Soliloquy (Or Is It Soliloquie?)

It’s simple. It’s so simple no one ever suspects it. So simple that real programmers would laugh at it. The program is a macro. It modifies the way Microsoft Word behaves. Of course, I have access to all the computers on the network, since I’m the admin. When I determine someone needs to be taken […]

A Life Examined

Activists Say Holiday Cheer Is a Bummer for the Planet

One group of activists is fighting to expose the damage that’s done every year by holiday cheer.

A Life Examined

A Few Thoughts on the Killings in Newtown

So many of us are thinking the same few sad thoughts. They may come with vivid images or without, depending on what you’ve seen and what you’ve known. They may toll through your being with peals of sympathy or only skitter over the surface. But so many of us can’t help thinking that the recent […]

A Life Examined

The Lesson of the Payoffs

We were recently at a birthday party. It was the kind that’s held at a bar with no arrangement with the management, and thus no free drinks or private space. The celebrants stand together for a while, and then seem to forget the occasion, and filter into the normal mayhem of a Friday night.