Tag: General nonsense

They say you get smarter every day that you’re alive until some tipping point. After that, because your brain starts to rot with age, you get dumber every day. I wonder if I’ll know when it happens. That would be a bad day. “Something feels different today. I wonder what…uh-oh.”…

Regular readers already know that I’m a trained hypnotist. When people hear that, the most common response I hear is “I can’t be hypnotized.” I suppose people are trying to tell me they have too much will power. What they actually tell me is that they have no understanding of…

The great thing about recovering from the flu is rediscovering all the small pleasures I had taken for granted. For example, I love standing in the shower after all the cleaning is done, just rocking back and forth while the warm water massages my neck and shoulders. It doesn’t last…

For the past few months I’ve been trying to drop a stubborn two pounds that has resisted all manner of diet and exercise. Yesterday I got lucky – I woke up with the stomach flu from Hell. Mission accomplished in 24 hours. I dare say my body looks perfect now,…

When I’m traveling for my speaking sideline, one of my small pleasures is ordering room service to arrive at the crack of dawn. I love my warm bagel, small pot of green tea, and assorted fruit plate. It starts my day off on the right foot. Sometimes I’ll have a…

I have an irrational fear of ambiguous tipping situations. You might think that with all of my traveling I would have seen them all. But no, I keep running into new ones. It bothers me because I don’t want to accidentally stiff someone and later realize it and feel bad….

The other day I was dispensing sage advice to a friend.  Later it occurred to me that if my advice were followed, my friend could end up getting married and starting a family. In other words, I might have accidentally created a baby. Whoops. And not just one baby. The…

If you ask me, the most obscene letter in the alphabet is the asterisk. It appears in almost every naughty word you see in print, from f*ck to p*ss to m*th*rf*ck*ng c*cks*ck*r. You can’t even pronounce the word “asterisk” without saying *ss. That smutty little character is attracted to obscenity…

Years ago when I worked at a big bank, one of the hot issues was that many customers didn’t trust our new-fangled ATM machines. Amazingly, this fear had almost nothing to do with the fact that I worked in the ATM department. Indeed, my suggestion to include a paper shredder…

I offer the following true story with the hope that no matter how crappy your day is, you’ll find comfort in knowing someone had a worse one. I co-own two restaurants in my local area. One is a block from where I live, so I eat there at least once…

Today we entertain ourselves by asking people who are bad at explaining things to explain the inexplicable. For some reason, the occasional discussion of free will on this blog is the thing that gets people most irritated. But always remember that irritation is what allows oysters to create pearls. Thank…

I had no idea how much reaction I would get from my post about regaining my voice. (It’s still 95% good.) I normally get about 25,000 hits a day on this blog. After the voice story posted, I got about 180,000 hits for each of the next two days. I…

[Posted on a borrowed computer] As I write this, my Internet connection has been down for a day. I don’t want to sound as if I’m starting to panic or anything, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t given some thought to binge drinking. I am cut off…

As regular readers of my blog know, I lost my voice about 18 months ago. Permanently. It’s something exotic called Spasmodic Dysphonia. Essentially a part of the brain that controls speech just shuts down in some people, usually after you strain your voice during a bout with allergies (in my…

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out the easiest way to become the emperor of the world. The key word here is “easiest” because I’m not willing to put in all the time killing opponents that it would take to do it the traditional way. So here’s…