Friction in the workplace among co-workers saps productivity at a time when we need to get our economy going again!  Got a problem where you work?  Ask Your Workplace Conflict Advisor!

Dear My (or is it “Your”) Workplace Conflict Advisor:

Recently I was up for promotion… Read full post »

WASHINGTON, D.C.  It is the latest variation on a “meme” that has gone through numerous permutations in just a short period of time; first S**t Girls Say, then S**t White Girls Say and S**t Goys Say.  “I guess we’re always the last to hear about things,” s… Read full post »

SEPULVEDA, California.  Lisa Sentient has been a Facebook user since 2005, and at the age of 23, she says she can’t imagine life without it.  “When my computer crashes, I start to hyperventilate,” she says, and one gets the sense she’s not exaggerating.  “… Read full post »

During the course of this week, you will be bombarded by features in women's magazines and on daytime talk shows on the theme of "Impress Your Man With Your Super Bowl Knowledge!" I saw one just the other day featuring a bottle-blonde--is "bimbo" too strong a word for the internet?--tossing a… Read full post »

My—you folks are brutally efficient
even though in tact you’re quite deficient.
I know your slush pile must be sky-high
But is this any code for a rag to live by?

My grandmother would say your behavior is tacky.
Financially, I guess it’s not so wacky
With each manuscript that yo… Read full post »

As a friend of mine from Texas says, he will believe
corporations are people when Texas executes one.

Bill Moyers

Bill—I can’t believe
you and your folksy friend are so naïve;
Texas executes corporations every day
for faults as minor as not paying fees.
The state giveth, and the state ta… Read full post »

Emboldened Taliban Try to Sell Softer Image. The Wall Street Journal

I’m sitting in a room with Zubihallah Muhajid and Qalamuddin Maluvi, two senior Taliban officials who hold the pursestrings that I hope they’ll loosen for an eight-figure media buy. We’ve temporarily scripted it… Read full post »

Super Bowl Pre-Game Hype officially began this morning, and I’m in Crawfordsville, Indiana, waiting for Ezra Pound to arrive at the Holiday Inn Express & Suites. This is as close–43 miles–as we could get to Indianapolis, the site of Super Bowl XLVI, and I for one am not looking… Read full post »

You can fool around and sow youthful oats,
You can wreck a car, and sink several boats,
You can get involved in all kinds of capers,
But always remember, look good on paper.

You can go to parties where the booze is flowing,
You can follow fast crowds, where’er they are going,
You can empty… Read full post »

Pato is a 17th century sport that resembles a cross between polo and basketball–using a live duck.… Read full post »

The Army Corps of Engineers spent $92,000 in federal stimulus money on costumes for mascots such as Bobber the Water Safety Dog. 

                           &nb… Read full post »

WASHINGTON, D.C.  In a daring move presidential historians are calling the equivalent of Richard Nixon’s trip to China, President Obama today tapped a former Bain Capital employee to head a federal agency and promised to lower corporate taxes.

“My old lady wears Talbots–… Read full post »

Because of a reporting error, guitarist Jimi Hendrix’s name was misspelled yesterday in a “g” section interview with psychologist Gary Marcus, who studies how the brain learns music.

                &nb… Read full post »

If you're a writer, or if you want to be a writer, you've probably suffered from writer's block.  Consider Henry Roth, to take just one famous example.

Henry Roth

In 1934, when he was 28, Roth's novel Call It Sleep was published.  It didn't do well, and after he abandoned a… Read full post »

People–
Corporations who are people–
They’re the luckiest people in the world.
They’ve no children, no bratty whining children,
Just subsidiaries that they hide
Offshore, somewhere on the side
Earning more than children–real children.

Unions—
are very special peo… Read full post »

Last night, in what is becoming a custom, some members of Congress sat next to each other without regard to party affiliation as they listened to the President’s State of the Union address.  It is a symbolic gesture, like the lion lying down with the lamb in the Bo… Read full post »

They had been stuck in traffic since they’d dropped off Janet, her friend from New York, and her boyfriend Greg at Logan. In retrospect, it was a dumb idea to invite them for Fourth of July weekend. It was hot, her apartment wasn’t that big, there was a million… Read full post »

Marriage counselors increasingly tell couples in relationships that have gone stale to “fake it until you make it,” but who can afford high-priced “experts” with professional training?  Ask Your Fake Romance Advisor for guidance in navigating the narrow path to&… Read full post »

“It’s all your fault,” I said as my fiancee peeled the lids back from my eyeballs, dessicated from the diuretic effects of too many beers, gin and tonics (or is it “gins and tonic”?), martinis and something called a “Zombie,” a high octane cocktail that came… Read full post »

Undine Spragg is the prototype in fiction of the international cocktail bitch.

                                     … Read full post »

Calista, most beautiful of three,
How did this May-December marriage come to be?
Between you pretty thing—so fair—
and a guy with a chin-scrote and white hair?

In ancient times, you were beloved by Zeus
who disguised himself as Diana, goddess of hunt
and moon and birthing, in order to… Read full post »