For a person who writes, I suffer from an almost fatal inability to slow down and let the morning last. I am always in a hurry to finish a piece.The usual result? A product that could be better if I spent more time on it. If only...

That's why I… Read full post »

This is an intriguing question. First of all, it’s loaded with vague and ambiguous words. What’s an ethnic group? Is it the same as a racial grouping or a language grouping? What does romantic mean? Does it mean love, lust, sex, caring and concern, or all of these and more?… Read full post »

The world has ended several times in my life. Each time, I usually awakened the following morning, automatically checking for functioning body parts and mental faculties just in case my room wasn’t a replica created by some extraterrestrial force the way things often happen in The Twilight Zone… Read full post »

Open Salon put out a call for the sexiest man living. That’s patently unfair to heterosexual males like me because we don’t look at other men as sexy. Speaking only for myself, I view men in general as dorks. There’s no hotness, no sexiness to a dork.

Sarah Palin, on… Read full post »

Yesterday I received an e-mail from my cousin in Arkansas. She keeps me informed of goings on and I appreciate her messages. She wrote that her husband and brother (another cousin) had gone to “the farm” at three a.m. on a deer hunting foray. The farm she mentioned is owned by… Read full post »

Yesterday, I visited the Department of Motor Vehicles (DVM) to renew my driver’s license. A couple of days earlier, my doctor had given me a certificate attesting to my 20/20 vision in one eye and 20/60 in the other. That’s good enough to drive without eyeglasses in this state.… Read full post »

I must be watching a television show from a twin planet. You’ve probably seen TV shows or movies based on this theme. A space crew from Earth lands on a planet, thinking they’re back home. But, as the story plays out, we see that the planet looks like Earth and the… Read full post »

Here is a scam you might want to think about. The following incident probably isn’t illegal, but I call it a scam because it’s a tricky maneuver by a credit card company to assess a late fee for the non-payment of an unauthorized and nonexistent charge. I’m changing the name of… Read full post »

I’ve been somewhat preoccupied over the past month or so. Almost all of my time during that period was related to my cataract surgery. In retrospect, it seems I was preparing for surgery on one eye and recovering afterward while at the same time, getting ready for surgery on the second… Read full post »

This morning I was chatting with a Facebook Friend about finding a suitable blog platform. She’s a professional writer, so she’s a little pickier than me. She’s looking not just for an audience but for the right audience. Professional writers need the exposure that could lead to a p… Read full post »

If you've lost your loved one, you'll understand how difficult it is to feel romantic. Even when you're thinking about your life together, about how beautiful she was, how her eyes shone with starlight, and how her smile pulled you to her, the memories soon give way to reality. She is… Read full post »

When you’re responsible for your own maintenance and upkeep, you early on begin to simplify the many tasks that are necessary to your well-being, things like eating, washing, drying, and folding clothes. If these tasks and more aren’t performed on a daily basis, you soon find friends and… Read full post »

This is probably a meaningless post unless you know a little about San Francisco. But if you are somewhat familiar with the city, you may recall or have heard about the Jack Tar Hotel.

This relic of another era at the corner of Van Ness and Geary in San Francisco… Read full post »

Relatives send me a lot of emails. Almost all of them originate with someone else and find their way to me through this cousin or that.

Since all of my cousins hate Barack Obama, all of the forwarded emails without exception are ant-Obama.

The funny thing is, by… Read full post »

Be honest now, men. If you had a chance, would you pose full-frontal nude in Playgirl Magazine if the editors invited you?

A lot of men have actually exposed all, including Burt Reynolds when he was still a hunk. Now, Levi Johnston, the father of Sarah Palin’s grandson, is getting… Read full post »

When the story first broke, I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to CNN News. CNN is the news outlet after all that continually flashes “Breaking News” or something similar across the ticker at the bottom of the screen. Every thing is “breaking” or “developing.&rdquo… Read full post »

San Francisco has a reputation for tolerating all sorts of behavior that heartlanders consider outrageous. Now, the clucking class can add one more item to its list of reasons why San Francisco and the whole state of California is destined to slip into the Pacific Ocean one of these days when… Read full post »

I violated one of my staunchest internet principles this morning. I contacted one of my Facebook Friends. My phone call to her surprised even me. I never suspected that I would actually dial her number. It happened like this:

We’d been Facebook Friends for several years. How we managed to… Read full post »

My mind is feeling goofy this morning. I’m thinking about City Halls and wondering which city hall in the U.S. employs the most attractive people. I’ve worked in and around some city halls and I noticed early in the game that the mayor or other chief executive was surrounded by some… Read full post »

Another child murdered. Another family in turmoil. Another mother in pain so excruciating that she collapsed on television. This mother now joins other mothers forever deprived of the pleasure and joy of loving a child and watching it achieve in life and in school, attending proms, graduating, headin… Read full post »

I’ve encountered a writer’s block of unparalleled density. I’ve been chipping at it in my mind for about a month without a great deal of effect. A friend of mine once observed, “We can saw off the leg of an elephant with the wings of butterflies if we saw long enough.”… Read full post »

About a thousand years ago it seems, I noticed that the vision in my left eye wasn’t as bright and as sharp as it used to be. I chalked it up to the natural degeneration that accompanies the aging process. After postponing the inevitable, I decided to see an optometrist to… Read full post »

Last night, I was sitting around clicking my clicker up and down the hi def channels. It's one of my bad habits.

But on this night, a couple of programs filled with romantic music captured my attention. One was the movie La Bamba with Lou Diamond Phillips as fifties rock and roll… Read full post »

I’m watching the President’s Cup golf match televised from San Francisco’s Harding Park Golf Course. This magnificent example of San Francisco’s beauty winds around Lake Merced not too far from the main campus of San Francisco State University where, in a moment of insanity… Read full post »

Yesterday, my doctor examined me in preparation for cataract surgery. But as usual, before she actually saw me, her nurse had completed the guts of all exams.

First, she had me step on a scale and then she recorded my 166 pounds on some sort of medical record. Following that,… Read full post »