I much prefer Sally.

Ayn Rand is back in the conversation, that tired old hypocrite, that lying apologist for larceny and privilege. And as always, those who beat the drum loudest for her philosophy are primarily middle-managers and shopkeepers, people of quite modest talent and accomplishment. That's not to say there aren't those who could be said to exemplify her tenets, to have succeeded thereby. But they're smart enough to shut up about it, to understand that crowing about it can only weaken you. Who, for example? How about the Hawaiian mulatto who is currently the most powerful single human being on the planet?

Gimme a match and I'll check the gas tank.

You expect me to believe a crappy video is making people go on murderous rampages because they feel they've been insulted? Why didn't every new Jerry Lewis movie cause chaos on the short bus? How come the first episode of the Beverly Hillbillies didn't spark violent riots all across Appalachia? Why haven't we seen James Cameron's head on a stick? What I'm saying is, you don't want to focus too much on a single trigger event. Gavrilo Princip was not the mastermind behind the collapse of four or five empires any more than yodeling has the power to create avalanches.

Rock Stars Driving Cabs

A lot of people I know make their living doing work they never trained for, but stumbled into. I know a guy with a degree in architecture who writes press releases for hybrid corn, for instance, and a trained physicist who runs nursing homes. I'm not even including all the Drama Majors who are currently acting like waiters and waitresses. Then there's people who train to do exactly what they end up doing – welders, scientists, professors. The weird outlier is dentistry. I don't see how you could just stumble into the job, but who the hell would choose it?

Guess what I had for breakfast

Life can be cruel. Early last week I was telling this one guy, “Man, I'ma hit the thrift stores and find me a waffle iron.” (Because I was thinking of eating waffles.) And he says, “I think there's two of them at our house.” And I'm all, “You're a very lucky person have two waffle irons when some of us have substantially fewer than a single waffle iron to our name.” And he goes, “Do you want a waffle iron? Free?” And he brings it over. And then a hurricane knocks out the power for the rest of the week.