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.

(formerly Formosa)

Ofttimes, imaginary people will ask me questions that help me to start a paragraph. For instance, this morning a purely hypothetical human, let's call her Vivian Blomquist, said to me, “Dave, where do you go for latest late-breaking news you need for your active lifestyle?” A crooked grin crossed my lean features as I replied. “Vivian,” I said, “I get most of my news from the BBC. I like their hardhitting style and unflinching take on today's modern world we live in. Like today I learned that Taiwan's Minister of Environmental Protection is recommending that men sit down to pee.”

Driving Force

So have you ever done that thing where you've decided to go out for dinner and you're discussing different places you might go and you're working toward consensus and you maybe disagree on what to eat like Italian or Vietnamese or Lebanese and then you think about that one place downtown you both really like and it’s been a while since you went there and it’s Wednesday so they shouldn’t be busy and it’s perfect until you remember how terrible the parking is in that neighborhood so you change your mind? Did your car just tell you where to eat?

In Memorium, and best left there.

I just found out that Gloria Winters died about two years ago. She was Sky King's pretty niece Penny, and she made a man of me. I have no intention, however, of locating and watching any old episodes. It would be disappointing. The influences of your youth often are. Like, I saw some Man from UNCLE and I Spy reruns, and they're pretty terrible. But it varies: Seuss and Kubrick hold up really well, Salinger not so much. It's embarrassing how Catcher in the Rye once perfectly captured my inner being, and now seems so shallow, callow, and snotty. Ouch.