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I Dare You To Stay Awake Reading This

Don’t you hate it when you go to a website or blog, expecting something interesting, and instead get some snooze-inducing report of stuff about the “author’s” personal life that you could tell you wouldn’t even care about if you were that person? Yeah, that’s about to happen to you. Our time, right now: 9:22 a.m. [...]

How To Make a Living Writing

This is a collection of posts I’ve done on this subject. Decide if you really want to make a living writing. If your primary interest in writing is to give expression to your innermost thoughts and feelings, and you don’t really care if anyone reads your stuff or not, that’s a beautiful thing. But if your [...]

The Five People Who’ll Beat Me Up In Heaven

I hate to lob bad voodoo onto anything as great as going to heaven. But it occurs to me that if I ever do make it past the Pearly Gates, then sometime between St. Peter saying, “That little cloud with the silver lining is yours,” and all my fellow heavenites finally giving up on my [...]

Free Bestselling Book Idea!

For 10 years now I’ve been carrying around in my out-sized head a book idea that I think is a surefire blockbuster. But I’m booked book-wise for the foreseeable future. So finally I am now officially giving away this book idea. It’s your lucky day! Maybe. Or whatever. Here’s the idea: A trade paperback needs [...]

John Notes for “Introduction to Western Philosophy”

Here are your John Notes for some of the major honchos in Western philosophy: Socrates: Liked to call himself a “gadfly.” No one argued it. Turned unceasingly asking annoying questions into the basis for Western civilization. Plato: Believed knowledge was more about remembering than learning. Yet founded the first college in the Western World. Been [...]

Backstage With The Blind Boys of Alabama

  The Blind Boys of Alabama. Jimmy Carter’s on the far left. The guy who looks like he’s yawning, Bishop Billy Bowers, has a voice of such arresting intimacy it stops their shows.   My wife Cat and I recently went to see The Blind Boys of Alabama. The group’s lead singer, Jimmy Carter, has a [...]

Praise God: A Politician Finally Said Something Real About Racism

Below are selections from the transcript of the speech that yesterday Barack Obama gave on race relations in America. I’m turning 50 this week. I thought I might die of old age before I ever heard anyone of Mr. Obama’s political prominence publicly say things this basic and true. Racism is the cancer of our nation. I personally thank God that someone of Mr. [...]

“Bad Word Bug Wiggles?” What the …?

In the last three days, these are what someone somewhere typed into a search engine (which then brought them here to my blog): Bad word bug wiggles [From some kind of deranged entomologist?] A list of testes to put a boy through to [Yikes! And two--I am so not kidding--people searched this!! Do people not [...]

Top 10 Qualities to Look For in a Wife

My wife and I recently celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary. If you’re a single guy thinking about getting married, might I suggest, based on my experience, that you marry a woman who possesses the following 10 qualities? 1. So smart she constantly freaks you out with her humongous Absorb-O-Brain. Upside: Hanging around with a smart person [...]

Pick-Up Lines Of Famous Men In History

New research into the romantic lives of famous men throughout history has verified what social historians have long suspected: eminent men have always tried to get dates, too. And now, thanks to the tireless research team working at Harvard’s James Q. Riddely Institute for Hornier Histories, we now know the pick-up lines some of them [...]