Category Archives: Life or Something Like It

by | August 31, 2011 · 12:07 am

Diamonds and Stones: a Metaphor for Life

This probably won’t be my most popular post.

Typically, I want to entertain you and make you laugh—or at least get a smile out of you.  Today I can’t do that.  Sometimes you get a string of unwelcome news you just can’t ignore and what’s on my mind is no laughing matter.

Sunday I was in a local watering hole called Hannover’s on Main Street in the small town of Pflugerville just outside of Austin.  Before you ask, yes; that’s the actual name of the street.  It’s called that because at one time it was the actual main street through town.  I suppose they should change the name to Side Street, but they don’t really cotton to change in Pflugerville. Continue reading →

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by | August 16, 2011 · 12:11 am

The BLOT and Other Tasty Morsels

I’ve been thinking a lot about acronyms lately.

I shun acronyms because for a brief time I worked for IBM, and the fact that the company name is an acronym should suggest how important they are to the executive leadership of the company.  Although, to be fair, IBM is not an acronym, strictly speaking.  Acronym has come to mean any series of letters which stand for something else.

An actual acronym is a new word created by assembling the initial letters of other words that connote some meaning to the speaker or writer, such as MADD or SNAFU.  By the way it helps a lot if it’s meaningful to the audience as well.  But all too often today something we call an acronym can’t be pronounced, and in my opinion is therefore not a word at all.  Have you ever tried to pronounce the “word” IBM? Continue reading →

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by | August 14, 2011 · 12:13 am

A Wedding or Two

My youngest daughter, Ashley, was married last month.

This followed my oldest daughter Rachel’s wedding seven months earlier.  A wedding ceremony springs from a simple concept: two people publicly profess their love and announce their intention to spend the rest of their lives together.  It occurs to me, however, that intention is fulfilled by the invitation, which seems in my mind to nullify the need for the wedding itself—but that fact is rendered academic to the blushing bride.  Somehow the wedding ceremony has evolved into something so elaborate it is terrifying to the average American male.

Now to be fair, weddings have been lavish occasions throughout recorded history in every culture.  Intellectually, I understand why, but it seems today they are not merely elaborate.  They have become exorbitant spectacles in which the bride must be appeased like some sort of volcano goddess who makes demands at the point of an emotional gun.  I think the term in pop culture is bridezilla. Continue reading →

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