I remember back when I was a kid. We were in the car on our way home from some place. My dad was driving as was usual. My mom knew how to drive, but she quit driving when I was about four because it made her too nervous. My father was not allowed to drive on the freeways when she was in the car. Anyway, there we were, stopped at an intersection, when a fellow riding a horse started to cross the street. Something must have spooked the horse, because it reared back and the rider fell off. There he lay in the middle of the street writhing in pain. My father immediately jumped out of...

Isn’t it interesting how many famous people die unknown and poor, even people who were once famous? Of course, I suppose the world is full of non-famous, poor people, but still, you’d think that once you were rich and famous, you’d stay that way. The poor part I can understand. I mean, everyone makes bad money decisions and money is kind of hard to get and keep. Do you ever look at your W-2 in January and wonder what the hell you did with all that money and why don’t you have it anymore? I look at think, and mine shit, I waste a lot of money. Sometimes I’ll...

Okay, I didn’t write this up on April 1st for reasons that are about to become obvious. As you all know, I have long been a subscriber to FATE magazine because it is such an entertaining little periodical. If you want to know why FATE is so special, please read my blog on the scrumptious piece of periodic literature, written a couple of years ago. For those of you who haven’t the inclination to find that blog, I will repeat here that FATE is a magazine dedicated to the paranormal. If it’s weird, it’s in FATE. You can always trust FATE for articles on ghosts, UFOs, Demons, Trolls,...

When I was a kid, I used to like puzzle books.  You know the kind.  There would be the puzzle that showed six clowns that looked very much the same and then ask which one was different.  Or there would be the picture in which you were supposed to find various things.  Later on, I would come to love books of brain teasers, seemingly impossible puzzles to reason out, some of which required hours to suss out. I remember one puzzle in particular, regarding some pennies, that drove me nuts.  You have twelve pennies, one of which is counterfeit.  The fake coin is either heavier or lighter than...

Okay, it’s been a year since I returned to the kung fu club and so it’s time for a progress report.  As you may recall, it was a year ago on Memorial Day that I bumped into a guy giving away free karate lessons during a local street fair.  I took him up on the offer because I knew that I needed to get some exercise and practicing a martial art is a lot less boring than lifting weights and running on treadmills. I had practiced kung fu for a good many years before, but an injury has forced me to stop for a time.  I started to focus my attention in other pursuits, such as music and writing,...

For the past few years, my wife, Becky, and I have been very interested in ghosts. Well, Becky is really the one most interested for reasons unknown to me. But I find the subject interesting and so I go along for the ride. So each week, we watch the obligatory episodes of Ghosthunters on the Sci Fi channel. That would be our favorite show. Next in line is Most Haunted on the Travel Channel. There is also a show on the Biography Channel called Ghostly Encounters. And for something very scary, there is the Discovery Channel’s Hauntings. A and E has Paranormal University, but that...

I’m getting a little tired of conservatives calling America a “Christian” nation.  There is nothing Christian about it.  Our nation’s government was not founded by Christians, nor was it founded upon Christian principles.  And although the organized church has long held hands with the government, there is precious little in the practice of the organized Christian church that resembles the teachings of Jesus. Thomas Jefferson said in his autobiography concerning the preamble of the constitution, “Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author...

I’ll tell you a little secret about teaching.  And I’ve been teaching a long time now, over 25 years, so I should know something about it.  I never meant to be a teacher.  It was never in my plans.  I wanted to be a rock star, or an actor.  I saw myself standing on the stage taking my bows to thunderous applause.  I told my high school guidance counselor so. I remember well being called to my counselor’s office back when I was a senior in high school.  I thought I was in trouble.  I couldn’t imagine being in trouble with Mr. Milling.  Mr. Milling looked rather like a tall, thin...

One of the things that drive people crazy about religions in general, and about Christianity in particular, is this perverse need many followers have to suffer. For some reason, these fanatics have equated a letting go of the world with the need to wear barbed wire underwear. In Ireland, every year, thousands of people walk up the craggy slope of a mountain called Croke Patrick in bare feet, in order to suffer. For hundreds of years, monks and nuns, and penitent pilgrims have worn hair shirts and flagellated themselves in order to suffer agony in the idea that somehow all this pain and suffering...

I once had a girl friend, many years before I met my wife, Becky, and I loved her very much. We had, I thought, a good relationship. So I felt as though I had been hit with a sledgehammer in the chest when she confessed to me that she had cheated on me while she was away at school. I didn’t know how to respond. I was angry, sure, and I felt betrayed, but mostly, I felt unloved. She felt terribly guilty. She wept bitterly. She apologized again and again. She had knew that what she had done was inexcusable and didn’t offer any. She told me she couldn’t see how she could continue...