Notes from a Narcisist: there's a place for ugliness and it's not the fast food drive thru.
Warning: If you suffer from conditions relating to weak stomach, irritable bowel syndrome, easily grossed out syndrome, restless leg syndrome, or a strong dislike of people who are irrationally boastful and full of themselves, you may want to pass up this blog entry and read something a little more asinine. Anything by Victoria Osteen or Newt Gingrich’s daughter Jackie should do quite nicely and cause your overall IQ to drop three to five points…during the first chapter.Modesty is a virtue.I like to think of my writing as not just terribly witty, poignant and life-changing, but also as prose that provides a public service. Now, I know what you

While we're on the Subject of Nudity
It’s not like I’m obsessed with people being naked. Please don’t think I am. Because I’m not. Okay!!! Friends from my Bible study read my blog and I certainly don’t want them praying for me because they assume I have some unhealthy addiction, other than watching reruns of Wife Swap on Lifetime. It’s just that I’ve had lots of response to the last posting about locker room nudity. People keep coming up and sharing their stories about getting embarrassed while they happened to be bare-assed (Sorry to be crude, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to put those words together.) Some stories I would’ve probably kept to myself. For whatever reason, it’s a hot topic.

Women's Locker Room Decorum
All names in this blog entry have been changed to protect the unclothed… and their inadvertent victims.My friend Jessica just called, jarring me out of my writer’s block, to tell me that she’d once again been optically assaulted in the gym locker room by Carlie Crenshaw’s naked breasts. I knew exactly what Jessica had experienced because it happened to me last week… and the week before. Carlie is one of those “overly proud of her body” age 40-something gym goers who would much rather spend an hour prancing around the locker room stark naked, than actually doing any kind of exercise. It’s as if she’s trying out for the part of a middle-aged Crystal on Girls

Ironies and Exercise
Ironic: I live in a house with two 18-step staircases that I avoid at all costs, only to spend thirty minutes on the Stairmaster at the gym four times a week. I wonder if Alanis Morissette would agree. At the Fairview Park Fitness Center, where dozens of workout machines are lined up like minutemen waiting to spring into action, I choose the Stairmaster. Like a veteran cowboy swaggering up to his trusted steed, I mount the machine, give her a greeting, and crank her up to level seven. It’s the highest I can go without my heart punching its way out of my chest cavity and bouncing across the floor. Yet it feels good to sweat. Feels even better to see the increasing numbers

Woodpeckers...the Original Head Bangers
I’m sitting here watching a woodpecker hard at work on a pine tree in the front yard. I can actually see him now because I cleaned the windows this morning. Before the Windex job, my windows were sort of like looking through a Jackson Pollack painting without my contacts in or watching HDTV channel 191…all static all the time. I have to admit, though, that high definition static is more impressive than regular static. Unless it’s the kind of static that causes balloons to stick to your hair without using mousse or rubber cement. Now THAT’S impressive…and amusing for hours on end.After taking two whole hours off my life with newspaper and a Windex bottle, I now understa