Well, dammed if I didn't have a big day ahead of me at Messieurs Kaiser. And just to be clear, I refer to the Western American healthcare provider, fully named Kaiser Permanente in honor of a German despot who promised to forever rule Mexico in the mid-nineteenth century. Either that, or it was named for Henry Kaiser, World War II shipbuilding magnate, who discovered that his workers needed healthcare and liked the name of Permanente Creek running by his cement plant in Cupertino, California. And, Read more [...]

"Baby, you can drive my car," the Beatles once observed, "if you want to be a star." And the profundity of these words has never been clearer. Yes, automotive stardom is mine. For after literally weeks of introverting and introspecting, dammed if I didn't bring internal reality out into the open. Yes, those of you with a direct line to that chip you implanted in my brain, it finally happened. I leapt behind the wheel of my Dodge this very morning, Sunday, and hurtled down Valencia Avenue, zigzagged Read more [...]

Gentle readers, it is with great relief that I announce the completion of chapter 3, revision 136, of my so-called book. This allows me to do something else, albeit briefly. It does not allow me to stop worrying. So at this point the focus of my mental self castigation has shifted from the literary to, you guessed it, the automotive. Yes, I have not been driving enough. And truth to tell, this is not good. Not only does one’s experience fade, but confidence plummets. Yes, the only solution is to Read more [...]

I went rushing through the neighborhood BART station, noting the unusual appearance of two customers sleeping just outside the elevators. My first thought: move them on. My second thought: did they know about the Gubbio Project? Now, let’s review. Why do I want the two recumbent forms removed from their sleeping bags and ‘moved on?’ Well, probably for the same reasons that have lodged elsewhere in the collective consciousness. It’s not tidy to have people sleeping in the local subway system. Read more [...]