From most recent issue (May 5-25, 2011):

"I have long abandoned the search of the "what" of existence.  In my memory, one day, I was alive.  I had been born into a civilization and culture that were here long before me.  I didn't have any say in the civilization or culture, as far as I know.  Someone else had named the spoon "spoon."  I might have called it something else if it had been up to me, but it wasn't.  Spoons were already here, and I just ate baby food from mine and never even thought to complain about what the instrument was called."

May 21-June 10, 2009

"As we rose, so did one of the palm fronds in the pew before us.  It rose, stuck, along with some fabric, in the derriere crack of one of the ladies.  And, as some power would have it, be it God or the Devil--it was stuck by its tip, so that the rest of it waved through the air,  much like a rat's tail . . . Now to the right, now to the left, now standing still in the middle, now vibrating, only slightly . . . . My daughter kept reaching forward and trying to snatch it out when it waved in her direction, but would just miss.  I pulled her hand down . . . . "I'm not going to let that woman go to Communion like that, Mom!"  "Well, I'm not either.  But I don't think you ought to just snatch it out like that!"

March 27-April 4, 2008

"When arriving for a court date in the nude, one certainly appears "odd" and highly likely in danger of damaging one's case.  It is equally true that on a nude beach one stands out as "odd" and somewhat "suspect" when fully clothed.  The very nature of the truth itself is odd:  The physicist Niels Bohr said, 'The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.'  The same is true in the non-scientific world.  Some say it is the company of like-minds that best feeds the soul; others say it is solitude in nature . . . . Mark Twain, a writer with a cynical eye for "truth," believed in the difficulty of reconstructing the past:  'The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.'"

October 2-22, 2008

"I think we should all take a break from our political ulcers and Wall Street ulcers and drown our stomachs in too many calories and everything bad for us at some Waffle House, U.S.A.

. . . One man who sat at the shiny counter--I was able to watch the side of his face . . . ate his food with the intensity of a serial killer, but I don't think he was really harmful . . . He just couldn't keep his right hand off his beeper that was clipped to his right pocket.  Paranoia of the times, I guess, and he looked like he felt he was all alone in the world.  I can understand that because, as busy as the Waffle House is, one can feel pretty anonymous there . . . No one chasing me down, yelling, "You don't write about the mayor in MY town!" . . .  I sank a little lower in my orange and yellow booth.  The aesthetics of the Waffle House make my mind go down a peaceful, endless river of melted Crisco, edged by marigolds . . . . As I sat there, sipping on my sweet tea and chowing down on that great big plate of waffle, big as a truck wheel to my stomach, I was happy.  Really happy . . . The sky outside was blue, and it contrasted nicely with the red clay embankment on the other side of the gas station.  And people were talking and waitresses yelling, and my waitress asked me if everything was okay.  I told her, way too enthusiastically, "Yes, M'am.  It's WONDERFUL!" 

I've eaten in Paris, in the Rue de Madeleine.  I've nearly fainted, just at the scent of bouillabaisse at Chez Voltaire.  But, for that moment, to hell with Paris! I thought (unbelievably).  To hell with the 2008 elections and the Tina-Fey-look-alike-endangered-species-killer-religious-fanaticism-censorship-what does-a-VP-do-all-day? crap!

Here's to The Waffle House!  That's good people, good eats, and good livin', too.  I suddenly felt like Uncle Bill on rye whiskey."