The View from a Drawbridge

Author: The View from a Drawbridge

  • The Shortest News Cycle in the History of the World

    On April 24th of this year a factory collapsed in Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing more than 1,000 people who were just desperately trying to make a living of about $1.50 a day. They worked obscenely long hours for this money in an overcrowded building with no air conditioning, outdated and dangerous equipment and unhealthy drinking water.…

  • Way too Freakin’ Perfect

    I have a friend who seems flawless. First of all, she’s absolutely gorgeous, and it’s the kind of beauty that will still be stunning in old age. She’s extremely intelligent, has a job that she loves that allows her to travel all over the world, owns a cool house, has an amazing family and a…

  • Signs and Portents

    One day a friend of mine was doing some gardening and a foot long mullet fell out of the sky with a thud, missing him by mere feet. Apparently the neighborhood osprey had butter fingers. You don’t expect fish to fall out of the sky. It sort of challenges your sense of reality. Coyotes have…

  • The Ultimate Interview

    I will never know what my mother’s favorite color was. I’ll never know where she was when Kennedy was assassinated, or during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I’ll never know if she ever considered being a model. She certainly had the looks for it. Did she know anyone affected by the 1944 big top fire that…

  • Pouringmyartout Banned from the Blogosphere?

    Have you ever had a friend or relative who is irrepressible, irreverent, shocking, out of control, and often does things that are, at best, ill conceived, but you can’t help but love him to pieces anyway? In the wild and whacky family that is WordPress, that person, for me, is Pouringmyartout. He makes me laugh.…

  • Hiccups in Time

    I have this nasty habit of imagining how my life is going to play out. Sometimes I project myself far into the future, and other times it’s just me anticipating how an evening is going to go. For example, if I have a job interview, on the way there I imagine what my life will…

  • My Father Figure

    On this, my 200th blog entry, which happens to fall on Father’s Day, I think it’s only appropriate that I write about someone whom I loved very, very much. His name was Ram Verma, and he was the closest thing to a father figure I ever had. I met him when I worked at the…

  • My Friend the Psychopath

    Recently I saw an interview with a psychologist. I wish I could remember her name so I could give her due credit, but after hearing what she had to say it was like someone had poured a bucket of ice water over me, so I hope I can be forgiven if her name escapes me.…

  • Awkward Information

    One time I had a 103 degree fever so I went to the doctor. On the way there I had stop at a very busy gas station to fill my tank. When I arrived at the doctor’s office I signed in at the front desk. Then I waited for an obscene amount of time in…

  • What’s Walmart up to Now?

    Okay, I’ve already established in an earlier blog entry that I’m no fan of Walmart, but I felt this new development deserved an entry, too. To further their quest for total world domination, Walmart has begun branching out. They call these new stores “Walmart Neighborhood Markets”. Basically they are grocery stores, pure and simple. One…