Don't park outside a bar; park about a block away, so later, if an officer sees you tumbling into your car, they won't know whether it's old age or what.

If you've got dogs, never move into a flat with rugs! Well, next time, anyway.

Every time a girl won't go out with you, salt away a twenty dollar bill in a jar in the boot of your car. You'll either get the girl, or become extremely rich.

Every time your flatmate annoys you, go out and accomplish some predetermined errand. You'll get a lot done! This is called the double-entry method of life.

A sweater is a poor man's thermostat. Politicians just move the hot air around.

Surprise a pickpocket! Carry a "decoy wallet" containing no more than two dollars, four pennies, and some dental floss.

Carry nylon thread, strong enough to use as an emergency dog leash.

It shines in your eyes, bright as a flashlight – Shine it on your chest and you'll see – When you buy a new iPad, reduce its brightness by two-thirds.

Grand Old Delusion bless America!

If ants overrun a box of sugar, take it all outside – The ants will leave and won't come back.

Even on a long trip pack for just a weekend and keep repeating it.

Sideboob the Poor Upskirt the Rich

Cut your toenails in the sunlight.

Wear glasses to keep chips out of your eyes.

Pee under a poncho! Forget the red umbrella; take a poncho! It's almost impossible to pee under a red umbrella.

If someone's ticklish, they trust you, or like you.

Women are complex & subtle, men simple & direct. –Miss Violet

Men keep everything in separate boxes; women have all their boxes wired together. –Lori Garrison, Canton, Georgia

A trunk by the door: You grab it in a fire: It has everything.

Drink way too much water. It floats your cold away.

The common cold is a symptom of dehydration – No one can make any money telling you this.

Lighten your load! When you travel, take clothes you want to get rid of! Wear 'em out & rip 'em off! You'll buy a few new things, anyway.

If you don't like doing a chore, say, doing the laundry, step back (inside yourself,) and do it from your spinal column. Set out to do the task deliberately and at half speed, as if you're a professional. Change it up. Consciously vary your pace. Promise yourself a reward, halfway through, such as going shopping for two new shirts (downtown, on the following day!) In this way, you will be rewarding yourself as (1.) an adult (postponing gratification), (2.) a child (giving yourself a present!), and (3.) a person (adding to your awareness of yourself as a capable & kind human being).

Cover a major secret you want to keep for yourself with a minor secret you can casually mention. Protect an expensive toy you want to keep for yourself with a similar but inexpensive toy you can casually lend.

Protect your shirt! Wear a "spaghetti sweater."

Like two Easter Bunnies, time hops an hour ahead the 2nd Sunday of March, at 2 am, illuminating USA's Daylight Savings Time; the shadow of a ghost makes time stand still, for exactly one hour, the first Sunday after Halloween, at 2 am.

Then Easter arrives the 1st Sunday following the 1st ecclesiastical full moon on or after the vernal equinox (Set at March 21st), and can never occur before March 22 or later than April 25. (The ecclesiastical full moon is set at the 14th day of a tabular lunation (new moon)). That's why they needed the elders. How primitive is that?

The tube of abdominal muscles surrounding your ribcage supports your entire back. Your back does not support itself at all. If you've got lower back pain, gently do ten sit-ups off the edge of your bed once a day for a week, to strengthen the front of the castle you call home.

Street smarts in a tough neighborhood: Cut your new license plate sticker to ribbons, after you put it on your car, so no one can steal it whole. -David Juda

You always learn something when something bad happens. -David Juda

When you're dying, if you give things away, you feel real good. –David Daniels

Get through life one mistake at a time. -Mike Kelleher

Before a smog test, drive your car around – maybe thirty minutes on the freeway – to get the engine good and hot.

The common cold virus lives and breeds in a narrow temperature band, which is why they don't jump from dogs, whose normal body temperature is 100 to 103° F (most often 101.5° F), to people, whose normal body temperature is 97.6 to 98.8° F (most often 98.2° F), and vice versa. With this in mind, Nature has a clever way of destroying viruses, by temporarily elevating your temperature to that of a dog, which feels like a fever to you, though the kiss of death to a virus! You can artificially raise your temperature, when you have a cold, by taking long hot showers, and drinking plenty of water to help "steam up" the virus. Afterwards, curl up under hot blankets and hibernate! When your throat tickles, get up, urinate, and drink more water.

When you're beyond 22, 44, 66, and 88 years old, @ 2 children per couple, a grand total of ( 16 great great grandchildren plus their 16 parents, their 8 parents in your family, their 4 parents in your family, and your spouse = ) 45 people who will call you GRRREEAT! It took half an hour to figure that out. Many great things take half an hour.

Dogs observe where you're looking.

Your popularity goes up about 30% simply by thinking about baseball.

Underneath conscious thoughts & feelings, a deeper mind integrates & digests large amounts of information & offers simple solutions. Listen for it. Sleep on it.

Hotel maids live on pirate ships and use five dollar tips you leave them on your pillow, along with a note written in Italian – "Grazie!" – for no good!

Deposit sketchy checks in a savings account first, to keep from getting burned.

Don't make a such fuss about soiled sheets! Let bed wetters sleep in hammocks on a beach. –Mark Zielinski

Would you ever steal a filthy car? Crooks don't like greasy window sills or dirty cars.

Special instructions for ground delivery people allow them to leave a package behind without you having to stay home. Write something like this on a 4x6-inch index card, and tape it to your front door: "Ground delivery: Please leave package for Richard Hart in lawnmower shed underneath the stairs <=====to the left====== Here is my signature: Richard Hart."

Before you wander all over the city on some mission, try the Yellow Pages.

Shrink-wrapped books or magazines don't let you discover manufacturing defects or remind you you already bought a copy. A book or magazine is supposed to provide nourishment of some kind, which ain't on its cover.

Would you rather play with a dog, or send it an Email? Would you rather feed it a piece of bacon, or write it a motivational memo saying, "Be a dog!" When you communicate, your smell & physical warmth provide far greater bandwidth than a conversation, telephone call, or Email. Why send someone an Email when you can stand beside them?

The more you act dumb, the more your intelligence shines. If someone acts a little too friendly, they're probably going to rob you.

Bill collectors get paid a lot of money to really hurt people. They've got health insurance and everything. What was their basis for lending you money? Why don't they put it in writing?

Someone who hacks your answering machine, turns it on & leaves a message is like a schoolyard bully demanding your lunch. If you say, "No, you can't have it," they'll leave you alone. Unplug your answering machine.

The Zen technique for finding a parking place: Stop at the top of a block and wait for someone to leave, which usually takes less than five minutes. Listen to music & watch for the parking detail in your rearview mirror.

In the city, don't look for an empty parking place. Look for someone walking by pulling their keys out. -Mike Kelleher

Aggressive parallel parking, in three steps: First, pull close behind someone who's leaving. Second, scoop into the spot & wait there until everyone goes around. Third, when they all leave, pull forward, and back in.

The parking detail ... Always put nickel slugs into meters, because it fills up their pockets quicker, and double your estimated time. For instance, if you need ten minutes, pay for twenty. It's self-insurance.

(1.) Putting your parking garage ticket in your breast pocket, because you're sitting at the wheel of a car, and later, taking off your shirt because it's hot, and draping it over your arm may be The Natural Thing To Do . . . until the ticket falls out, and you have to replace it by paying for twenty-four hours of parking. (2.) Parking where there's no parking meter, totally missing the "Parking: One Hour" regulation hidden halfway down the block behind shrubbery, may be The Natural Thing To Do . . . until you return and find a thirty-five dollar ticket on your windshield. (3.) Drinking two cups of coffee, then going for a ride on a Ferris Wheel may be The Natural Thing To Do . . . until you get stuck at the top!

(4.) Running a red light, driving a little too fast, and dashing across the street without really looking may be The Natural Thing To Do when you're running a few minutes late – to your third grade class. Too bad your teacher never told you, "That's okay – Don't do it again . . . My mind, my chauffeur! . . . Don't ever let anyone tell you you're bad!"

"You're late!" —Better than playing with yourself in public.

Here's your chance! You can say these things now, because you're an adult.

Long engagements suck.

Moments before taking a pill, take a small sip of water to open your throat.

If you're choking, signal to other people by grasping your throat and acting crazy. If you're alone, collapse your diaphragm (just above the belly button) on the back of a chair, or on the edge of the sink countertop, or sturdy table, or on the edge of the bathtub, to blow the obstacle in your windpipes across the room ... Thrust yourself down, or fall down on your upper abdomen, until you dislodge the obstacle ... Practice it right now on a pillow on the back of a chair, to get the idea ... That way, if you're ever choking, you won't panic, because you've rehearsed ... Here's a good first-aid website.

Think of double-ups! Take a train ride to a remote city for breakfast! Stomp on dirty clothes while you're in the shower. Trim your fingernails while waiting in a long line. Pay your bills while you're at work. Shop for groceries while you're carpooling. Get your car serviced while you're away on a trip.

The wealthiest people don't own anything – Rent a mansion, rent skis & boots, rent a yacht, rent a Harley Davidson! If you do Rent a Harley from Eagle Rider, FedEx your suitcases ahead!

If you can't shift from Park to Drive in a rental truck or van, hold down the brake pedal. If you forget, a nearby police officer can sometimes solve this dilemma. –David Juda

Clockwise one to five, right — tight! Counterclockwise eleven to seven, left — loose!

To change a flat tire in style, use plastic grocery bags as gloves, cover the spare with a tucked-in newspaper, and sit on it.

After you've (1.) parked on a level surface, (2.) put the car in Park, or in gear, (3.) set the emergency brake, (4.) removed every lug of a flat tire, and (5.) jacked up the car, the tire can still be frozen to the wheel by rust. Replace a few lugs, loosely, to hold the tire on, lower the car, remove the jack, then carefully drive the car a few feet to break the tire loose. Some people just kick the tire.

If you have to change a tire in the rain, take off as many clothes as you can, so you'll have something dry to get back into.

Stop eating when you're 80% full, because your stomach takes 5 or 10 minutes to tell you, that's when you're really full.

Wear glasses for safety in a shop, because wood chips can get in your eyes.

Wear gloves for protection, because thorns & splinters can cut your fingers.

Wear shoes as armor, because bottles & boxes can drop on your feet.

Dress nicely when you travel, or at the office, even on "casual workdays," to distinguish yourself from the crowd, so as not to limit opportunities & remedies, or in case there's an emergency meeting with a client.

Don't jump start a stranger's car; too many things can go wrong. They may not have too much compassion for you! If they're poor, let them use their cell phone to call a friend; if they're rich, let them call a tow service. Tell them, "It's against company policy to jump start cars," and notice if they want to get you fired!

If you're jump starting a friend's car, think of the little "+" sign as the cross of the Red Cross: connect the cables in a circle. (1.) First, apply the "+" to the dead battery, because it "needs the most help, and fast!" (2.) Then apply the other end of the "+" cable to the live battery. (3.) Now that you're working with the living, apply the second cable to the "–" on the live battery and (4.) finally apply the other end of the "–" cable to the dead chassis, or to the "–" terminal on the dead battery. Rev up the engine on the live car, then try to start up the dead car, and stop right away if it doesn't start. Disconnect the cables in reverse order.

For a five dollar tip, you can check your bags at a topnotch hotel even if you're not going to stay there. Things change & why lug all that stuff around?

Certain bookstores will let you – even want to! – check your bags for free.

A worker in a tree can tell you what kind it is.

Do what you do; not what you ought to do; doing nothing is even better. Be what you are; not what you ought to be; being nothing is even closer. Do • Be • Do • Be & Beyond!

Your feelings are experts at time travel, taking you into the past. In severe cases, drawing you into a repetition compulsion, trying to solve problems way in your past. There's a new possibility, rooted in the moment. Why can't you teach your feelings how to travel into the future? To a time you're doing all right? To a time you can begin preparing for now. Pretty much for yourself. You can begin by telling them not to feel so bad, because they've never heard you telling them that. You say, Don't feel bad. They say, I am ashamed. You say, Don't feel bad.

Peace pipe on back of new nickel good; makes me want to light up. Axe good, too; "Here's Johnny!"

Keep cigarettes in the freezer, in Room 237.

In Hawaii, you may be disappointed it's raining, but you can still go swimming! You may think it's cloudy, but you can still get really sunburned!

Less popular airlines have quicker security lines. Buy a ticket from one, and go through the line of the other. It's called swerving.

Women travelers: Wear flip-flops or sandals through airport security ... and because it takes a while to fish through a large handbag, wear something with a pocket for identification and small-denomination bills for flight attendants, bus drivers & taxi drivers.

Earthquakes usually last less than a minute, overturn bookcases, knock pictures off walls, break windows, sever gas & water pipes, bring down electric wires, cause fires, and shut down gas stations & ATM machines. You need a flashlight, tennis shoes to avoid broken glass, bottled water for the dogs, a full tank of gas, and cash. Don't sleep under a bookcase ... and don't light candles!

Tsunamis travel very fast across the open sea, maybe five hundred miles an hour, with hardly a ripple. However, as the land rises, dramatically slowing down the waveform, and the beach gets shallower, all that energy has to go somewhere! It goes straight up, sometimes sixty feet into the air, sucking up water from both sides. A tsunami could happen in the middle of the night. If you feel an earthquake, or hear an ocean's roar, get inside a boat, car, or bathtub. If it's daytime, go up a tree, or somewhere sturdy and high, like Swiss Family Robinson. After the wave goes by, it's not the water that gets you. It's the debris. The same is true of tornados. You generally won't get any warning, because the people who know it's coming don't know the telephone number of the BBC.

Watch out for open manholes in a flood!

Tornadoes, preceded by rain or hail, with the deep roar of a 320-mph vortex of rising hot air, usually travel 25 to 40 mph, first from the southwest, then from the west, March - August, 3 to 7 PM. They can skip from one place to another at 70 mph. Automobile-sized missiles can fly through the air 100 yards or more. Use your arms to protect your face and neck! See Chase Safety by Charles A. Doswell III.

Lightning goes for the tallest object around, like a tall tree. Staying in your car or getting low in the middle of a dry field is a good idea, but don't spread out prone; kneel, squat, or sit. If lightning strikes close enough, you feel induced electricity in your body, which isn't pleasant. You're lucky to be alive.

Turn on lights going through a tunnel in case there's a power failure.

Consciously look for the color yellow, driving from bright sunshine into a tunnel, to help your eyes adjust to the dark.

Apartment fires consume all the oxygen, replacing it with poisonous fumes from burning wallpaper, curtains & furniture. It's not the heat that kills you as you race around trying to plug door cracks with wet towels. Suddenly there's nothing to breathe.

Worry travels at the speed of light. –David Daniels

The oldest & wisest part of you is sexual energy. Rechanneled a certain way by a subtle influence on negative emotions, along with revisiting certain childhood experiences, using reason & sensation to find something buried in your childhood that speaks in symbols, by making a mistake, reaching back in the dark to find your pillow, sublimated & transmuted sexual energy illuminates neuronal transformation leading to mystical enlightenment.

If you can't sleep, it's just that you're dreaming you're awake & the reason I can say that now, is that I'm dreaming I'm not stupid. –Donna Morales

The cure for election malaise is renewed political activism. Be in solidarity with the poor, & you can't stop love!

What you need most in an emergency is pen & paper. Store images of irreplaceable documents, photos, and your last will & instructions on a website. Keep valuable goodies in a steamer trunk you can drag outside in a fire, along with leashes for the dogs. Using a poncho as a cover, you can piss in a bottle.

Which is it? An upside down rainbow flag means "gay America in distress!"

Don't touch your waitress! –Sarah B. Gibson
I don't think tapping should be allowed. Tapping should be reserved for Morse code and dance. –Jennifer Burke

Cats like life! When the cat's mother died, no one went to its funeral.

When something's temporarily lost, take careful note of the first place you look for it. When you find it, move it there.

Put stuff you want to keep or throw away into a huge salad bowl first, and when you get around to it, move things into a single spot which contains everything of that nature.

Adhesive tape won't get stuck to itself, if you tape a penny on the end.

On the telephone, you don't need to reach someone directly; you can use answering machines for specific suggestions and germane responses without ever reaching them or playing "telephone tag." For instance, "Hi, this is Richard, would you like to get together this Saturday for dinner? If so, I'll come by about seven, and you can choose the place." "Hi. I'm busy Saturday night, how about tomorrow? Can you come by a little earlier, maybe six or six-thirty?" "Hi! See you tomorrow at six, maybe a few minutes late ... depends on traffic ... See you! ... I'm bringing my camera, so ... See you!"

Let's take a little trip. Leave from: It Wasn't Meant to Be. Stopover: Who Needs You? Ultimate Destination: I Don't Even Care Anymore. Looking Back: I'd Hate to Be the Flower He'd Sip From.

If someone steals something from you, it wasn't really yours – No one can steal what's really yours – The first thing they steal is your attention.

When you hate, you can't learn. –David Daniels

Include people around you in your cell phone calls ... to escape from the cage.

If you're out on bail & stay out of trouble, inertia will tend to keep you out of jail; however, if you're on the inside when you go to trial, pre-judgments will probably keep you there.

If you get married a second time, the clerk insists on seeing divorce papers from the earlier experiment.

In a rental unit you can hang pictures with pins when you move in, and fill pinholes with toothpaste when you move out.

Attach a plastic bag to the end of a line, and use an industrial strength vacuum cleaner to help pull the line through a conduit, while you push.

If you see something to do within ten feet of you, just do it! Don't go overboard.

I've been postponing telling you this, because I wanted to see if it was true, but a little dental floss wrapped around a too-short screw, will help hold it in place in a cracked door jamb, until you can buy longer screws. A few wood splinters, or pieces of dowel rod, shoved into the screw holes, work even better.

Eventually, the fat screw holes and cracked door jamb will need to be stuffed with broken wooden match sticks, wood glue, all held together with a flat metal "mending brace" from the hardware store, though that's another story.

Find a nice place to rent (before it goes on the market) by driving around looking for apartments without curtains. (They're being painted.) In a listing, get a rough idea of an apartment's suitability by its zip code.

If a dog doesn't share your common sense of house breaking, keep it in a small pen, and never let it wander around on its own looking for a secret spot.

The best strategy for housebreaking dogs is vigilance and prevention by cordoning off areas, especially when you're not around, as opposed to inattention and punishment, an expression of anger not so good for your mental health. Get angry when you stub your toe on the sidewalk! Hate the sidewalk, while it boils in molten, seething lava. What did a dog ever do, beside lead you into the Heart of Darkness?

"I never had any trouble housebreaking a dog ... get a cat .. the dogs chase it outside." –David Daniels

When you're bar hopping, don't get fancy ... just order Maker's Mark on the rocks ... to protect yourself from bartenders who have no idea what they're doing, and to achieve a certain modicum of consistency.

A raisin from a box of Raisin Bran is the best thing to put in a mouse trap, against the wall, behind the refrigerator.

Before slapping down a moth, slightly crouch, or bend your knees.

Mexican Restaurants rarely tell you you can request black beans and corn tortillas. Otherwise, they'll try to save a few pennies by serving you pinto beans and flour tortillas.

Eye drops mixed with salt from your face will sting your eyes, so wash your face with soap and water before you put an eye dropper up there.

When a shark attacks, poke it in the eye.

For poison ivy, mix up baking soda and white vinegar ... Slap it on!

When your stuff asks, "Why do you own me?" ... because it knows it can't help you make money, or you can replace it in a day, throw it away. Let stores "store all your stuff."

When you buy a house, you really own a loan – The government really owns everything – That's why they call it "Real Estate: Royal Property." Don't sell to the highest bidder – They'll just bug you endlessly over little defects.

When people give you stuff they like, put it in a manilla envelope to file under their name. When a child sells you a lottery ticket, put the ticket in the child's name.

Plan as if you're going to live forever; live as if you're going to die tomorrow.

Don't go into debt; you're better off owning income, not debt. –David Daniels

Memory pulls emotions into the past, though making mistakes in the process of learning & the Imagination of Nature drive us into the future.

Why punish anyone with hatred? It's a waste of energy. People are punishing themselves.

Time, combined with understanding, heals all wounds.

Adversity reveals character; knowledge nurtures character; experience guides character; understanding builds character; humor frees character.

Social emotions like guilt, shame, pride, embarrassment, disgust and lust are based on a uniquely human mirror neuron system found in a part of the brain called the insula ... Humiliation appears to be mapped in the brain by the same mechanisms that encode real physical pain. (–Sandra Blakeslee, "Cells That Read Minds," The New York Times, 2006-1-10)

Social emotions are for kids! There's hope, there's trust, there's compassion, there's companionship, there's encouragement, there's support, there's solace, there's love.

Racism, or contemplations of killing entire races of people, is based on beatings as a child, the resultant self-loathing and efforts to be special, right, important, perfect & good – What a person is is deeper than all that.

Ugliness does not actually exist in the outside physical world. It's really deep tension in one person, and hatred in another. –taxi1010.com

The Intellect absorbs impressions, period. It is silent. The emotions, such as fear, anger, hatred & sorrow, are responding to danger. The instincts are what beat your heart.

(1.) Men navigate by dead reckoning, without noticing much; women navigate by landmarks. (2.) Men listen to solve problems; women listen to validate emotions and share experiences. (3.) Men oxidize alcohol more rapidly than women, who become more quickly intoxicated. (4.) As the temperature rises, men begin to perspire before women, who get hotter, shedding clothes. (5.) Men bury pain with sexual energy and aggression; women bury pain with rules, rationalization and emotional cover-ups. (6.) Men are like goldfish: they just die. Women use fish logic: it swims.

"What do you call it when you sense your knee, and look at another person's knee?" ("Sex." "No! Art.") –David Daniels

Better than turning a sweatshirt or T-shirt with a nice logo inside out on laundry day, is turning it inside out the moment before you throw it into the laundry hamper.

Crushes on people & an intense desire to see them naked, come because God strikes you with toads & lightning bolts . . . which releases pheromones.

One kind of person uses (1.) dead reckoning, (2.) night vision, or (3.) the fingers of their left hand (4.) to find a keyhole in the dark. Another kind of person (5.) leaves the porch lights on.

WHO NEEDS DIRECTIONS? Women party, Men explore! –SuccinctNews.com

Best alarm clock: (1.) Go to bed really early two nights in a row; (2.) Drink lots of water before you go to bed; (3.) Every time you get up to take a leak, drink more water.

Just before you go to sleep pump both arms in the air ten times ... In the morning do the same thing ... makes it easier to stop dreaming & wake up.

If you go to sleep in pain, you wake up in pain, so don't do that ... Don't be hard on yourself.

Don't blame me ... blame my mother ... If I'd been born about half an hour earlier, I'd never be late.

Throw all your daily receipts, or anything you might want to retrieve someday, into a large ceramic umbrella stand. Each year dump the contents into a trash bag, to save another few years.

Keep some things for sentimental reasons as proof someone once liked you – even if, or especially if, they were weird.

The crime rate is inversely proportional to the distribution of cell phones and cameras: "Smile! You're on 911."

This is the Era of the Common Man. Priests, jailers, CEOs, editors, teachers ... Watch out! ... About me.

The only thing I'm ambivalent about is lists: (1.) motor oil: 20W-50 turbo; (2.) my passport expires 21 May 2016, except for actual travel, six months earlier; (3.) blood type: A positive.

When you register to vote, you get on the list for jury duty, and when you serve on a jury, they don't pay your expenses & often give your name and address to perps! It's all an accident, of course. An apparatchik would never do that to you ... Wait! We never elected those guys!

Don't wear a Mickey Mouse wristwatch when you're called in for jury duty. It's very symbolic. And don't wear too much cologne. What else? If you're comfortable with testimony that's been "paid for," then by all means, go!

If everyone realizes they're bad, everyone knows they're wrong, everyone sees they're insignificant, and everyone believes they're as common as dirt and grass, you can negotiate anything. This is why overwrought religious people ... stubborn, angry, critical ... have so much trouble in this fleeting moment.

Christians think they're Jesus; Jews think they're God's Chosen Ones; Hindus think they're Perfect; Muslims think they have Secret Knowledge; Japanese think they're the Emperor; Communists think they're the Postmaster General; Tibetan Monks think they're Slave Masters; and what they all have in common is delusions of grandeur.

Rule of law is ritualized aggression. Everyday practice of law involves negotiating settlements. Foundations of peace are laid by a rational process of mutually-agreed-upon, almost insignificant steps, demonstrating ongoing hope, faith and trust.

Office politics has something to do with power sharing, and it's done with praise, shame, dirty tricks, and withholding information.

You're going about it the wrong way. You're not supposed to go up the ladder. You're supposed to go down the ladder. –David Daniels

People have been around more than seven hundred thousand years. Imagine having a conversation with some of your ancestors.

Then there's you. You fall asleep and dream at night. What's that all about?

If you're not married and don't have kids, you're a successful flower on the family tree. You don't have to "try again" to get it right.

Pain is a marker, an electrical signal. Try to go into it and fix things up. Heal it. If it's emotional pain, realize it's always been there, inside you. Talk to it. Be its friend.

If you use an absentee ballot, you won't have to wait in long lines to vote, though you'll miss out on cute neighbors.

Bug bomb yellow jackets at evening, night or dawn – when they're sluggish ... not at high noon – when they're full of zip.

If your tangible wealth is below a certain threshold, you should always vote Democratic; above that threshold, Republican; otherwise, you're not in reality.

If you are among the privileged, always ask, –How? –Who? –When? & –How little does it cost?

If you are still struggling, pulverize –If only, –But ..., –What? –Where? –Why? & –How much does it cost?

The population of the United States is roughly 293 million people, and roughly 60.5 million voted for Bush. This means 21% of the people in the USA elected the President.

What if you could open your eyes in a dream and actually see? It might be like two different radio frequencies somehow synchronizing.

If you tow a boat on a trailer, or rent a truck, the rules change. You can get a ticket if you don't stay in the right two lanes.

Know the law, stay in the present, and stay away from policemen.

No promise or confidence holds beyond a certain framework. Santa Claus saying one thing, the Easter Bunny, something entirely different; married in church, divorced in court; hired by Democrats, fired by Republicans; "We're just one big happy family," coming in, "We're sorry – company bankruptcy," going out; mutual assurances from sales, reinterpretations from management; anonymity on grand juries, "the public's need to know" in Congressional hearings; safe at home, tortured on the high seas.

Businesses are like societies of people who band together to get salaries for doing nothing. It's no more stupid than selling oranges. –David Daniels

Women you want to kiss and cuddle most, or see naked, are like squirrels, and a squirrel is just a fancy kind of rat. Step back far enough & see them, every day, wearing rat's clothes.

The first day Is the devil! (1.) On the day of your wedding, a family friend throws rice in your eyes, because you weren't expecting a friend to hurt you; (2.) On the first day of your honeymoon, you run out of gas, because you weren't used to traveling so far in one day, or looking at the gas gauge twice in one day, with something twice as nice to pay attention to; (3.) On your first day in Hawaii, you, and the devil, get an Hawaiian sunburn; (4.) On your first day on crutches, you get chafing sores in your armpits and terrible blisters on your hands, because you didn't know your pain meds would conceal these other sensations until it was too late! (5.) You wonder why nobody warned you, as you release an emergency software patch for your company's main product, and the answer is,
The first day Is the devil!

Be careful what you wish for! It's hard to get into much further trouble if you just take a nap.

Singapore, most Asian countries, and probably all other insane countries, won't let you travel there if you have less than six months left on your passport.

In California, if they've both expired, you can't get DMV registration without car insurance, and vice versa. To solve this thorny Catch-22, (if and only if you don't need a SMOG certificate, which is a whole other story,) you have to run back and forth from both offices ... real quick! ... starting at the insurance company, where they coach you, for a grand total of 5 visits.

Catch-22s are inversely proportional to Identity Theft. That is, the more Catch-22s you have in your life, the less chance someone has of stealing your identity. Out-of-state foreign dead people have no Catch-22s.

It's the one prescription doctors give themselves: "Take Antibiotic X-pack as directed" when you travel.

"Preparation is everything: When you sense yourself, you bring the inner stars closer to your eyes." –David Daniels "That's most of the daytime job: setting things up for the night." –Christa Manalo

Rent a car to reduce wear & tear on your own car when you go on a trip.

Sling a duffle bag with a (1.) First Aid Kit (2.) wire coat hanger, (3.) pair of scissors, (4.) needle nose pliers, (5.) hunting knife, and (6.) screwdriver in the trunk of your rental car. (7.) A flashlight, (8.) flare & (9.) gloves. Maybe a few (10.) rags, (11.) paper towels, and (12.) a garbage bag. (13.) Extra quarters for the parking meter, (14.) an oil funnel, (15.) a sweater, and (16.) an umbrella.

Women change their name when they get married so even if their past catches up to them, they get protection from another family. "Hey, Heathcliff! Who's your daddy?"

Feet & genitals are mapped side-by-side inside the brain, which helps explain the exotic ... close to dreamlike ... appeal of shoes.

Don't lose your pocketbook; don't lose your baby!

Place a newborn infant on its mother's belly, against her bare skin, to keep it warm; you might have to lift her shirt a little; don't separate it from the umbilical cord or placenta, which is about one-fourth the size of the baby ... wrap it all up together, against the mother's skin; listen for the baby's cry, which starts up its circulation; if it doesn't cry, rub the baby just a little bit, and in rare circumstances, swirl your finger around in its mouth, to get it to cry; on the way out, make sure there are no obstructions; don't let it get caught in its mother's underwear. If the cord is around the baby's neck, slip it over its head so it's not being choked.

1. A Woman in Labor. Richard, I wouldn't give a woman anything to eat or drink if you thought she was about to deliver. If she asks for water, just give her a little, or tell her to just take a little. If she needs surgery for any reason, you don't want to give her anything to eat or drink.

2. The biggest thing you can do is remind her to relax ... relax her mouth and jaw. If you have pulled over to help deliver, make her look into your eyes (by holding a part of her body, wrist ... or touch her knee & ask her to "look at me") & breathe noticeably in and out ~ big breaths.

3. If she's pushing and screaming, say, "Okay now, I want you not to scream for the next contraction – Put all that energy into pushing."

4. There's two big pushes involved, one for the head, then a break, then one for the shoulders (if it's head first.) Mostly sound calm, and assure her everything will be alright. If she is delivering fast enough to do it in the cab, it won't last long anyway. But if she is just in labor, just sound happy for her to almost be through with it. If she seems very agitated, or starts burping a lot, you might only have about 30 minutes or less left until she starts pushing. –Amoret Phillips

If you leave something behind, it means you want to come back. –Donna Morales

If you notice when a pretty girl is "merrily" laughing, and run energy up the left side of your spine, she will fall in love with you. The left side is Cupid's gold arrow, or "sweet" straw. If you notice when someone is "contemptuously" laughing or talking, and run energy up the center, or right side of your spine, they will feel their own bitterness and generally leave you alone. The center, or right side of your spine is Cupid's silver arrow, or "bitter" straw. Both effects work through walls, though it's best to see someone so you can gauge their emotion directly, and apply either side when they are talking or laughing.

If you're heartbroken and you eat chocolate, then your body will say, "Oh, I'm in love!" –Sarah B. Gibson

Vitamin D, which bones need to absorb calcium and phosphorus, is made in the skin in response to sun exposure. –Gina Kolata

After you peel and prepare a pound of raw shrimp, your hands smell like raw shrimp for a day, no matter how much you wash them. Unless! Some lemon juice doesn't totally remove the smell, but adds a little freshness to it.

If you put Neosporin on a pimple, each night before you go to bed, it heals very quickly.

For all the young girls who have eating disorders ... bulimia, anorexia ... you have to consider most of the clothes designers are gay males, whose idea of beauty is a teenage boy, straight up and down. –Karen Zephyr

High heels throw your pelvis forward in a provocative stance. Sandals prevent you from stubbing your toe. Loafers relax you at a desk. Polished shoes appeal to women. Tassels mean you're nouveau riche. Cleats give you traction on a golf course. Topsiders prevent you from slipping on the deck of a boat. Lace-up shoes protect your feet from heavy objects, and make it easier for you to run away. Cowboy boots keep you from getting caught in a stirrup & protect you from snake bites. Lace-up boots support your ankles, and keep your feet out of the weather. Canadian Army Surplus boots keep your feet really warm.

In buses, subways and grocery store checkout lines, always stand beside the prettiest girl you can, so you get a chance to admire them as a person or see how sick they really are ... This is because their parents planted a microchip in the back of their head ... Actually, you're better off waiting for the best part of you to bubble to the surface and letting them get in line behind you.

You're going to want to try, because you're a natural born nurturer, but you can't love a man out of his sickness. –Karen Zephyr

Tune up your bullshit detector ... When I was young, I couldn't tell the difference between decent people and rats ... Lying ... what a waste of time.

If you try to please a rat, or even a saint, you only find unhappiness. You find happiness by paying attention, moment by moment, person by person, neuron by neuron.

Give ants & insects a clear path to the mice & rats who die behind your walls. One good vermin deserves another.

Pushing flies out the window is easier than catching them. –Mark Zielinski

Tomato juice ("Make sure the tomato juice gets to the skin") masks skunk odor on a dog, because by the time you've washed the tomato juice off, you've gotten used to the skunk odor! – But veterinarians say, "A fresh mixture (Don't store it because it can explode!) made from a quart of 3% hydrogen peroxide,1/4 cup baking soda, and a teaspoon of liquid soap, rinsed off in five minutes," chemically neutralizes skunk odor, though it bleaches a black dog's hair brown!

Having a child is no more rewarding or special than having a mother or father. They're just another relative, like a brother or sister, except a little younger & a lot more expensive. If you really think babies are all that cute, get a job in day care!

Old people dream about dying the way young people dream about sex, the way children dream about a snow holiday, the way middle-aged people dream about a really good ham & cheese sandwich. Death is the black sandwich between sex and a snow holiday.

There are Navajo Indians who don't speak English. Well over 700 different Native American Indian languages are spoken today.

Only an old person would know this: When people fall in the shower, it's not from slipping ... it's from fainting.

Rock & Roll has its deepest roots in the blues. Listen to Led Zeppelin and you'll hear it. Liberation & Revolution!

The first thing someone wants in a hospital is a clipboard, paper, and a pen, so they can make a living will so they won't get tubes jammed down their throat.

Powerful pain medicines cancel other sensations, such as the onset of bed sores, which start out as mild chafing, and which undetected, can quickly lead to severe injury of deep muscle tissue. Ouch! Watch out for all kinds of chafing when you're on pain meds! Just remember, it's not something you'll be able to feel, because the medicine is covering up both the expected pain and the unexpected pain!

Bucket Pampers: Put a few paper towels in a plastic bag in a commode or bed pan – Use it, throw it away.

Alcohol abuse chips away at intelligence, especially in women. I saw it in my mother.

Things you can do with a paper clip: (1.) Throw it away.

Mysticism is the background artist. Preparation is everything; patience is the key to joy; time is for the beginner; breath is for the finisher; the worker is hidden in the workplace, spinning a golden cocoon; right time, right place, right person; to change is to bear the unbearable; it is what you cannot imagine.

Try to quiet your thoughts, memories and sensations, and just be alive. You have the right to just be.

Underneath all emotional pain is pleasure. Sensations of pain are simply over-excitations of pleasure. When you follow emotional suffering to its source, by noticing its sensation, then turning around, and going into it, ask the sensation, What are you trying to tell me? Turn everything upside down and you will see the truth.

Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity unites the weak force of radioactive decay, the strong force holding together protons, and electromagnetism, whose forces were first formulated by Maxwell. Einstein's theory says that physical experiments conducted on space stations drifting by each other, without accelerating, will yield the same results on each space station. However, if they each spy on the results of the space station drifting by, the only way you can compensate for perceived diagonal "drift" of straight up and down motion, is to literally take away from relative time. Thus, something traveling by, in the swift current, is doing things more slowly than you are, because they're adding the motion of the current to whatever they're doing, as well.

Everything is moving at the speed of light through space-time, that is, through the product of the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time, and most of this motion, at the speed of light, occurs through time. The more you move through space, the less you move through time. A photon of light has no motion through time at all!

An object's mass is its resistance to motion, and as a space station shoots by, at close to the speed of light, as the motion of all its moving parts through time slows down, the mass (resistance to motion) of all its moving parts goes up in perfect correspondence.

Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity unites the forces of Special Relativity with the force of gravity, by saying that gravity is not an instantaneous force, rather, it travels at the speed of light (C) and is indistinguishable from the forces of acceleration. To accomplish this merger of acceleration and gravity, you have to realize, the faster something moves, or accelerates into another spatial dimension, the more energy it has, and the more massive it becomes in the squared dimension (E = m x C x C). This massiveness actually warps the fabric of space-time.

The same way you get warped, or bent out of shape, by acceleration, the force of gravity warps, or bends out of shape, the fabric of space-time. The agent of gravity, according to physicist Brian Greene, is the fabric of the cosmos.

The intensity of gravity near a black hole slows time the same way acceleration makes clocks run slower ... The deeper in a gravitational field a clock sits, the slower it runs & measures time.

If you wear the same clothes day after day, you don't have to do the laundry that often.

When you're looking for a partner, look for a good match, not a prize.
-may-li khoe

If a monkey reaches into a bottle to grasp a cherry, it can't get its clenched fist out. A girlfriend or a boyfriend is like that – They can make you lose sight of your freedom. When your love is rushing by onto another person, put some of that love on yourself ... not the cherry. Let go, let go, let go!

For something sentimental that's weighing you down, take a picture & let it go ... It could be a feeling, too. -Sid Scully

"How do you know when it's the real thing? Everything is easy." -Richard
"Everything is eas-i-er." -Sidney

When things get very, very small, no longer than a Planck length: a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter, (10 ^ -33 cm.) they get unimaginably energetic, and can only be described probabilistically. Things pop in and out of existence, they don't like to be "bottled up" or confined, and obey unknown laws relating to six more "curled up" dimensions within each vibrating tin plate, or ten-dimensional "string" in the quantum foam. This ultramicroscopic frenzy prevents the union of "smooth" Relativity over large distances, with "probabilistic" Quantum Mechanics over short distances, though String Theory curls the waves of a grand unification.

Real intelligence has to do with inner playfulness and light. For most people it's dreadful – They're trying to be better than other people, and certainly not worse – They live in a box, and don't know what they're doing – They don't know truth is something beyond states, something that can happen to them.

Releasing the powerful tensions holding down negative emotions isn't easy; it's a cyclical process, over days, over years: Dream, sensation, memory, tension. You can't find it; it finds you; faith is really paying attention; hold a question now and someday you will realize you have lived into the answer. When you rediscover forgotten childhood memories, their associated tensions are released, emitting an enormous amount of energy, which is called enlightenment.

Children spend a year learning one-word sentences, and spend another year learning two-word sentences, motivated by the most beautiful teacher in the world: their mother. In the third and fourth years, children suddenly know how to combine phrases and clauses in sentences of unlimited variety. Learn foreign languages the same way ... motivated by a beautiful woman. Otherwise, hollow begets hollow: If you're pummeled by a fearsome teacher, all you learn is hatred & fear.

A college degree is little more than a corporate ticket, with a shelf life of no more than three years. Ask Tiger Woods what they're worth; or Jim Carrey; or Bill Gates.

If you can afford to live anywhere, live close to a college or university, with close access to their movie theaters, quirky coffee shops, comic book stores, old computer parts, and pizza delivery. In a pinch, you can rent out rooms to those well-educated students not writing anarchist papers.

The main thing you learn in college is to not be like everyone else & to not be self-critical. As soon as I discovered that, I dropped out . . . If I can get away with this, I can get away with anything.

You never have to shave especially well . . . Whatever you miss today, you'll catch tomorrow.

How much does it really matter where you go to college? Nothing should ever get in the way of your having a good life. In many ways, everything is upside down. Any college would be lucky to get you, and I'm sure, on a deep level, you know that. If a place isn't warm and accepting, what's the point in going there – or staying there – or even wanting to be there? No one should be attracted to the cold and rejecting. And this proves true all through life.

(1.) Never stand behind a car that's backing up. (2.) Never stop behind a truck that's parking. (3.) Never back up farther than you have to.

Don't do college visits over holidays. Only the weirdoes and geeks who can't get invited to someone's home or take a road trip are left. They aren't representative of the regular student body. –Terrence Lee Croft

"Above heaven, God says God; below heaven, He walks in dirt." –David Daniels

When you're talking to someone, try to see you're talking to a product of a million years of evolution. That's a lot of bandwidth, and a lot of intelligence.

When you incorporate the knowledge of your elders, the raw dynamic of your youth, the dreams & outward expansion of the masculine, and separation into family of the feminine, you're a Canadian Indian.

"If someone knows how to resolve a problem, then they should have resolved it." –Indian proverb

"If you talk to a woman until an hour before sunrise, she will sleep with you." –Russian proverb

When you detect ["good- natured" lying] say, "Way beyond! ... I'll bet ... That's something to hope for." [jealousy] "Not alone ... I know, I know! ... It all depends on what you don't do." [self-attack] "Living dangerously ... Really tragic ... How exotic ... And you thought you had problems! ... At least you're living ... You want to live!" [greed] "Let things develop." [flirting] "There's a lot to learn." [weird] "Small world ... It takes one to know one!" [anger] "Not today." [hatred] "What if you didn't have a nice life?" [fear] "This, too, will pass."

When you detect [emotional pain] say, "A sense of humor helps, and honesty ... It all depends on what you expect." [physical pain] "OUCH." [dismissal] "It's maddening ... I haven't reached that level yet ... Sometimes it's hard to remember things because there are so many things to remember." [politics] "Why shouldn't people make money?" [religion] "You can go back to Church because Jesus loves you and God loves you." [intrusion] "Can you loan me any money?" [caught lying] "It's insane." [accusation] "Thank you!" [small talk] "All right ... Looking good ... Another one! ... Never better!" [more] See taxi1010.com.

When you detect [road rage] scream, "THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME! [the finger] wag your index finger and scream "AS IF!" [the A word] pretend they're in the pit beneath an outhouse and scream, "HEADS UP!" [the F word] scream, "The opposite! CHEER UP!" [movie rage] "Hey! Are you planted there forever? ... That's dangerous ... Practice that in a mirror when you get home." [street taunts] "Like yourself! ANY TIPS? Didn't he have a great technique?" [rich people] "Hey! When you're not killing little people with bowls and rags, what are you doing?" [hoi polloi] "Where did you learn your manners, in a sewer?" [car horn] "WHO CARES?" [wise pedestrian] "YOU SAID IT! ... You don't have to!" [still more] See Mind Candy.

When you hear [late?] say, "Worse yet ... I think we could stretch this out a couple of months." [mind?] "That's all? ... Not at all." [pay, price, cost] "Nothing much ... I don't want to say ... Do you want to rent it from me?" [weather] "It's better ... Unsettled ...." [future weather] "They never know ... We'll see." [past weather] "They're always wrong ... The weather's always wrong." [kind of car, mileage] "Nothing special ... Real old-fashioned ... Who cares? ... Just normal." [delusions of grandeur] "You know, you didn't give me any money ... I'm sorry, you're not giving me any money." [rejecting you] "Someone else ... I'm trying to do things I never did before ... There's other people." [general insult] "Who else? ... I like to see someone getting away with murder." [even more] See Verbal Tools Contents.

Most people are just an ant on a big ball, and they don't know that – Some people say, you're not civilized if you can't help other people – However, if someone lies to you, ignores you, or attacks themselves, make sure it isn't affecting you by saying, "I think it's very unkind ...," inside your own head – Ignoring is the same thing as hitting – You may feel, down deep, there's something you can do – That's not your job. Just make sure, that somewhere down deep, you don't think it's your fault – it's not your fault.

Use a professional tax preparer to do your taxes so you won't get audited. It's a racket. What you're paying for is a signature.

In a theater, sit directly behind a short person, not behind an empty seat. The best thing to smuggle in to the movies, is raisins. If someone's bugging you, get up and move. You're not an actor in some Laurel & Hardy movie. If a pretty girl sits directly beside you, she's probably doing it on a dare. Ask her to buy you some popcorn.

You don't have to say something to be smart & you don't have to revolve around anyone else to have fun - Almost always it's the opposite - Don't let anyone trick you into believing there's "better action" somewhere else - It's really Zen - Being a person is the action.

Here's how to pick up someone in a library on a Saturday night. Walk up to them and say, "My friends and I are going around looking for the best bad bar food ... Want to come?"

In a lunch room, if someone sits down at your table uninvited and starts bugging you, ask them how much their clothes cost, or whether they can loan you any money.

A Heinz Tomato Ketchup bottle, on its side, parallel with the horizon, lets air enter the bottle and replace small dabs of catsup, while you firmly, persistently, and repeatedly tap the neck of the bottle six or eight times, allowing the catsup to pour out onto your cheeseburger.

Life's a routine, and life's an adventure. Sometimes these two worlds collide and wipe each other out. If you have to do something odd, leave yourself an odd clue. For instance, if you find a can of dog food on the seat beside you in the car, it means you have whole bags of groceries in the trunk. If you can't find money to pay the cab driver, it means your money is in the trunk with your luggage. If the TV won't work because it's unplugged, it means you have to pay the electricity bill now! If you get home and find your wristwatch in the palm of your hand, instead of fastened to your wrist, it means you left a friend buried in the snow.

After five thousand years of breeding, men and women have evolved into two separate planes of existence. A girl will let you know she's interested in you by darting across your path, or purposefully blocking your way in a grocery store, and saying the exact words, "Excuse me!" Later, in the checkout lane, if she sees you buying four Reese Peanut Butter cups, she'll say the exact words, "Uh-oh!" under her breath, then show you the "forbidden" goodies she's stocking up on. These overt signs of interest are signposts for getting married, raising kids, and paying for their college education, so watch out! If you're a girl, you have to realize, most guys don't "get it," so you have to keep bumping into them, or asking them to help you in some vague manner ... without apologizing. "Will you help me ... figure out what to have for dinner?"

Don't be popular at a party ... Act like an oil painting, "a visual stream ... in jagged flashes, punctuated by lyrical pauses, ... a dying man's life passing before his eyes; or not." (–Stephen Holden, The New York Times)

George Carlin says, Think how stupid the average person is, and realize, half of them are stupider than that!

Does intelligence come from beauty, beauty come from intelligence, or they both come from kindness? –Richard Ames Hart

Professional drivers always keep a spare key in their pocket. Mine is in my wallet, along with a postage stamp, blank check & deposit slip, with no cash ... I keep money folded from the outside, 10's, 20's, 1's & 5's ... somewhere else.

If you drive a taxicab, drive with two feet. Period. Never be first through an intersection. Stop at all stop signs, and make friends with police officers. Create a "zone of safety" around yourself. Your passengers will strongly suspect you're a detective. Be gruff at first. It's a lot easier to switch to being friendly than vice versa. Never use your main money to make change. Tips don't matter. Be yourself. Cut your losses, and don't invest in trouble. In a pinch, speak directly to your wristwatch and say, "Get back! BACK UP! BACK UP!"

Keep passenger's tender in plain view, fastened by a rubber band to your visor. Use plain words to describe what you both can plainly see. Give them change. Use plain words to describe what you are doing. When they leave, lock your doors and put the untouched cash from the visor somewhere else. This is the inner meaning of, "You can't cheat an honest man."

When you have a whole house to clean (or flat or boat or whatever you live in) just focus on one small counter top. Just make a jesture at cleaning.
–Amoret Phillips

Friendship is as easy as giving a single dollar to a single person every day. Maybe a street person, maybe a child. Say to yourself, "open," hand out a dollar, then say to yourself, "close," to keep the floodgates secure.

The 1st dollar, "This is for you!" ... the 2nd dollar, "and this is for a rainy day!"

It's easier to nourish each other than it is to nourish yourself. If you're an adult, and you're clever, you can do both.

Obligations of friendship, based on Earth circling the sun, cover birthdays and anniversaries like a transparent plastic tarpaulin ... hard to see, trapping too much heat & ultimately, smothering. Real friendship is a mirror, not a pressure cooker.

There's an old Southern recipe for Whiskey Sours. The trick is to use blended whiskey instead of straight bourbon. 1/3 cup lemon juice, 1 cup orange juice, 1/4 cup sugar, 3/4 cup whiskey, or to taste, using the finest ingredients.

Place the beverage glass solidly on the bar with the shaker firmly on top at the steepest possible angle. Whack the shaker with the palm of your hand to complete the seal. Shake six or seven times. Finally, with the shaker down, use their off-kilter connection to tug or prize them apart.

It shouldn't be a secret: Pace yourself at a bar by ordering a glass of water with every drink. You'll keep ten steps away from intoxication, dehydration, and financial insolvency.

If a storekeeper gives you no receipt, it's a trick ... makes it hard to return the merchandise.

The best present you can buy a chef with Attention Deficit Disorder is a kitchen timer.

I always forget why I carry a rubber band until a broken parking meter needs the one I'm carrying to fasten a note.

Do you ever walk into another room and forget what you were looking for? Sure! Then it follows, if you study at a desk in a classroom, you do better at tests, because your posture & the surroundings remind you of the answers.

Business people say, "Let me sleep on it," so the deepest parts of their minds can help solve the problem. The same is true on tests. If you skip tough questions & answer ones you know, unconsciously "working out what you skipped," you can go back later & fill it in! Unless you forget to go back!

Teachers actually want you to get good grades. They'd rather have you get good grades than learn something. Try to get on that wavelength, even though it's weird.

When you renew your driver license, you'll do better on a vision test if you squint a little.

"Skim and get the gist of something" is what college professors mean when they give you a 100- page reading assignment – Business people call it "drilling down."

Artists know intelligent ways to let off steam where a falling leaf stops before touching the ground.

"Watching the Presidential Debates is like writing a book report." –David Daniels

It's easy to remember the last sixth of your life: For a six-year-old, that's exactly one year; for an eighteen-year-old, it's three years; for a sixty-year-old, it's ten years. This explains a lot. If you're reminiscing proportionally, time flies like cherry pies!

Just when you've got everything all figured out, time starts rolling backwards.

Next time you're taking a walk, pretend you're at the bottom of a swimming pool, wading through air. Notice how no one else notices the sea of oxygen.

Sometimes you see clouds in the sky that are not fluffy, frosty, dreary or jet contrails: Featureless and calm, especially near sunset, in vast, lenticular, or surprising shapes, these streaks of "sky fog" are called stratus formations.

The 2nd kind of clouds are called storm clouds: majestic thunderstorms (cumulonimbus), with pendulous underbellies (mammatus), threatening squall lines, or all-day drizzly nimbostratus.

The 3rd kind of clouds are called mixed skies, with all kinds of things! High frost-fingered cirrus, solitary cirrus forms, washboardy altocumulus (mackerel skies), fluffy sailing-by cumulus, distant walls of cumulus pileus, wind-swept advection fog (stratus) or faintly visible & featureless cirrostratus.

The 4th kind of clouds are literally all one thing, maybe (1.) overcast skies (stratocumulus), (2.) completely featureless altostratus, or (3.) fair weather cumulus humilis, thickening into cumulus humilis fractus, cumulus mediocris, then cumulus congestus, and on days like this, you can become a school teacher.

From May until October, deep ocean currents off the coast of San Francisco well up extremely cold water, making the air above the coast cooler than normal. Ten miles inland, hot air rises, then circulates back toward the coast, against the prevailing weather. The convergence of falling air off the coast, from both the Pacific Ocean to the west, and the hot land to the east, creates a heavy column of air, known as the Pacific High, which blocks low-pressure storms from reaching San Francisco all summer long. The typical summertime temperature in the City is 65° F, and ten miles inland, maybe 90° F. All that rising hot air ten miles inland has to be replenished, so it sucks in the ocean air, creating huge fog banks in San Francisco.

If you feel bad, pretend you're in the basement of the Paris Opera with a mask and a bowl - and you can sing songs - It's called triangulation - You're replacing (1.) sensations you felt as a child when (2.) your parents attacked you and (3.) your cover-up, (saying, "I'm all right - I'll get through it,") with something else ... The trick is to have a sense of humor & not believe it. –David Daniels

The bogeyman who hides in the dark has a name: Stand on one foot while pulling on your trousers, leave toys in the middle of the floor, roll over near the edge of your bed, dive into the shallow end of a swimming pool, lean a folded table up against a wall & turn your back, slip in the shower, forget to curb your wheels and set your brakes on the edge of a hill & you will meet him.

You have an accelerator accelerating you towards Death, with no real brake. The best you can do is take it easy and have a nice life.

When this counter reaches a certain number, I'll be dead.

I just hope I hear a lot of music before then.

The counter will have no effect on you if ... you can somehow get inside this little black box ....

Within the ordinary bounds of civilization, whenever you have a choice between being bad and being good, you're way better off being bad.

"'As a woman, I have lots of advantages you don't have,' Lara Logan told a male interviewer. 'I can be vulnerable. Usually you don't have to do anything. Men do it to themselves. They feel like they want to protect you.'" (–Jacques Steinberg, The New York Times, 2005-11-23)

"There isn't a journalist alive who won't admit to you they use every advantage they have."

Lara Logan of CBS News, a native of South Africa (–Ruth Fremson / The New York Times)

"In the early 1960's, Laurence Olivier defined the goal of acting to Michael Gambon, his young protégé at the National Theater. Every member of the audience, he said, both male and female, should want to have sex with you.
... He could describe the smell of success quite concretely. He got a whiff of it on the opening night of 'Richard III' in London. It smelled, he said, like seaweed, or oysters." (–William Grimes, The New York Times,
2005-11-23)

The US Constitution is like the bottom half of a bikini – It's what the Framers had in mind.

You can write anything you want, because nobody reads it. –David Daniels

I::BOEING have::NIKE seen::CBS the::PRUDENTIAL future::AT&T and::UNITED it's::CHANEL corporate::APPLE sponsorship::IBM of::MACY'S everything::GOOGLE, escuche tan la música romántica en programas de la radio del idioma extranjero (so listen to romantic music on foreign language radio programs).

The lower urinals are for those with longer dicks.

Drunks are prone to exaggeration, so they double the percentage of alcohol and call it "proof." The drier the gin, the greater the proof. See also, –A Martini from Heaven

In sunlight, red pigments break down the fastest (faded red cars & No Parking signs), yellow pigments show up the best (school buses & taxicabs) and white pigments add the most resale value (In Japan, most cars are white).

San Francisco cable cars run late into the night and use rechargeable batteries hidden underneath the seats to power their headlights.

No one escaped from Alcatraz because they never give criminals swimming lessons. (If you're drowning, don't struggle. Just count to ten.)

If you go to the grocery store hungry, buy little perishable food, though it never hurts to stock up on vanilla ice-cream & chocolate sauce!

You don't need to know anyone's name because they actually know their own name. Just say, "Hey, pal!" or wait until someone mentions it.

In general, if you wear deodorant, it makes you stinky. It's one of those diabolical feedback loops.

If you don't get much power throwing a football with your right arm, put your whole body behind throwing with your left arm for about a year. Your mom probably switched you when you were a kid.

This business of socks: If they're all the same color, you never have to sort them, and if you lose one, who cares?

If you're paranoid, someone is probably stalking you. Give them many reasons to be bored. Go shopping or switch movie theaters. They're not watching you. Nobody's that hot.

I really should backup my computer one of these days ... eh? Err -cchhh cchhh, cchhh, cchhh, paswrd? Erp?

"Every drive will fail – It's not a matter of if, but when. The only good hard drive is one that's been backed up." (–Rian, a technician from DriveSavers, courtesy of David Pogue)

The best place to hide your money & passpork is with your backup gun.

Keep user names, passwords, and other scrawls on 4-by-6-inch index cards locked in a file box next to your computer. If you work in an office, take daily notes of your activities so you can bring your boss up-to-date at the drop of a hat.

If you can't spell words such as "faux" or "faux pas," look up "fake," in a thesaurus, and if "faux" isn't there, look up "mistake."

Write down your bank balance on a slip of paper and keep it in your wallet. Always have enough cash to get out of the country.

Write four numbers, on every bank receipt, in this order: (1.) the bank's version of your final balance; (2.) the date; (3.) your version of your bank balance, including all pending transactions; (4.) the difference. This way, when you gather together evidence of what's going on with your balance, the evidence is consistent. bank's version, dd-month-yy, your version, difference. When the difference is zero, this all collapses into one number: your version.

Your bank balance minus all the unaccounted-fors, or missing-in-actions, is your real balance. Keep an ongoing list of all your MIA's. When you write a check, add it to the bottom of your MIA list; when you know of an electronic payment coming up, add it to the bottom of your MIA list. Don't worry about deposits, or ATM withdrawals, because those simply get incorporated into your current bank balance, which both you and your bank already know about, because it's on your ATM receipt. The only real accounting you need is an MIA list. When an item clears, and gets incorporated into your bank balance, cross it off the MIA list. Your bank balance should always be greater than the grand total of your MIA's.

Carry a xerox copy of your passport & itinerary in a plastic sandwich bag in a pocket of your raincoat.

Move your wristwatch to the other wrist if there's something you want to remember. Maybe it was bags in the trunk of the taxicab, or a phone, jacket, or umbrella by the door,

Live out of a suitcase before you leave home ... for practice! Wash your clothes every day, and see how little you need to pack. Extra socks. That's about it. A raincoat. An alarm clock. Bring sandwich bags for receipts & tickets; an address list & stamps for sending postcards.

Take lots of catnaps and time zones won't bother you at all. Drink water, check out the sunlight & use your shadow to get a rough idea of the time.

If you fall asleep in front to the TV, you'll probably wind up with a wedgie, which you can begin to heal with Neosporin & if it gets itchy, Ultravate.

The best place to pick your nose is over a sink with running water ... You keep dirty fingers out of your nostrils ... & wash those boogers down the drain ... or in the shower.

Not putting your fingers in your eyes is way better than washing your hands for two minutes. Eating food you dropped on the floor is way more sanitary than French kissing.

No time for bath or shower? ... Wipe behind your ears, your groin & bottom with a damp cloth, and change your underpants. It's called a French Bath, which is funny, because I thought the French had all the time in the world.

A damp white cloth, repeatedly rinsed, is far superior to toilet paper.

Food travels at different speeds through your large & small intestines, and this gets really interesting when an express train comes up behind a slow-moving freight.

The correct way to wipe a baby's bottom (and your own bottom) ... Don't wipe at all; dab, dab, dab, pat, pat, pat. Most people use way too much violence. Electric hair trimmers around your bottom from time to time keep the worst Klingons away from Uranus.

If you have long, or sharp, fingernails, be especially careful, because it's easier than you think to cut yourself down there. And never bite them!

"Wait until they die and no little Jew comes to visit them." –David Daniels

To prolong the pleasure of taking a shower, (which keeps perspiration from stinging your eyes, and your groin healthy,) pour the clothes you soaked in Woolite overnight onto the shower floor, run hot water on them before you get in, then stomp on them like grapes.

Vacuuming the whole house in the nude is the best cure for having fallen in the toilet after someone left the toilet seat up.

When someone's wearing sunglasses, as long as you're gazing into their right eye, you won't lose your balance or feel intimidated.

Grape skin tannins preserve red wines but, until they're properly aged, make them bitter. You can ask your server to let you taste a "softer wine" or red wine less tannic.

To learn constellations, start with a small region. For instance, Taurus, "The Bull," is next to Orion, "The Hunter." Next come Gemini, "The Twins." There aren't that many.

To learn about red wines, start with regional wines of northern Italy: Barbera, Sangiovese, Valpolicella. Then branch out. Sicilian wines come next. If your bartender isn't friendly, go to another restaurant.

You have the right to grind your own pepper, even if the waiter is clutching some gigantic pepper mill. Just reach out and say, "Let me do it."

Turn a corkscrew on its side to start it near the center of a cork. Turn a bottle of wine on its side while screwing in the corkscrew.

Better than rapping a jar lid on the counter to open it, is to run hot water over the metal lid, which expands more rapidly than the glass jar, and opens easily.

Girls get grouchy when you try to turn them into a prostitute.

Churches would be a lot better off without religion. And bingo! People could just dress up and get along, maybe with an exclusive restaurant or golf course. Or there could be rotating services, with the Jew-bit one week, the Buddhist-bit the next, with Mohammed setting things straight down at the stables. There could be anger management classes with oil paintings of God stomping Adam and Eve, or role playing with Joseph figuring things out in the garden, Mary in the loft, then with a great flash of light, three African wise men coming by to drop off gold, frankincense and myrrh and check out the little bitty Jesus, who, along with the witches, without piano lessons or any other help, could grow up in different families and figure out how to nourish people, as far away as Hawaii, who otherwise, would be no good whatsoever.

You either have warmth, or you lose warmth. If you take care of an animal, you provide warmth. If you tell this story to an animal, you get warmth. And affection.

Don't work at a relationship. Work on yourself. Provide warmth and affection for yourself. Not dog training – Treats. Relaxation. Understanding. Nourishment. Hope. God, er, dog ... loves the lazy.

Eastern Philosophy: Be in the present. Western Philosophy: Open the present. –David Juda

Avoid psychological interactions with hesitant drivers who are "green light challenged." They don't need any more distractions. It's called, "Clever Takes a Holiday."

Drunken liars lose their temper, (and anger effectively covers up lies and releases adrenaline, (which in turn oxidizes alcohol)) winding up sober, believable, and dangerous.

Eighty percent of the time police believe the first story they hear, and they think anything else is a lie. If someone beats you to the police with their story, immediately suggest that other person is on drugs, and get it on the record.

A safe & generally legal way to make a U-turn is to stop just beyond a driveway, carefully back into the driveway, then with your nose facing the traffic, make a left turn.

Job interview: You don't have to pass some test; just be yourself. Greatest strength: Experience. Greatest weakness: Loyalty. Don't worry: Phonies will never hire you, and you get good practice being you.

Coffee is a diuretic, makes you want to pee. Remember that next time you're trapped in the back of a bus without a pot to piss in. What do fighter pilots do? "Tubes don't work so good ... We usually just soil our flight suits and clean up after."

Emergency restroom, for when you've really got to pee ... Use a Ziplock bag ... after use, fold inside a second bag & deposit in airline security bucket.

The onset of a cold is nothing more than a symptom of mild dehydration. A cup of coffee, or some cookies and tea aren't enough. You have to drink a whole lot of water much faster than that, and the cold never gets going.

There are a whole class of ideas called "nipping things in the bud," which include a little lip balm to heal lips chapped from the sun, a drop or two of eyewash to curtail eyelid infections, nickel slugs in the parking meter, and a spare key to your house & car, always in your wallet. You can also nip poverty in the bud, inside and out ~~~

Practice "give up's": Give up getting a haircut, using deodorant, watching TV, talking on the telephone, complaining, explaining, wishing, running away from yourself, loathing yourself or anybody else. It's a waste of time, money, energy & existence.

"If someone ever forces you unwillingly on a fish trip, throw a few fish back and then that will end any further opportunities with them." –Benita Davis

"Never expect; it never pans out." –Fran Fishback

Children are at a great advantage, because they don't have as many memories drawing them into the past, though some adults have used life & experience to develop a sense of due proportion.

Reese Cups from a large air-conditioned grocery chain taste much better than Reese Cups from a corner convenience store.

Start with nothingness, unimaginably small, vibrating just below the Planck frequency. (1.) Suddenly something emerges into the three dimensions of space, which in turn, move through time, at the speed of light. (2.) When matter erupts, at its origins, its resistance to motion through space and time, is its mass. (3.) Its wake, or acceleration into existence, is its gravity wave.

(4.) This wave, or wake, is itself a curvature of space, and since it is curving space itself, is known, at the speed of light, to all of space, throughout the universe, by its diminishing waveform. (5.) Curvatures of space, spiraling through space and time, create greater curvatures as matter clumps and falls into itself, increasing both its mass, or resistance to motion through the three dimensions of space, and its wake, or gravity wave form, as the aggregate moves through time.

(6.) Eventually, when its curvature of space reaches a certain point, and its resistance to acceleration from nothingness reaches a certain critical mass, such that its gravity wave, moving at the speed of light, consumes itself, it becomes a black hole, where time barely creeps.

(7.) Meanwhile, a photon of light, emerging from nothingness, has no resistance to acceleration from nothingness, so has no mass. It has no wake, so has no gravity. It doesn't curve space, so moves through space without hindrance, and doesn't move through time at all!

1. Gravity is the wake of matter accelerating into existence; 2. Something moving by, at close to the speed of light, has slower time, greater mass & greater energy; 3. Mass is resistance to motion; 4. E = mCC; 5. E/CC = m; 6. Existence is the pre-driver; 7. What does it mean for something – or yourself – not to exist?

Add seven to ten drops of water to whatever you're microwaving, say, a stale piece of pizza, bacon, or frozen peas. The microwave needs water vapor to do its thing.

If you master about ten recipes from beginning to end, you can cook just about anything, falling back on standard techniques when you get in trouble. Try the recipe for shrimp creole off a bottle of Tabasco Sauce.

Boil rice in way too much water with a lot of salt, and when it's a few minutes too early, pour it into a strainer where it will continue to cook a minute. So what if you're pouring out nutrients? Whatever.

When you're holding a knife, hold it by the blade because you're cutting with the blade, not the handle. –Jonathan Stoddard

Start with a little olive oil, high heat, thin slices of meat, salt, pepper, garlic, vinegar, veggies, end with a little wine, and the pan practically cleans itself.

The best way to wash dishes is to play with them, like boats in a bubble bath.

Walk around the house with a huge lawn & leaf bag collecting garbage, like Santa Claus collecting toys, to totally mystify your parents, unless you're fool enough to tell them what you're doing.

The little part in you that procrastinates doesn't even know how to do something. It's a little child, filled with fear. It doesn't think you can do anything. Okay! The way out is to just start doing something! ... so the little child can see, it's kind of fun ... It's the same thing as riding a bike ... Just start!

American frontiersmen in the Wild West would pay more for a photograph of a woman than for a real live honest-to-God flesh-and-blood woman. Will the frontiersman who climbed into our dumpster, sliced open the lawn bag & stole the Polaroid scrapbook I threw away please return pages eight through seventeen, no questions asked? Burn, baby, burn!

A pumpkin pie milkshake, or blueberry pie milkshake – one slice of pie, two scoops of vanilla ice-cream & milk – may be the best you've ever had – They're called "pie à la mode to go."

Don't make beds. Sleep on top. Curl up in a blanket. Take a little camping trip.

They make the world go round ... In general, you can't see shooting stars until after midnight, when the daily spin takes you out of the Earth's wake into the cusp of its trajectory through space.

Plants & Ivy grow best in the bathroom, which is dirty anyway, close to water, light & soil.

People don't have money. We eat out of cans, and toilets are our chairs. –Stephen A. Cossé

At the most elemental level, certain people are taught (1.) to never discuss it; (2.) to never mention it in public; (3.) to do it at least once a day; (4.) to hold it until the "proper time"; (5.) to never let anyone see it; (6.) to keep their hands clean; and certainly, (7.) to never play with it! Because, (8.) "It's dirty!" When dogs do it, they euphemistically call it, (9.) "Doing your business," and it's the way extremely wealthy people train their children to handle money. They literally rechannel toilet training to another psychological realm ... into accumulating wealth.

An extremely small child is given a 19th Century chrome-plated brass, tin or white porcelain bedpan and taught to drop a one-, five-, or ten-dollar bill into it once a day, and if not at home, then once a week, at Church, as part of their "endowment," or "good will." Later that child is given an old-fashioned leather-bound photograph album, so they can begin their "hundred-dollar bill" collection, which is kept entirely secret, though, strangely, in plain sight.

Instead of having a butterfly collection, stamp collection, or hundred-dollar bill collection, many businessmen have a portfolio "collection," without ever understanding why ... that it's from their toilet training. Though, by all means, whatever it comes from, they're not about to "piss it away."

Many of the wealthy have a close affinity with the poor, because all their resources are tied up in real estate "holdings," portfolio "collections," and cash "savings." Next to these "hoards," they're actually "cash poor," and many of them lead mean, stingy lives. "Any more butterflies of hate, fluttering from level to level?" –David Daniels

If a person remains poor, then, psychologically, their parents are still important. Underneath, they don't want to "do better" than their parents. –David Juda

You're supposed to have a month's expenses in cash in your house. –David Daniels

It's my office and my bank, all in one place! –Al Nelson, emptying his pockets

Lots of people, it's very simple. They see something to do & they do it. To see what happens. –David Daniels

You have to have a sense of humor about these things ... If you don't have fun, what's the point in living? –David Daniels

In the struggle to collect hundred-dollar bills, you soon learn you have to carry change for a hundred-dollar bill. You begin to learn why you feel frightened, too.

How much? How much shit did you make for mom today, and did you get a star? – I just made a blunder in toilet training.

People who have kids are never rich! –David Daniels

A poor person is told to cut up their credit cards and throw them away. In this way, they always forget they're in debt. All they have left are a few spare dollars to throw into the state lottery. From then on, whenever they take out a circular coin, they think of a wishing well.

A wealthy person does something most disgusting. They place an expired credit card underneath a few pebbles at the bottom of their toilet tank, opposite the flushing mechanism. From then on, whenever they take out a rectangular credit card, they think of a toilet.

A poor person picks up a copper penny, while a wealthy person sits upon a gold brick! Those, who like purple, do both!

Don't try to save money – Try to spend money wisely. –David Daniels

A mathematical secret for managing an endowment: You begin by diversifying your investments, say a fifth each of (1.) stocks (2.) bonds (3.) real estate (4.) licenses, and (5.) gold. Once or twice a year, you "review and rebalance" your assets. That is, if stocks have risen proportionally, you sell enough to bring them down to a fifth again. Or if gold has fallen proportionally, you buy enough to raise that portion to a fifth again. This rebalancing forces you to "buy low [say, the gold], and sell high [say, the stocks]." The unschooled investor believes, "If the stock goes up, buy more!" It's the opposite. The knowing investor is a mathematical machine.

The fewer clothes you have, the less laundry you have to do ... You just have to do it more often ... which increases your chances of bumping into a moon shadow ... an exotic, foreign Laundromat chick.

Jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge may be one of the worse deaths imaginable. If you don't break your neck upon hitting the Pacific Ocean, you generally live about three hours with most of the bones in your torso broken or fractured, and your internal organs bleeding until you die. "The biggest mistake I've ever made," most people realize, as they plummet toward the water, "is this."

Why go to a health club when you can do a few extra things around the yard or be of use to someone? Turn things around. Is Jimmy Carter lifting weights? ... or building houses?

If a veterinarian prescribes pills for your dog, wrap one in a piece of cheese, and wrap up an identical piece of cheese without a pill, which you feed the dog first, to whet its appetite, and allay any suspicion.

Shoes without treads are much easier to clean after you've been raking leaves, misstepping & playing in the back with the dogs.

Deep in your mind, below the level of sensation or awareness, dispersed and locked within tensions in your tissues, are totally convincing holographic projections of the worst things that ever happened to you. Your unique emotional system is devoted to preserving some ten to fifteen memories and shielding them from your conscious perception ... even though you'd be much better off seeing them.

Never go on a diet until you feel really secure. It's better to be fat until you can afford to write your weight on the bathroom mirror & eat a little less each meal. Anyway, just before you die, you'll be wearing clothes too big for you, so why not wait?

The most ridiculously easy diet in the world is to go to bed without supper. You save money, you save about an hour of your time, you get extra sleep, you lose weight, and you feel no hunger pangs at all. If you wake up, drink water.

One Advil – the orange pill with a cumulative effect – every few hours before visiting a dentist makes teeth cleaning painless.

Flossing your teeth has more to do with massaging your teeth than simply running floss between them. You curve the floss around one tooth then another. Cool Mint Listerine antiseptic helps gums more than flossing (rather than a generic-brand mouthwash).

Generally, doctors will not give you pain medicines they know you like, simply because you like them. Instead, they'll prescribe medicines with known unpleasant side-effects. Instead of saying, "Give me Percodan! I really like it," say, "Oh, Demerol gives me nausea." Eventually, the pain will go away, or the prescription will run out; meanwhile, who cares if you have fun?

When you make love from underneath, put a pillow under the small of your back, and you won't get lower back pain.

The telephone repair service will fix your downed line a lot sooner if you act like the fate of the known universe hangs in the balance ( While you go through symptoms of withdrawal ): Dial the repair service on a neighbor's phone & repeatedly choose "0," even if it's "not permitted," to talk to a human being.

For any recreational drug there is a corresponding prescription drug, more or less, and what they have in common is they shut down self-hatred and introduce you to the world of sensation, which is also the language of dreams.

The main trouble with illegal drugs is that you become the doctor, so you're getting drugs from a doctor who's on drugs! It may seem romantic & recursive, this shortcut to getting a social life, but at the end, it's quite troublesome, because you never learn to shut down negativity on your own.

http://www.firekissedglass.com

http://www.moonfooling.com

http://www.verbaltools.com

People learn knots, such as the bowline, square knot, and circus tent hitch, not because they're particularly easy to tie – They're easy to untie!

To capture a wild animal the way a Cherokee would, buy a raccoon trap with one door, not two, because fewer things can go wrong when you're letting it go, back on the reservation.

Foolproof Shoelace Bow and tips for creating a personal website at taxi1010.com Prumbing.

When you're tying a balloon, use two fingers (instead of one) to pry open the elastic loop of an overhand knot, so you can tuck the tip of the nozzle through.

Why the Moon Gets Bigger on the Horizon, Grab Every Scrap of Happiness You Can, Day of Week Algorithm, Origin of the Word OK, How Clairvoyance Works, Names of the Full Moons, How Do You Talk to a Girl?, Mind Candy.

The best place to write a paper is on the World Wide Web, on a secret web page, and to forget about it. Next day, you can read it on the web, as if it's already been published ... then make corrections.

My sister and I never use Email. We communicate with secret web pages. The sender does back-up & weekly archiving and can tell when the other one reads it from the web logs.

Beyond Email: An extremely effective way to communicate is by secret web pages. You have a chance to edit & review the communication before you tell the other person about it, and you can verify its accuracy. Here are the actual pages we used during an Amozoo.com server upgrade: Click here

The best place to edit a book is on the Internet, on public web pages. Use web logs to see how far along your readers get, where they get into trouble, and make corresponding adjustments in your material. This two-way street brings you playful design, clear writing & practice, practice, practice.

To flag a taxicab make eye contact with a taxi driver. Stand very still & make a slight gesture with your arm. Repeat until taxi driver acknowledges you, then stand back a little. Go to the first taxi you hailed. It was an implied contract. Flag anything that moves, even if people are in it. Empty cabs may be going to fill a radio order, full cabs may drop their passengers a few blocks away, then circle back for you. Any taxi driver who sees you may use the radio to call you a cab, unbeknownst to you. They'll say something like, "Possible at Bush & Taylor, with bags." If you're going to the airport, flap your arms like a bird.

To call a taxi on the telephone, give a street address and apartment access code, (not an apartment number, unless they're the same,) so the order taker won't think you're trying to flag first cab you see. All they want is your address. They'll say, "okay" to all your special instructions, then ignore them. Sometimes they won't actually place your order, even though they say they will. They don't have time to argue. Stay calm. You're probably talking to a taxi driver who's been grounded for getting too many tickets.