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Modern Love

Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear LET’S say you have what you believe to be a healthy marriage. You’re still friends and lovers after spending more than half of your lives together. The dreams you set out to achieve in your 20s — gazing into each other’s eyes in candlelit city bistros when you were single and skinny — have for the most part come true.
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What's In It For Me?

I remember visiting the stately home of Henry VIII. He was the richest man in the world in his time, but he had neither air conditioning nor indoor plumbing, no Tylenol nor a heated Shiatsu massaging chair.

We are all richer than the richest people of the world 75 years ago. What we take for granted today, kings and queens of Europe could not have envisioned.

In fact, everyone reading this article is well within the top 10 percent of the richest people walking around the planet today. That means 90 percent of the world’s population think that if they had our money, they would have nothing to complain about.

So why don't we feel that rich?

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The Science of Love

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I want to talk to you about one of the great unsolved mysteries of science.

My husband (or wife for that matter) is clearly deficient in so many areas - that’s no mystery.

But here is the real mystery. How can he be so unabashedly beloved by his mother (or father for that matter) with all of his many faults?

Despite what he does (or doesn’t do) he is welcomed with open arms no matter how cognizant his parents seem to be of his many indiscretions.

They don’t disparage him. They don’t even given him a look. Nothing!

And I’m not finished. Don’t grandparents have eyes? Can't they see what their grandson is really like?

And that’s not all. I can’t imagine anything my future daughter-in-law could possible say that will change my affection for my own son. No matter what the mistake.

Let’s start by removing any ambiguity. Your husband really is a jerk (if I know him tell him nicely).

However, every scientist will tell you, that has absolutely nothing to do with your affection for him (or lack thereof). If it did, then his own parents would have disowned him long ago.

Seminars & Events

Teenagers killed off the dinosaurs....

Let me tell you the problem I have with evolution.

First, I don't have a problem with frogs coming from fish, and I don’t have a problem with birds evolving from lizards.

I don’t even have a problem with dogs evolving from scummy divorce lawyers (my latest pet peeve).

My problem with evolution is this: How can anyone think teenagers evolved from anything?

The whole concept of evolution is that the previous species is inferior to later ones. That would mean the previous incarnation of teenagers was worse than the ones we have now.

I just find that hard to believe.

Anyone who has experienced these precious moments of teen-parent angst knows what I mean:

• The Look, as in, “I can’t believe you and I are related.” Where do they learn that? It must be in the DNA. How can teenagers all over the world spontaneously know what look to do? Do they go to school for that? What-ever!

• The ever-amusing “I hate you, and can you drop me off at the mall with your credit card” combo. Funny how they fail to see the irony in that.

• The classic line, “You are the reason I need therapy!”

All of this makes it hard for me to conceive of a human-like species worse than a teenager.

So, I submit that teenagers must have killed off the dinosaurs. Life in Jurassic Park got too comfortable, the kids grew up, the livin’ was easy, and the world entered the Teenagic Period.

A new generation of dinosaurs evolved, the Teenagosaurus. This genus was so self-absorbed and impervious to reason, that the dinosaurs couldn’t survive it. The only way for life to go on was to evolve, because the only thing worse than a teenager, is a teenager with big teeth.

The question now is, are we going to survive?

In this artists re-enactment of a tragic father-son dinosaur scene, you see father dinosaur trying in vain to explain to his “evolved” teenage son that if we are to survive as a species, you can't sleep till 2 p.m. The son doesn't listen, of course, perhaps because Mr. Dinosaur is unable to wave his useless little arms in protest. So, in the end, they became extinct.