The nicest Father's Day surprise of all for Dad would be if you handed him a box, and he unwrapped it, and there, inside, sitting on a bed of folded tissue, was the pair of his undershorts that somebody threw away six months ago (without asking Dad) because they had reached the stage where they were 3 percent undershorts and 97 percent holes. Dad misses those undershorts. They were his Faithful Undershorts Companion.

John Dorschner, one of our staff writers here at Tropic magazine at The Miami Herald, who is a good friend of mine and an excellent journalist, but a raving liberal, wrote a story about a group that periodically pops up saying that they're going to start their own country or start their own planet or go back to their original planet, or whatever. They were going to "create a libertarian society" on a floating platform in the Caribbean somewhere. I know there's never going to be a country on a floating anything, but if they want to talk about it, that's great.

When preparing your return, you should be sure to avoid common mistakes. The two most common taxpayer mistakes, states the IRS booklet, are (1) "failure to include a current address," and (2) "failure to be a large industry that gives humongous contributions to key tax-law-writing congresspersons."

When my generation was your age, we took crazy risks. The wildest thing was - prepare to be shocked - we deliberately ingested carbohydrates!

Like all writers, my greatest inspiration, my ultimate muse, is a deadline.

Eating rice cakes is like chewing on a foam coffee cup, only less filling.

That is the Wasp, yes. But it was captured by Black Stache, and he’s coming for this ship now.” “And how do you know that?” asked Slank. “Did a seagull tell you?” This brought chuckles from the crew. Something like that, thought Peter.