The belief that tomorrow is a different place from today is certainly a unique hallmark of our species.

How can we be alive and not wonder about the stories we knit together this place we call the world? Without stories our universe is merely rocks and clouds and lava and blackness. It's a village scraped raw by warm waters leaving not a trace of what existed before.

Only losers make decisions when things are bad. The time to rejig your life is the time when it's seemingly smooth.

SAFETY NET-ISM: The belief that there will always be a financial and emotional safety net to buffer life's hurts. Usually parents.

Beware of the corporate invasion of private memory.

Here's what I think: the five most unattractive traits in people are cheapness, clinginess, neediness, unwillingness to change and jealousy. Jealousy is the worst, and by far the hardest to conceal.

When future archaeologists dig up the remains of California, they're going to find all of those gyms their scary-looking gym equipment, and they're going to assume that we were a culture obsessed with torture.