Writing Boots

I heard myself say in a conversation about a company's values ...

"They seem like a smart, decent people who aren't out to change the world. Which is better than a bunch of dumb pricks who are."

They call me a grumpy old man ...

... but they keep walking on my Goddamn lawn.

Who said that? I said that. "The hardest thing about communication ...

... is balancing your essential zealotous conviction that what you feel, everyone feels ... against your granite knowledge that no one is quite as interested in what you are, as you are."

Rubby is buffing off on me

I recently wrote in an e-mail: "Shit or get off the casket."

Writing Boots Word of the Week: marplot

One of my favorite words is marplot: an officious medler whose interference compromises the success of an undertaking. Or as I call him: a one-man bureaucracy.

The intellectual mistake I most frequently make ...

... is laughing at the naiveté, or lauding the nobility, of past generations of people who I know damn well were built just the same way I am.

They should call 'em marital arts

At the bottom of each side of every marital argument is the vexing question, "How could you have been married to me for this long and still be so fucking dumb?"

The Quotable Murr

Ron Santo didn't cook up a lot of food for thought in his life. But the gritty third-baseman's posthumous election to the Baseball Hall of Fame has me thinking:

Your parents told you you could do anything that you set your mind to. One of the details they left out is how unbelievably long it's probably going to take.

If you've been around at all, you know ...

All e-mail treachery begins with the words, "Quick question."

The Quotable Murr

Whereas Spiro Agnew criticised "the nattering nabobs of negativism," I prefer to pillory the prattling pipsqueaks of positivism.