About the most exciting thing a baby can do is burp - I've spent hours of my life holding a baby on my shoulder and patting its back, trying to loosen up a burp. Burping was probably invented to give the father something positive to do, since our chests are not equipped to allow us to do much else.
— W. Bruce Cameron
The first cellphone I owned was hardly a slim, high-tech device - it was more like a brick with buttons, only with worse reception. If you wanted to use your phone to give someone a message, you were better off throwing it at him and hoping you broke his car window.
There are apparently three factors that lead to longevity: heredity, habits, and what your wife will let you get away with.
My favorite ski slope is the kind that winds up at the cafeteria. My children, though, usually insist that I get out and take on a few expert runs, in a game called 'Let's See if We Can Get Our Inheritance Early.'
I've always been busy, but I wasn't always successful.
I have never been able to pay attention to anything for more than a few minutes - the stories in my head have always been so much more entertaining. Only books could pull me out of my own imagination, and then it was only to plunge me into someone else's.
Communicating with teenage girls is easy unless you're an adult, and then it's like having someone take a pair of pliers and, one-by-one, yank off your fingernails through your ears.
My dog Tucker likes to walk late at night because it is a good way to keep me awake. Apparently, the one time I took him for a stroll around midnight represented, to him, a commitment similar to marriage.
Without a dog, you'll be without at least one creature who thinks you are the smartest, most decent and heroic human being on the planet.
Without a dog, I would have tassels on my throw pillows instead of little stubs of yarn that look like small worms. The pillows seem to function just fine without the tassels, so perhaps it isn't a problem.
My body believes a famine is imminent and has begun stocking up on provisions. These supplies are being stored around my waistline. I've tried explaining to my stomach that this is entirely unnecessary: I've never once, not even when I was in college and more broke than the E.U., done any actual starving.
I think, of all the holidays we celebrate, my least favorite is Earth Day. For one thing, I never know what sort of gift is appropriate. A jar of dirt, maybe? And it's not clear to me why Earth even needs a 'day,' since a spin on its axis creates a day. That's like giving a man who owns a shoe store a gift of a pair of shoes.
Pre-history tells us that our species used to be a hunter-gatherer society. This means that the job of raising a family was split 50-50 between the men and the women - the man's 50 percent share was to sit in the woods with a sharp stick, waiting for something to hunt to wander by, and the woman's 50 percent was to do everything else.
3D printers give us what we've all been craving: another reason to talk to technical support. When you finally get the thing working, though, you'll be able to print out your grocery list as a cube! When you look up directions online, you can print the map out on a globe!
My parents live in the part of the United States that is Canada. It is so far north that Minnesota lies in the same direction as Miami. They have four distinct seasons: Winter, More Winter, Still More Winter, and That One Day Of Summer.
My younger sister looks to me to provide her with advice on how to do her job better - though she's too shy to ask me questions, so I have to give her my opinion on an unsolicited basis.
The story of 'A Dog's Purpose' flowed into me a set piece. The entire book was just there, as if I were connected to a streaming service, a novel wholly formed of character and plot. This has never happened to me before or since. I prayed for help and I got it. A gift.
As to which is cuter, a puppy or a baby, I'm going to say that probably depends less on the particular puppy and more on the baby. I've seen pictures of me as an infant and consider myself lucky that nobody ever offered my parents the opportunity to trade me for a beagle.
When I was in seventh grade, I was a scrawny boy with no muscles, so I went out for wrestling. My intention was to develop secret wrestling skills so that if I were jumped by a bully, I'd shout, 'Ha!' and he'd be on the ground in a headlock.
For me, the most indispensable tool for wrapping presents is a wife.
My philosophy on snow skiing is that there are less expensive ways to fall down a mountain. Yet every couple of years, I go on a ski trip for the same reason that women will have multiple children - they simply forget how much it hurts.
I started writing in fourth grade and never stopped. I faked my way through high school and nearly was flushed from college - I still can't pay attention - and then had a series of day jobs. But always, continuously, I have written.
When I was in grade school, my teachers decided I was just about the dumbest thing to come through the door in a long time. Whatever the lesson, whatever the subject, I would sit and listen to them with a lost, glassy-eyed expression on my face.
I know it sounds strange, but I'm one of those people who goes to a coffee shop to drink coffee.
I've tried several diets over the past couple of years - not because I need to lose weight, but because my pants are trying to cut me in two.
Without a dog, no one will listen to your opinions for more than a few minutes without interrupting to tell you their opinions, which you won't find nearly as interesting.
An ice-fishing shanty is basically a tin outhouse on a frozen lake, except that in an outhouse, the hole has a purpose. In ice fishing, the hole is what you stare at for hours, hoping that at some point you'll break the monotony by falling in.
My mother taught me to drive using the 'Detroit Method,' where speed limits and traffic lights are taken as cute suggestions.
Going to bed can cause imaginary conversations you should have had with certain people or real conversations with your brother who is calling from a bar in a different time zone.
Your neighbors will be envious of your 3D printer - and if they're not, just print new neighbors. Design them so they'll like to bring you pies, maybe, or want to do your yard work for you.
I don't think my father considered allowing a teenager to follow his dreams was necessarily good parenting, or even parenting. I think he thought I was a teenager with teenage impulses. I'm pretty sure he knew that if he just let me follow those impulses, it would wind up being very expensive and perhaps even life-endangering.
I've read that an average dog possesses a vocabulary of 200-300 words, which is enough for him to have his own Twitter account.
Most of what happens in the world is far beyond a dog's comprehension, so they must turn to their faith in us to help them navigate life's treacheries. Don't we, also, have unanswerable questions about the vagaries of modern existence for which the answer is beyond human grasp, so that only our faith can guide us?
I was an arrogant man. I not only thought I could manage my life without help, I wanted it that way. I had best-selling books and a TV show and movie contracts; I felt invincible, secure in the thought that everything was my doing. And then, like all arrogant men, I came to stumble.
Throughout the day, my phone will variously chirp, burp and growl - it's like living with a velociraptor. The last time I went to try to shut it off, the thing bit me.
I am an independent, strong-willed, free, and unfettered individual who lets his wife decide for him what he wants to eat.
You'd think skiing wouldn't be strenuous - all you have to do, after all, is start at the top and let gravity pull you to the dessert bar in the lodge. But at those elevations, you'll find about as much oxygen as you'll find kindness from your children. It's like spending six hours holding your breath.
I am the sort of athlete who participates in a lot of winter sports - basketball, for example, is an activity that I'll spend many hours a week watching.
I am a newspaper columnist and a professional screenwriter, but my real love is the novel for all the room it has for characters to come alive and breathe and face their challenges.
Not too many people know it, but when I was in junior high, I was a pretty tough kid and was the leader of a street gang. Well, OK, it was less a street gang than an Ecology Club. We were pretty intimidating, though, and had our own meeting room until we got run out of there by a bunch of thugs from the Poetry Society.
I've always thought that I'd make a pretty good police officer, except maybe for the danger part. I have a rare medical condition that makes it difficult for me to risk getting shot, so probably I'd have to be one of those officers who work in 'do not shoot' areas.
In my opinion, it has never been proven that food even has calories. When I bite into a hamburger, I see pickle and ketchup and bun and meat, but if there's a calorie in there, it must be hidden.
Without a dog, you'd never have anyone demonstrate how important it is to stop every day and smell the roses... and then lift your leg on them.
During the holidays, I often see my sisters, who still, even after all these years, can't always seem to agree with me. They take silly, indefensible positions, such as denying that my parents loved me more because I was the better child.
Parenting is difficult under any circumstances, and in my father's view, to raise a morally upright and honest child, you sometimes have to lie to him.
Even if you've gone easy on the vermouth, there are still serious downsides to alcohol consumption, including but not limited to the sense that you're a good dancer.
With a 3D printer, you could build your own car, one part at a time. When you were finished, you'd have an automobile that is extremely lightweight because it is made of plastic, which is good because you'd need to carry it because it is made of plastic.
The Internet has turned the world into one gigantic linked community, capable of instantly sharing vast amounts of incorrect information.
When you have a half slice of chocolate pie, it's as if you owe yourself the other half - what's known in medical circles as a 'caloric deficit.'
God invented love, and it is therefore perfect, and dogs are better at celebrating this perfection than we are. When in doubt as to how we should feel, we could do far worse than trying to live life like the dogs.
