I am absolutely sick unto death of hearing people say - they all say this; it must be Item One on the curriculum in Trend College - "I just hate to talk to a machine!" They say this as though it is a major philosophical position, as opposed to a description of a minor neurosis. My feeling is, if you have a problem like this, you shouldn't go around trumpeting it; you should stay home and practice talking to a machine you can feel comfortable with, such as your Water Pik, until you are ready to assume your place in modern society.

Wood heat is not new. It dates back to a day millions of years ago, when a group of cavemen were sitting around, watching dinosaurs rot. Suddenly, lightning struck a nearby log and set it on fire. One of the cavemen stared at the fire for a few minutes, then said: Hey! Wood heat! The other cavemen, who did not understand English, immediately beat him to death with stones. But the key discovery had been made, and from that day forward, the cavemen had all the heat they needed, although their insurance rates went way up.

English history consists largely of royal people getting their heads chopped off...Needless to say, this brand of history was a hit with our son.

We're deep into the holiday gift-giving season, as you can tell from the fact that everywhere you look, you see jolly old St. Nick urging you to purchase things, to the point where you want to slug him right in his bowl full of jelly.

The basic Roman ruin design is a pile of rocks with a little plaque saying "Roman Ruins" and a group of tourists frowning at it and wishing they were back at the hotel bar..

There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: passive systems collect the sunlight that hits your home, and active systems collect the sunlight that hits your neighbors' homes, too.

The Romans spent the next 200 years using their great engineering skill to construct ruins all over Europe.

Of course God enjoys a good prank as much as the next infallible deity.

One key lesson of history is that virtually anything, including afternoon or evening thundershowers, causes Germany to invade Belgium.