At my office recently we all had to sign a document from corporate stating that we understood the drug and alcohol abuse policy they enforce. I certainly have no problem with that, since some of my least favorite ex-coworkers had drug and alcohol problems, including one who blazed up a doobie in the car in…

It seems to be a latter-day principal that the crowning achievement of an individual is that s/he be safe. Recently I was cleaning my computer keyboard with Formula 409, the bottle for which says that it’s “antibacterial.” On its face, I have no problem with this concept. Digging deeper, however, are several ironic contradictions, not…

Damn the Nazis for ruining so many potentially cool ideas, like Friedrich Nietzsche’s Will to Power, or his concept of the Ubermensche. I’ve read enough Nietzsche to say with some authority that his idea of a Superman wasn’t about race at all, but about the potential of all humans who have the will to become…

As many of you know, last year I was forced to migrate richardbarron.net, to our new web host, ipower.com, which I picked because it has nice features and a bargain price. The reasons we left mysitespace.com are… They changed control panels from an elegant, simple interface to an awkward, incomplete system. Our purchase plan included…

Here is an email I wrote to conservative/libertarian radio talk show host Neal Boortz, who like a lot of the shallowest in the public eye tend to wave the flag a little too hard to fan their ratings flames: As a fellow pilot I am curious about your apparent lack of concern regarding the Transportation…

In journalism, we run into, well, a lot of unpleasant people. We see the unwilling jackasses, who have had assness thrust upon then, like the victims of tragedies who don’t know how to handle themselves in a crisis, to the raw criminal element, who by virtue of raw stupidity or the occasional inheritance of fetal…

Let me make a few things clear… I do not believe that the war in Iraq addresses terrorism. I do not believe that the war in Iraq can be won. I was against the war in Iraq since the day it began. I believe it is a very serious mistake for America to assume that…

My sister Nicole and I are in Florida, tending to the details of our mother’s estate. One of our tasks is shredding the thousands, or maybe hundreds of thousands, of documents of Mom and Dad’s. They kept it all, and it all has key account and ID numbers on it. We have decided that in…

For some years this document was on the refrigerator door at Mom and Dad’s house in Florida. My sister was discussing Superfoods with Mom, and wrote out this list for her, placing it on the door of the fridge. Not knowing what it was, Dad came along and, thinking it was a grocery list, added…

This image is from the fall of 1982, in my dorm room at Oklahoma University. A few interesting tidbits about this image: Pictured are Michael, Allen, Chip, Chris and me. The color image is a slide made on Kodak Ektachrome Professional Infrared Film. The lens was my first 20mm, and the camera was a neat…

So we are presently digging though lots of stuff that was in Mom’s house, including a large box of photographs. I recognize many of them as my own, but others are pictures of my parents shot by their friends. Even others are of people or places that mean nothing to me. As I searched through…

As many of you know, it has been 40 years since the CIA faked the moon landings. I was just a kid then, and believed that it really happened, until a buddy of mine who shall remain nameless (though we could call him “Negative Guy”, or the guy who was in charge of fixing Y2K)…

In most of his early pictures, our father, Joe Barron, looks a lot like Elvis Presley. But while going through some family photos this afternoon, I found this, and I am struck by how much he resembles Jack Kerouac. It may be his posture, it may be his expression. It might just be his overall…

On the evening of July 4th, my sister Nicole began hearing fireworks outside of our mother’s house in Palm Coast, Florida, and suggested we go out into the driveway to see if we could see any. As we stood there, we observed lightning arcing through the tops of a thunderstorm on the horizon. I remarked…

Abby and I are home after driving 21 hours from Florida in Mom’s car. When we were packed and preparing to leave, the car was so full that Abby said, “you couldn’t get a dime in that back seat.” We made the trip in three days, and with Abby along it was actually pretty fun….

Welcome to the Winn-Dixie International Professional Baloney Eating Championship time trials, day 4. “I don’t understand! How can you not know exactly where the poop is going?” -D Rang tang tuna lung, buy a bottle of hooch. Real sign: “We have a urine-mobile!” “…realizant.” -S Real sign: “Smoked jerky ahead!” “…efulgent.” -S When bees copulate,…

Every year at Christmas for the last 20 years, Mom and Dad, and later Mom, had a big sandwich, called a Ring Leader, made for us by Publix deli, which would be our staple diet when there was no meal, like Christmas dinner, planned. We always got a big kick out of having the big…