Cosmic Truths

1. Waiters in Chinese restaurants always wear white socks

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2. The mail on Tuesdays is unrelentingly awful, suggesting some black hole or otherwise in the universe.

3. When someone begins their comments about something you have written by telling you it was well written, watch out.  If they tell you up front that it was very well written, they undoubtedly hate it.

4. Jam or preserves that are red or blue contain some secret ingredient that causes them to drop off your toast and onto your shirt.  Yellow preserves are more considerate, but marmalade does have a mind of its own.

5. Persons who correct you have no interest in hearing your side of the story.

6. Persons who tell you there is a fleck of spinach on your tooth expect to be thanked.

7. If someone prefaces a remark to you with the disclaimer that they hate to be the one to bring the subject up, they are in fact eager to become the first person to introduce the topic.

8. The guards at crosswalks near schools have hidden agendas.

9. One way to tell if a particular book has been self-published by the author is to check the spelling of the “Acknowledgments” on the acknowledgments pages, where it is incorrectly spelled with an extra e after the d.

10. Spell and grammar checkers make as many errors in judgment as you do.

11. Signs written with capital and lower-case letters are more legible than signs using all caps.

12. Supermarket managers who have mustaches are more likely than un-mustached managers to take on an air of superiority when you ask them where the Braunschwiger is shelved.
13.  If you try to order a particularly spicy dish in a Korean restaurant, you will be told you wouldn’t like it.

14. When editors tell you your sentences are too long and they are otherwise interested in publishing your work, they will invariably tell you that Faulkner could get away with them.  If you wait too long before you reply, they will tell you that of course Faulkner did not sell all that well during his lifetime.

15. When a student tells you there was a problem with understanding an assignment, it means the assignment frightened them into a non-understanding mode.

16. Mail on Wednesdays is not all that great, either, but you get the impression it is at least trying.

17. Most self-service gasoline stations are completely empty until you need a fill-up; at which point the only empty pumps are on the opposite side of your tank.

18. Libertarians are committed to free speech until it becomes your time to talk.

19. Persons who do not like things you have written will tell you that they have literary tastes.

20. Persons who actually have literary tastes and do not like your writing will tell you they never read commercial fiction or journalism.

21. Whenever you go to a supermarket during rush hour, there is always an elderly woman, her purse filled with pennies, watching you in order to step in line in front of you.

22. Mornings when you go out for breakfast because you were too needy to make your own coffee, the waitresses see you, and then gather in the back of the room to make jokes about you.

23. Nothing is as bad for your appetite as a misspelling on a menu.
24. If you are in a dog friendly restaurant and asked by a fellow patron to watch his/her dog while he/she goes to the lavatory, the dog will seize the opportunity to get into a fight with another dog.

25. People are more likely to mistake you for someone they know in outdoor restaurants rather than indoor venues.