Drug Store Annoyances

By phone, drug stores are amazing.  You can ask to talk to a pharmacist at nearly any hour and get quick, accurate information without going through a doctor—even if you didn’t purchase your prescription there. But trekking to the pharmacy in person?  Yikes. Why can’t I leave my prescription and come back later? Instead of…

On Sun Phobia

Want to raise eyebrows?  Try telling people you sunbathe. What with fear of skin cancer, the compromised ozone layer, and the premature wrinkling caused by too much exposure, sunbathing has fallen so far out of favor in the last few decades that you might as well admit you chain-smoke unfiltered Camels. I’m naturally pale, like…

A Rant About Dry Cleaning

“Do Not Remove Tag!  Under Penalty of Law!” Remember when this warning, found on mattresses and pillows, inspired unthinking compliance instead of derision?  Well, I’ve been wondering why the “Dry Clean Only” label to which so many of us bow down isn’t regarded with similar bemusement. Dry cleaning has been around since the mid-19th century,…

A Rant About the Car Options

Somewhere in a parallel universe, economic, geopolitical and environmental factors have forced a civilization to rethink its automobile industry.  In a Piedmont Post exclusive, we are bringing you notes from this alien culture. Plan One: we’re retrofitting our cars for energy efficiency. New car manufacture has been the economic backbone of our city of Totride…

What’s With Elevators?

Much as I appreciate being able to travel up and down the floors of a highrise in defiance of the acceleration of gravity (not to mention the acceleration of arthritis), there are some aspects of elevator technology with which I’m… well, not impressed. 1.  What level do I want? Will physicists someday develop a unified…

Childhood’s Wrecking Ball

Originally published in the S.F. Chronicle, Sunday, October 11, 1998   Thousand Oaks Elementary School is gone now, and I suppose one could argue that the field of dirt on which a new structure will ultimately be built is already an improvement over what the place had become.  Years of neglect had ravaged the once…