Additional Gratuity: $____

Room service is notoriously bad. The food comes from the same restaurant next to the lobby that features such anachronisms as chicken cacciatorie. Once I ordered prime rib at a boutique hotel in San Francisco. You know -- boutique -- the kind of charming establishment that charges double the market rate, uses nineteenth century keyholes, and earns you points toward absolutely nothing.

The hotel had already automatically added 19 percent gratuity, plus a five dollar delivery charge. It was the space right under the subtotal that nearly made me laugh out loud. It read --and I am not making this up -- "Additional tip: ______." What additonal tip would be appropriate, considering I'd already paid $29 for a sinewy piece of overcooked meat and limp vegetables, and a square of cellophane stretched over my glass of house wine?

Don't forget - there's a 10 percent sales tax, so with all charges so far I'd already sunk $44. I thought of a really small amount, maybe a couple of dollars, just to show that I hadn't veered off protocol. Then I thought of a big, fat goose egg, as if saying "I saw the space and intentionally chose to give you nothing."

The Collective Karma of Flight

Airplanes don't take off because of the laws of physics. That's just a ruse, an easy explanation for a dark secret that one of the Wright brothers stumbled upon. All that talk about curved wings and air pressure is nonsense. No, the airplane is willed into the air.

Observe this on your next flight. The engines gear up, the plane lurches down the runway, and everyone stops what they're doing. Readers look up. Sleepers wake up. Churchgoers pray. Agnostics look indecisive.

It's the collective karma of the plane that gets it into the air. Orville simply had the mojo; Wilbur did not. This fact makes the risks of flight somewhat under your control. On a Monday morning your fellow passengers will be scowling vice presidents. Hear that hissing sound? It's not the adjustable jets of air, my friend. It's the sound of a negative karma vortex, spiraling into the dangerous territory of iced wings and freak turbulence. Tread carefully.

You're better off booking a flight in the hooky hours of the day: 10:30am; 2:15pm. Here you'll find breezy security lines and throngs of vacationers on their way to their Sandals vacation package in Cancun. The earnest working stiffs of the world, positive energy abounding. If you're really lucky, children will be well-represented. They can be a headache, I admit. They knock over the venti that had been perched so precariously on the floor next to your rollaboard. But you must remember that unless they're one of the Hiltons, this is their first flight, maybe their second. Their belief in the miracle is strong, so strong.

Reincarnated

Wondering why that Toyota Prius silently plying the street looks so familiar? Maybe it was designed "in the tradition" of another Japanese subcompact.

And the Chrysler 300. Finally, an American car with style. But were the designers inspired by Magritte?