Here's something I sent to my friend and former employer, David Berger, just after we moved here in 2003. He liked it and encouraged me to share it, so at last, here goes:

I told Paul about a word picture of California I came up with, illustrating life here. By design, it is best understood by a man:

"You are standing looking at a beautiful ocean scene that exceeds description. California comes into view, personified as a gorgeous breathtaking, statuesque blond, with a captivating, even seductive smile and an inviting physical presence. Moving forward toward this beauty, something soon becomes evident, impossible to detect from a distance. There is an odor. Oops, she smells bad, okay, you can deal with that, but then, as you get close enough to engage this stunner in conversation, she smiles and as she speaks you suddenly realize that she has a case of halitosis the likes of which you've never encountered. She smells like something died inside her mouth long ago. Not only that, but her smile, as gorgeous and appealing as it is, upon closer inspection is evidently made up of the only teeth in this babe's mouth. The teeth behind the front ones, are either missing or rotten and jagged. You look deep into those liquid blue eyes and suddenly realize this girl is the recipient of more than one face lift, and her body at present does not resemble the one God intended, having been surgically altered; in fact her hair is a wig..with synthetic hair. No one knows what is under the that wig except the wearer, and she knows only too well because she has spent the greater part of her life gazing lovingly into her mirror, but only under lighting that is as flattering as possible. She can't quite see you because you did not originate in her mirror and because in her vanity, she refuses her glasses and wears contacts that provide luminous blue color, but nothing else. You reach out to politely introduce yourself, to take her hand, but she can only reach over and shake her own. Her capacity to touch someone else in any meaningful way died a long time ago, when her "doctrine" became "The National Enquirer". She can engage in conversations only about her interests, or what she perceives her gurus (in superficial, egotistical ignorance) stridently think is permissible." The End