The Buddha said that we're not punished for our anger but by our anger.

That is why, whenever possible, I turn the other cheek (recommended by another credible source). I've let go of bad calls during the World Series, the disappearance of tax money, and SUVs taking up three lanes at once; but there is one grumble I just can't fight off:

Walkie-talkie cell phones.

It's bad enough to be surrounded by people who used to be perfectly quiet, but now we hear both ends of the gobbledyblab.

"Hey, Dave, this is Bob. I was just calling because silence scares me."

"Hey, Bob. I'm on the other line with Betty. She's got lint stuck between her toes. Let's talk three-way!"

And each sentence ends with that little blood-curdling "chirp." That's what Sprint would have you call them -- "chirps." Cheery name for something that has doubled the rate of hypertension (science is only beginning to understand the effects of second-hand conversation).

Having given this some thought, I have decided that I am prepared to give my life in a war against the walkie-talkie cell phone. It's the least I can do to save our grandchildren from living in a world chirp where even the Buddha chirp would chirp chirp go chirp insaaaane chirpchirpchirpchirp.

I didn't know I was a vegetarian till the day I dropped a live crab into the steam cooker. It was the first time I had to watch my food die. I can still hear the crab clicking the inside of the pot, squealing like a hot dog in the microwave.

I never really had a policy on meat. I just followed the unwritten law: It's okay to eat animals so long as they're not cute. At grumpy, drunken get-togethers, relatives would ask me to go hunting, but I never agreed for fear that I would shoot someone. On purpose.

Crabs are not cute by any stretch, but you'd think I was boiling Bambi the way it haunted me. I was supposed to be sprinkling garlic, but all I could do was tap back on the outside of the pot.

It's pretty naive for me to reach this age without considering crab pain. This animal has appeared on my salads, in burritos ... I threw one during a food fight at summer camp!

I'm still shaken up over crab night. I can tell by how I recently sprinted into the kitchen to rescue a hot dog from the microwave. I can no longer eat meat without considering how it died and whose pet it might have been. Maybe I'll become one of those nuts who doesn't eat broccoli because it has a basic central nervous system.

At any rate, I won't be killing any more crabs. Well, unless you count my relatives.

My grandpa is 83. I'm sorry -- 83 years, 5 months (he's back to counting in halves). That is four years past the life expectancy of American males. I know this because he tells me every time I visit.

For grandpa death isn't a concern; it's a lifestyle. He schedules his week around dates with Dr. Mioto, whose BMW he has personally financed. It starts every morning at six, when grandpa reads the obituaries.

"See there," he points. "80 years old, heart failure. Right on schedule."

To stay out of the paper, my grandpa takes pills. By the silo. He totes them around in an alabaster box and swigs 'em down before meals, sometimes during grace. One pill helps his blood pressure but causes trembling; another stops the trembling but causes cramping. When Neo asked whether my grandpa wanted the blue pill or the red pill, he said, "Yes."

"Got to keep the old body ticking."

And that's the point: My grandpa has turned himself over to science. He's got pills to make his hair grow and heart beat and lungs breathe -- stuff that has been happening without meds for 83 years. 83 and a half! My fear is that the old fart is going to die of medication.

Last week over dinner -- spaghetti and meds -- grandpa couldn't stop praising Dr. Mioto. It went on so long that I wondered if the doctor wasn't prescribing BS. My grandpa isn't senile, but he's at that stage where life is like a box of whatmacallits. He doesn't flinch when the doctor says, "We can't figure out your rash, so we're just going to rub more money on it and see what happens."

I've tried to pull my grandpa from his bender, but he can't hear me. He's beaten the odds by four years and owes it all to his alabaster box. And so long as we keep thinking that way, our gods will drive BMWs.

On the totem pole of life, advertisers fall somewhere between the bedbugs and the serial killers. Consumer psychologists study the psyche not to assist the growth of human beings but to exploit them for commercial profit.

It didn't surprise me, then, to find advertisements crammed into textbooks at our local college. The ads weren't pitching part-time employment or affordable housing; they were selling acne meds!

Is your face oozing with pus from your repulsive hormonal imbalance? Scared to death that others secretly hate you? Then try Proactiv, the most expensive rubbing alcohol on earth!

Come to think of it, totem poles start beneath the dirt, which is why we never see advertisers.