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In a day and age when there are so many different types of people, with various races, ethnicities and personalities, there is one type I'm more likely to associate with frequently.

I have an insatiable and unconscious desire to surround myself with Dr Pepper drinkers.

But Iím also convinced that most Dr Pepper drinkers are psychotic.

Which comes first is unclear. And calling someone psychotic can be misconstrued, so Dr Pepper drinkers, donít take this personally. But ponder the following arguments.

The world's not revolving faster, nor have its inhabitants been hibernating, but time is moving faster. If time doesn't slow down, it could get pulled over, and it won't stand a chance in court.

Vacations have a lot to do with the insane pace of minutes. No, not the vacation you take. The vacation other people around you take. Many people working at the Journal have taken trips all across the United States, even to Canada. When someone leaves any business for a break, the remaining people must suffer the consequences.

Most sensible people would probably concede, pay the ticket and try harder next time. Not me. Finally, Aug. 2 at 8:50 a.m., the charges were dismissed. I was a free man. But the way it happened was a bit intriguing.

Boy it's hot outside. That's why I'm inside now. People keep talking about beating the heat. You've got to be kidding. You couldn't even beat the heat with a large frying pan. To avoid one silly cliché, I've decided to live by another — if you can't beat it, join it. Here's a short list of things to do to join the heat:

Start a fire — You can burn a lot faster, and burn a lot more for that matter. The folks at Woodstock 99 decided to light a few bonfires, loot shops and get really, really angry. Unfortunately, Willie Nelson escaped with few burns.

Bad things happen.

There's nothing anyone can do; they just happen. This past week, we saw our fair share of incidents. Nationally, a man whose life has been in a continual spotlight died in a plane crash. Locally, a young woman was found dead after being missing since July 4.

Tragedies strike at all times, mostly when least expected. There are numerous levels of tragedies, yet they all come back to one thing — loss. Losing something or someone can be devastating. But eventually, the void becomes a part of you, while you try fervently to concentrate on other things.

AOL has had its moments over the years, but attempting to level a tax on sending email is just a bit over the top. Fortunately, with the help of MoveOn.org, there's an online petition you can sign to thwart this from starting.

The organization has created Our Open Letter to AOL to help prohibit AOL and other ISPs from setting a tax on emails. Let's face it: Would you pay to send an email?

Last month I was in Wal-Mart, and I aimlessly wandered into the vitamin aisle. There were hundreds of nutritional supplement items, but one caught my attention – shark cartilage.

Unfortunately, the label contained little information pertaining to what the product actually does, such as make one lose weight or grow a dorsal fin.

As a kid, I used to see "Jaws" on my wall at bedtime. Now I see health companies trying to withhold routine information on Jaws' cousins.

One of the toughest things I have found as a new novelist is finding objective reviews. It seems that most friends and family members, as truthful as they may be, have insider information that makes it difficult to be unbiased. While I have received a few great reviews from people I did not know, I haven't received a large amount of bad ones. Which might be good, but then again, who wants to review a bad book?

Google recently made a mildly surprising announcement (at least, to me) that the company is shutting down its online collaboration tool, Wave. Google does a lot of cool, neat and worthy stuff obviously, and I think Wave fits into this category. It's just that the actual marketing of it was rather peculiar.

Writing a review for Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is sort of Catch-22. If I don't tell you enough about it, you probably won't be interested in the book. But if I tell you too much, you won't have to read it because you'll already know what it's about.

But I suppose I should try.