The Meaning of Life for $40 an Hour --and No Questions About Mom
Operation Desert Storm giving you cosmic doubts?
In need of an epistemological tuneup? Worried whether man’s free will is real or just some metaphysical put-on?
If so, Ben Mijuskovic is at your service. For $40 an hour, he’s prepared to talk philosophy with you, point out some books and generally soothe your Angst .
This is not psychotherapy. No couches, no discussion of your mother.
This is not tutoring. No mandatory reading lists, no pop quizzes.
What Mijuskovic has in mind is something that is done in Europe but is new to these shores: individually tailored bull sessions on The Big Questions.
His credentials are top-drawer: Ph.D. in philosophy from UC San Diego, teaching stints at UCSD, San Diego State, Northwestern and Southern Illinois universities. Plus four books and 42 published articles.
Mijuskovic, 53, a resident of Solana Beach, is a social worker at a county mental health clinic in Oceanside.
He decided to branch out to a private practice of philosophical counseling even before the bombs hit Baghdad. But he figures the war will increase the number of people who can use a bit of values clarification:
“People are asking about the meaning of human existence, the future of the race and whether values are relative or absolute.”
As someone whose expertise stretches from the pre-Socratics to the post-World War II existentialists, Mijuskovic thinks he can provide a framework:
“I’m looking to address the concerns of people who are not yet dysfunctional but are searching for a workable set of beliefs and values.”
Mijuskovic has had some nibbles but no solid bites. He’s patient; Spinoza wasn’t built in a day.
To introduce his service, Mijuskovic recently took an ad in the personals column. As Descartes might have said, “I advertise, therefore I am.”
Nice Work If You Can Get It
News and views.
* The last laugh.
First it was learned that John Duffy would retire at full salary. Now it turns out he’ll make more as a retiree than as sheriff and get annual raises.
For his final two years, his “friends” on the Board of Supervisors kept his salary unchanged. As a retiree, he just got a 3% raise.
Up to $96,163 a year.
* Bumper sticker at Camp Pendleton: “Say No to War.” Inside the car, a Marine wife and two children.
* Spotted in San Diego: Car with a dummy sticking out of the trunk. On the dummy, a sign saying “Saddam.”
* Cops have a name for rowdy demonstrators: Peace punks.
* Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Marin) talks today at a luncheon of the feminist San Diego Lawyers Club. She’s thinking of a Senate try.
* A menacing-looking carrying case set off a bomb scare Thursday in the parking lot of downtown police headquarters.
Area cordoned off. Bomb squad and dogs called. Lots of tension.
The case proved to contain the laptop computer of a San Diego Tribune cop reporter, who had put it on his car’s roof and driven off.
* Jughead’s Bar in Oceanside is a favorite among network news crews covering Camp Pendleton. Bartenders answer the phone: “CNN Jughead Bureau.”
War of Words
After the San Diego City Council voted, 7 to 0, to endorse U.S. action in the Persian Gulf, Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer found herself in an elevator with a still-angry peacenik.
Kim Jensen, a San Diego State University student from La Mesa, said Wolfsheimer was overheard describing her with a word that rhymes with “witch,” as in “that little . . . “
Wolfsheimer doesn’t remember saying that. But she does recall that Jensen was “railing.”
“I told her she should be ashamed of herself,” Wolfsheimer said.
As for the witch sound-alike, Jensen concedes she aimed the same word at Wolfsheimer.
Ah, political dialogue.