June tweets of the month!

This picture of me in my Tin Lizzy office was taken in '15 by my buddy Brian Henry. We spent the morning doing a bunch from all over this neat old landmark, which dates back to 1750. Sometimes when I'm feeling mischievous, I turn the "9" upside down so it'll confuse any deliverymen or women who come all the way up to the 3rd floor to deliver me an important package. This has never happened not even once.

Follow my tweets @8days2Amish. Have a great weekend!

• My great fear isn't that the Fascists will come to burn all the books. My great fear is that when the Fascists come to burn all the books our collective indifference will have rendered all the books irrelevant.

• In ongoing quest to prepare you and I for the afterlife, I will now devote the next hour to resolving if Heaven has time zones.

• Some men spend days solving complicated problems. I just came up with this: "A burp's just a fart that's afraid of the dark.”

• There will still be traffic in heaven, but there will be no more road rage.

• Those eager to see a hyphen in this sentence will suffer from dashed hopes.

• If violence is never the answer then what's wrong with us that we must again and again keep asking the question?

• Once again a bad guy with a gun is stopped by the same bad guy with the same gun.

• Eternity means having all the time all the time …

• Families are God's way of proving we're incapable of helping even those we love the very most.

• Daughter, 16, said she wants to have a big family. What she means is she wants to choose who's in her family.

• On 73rd DDay anniversary I wonder how they could be The Greatest Generation and still have raised so many jackasses like me?

• ”Eve of Destruction" is most harrowing protest song ever. Lyrics remain relevant. I'd like to hear a current re-release but sung by Muppets.

• William Shakespeare is a famous writer. William Shakesbeer is a guy you don't want to be next to at the party.

• I like that a man whose name is pronounced COMBy has really great hair. 

• Something expert Egyptologists are reluctant to admit: Most mummies were daddies.

• There’s no church in heaven. Purpose of church is to get people to be good so they go to heaven. In heaven, people already good & in heaven.

• I can look at any woman and know instantly whether or not their daddy was a tickler. 

• McCartney was an optimist, cheerfully convinced it would all work out. Lennon a pessimist, grimly sure of eventual doom. Who was right?

• I lied when I said I'd never disdain a prez the way opponents disdained Obama. Difference? My antipathy is based on character, not color.

• The whole arc of human history is bent on turning every luxury into a necessity.

• Always amused when officials at mass shooting du jour rule out terrorism. Like we're supposed to be relieved it's just some white dude.

• Dennis Rodman goes to NKorea & gets American released. Never thought I'd say this, but he brings stabilizing influence to US foreign policy.

• Given it involves our twin unhealthy obsessions of sports/politics I wonder how many are most upset 'cuz they have Scalise on fantasy team.

• Self-publishing book is like home schooling kid. You think you know better than pros & pray your work doesn't result in something moronic.

• Full disclosure: Anytime you see any writer use phrase "Full disclosure:" understand they're about to write self-important BS.

• Missing golfing w/ Dad on Father's Day. Golfing w/ Dad was to me like church is to other people only with beer and fart jokes.

• Many adamant about seeing Trump's taxes. Me, I'd appeal to his showmanship: Either show us your returns or what you look like w/out the wig.

• There are 310,800 hip replacements per year. Question: what do they do with bones. I fear I'm not as hip as I used to be and, well, you know.

• It must have been difficult for cartoonists to animate a bombastic character named Foghorn Leghorn & not show him cranking out a single fart.

• I wonder if parents of boys born above the Arctic Circle ever struggle with the illogic of naming the fair-skinned lads Tanner.

• Was feeling bad about not taking family to the ocean this summer when I realized no biggie. Oceans are coming to us. #climatechange

• In my quest to find people whose names make them perfectly suited for their occupations, I'm now searching for a farmer named Doug Root.

• This is bound to sound naive but couldn't we stall disastrous results of rising oceans by simultaneously lifting all big boats out of water?

• What if you get to heaven & find they were serious about  forgiveness & it's full of folks you with whom you got into Facebook fights over Trump?

• Am disappointed to learn Asheville, NC, was named after Gov. Sam Ashe and not piles of ash. Next question: Was Ashe a tobacco farmer?

• Cosby planning on holding "town halls" on sexual abuse. Now that sounds like it's bound to be a forum for reasoned debate.

• I wonder what kind of bureaucratic mayhem will result if they ever decide it's in our best interests to drug test our nation's pharmacists.

• Given temp trends, I predict within 10 years, our idea of an "adventure vacation" will be anything outdoors & above ground.

• In order to lend cerebral precision to your putdowns, descending order of IQ stupidity is Moron (50-69), Imbecile (20-49) & Idiot (below 20)

• It’s an interesting fact that the more we acknowledge our own human flaws the more slight become our actual flaws.

More

• I never dreamed I'd say this about a Commander 'n Chief, but forget impeachment. The man should be horsewhipped.

• I wonder what Socrates used to say when people asked him if he was ever going to get a real job.

Related …

June ’16 tweets

June ’15 tweets

June ’14 tweets

June ’13 tweets

Cool solutions to melting Antarctic

(649 words)

Alarming news about the rapidly melting Antarctic glaciers has me scrambling for silver linings. They say the inundation of as much as 13-feet of water could swamp global coastlines where 50 percent of the world’s population lives.

Could disaster be averted if everyone in the heartland started digging really deep backyard pools?

The problem isn’t having too much water. Water is essential to human life.

The problem is having too much water where no one needs any more water.

I used to worry Earth was going to run out of water. Now, I worry we’re going to have too much. It’s like every other day humanity must decide whether it wants to die of thirst or drown.

When did life become such a daily disaster film?

Researchers say a Texas-sized iceberg is about to break off the Antarctic. They say this will eventually melt, a prelude to the loss of the icy continent. Fun fact: ants, the most prolific species on the planet, can be found on every continent except the one that includes “A-N-T” in its name.

So everyone is fretting a Texas-sized iceberg is about to break off into the ocean.

I say tow it to Texas!

That much fresh water could turn the arid state into a green paradise. I love the plush Texas Hill Country, but dousing the scrub lands of West Texas could transform deserts into farmlands that could feed the world.

I’ve never been to west Texas, but I understand it’s very flat and unrelentingly nondescript. Texas troubadour Robert Earl Keen says it's so flat that on a clear day you can see the back of your own head.

Besides agricultural uses, that much water could serve civic purposes. Texas is full of filthy Texans who could — lather, rinse, repeat — use a good soaking, giving fresh meaning to “scrub” lands. 

I used to think industrial efforts to desalinate ocean water for human purposes just confirmed my theory that humans are nothing more than parasites with personalities.

But rising oceans may make mass desalination necessary.

That’s because a major part of my planet-saving plan will require lots and lots of fresh water. 

I’m talking about saving the planet by — hallelujah — drinking more.

Sure, you’re welcome to wuss out and drink plain water. I’m unsure about the legitimacy of the claim and too lazy to research its validity, but it’s recommended we all drink “8 x 8” (eight 8 ounce glasses of water) each day.

It makes sense. Our bodies are 60 percent water. Again, without the benefit of research I’ll speculate the rest is 30 percent muscle, 6 percent bone, 3 percent compacted fecal matter and 1 percent brain.

Feel free to transpose the last two percentages based on political party affiliation. 

But water is essential. It flushes toxins, carries nutrients to cells and provides necessary moisture — our bodies’ oil — to all our moving parts.

Of course, the real yeoman work will be done by a demographic frequently disparaged as drags on the planet, not its saviors.

I’m talking beer drinkers.

Each beer is about 90 to 95 percent water.

I was too muddle-minded to realize it, but I’ve spent much of the last 35 years helping to save the plant.

Heck, from 1981-1999, I was practically a Superhero.

We can be the wobbly vanguard of a new environmental movement, only instead of bagging sand on flood plains we’d be the ones in the bag.

Instead of spending our bar time discussing things like sports and which weather babes give us high pressure systems in our pants, we could elevate our conversation.

We could talk about climate change and how it’ll effect our bar. 

And we could address the next big problem that’ll be a direct result of solving the last big one.

That being: Where the hell are we going to put all the piss?

Related …

On the hottest day of the year, a toast to ice

I want an overnight solution to climate change … now!

Getting real angry about fake news

SCOPEtics & sunny side of global warming

Roll Tide: The last winter day

Pledge Week results!

(485 words)

The people have spoken! 

And they said, “Ehhh …”

My earnest, ballyhooed, passionate blog pledge drive landed with a thud. Total haul from 10 enthusiasts: $547.

That was four $100 donations, one $52, two $25, one $20, a $15 and a $10. Each donor will receive equal prominence on the acknowledgements page of my new “Use All The Crayons! II,” which I hope to have available for sale by September. And each will receive a free signed copy.

So what do I do with my “windfall?” What’s the splurge? I hadn’t seen my sunglasses in about a month. I’d had them about six years and was eager to update with something stylish. I’d planned on going to The Eyeglass Shoppe on Route 30  today to shoppe, er, shop.

But I found the old ones rattling around beneath the driver’s seat Sunday morning on my way to church.

Nothing’s going right!

Now I’m conflicted about the blog’s future. Certainly, it must change.

I don’t doubt that many people really enjoy it and consider it a welcome distraction. For the first time, I had three months in a row with more than 10,000 unique views from all over the world. That’s not insignificant.

We’re talking Trump inauguration numbers.

And I really enjoy keeping it lively and fresh. It indulges a swampy part of my mind where offbeat ideas stew and seek release.

But, geez, there’s another part of my mind, the minuscule stump where cold logic dwells, that shouts the blog is a tremendous waste of time and energy.

I’d hoped to show that part of my mind a great, big bag of money to refute all its shrill protests. Take that, brain!

Alas, it is not meant to be. 

I’ve started a new novel and I think it’s time to really inhabit it, to divert all the time and thought I use for the blog and apply it to a new novel. I intend it to be fast and funny. My goal is write about 60,000 words by Labor Day and have some version of the story on Amazon in time for the holidays.

What’s the book about? It’s a satire about the upheaval the introduction social media wreaks on the afterlife. It centers on a star-crossed Romeo and Juliet couple only instead of Juliet being on a balcony, she’s in heaven and instead of Romeo being on a plaza, he is in hell.

It’s a match made in heaven.

And hell!

And it’s all thanks to Facebook.

Maybe this will be the project that leads to some sort of authorial stability.

Maybe not.

I now know this after nine years: no stability will come from blogging four or five times each week.

It’s like what Branch Rickey told future Pirate Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner when Kiner said he was too valuable to be traded.

“Ralph,” Rickey said, “we finished last with you, we can finish last without you.”

Related …

My career advice: Don’t be like me!

Telling the truth to writers about writing

My business plan: Keep feeding the unicorn

How to review “Last Baby Boomer” and praise from those who have

The 12th post: a blog on bloggin’