What will I call my "Tweets of the Month" when Twitter goes away?

• Women age distinctly; men uniformly. As a woman ages, she becomes more individual -- her hair color, her laughter, her manner of dress -- all put her in sharp relief from other women. All men age the same. We lose hair, gain weight and generally stumble thru life w/ the bewildered expressions of men who mistake the sliding glass patio door for open and repeatedly slam into the invisible solid. If we lived to be 120, we wouldn't be able to walk 50 feet without someone confusing us for their Uncle Burt.

• We revel in the misfortune of less fortunate. We gloat when our hatreds provoke irrational acts. We care not who's killing whom as long as our pack can elude blame. I fear we're becoming a nation that behaves as if 50 percent of us were raised by wolves. The other 50 percent? They’d be the wolves. 

• I live in a house with 3 sassy women. And I'm under a constant barrage by boneheads eager to engage me in provocative political and social arguments. I hold my tongue so much it's a wonder my fingertips don't have tastebuds.

• I was stuck at an interminable red light wondering about all the things that take so damn long. Things like waiting for the computer to boot up, TSA lines, and getting stuck on IT hold. Our busy lives are consumed by mini-eternities. Want to know something that goes by like lightning? Sixty years. 

• I read because I'm convinced the more I have in my mind the less I'll have on it.

• I suggest we Pennsylvanians reshape our borders -- put some wiggles in 'em -- so we don't appear on maps like the state most likely to be used as the dead battery gauge when the USA starts to run out of power.

• My father died in ’04; mom in ’17. Their memories flicker fainter each year for our daughters, 22 and 16. It’s a pity. I wish on their tough days they could recollect how the faces of these two people lit up when they saw their beloved grandkids — and stayed brilliantly illuminated whenever they were blessed to be in their presence. I wish I had a pill — just one pill — that would restore all our memories. Not of childhood, but of infancy, when our every expression, sound or gesture provoked pure delight. The pill would remind us of what perfect love, security and hopefulness feels like. One pill. One dose. I’d prescribe it to America. 

• This is the time of year married men begin to envy leaves. Leaves get blown at least once a year.

• I sometimes fear my drive for ceaseless originality is weakening and I'm destined to reach back for the greatest hits. But I always conclude I'm being too hard on myself. I sometimes fear my drive for ceaseless originality is weakening and I'm destined to reach back for the greatest hits. But I always conclude I'm being too hard on myself.

• You can convert a home. You invert a fraction. You can subvert a good idea. You can transvert a landscape, and you can pervert an innocence wholesome and pure. Question: How come I’ve never seen, felt, heard, smelled or been invited to enjoy an illicit little vert. What is a vert? It can do so much yet it remains to me cloaked in mystery. Its humility may nevert be surpassed.

• Referring to men & women whose exercise goal is to strip their frames of any excess weight as body "builders" is fraudulent. They're not body builders. Now, me, I've spent the last few years adding enough closet space to my posterior it's surprising the township's not after me to staple a permit to my ass. Now, THAT's body building

• I realize the observation will cause some to think me ignorant at best, xenophobic at worst, but I was surprised to read Saigon has a thriving Chinatown neighborhood. Isn’t that like Cleveland having a busy Canadatown neighborhood? Sure, they’re distinct nationalities, but wouldn’t the differences be of interest to just a few anthropologists. It’s certainly an indication of the international popularity of the Chinese culture. It also has me wondering if most major Chinese cities have their very own Chinatowns or if that would take redundancy to absurd levels.

• That catbird means an advantageous position matters far less to me than the potential hybrid that results the day we mingle their DNA. Do you want as a house pet a cat that can fly or a bird that snoozes the day away cozied up on your lap? I'd go with the flying feline. And while we're at it, what would the titmouse look like if it looked like its component names?

• This is the time of year when I always begin to wonder if the nation of Turkey has a national bird. Could it be that obvious? Of course I'm the same guy who thinks a 3rd world African nation must have great take-out food just because the country's name is TO-GO.

• News that Buffalo is getting walloped with 5-feet of snow has me thinking that Buffalo should be renamed Uninhabitable. Even buffalo can't live in Buffalo. 

• I know to some patriots the charge itself is practically seditious, but the Founding Fathers got it all wrong when they called the place where the legislative branch does business the "House of Representatives." It would make more sense to call it, "The Big Room of Morally Shady Mostly White Men Whose Positions Bend According to the Latest Campaign Contributions.”

• I understand the mostly snobby reasons it's never mentioned alongside classic scenes from "Godfather" or "Citizen Kane," but one of the most compelling scenes in all American film is the hanging of Jake Spoon.

• On this day we as a nation should vow to never again say Happy Veteran's Day until we're certain we've done everything we can to ensure every veteran is happy.

• ”These kids today do nothing all day but stare at their stupid phones," say in unison the cranky old men who do nothing all day but stare at Fox News.

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• Doctor suggests I not drink my Wild Turkey straight, so I now drink bourbon & water. I drink water from 7 am to 5 pm. I drink bourbon from 5:01 to 10 pm.

• I vow to never describe anything as being cute as a button until someone shows me an actual button that any reasonable observer would consider cute. Describing a button as cute is like describing a utility poll as charming. The two are functional and should never be considered "cute."

A jiffy moment or two about time

(587 words)

I’m a guy with plenty of time on his hands so I wonder about the passing of time pretty much round the clock.

Speaking of clocks, historians say the first one was built in the year 1270. Catching a bus before then must have required infinite patience.

It sounds simplistic, but I wonder how they decided clock hands ought to go clockwise. Really, how would they know?

If anyone has time to study time, it ought to be me. It’s not like I’m one of those guys who has to punch a clock, a phrase that always reminds me of Henry David Thoreau who wondered (or should it be “pondered?”), “Is it possible to kill time without injuring eternity?”

Remind me to invite him to my next seance.

If I could only find the time. It just goes by so fast.

Like in an instant. A moment. A jiffy.

Each of those examples, by the way, is an actual unit of time.

A moment is a pre-clock medieval time measure that lasts precisely 90 seconds. I wonder how in those pre-clock days they timed 90 seconds. I guess they could have said, “A-one Mississippi! A-two Mississippi! …”

But knowing a moment is 90 seconds is useful to me and now, I hope, to you. You can now tell an annoying caller you'll "be one moment" and really take your time. I thought a moment was like 4 or 5 seconds, like within the realm of a winking flirtation.

In fact, an open-minded couple could go in 90 seconds from perfect strangers to being partners in an act that could conceivably result in the birth of a child. I’ve seen it done.

A friend of mine in college made meaningful eye contact with a girl he saw on the sidewalk and asked her if she’d like a house tour. I wondered later if she was from a different country where “house tour” translates to “instant sex.” But he really did get a girl in bed in 90 seconds.

I doubt he could have accomplished the same feat in a jiffy.

From Wikipedia: To physicists, a jiffy is how long light takes to travel a distance of one femtometre, which is a millionth of a millionth of a millimetre. That means that there are about three hundred thousand billion billion jiffys in a second.

Yet it takes at least 30 interminable minutes to get a basic suite of services at a vehicle maintenance shop called Jiffy Lube.

As for two shakes of a lamb’s tail, I become uncomfortable speculating about the origins of the phrase that certainly involves prolonged staring at the hind quarters of these gentle beasts.

I’ve heard too many stories of love-starved men succumbing to the carnal temptations of cattle and ‘round these parts we understand bedlam is an uproarious situation, but bed lamb is a rural scandal.

I’d like to see a judge sentence a bestiality convict to 50,000 shakes of a lamb’s tale.

Lesson: do sheep, do time.

Or does time do you?

It’s kind of like one of my favorite lines.

“Foolish mortal. You think you can kill time … Time kills you!”

It can be time for a change. Time goes by. You can call time out and be just in time. In your spare time you can save time. You can try to make time but will eventually run out of time.

Because time flies. It just never lands.

And that’s that. I’ve been doing these blogs since 2008, but this is the first one that ever directly took on the topic.

It’s about time.

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