Best tweets of October (rough)

I was railing against the world of woe to some friends who advised me to embrace the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer -- "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference." I considered it, but decided instead to pray that God grant me God-like powers for just 12 hours. Goodbye war in Ukraine! Goodbye climate change! Goodbye credit card debt! Hello my name on the best seller lists and the return of $4 beers at the baseball games!

•There ought to be a weather person museum with one wall dedicated to the memory of early meteorologists who used rudimentary science to explain to the primitives that lightning was the result of atmospheric conditions — and not the wrath of a vengeful God. Nearby there should be a scholarly presentation of the many times mobs of religious fanatics disagreed and tried to settle the dispute once and for all by burning the sassy heretic at the stake.

 

• Inhumanity results anytime man opts to wage war. "Wage" is too commanding a verb to cede exclusively to war. You never hear of anyone waging anything but war. Let the change begin with me. On this beautiful day, I shall wage golf. Our children will wage school. And Val will wage pickleball! And we can all hope someone, somewhere is trying to wage peace.

• I’d like to see what would happen if we really sealed the borders. Not with Mexico. I'm talking Burning Man. No one gets in or out. It would be fascinating to see what kind of society this group of nihilists would create, How would they worship? Care for their sick? How would their Olympic team perform? Then let's try the same experiment with people who really like cats.

• If your child is attending the Greater Latrobe Senior Sunrise ceremony, be sure to advise them to be looking East. Not West. Tell them to ignore any fellow students who tell them to look West. And don’t worry. I’m already reaching out to school administrators about contingency plans should  today be the day the sun chooses not to rise.

• People who say they’re flat broke as if it’s the very worst financial situation are wrong. Let me tell you: some of us aspire to being flat broke, which implies a certain leveling. We not only lack dough, but every where we look we see disheartening divots of debt. Flat broke? Try being concave broke.

• If I’ve ever even seen one then I did not know what I was looking at, but when a pigeon is in its pigeon hole is it facing forward or backward? I mean, are we seeing the pigeon’s face or the pigeon’s hole?

• Woke bolt upright in a cold sweat. dreamt I’d had an accident on a busy city intersection. No one was hurt, but my car burst into flames. I escaped in the nick of time. I was standing there grateful to be alive when I realized everyone was staring at me. I’d forgotten. It was “Don’t Wear Pants While You’re Driving Friday!” How embarrassing. Oh, well. Happy “Don’t Wear Pants While You’re Driving Friday!”

• Because I’m all for removing violence from the language I will henceforth no longer use the term “bullet points” to describe punchy ideas. I’ll instead call those breakout ideas “Levitating Conclusionary Punctuation.” I gotta tell you, something in my gut tells me this one won’t be catching on …

• It is estimated that 52 percent of Americans will die in hospital beds. I hope I die on a battlefield — not as a warrior, certainly, but as a guy who made a wrong turn and wound up in lethal crossfire while asking for directions to the nearest Appleby’s 

• Just dawned on me that I never heard the old man drop an f-bomb. He’d use profanity, say, on the golf course, but never the f-bomb. Now, I’m not willing to cede he was a better father. After all, the man raised me and I use two f-bombs when I ask someone at the supper table to pass the salt so he went wrong somewhere.

• Friend at the gym said she just made her goal weight. “And that was with my shoes on!” she said, alluding to a tactic with which many of us are aware: Do not step on the scale wearing shoes, heavy clothes, etc., lest the result be tainted by extraneous factors. I know some who won’t step on a scale until they’ve evacuated their bowels. To me, they’re all pikers. I don’t step on the scale until I’ve aggressively trimmed my nose hairs.

• I used to mock the excessively tattooed, but as I age and my appearance becomes less and less appealing, I see at vivid tattoo as a way of distracting observers from examining all the flaws. Or I could just save the dough and stop wearing pants in public. 

• Just read India, pop. 1.4 billion, may change its name to Bharat. I doubt anyone there would pay any mind to me, but I’d like them to instead consider changing it to the Republic of Fred. I’ve known a number of Freds in my life and not a one of them ever started any trouble. Just easy-going guys. Maybe if you named a nation Fred then Freds would follow. But what do I know? I’m the guy who whenever he sets foot in Murrysville, pop. 21,738, is always reminded I’ve never met a single Murry in Murrysville.

• He’s one of history’s most revered orators and his is one of mankind’s most monumental speeches, but if Abe Lincoln returned and began a live broadcast with the words, “Four score and 7 years ago …” every viewer would immediately tune him out and begin poking at their phones to figure out just what the hell he was talking about.’