January Tweets of the Month!

Donald Trump’s twitter feed has 23 million; Barack Obama, 82 million. A twitter feed purporting to be God has just 217,000. 

My 8days2Amish has just 1,658. I’m not saying I should have as many as Trump or Obama, but you’d think the following wisdoms would at least lead to as many as God.

No matter. It all winds up here on the blog sooner or later. Thanks for reading!

• I hope 2017 is the year when someone -- anyone -- tells me I'm great and dumps a big bucket of Gatorade over my head. 

• I may be misjudging the man, but I suspect every time Trump leaves the White House he steals a towel or two.

• People who say revenge is a dish best served cold fail to realize if revenge had a drive-thru the traffic would stretch for miles.

• You can play a mean bluegrass banjo or country fiddle on earth & it won't matter. Once you get to heaven, everyone's in a soul band.

• A pessimist dwells on the fact that Smallpox killed 15 million. An optimist says at least it wasn't Bigpox.

• If they gave the death sentence for killing time could you live forever? 

• Scientists say earth is 4.543 billion years old. Wikipedia says "Catwoman" actress Eartha Kitt died in 2008 at the age of 81.

• I used to pretend I was too sick to go to school. Now, I pretend I'm not hungover nights after I swore to wife I wouldn't drink too much.

• God helps those who help themselves. I only help those who help me. Something to think about next time you have a couch that needs moving.

• I wonder if clever HVAC men ever entertain themselves at conduit installations by asking, "Tubey or not tubey?”

• Does being a Born-Again Christian mean you get to eat twice as much as you did before?

• Photos of even unpatriotic chefs making soup are often stirring.

• Pessimists suffer from pre-traumatic stress disorder.

• “London Bridges Falling Down" is a popular nursery rhyme. London britches falling down is a sartorial scandal of epic proportions.

• Try and do at least one thing each week that will blow your hair back and allow you to scream, “Wheeeeeeee!!!"

• Scientists who declare matter cannot be created nor destroyed have never observed a bar of soap in a shower.

• I’d like to attend a church where the pastor says, "Spoiler alert!" before even familiar Bible stories like the crucifixion.

• I’m dumbfounded I'll be 54 next month and I still haven't sucked face with Madonna. Oh, well, there's still a few weeks so who knows?

• Any time anyone tells me I'm good listener I want to say, really, I'm just good at smiling and nodding, but all I do is smile and nod.

• I’m tickled by the irony that a story about golden showers was the result of leaks. 

• Cell phone etiquette will improve when anyone found in breach is forced to exchange current phone for one of these.

• I have to think in heaven we still have birthdays, but we'll celebrate them on the day we died. And the cake is always angel food. 

• We now have ability to forever preserve things that 10 years ago we would have destroyed as being too stupid for anyone else to ever see.

• I haven't gazed closely enough, but I wonder if among the heavens there's a star named Ringo.

• Has the advent of ubiquitous smart phones meant the death of the rhetorical question?

• Divided country meant no matter who won election, Friday's swearing-in was destined to become a swearing-at.

• Reckless abandon is redundant. Anyone ever heard of careful abandon?

• I wonder if in the annals of mob history a man named Stone was ever asked to kill two men named Byrd.

• I remain amazed "beer" & "mirror," words with just one letter in common, are near-perfect rhyme. Beer, is there nothing you can't do?

• The self-loathing conservatives feel at supporting Trump must be akin to what dying vegetarians feel when they realize they’re about to turn zombie.

• I don't understand why my racist friends get angry when I point out they are racists. Does it bother me when they say I'm lazy?

• Trump laying wreath at Tomb of the Unknowns? If he doesn't like people who were caught, what must he think of the ultimate quitters?

• If we had to have a reality show host for president, why couldn't it have been Jeff Probst?

• All you need to know about man is 1st match was invented in 1836; 1st smoke detector, 1956. Don't get me started on birth control.

• May not be in our lifetimes but at some point some high school band'll road trip to the moon. They're going to have to sell lots of hoagies.

• I wonder if smart alec bacteria ever introduce themselves with “Spoiler alert!” at fridge parties and still think it’s funny.

• Prediction: Atlanta 56, New England 32. Those aren’t scores. Those are high temperatures in each city game day. 

• Looking in the mirror when you wake up can ruin your psyche for the whole day. Me, I try not to look until I've had at least three beers.

• Trying to justify value of writing to people who don't read is like trying to justify the value of fresh air to fish.

• Single apple seed weighs 700 mg but sinks. A battleship weighs 45k tons, but does not. What would happen to battleship full of apple seeds?

• You never hear about it amongst other Biblical miseries but another thing about hell that sucks is everyone gets a really bad roommate 

• Easiest way to differentiate carpenter bees from others is that carpenter bees are the ones wearing the really tiny tool belts.

• Nearly 7 billion people on earth. Total has me wondering when earth will become one giant graveyard.

• The idea behind "pursuit of happiness" misleads. Find a comfy enough chair & pursuit becomes unnecessary. Happiness'll finds you.

• I vow to continue saying 'Happy New Year!' right up thru July 5 when it'll become seasonally appropriate to resume saying "Merry Christmas!”

• We live in a time when many people aren't truly happy unless they're truly angry.

• People in an uproar over Trump's actions during his first hundred days. Not me. I'm terrified about what'll happen his last 100 days.

• The only thing getting me through this tumult is the knowledge that right now Bruce Springsteen is probably writing another fierce rock 'n' roll album that will in a fair and balanced way lyrically explain whether or not I'm on the right side of history.

Related … 

January ’16 tweets of the month

January ’15 tweets of the month

January ’14 tweets of the month

January ’13 tweets of the month

Shall I "just get over it?" Hmmm...

(594 words)

I was surprised to see Donald Trump honoring the fallen at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

You’d think a guy who famously disparaged an American hero by saying he prefers people who weren’t captured would have little patience with the ultimate quitters.

Is that the kind of joke I’m supposed to suppress if I were to just get over it?

For me, that’s a pretty steep price.

Here are two Facebook posts from yesterday that led one friend to declare “Angry Chris is back.”

• “The self-loathing true conservatives feel at supporting Trump must be akin to what dying vegetarians feel when they realize about to turn zombie.”

• “I don't understand why my racist friends get angry when I point out they are racists. Does it bother me when they say I'm lazy?”

The second one doesn’t even refer to Trump but was seized by racist Trump supporters who resent being informed of possible racism.

Am I angry?

Should I have, in the name of Facebook civility, posted cheerful cat videos instead?

I don’t feel angry.

The American Psychiatric Association says the five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

I have my own and they have since November 8 been thus: drunkenness, concern, acceptance, bemusement, and sexiness.

Why sexiness?

Because I’m convinced we’re all screwed.

I’m kidding. I can’t resist leaving out even a stupid joke.

I know a lot of very good men and women who voted Trump for very good reasons. They’re sick of the partisan posturing in Washington and think an outsider businessman like Trump can truly drain the swamp. Who can oppose that?

But I also know many truly obnoxious assholes who voted for Trump because he campaigned like a racist, misogynist blowhard who promised he’d bring back jobs digging things like coal, something that made even people who run coal companies chuckle at the fantasy.

I’m hopeful -- honest -- and am enjoying being in the position of not having to defend a president who infuriates half the country.

No matter who won, today was bound to be more of a swearing-at than a swearing-in ceremony.

Under Trump, the country will either prosper or our worst fears will be realized and those of us who loath Trump will be entitled to one of history’s greatest I-told-ya-sos. It’s a win-win.

Really, it’s become like that with every presidential race.

We’ve become a very manic electorate. We’ve been since 1992 on a two-term whiplash. We elect the liberal then the conservative then the liberal then the none-of-the-above.

And, frothing at the mouths, we all press on.

Thinking back on those schizophrenic presidencies makes me wish Billy Joel would compose a 2017 sequel to “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” 

History set to music can be very catchy and that which panics timid adults today will in 10 short years be boring children in high school history class.

So I intend to watch the inauguration today because I think something funny is bound to happen, but I also plan to re-watch the brilliant Dave Chappelle SNL monologue from the week after Trump stunned the world.

I want to again see the part where he so eloquently talks about how much we’re going to miss the grace and dignity of Barack Obama and his family, a man whose legitimacy was so viciously questioned by the man who now takes prissy offense at having his presidential legitimacy questioned by others.

Oh, it all promises to be an irony connoisseur’s delight.

You ask me to just get over it?

I hereby decline.

Related …

A tough day for racists

Trump’s no jackass; he’s under-qualified

Questions about the bully in the bully pulpit

Who can help me quit caring so much?

The prez, the killer & origins of “Amazing Grace”

Obama hater spoils my breakfast, then my windshield

The death of conversation & cell phone etiquette

I’m taking it as a sign of evolutionary improvement in that where I used to annoy women by speech or action I can now without any intention annoy them by doing nothing at all.

Happened again last month. I was sitting at the bar having a beer with my buddy and his girlfriend when my phone buzzed. I glanced down, saw it said “HOME” and let it go straight to voice mail.

“I can’t believe you just did that!” she said. “That is so rude!”

Actually, she was confusing rudeness with proper manners.

What’s rude is the common practice of interrupting an in-person conversation to yap on a cell phone while your companion sits there like a potted plant.

We’re witnessing the death of soulful conversation.

Many people answer cell phones in public because they want people around them to think they’re important, that someone, somewhere needs them.

Ten years ago I maintained the only thing that should be said into a cell phone in public was, “No! No! No! Make the incision behind the left ear! The left ear!”

Now most of the conversation I overhear involves reminders to DVR “Two and 1/2 Men” or that, gadzooks, Suzie updated her Facebook status to single.

We are inundated by inanity.

I refuse to subject my friends to the minutia of my life. It diminishes me and all within earshot.

“Well, what if it’s something important?”

Then that would be historic. It’s never once been important. Cell phones have made us too dependent on others to make decisions we should all be making for ourselves.

Like what to do when the house is on fire.

That’s what I belatedly learned after I ignored a Friday evening “HOME” call. Our 11-year-old was having a sleepover with two other innocents when the whole house filled with smoke.

The situation was rich with irony because while panic was striking the homestead I was giving my full attention to the father of the very girl who berated me for being casual about answering the phone.

He’s a very good friend. He’s one of the six Regular Joes from my favorite tavern where are all conveniently named Joe. He’s 73 and still healthy as a horse, albeit a horse that drinks lots of tequila. He’s the kind of old school that has a cell phone, but no one’s sure he knows how to use it.

We shared a pizza at the bar and then he suggested, say, why don’t we go enjoy a good cigar at the fancy smoke house restaurant down the street.

It was such a good idea another friend ditched his wife to come along, too.

So there I am with two good buddies, smoking cigars and sipping bourbon with a great bartender and an owner who’s always happy to see us.

That’s a circle of five people who really excel at talking and the lost art of listening.

I remember feeling the phone vibrate in my pocket. I figured either Josie was trying to impress her friends by crank calling Daddy to pretend she’s President Obama inviting me to lunch at the White House, or Val was calling to report Snickers peed on one our guests.

Either way, there was no way I was going to answer it.

Here’s what happened. The basement fireplace doesn’t draw very well. It needs packed with incendiaries to rapidly heat the chimney enough to pull the smoke skyward. This was not done so a choke of smoke began pouring from the fireplace.

Had I been conditioned by custom to answer every call, my evening would have been ruined.

My choices would have been to dramatically announce “My house is on fire!” and run from the bar, which would have led everyone to suspect I was trying duck my share of the bill, or logically say, “Call 911! I’ll be there as soon as I’m sure I won’t get in the way!”

Instead, by ignoring the phone call I was free to say to my good friends what at the time was in my heart, which was: “Let’s all have another round!”

So all’s well and some lessons have been learned. Val’s learned to use more kindling for basement fires and that she’s capable of low key heroics when she’s alone with the kiddies.

And I’ve learned to just leave the cell phone at home next time I want to spend time with friends. Because some smoke-filled rooms will always be better than others.

Hank Jr., Rick Perry and redneck risings

I have a tanned friend with a white collar job at a green Orlando hotel who told me about the time Hank Williams Jr. talked to his black assistant with blue language that left him red faced.

“He was joking and the guy was giving it right back, but I was just hoping none of the guests heard the way he was talking,” he said.

He said he did everything but call him -- and I’m paraphrasing here -- his African American. He said Hank talked to him like it was still the ‘50s.

The 1850s.

I’m sure ol’ Hank songs have shook the walls at Niggerhead.

I wonder if anyone who was outraged by Natalie Maines’s gentle admission that she was ashamed George W. Bush was from Texas will tell Hank it’s time to shut up and sing instead of saying President Obama is the enemy because he’s like Adolph Hitler.

Executives at ESPN are right now weighing if it’s more profitable to alienate the 50 percent of the country who hates Barack Obama or the 50 percent who hate the people who hate Obama.

And I think my math is correct. There’s no longer any middle ground, is there?

I’d like to find and buy lunch for maybe the one person in the country who says, “You know, I don’t think he’s a bad guy or a Muslim or anything like that. I wish he could do something about the economy, but Congress won’t compromise with him. I’d like to see them stop trying score political points and start working together.”

To hell with lunch, I’d give him a campaign contribution.

I want Hank out. Now. Forever.

I don’t want to be sitting in a bar next Monday night and have Hank musically ask if I’m ready for some football and have it lead to another tedious political argument.

I can think of three bars in Nashville I could walk into right now where I could wing a shot glass and hit somebody who could write a rousing new anthem to a football contest less and less of America cares about.

I think a great compromise would be to get rid of Hank Jr. and get his son Hank III to write a new ditty. Hank III kicks ass.

And even pacifists like me enjoy a good ass kicking.

That’s one thing me and the boys at Niggerhead could agree upon. We all like to joke and fart and drink more than we should with loaded weapons lying all around -- and please don’t mistake that as a redundant shot at Dick Cheney.

Here’s where we differ.

If a popular and influential politician invites me to spend a guy weekend drinking and fishing at a place called Niggerhead, I don’t go.

What the bonehead pundits fail to understand is that owning a place called Niggerhead doesn’t hurt Rick Perry with his constituency.

It boosts him. It solidifies his base. He’s the redmeat guy the people who are driving the GOP want and, hell, if he uses a little colorful language that means he’s jus’ more like us.

The Republicans are absolutely crazy if they don’t nominate a middle-of-the-road business guy like Mitt Romney, but they won’t because right now they are absolutely crazy.

Here’s something no pollster in the world will tell you: Barack Obama is going to win a second term in an historic landslide.

All the reasonable pros in the Republican party -- Huckabee, Barbour and now Gov. Christie -- have sat this one out because they sense they aren’t extreme enough to win the nomination. And they know extreme won’t win a general presidential election.

Obama knew he couldn’t get anything done this term because he’d need cooperation from those opposed to his very existence. They say he’s a socialist, a Muslim. They say he wasn’t born here.

My hunch is he figured rather than risk failure after failure he’d do what he could and wait for the country to decide if it was really ready to follow a black man who’s qualified to lead.

What’s being decided isn’t the 2012 presidential election. This is the 2008 Part II without the moderating influence of a maverick McCain.

The Tea Party is bound and determined to make America choose between a black liberal and a white (Herman Cain doesn’t stand a chance) conservative.

But it’s not going to be your father’s conservative. It’s going to be a guy who denies global warming, will need to address racist and homophobic comments from the past, and claims Jesus as a political adviser.

They’re going to ask us to pick a redneck.

Well, fine then. I’m telling you right now America’s going to stick with the black neck.

ZIPpity-do-duh: A postal money maker (from 2008)

I've vowed to blog nearly every day unless I don't feel like it. I feel like it every day, really. I enjoy it. But today a friend's in town and we've scheduled an afternoon of South Side Pittsburgh debauchery and I have my priorities.

Still, I can't help but fret the day I do not blog will be the day President Obama or any of the congressional big shots read my blog for ideas on how to straighten out the messes routinely addressed here.

In case that happens today, here's a really good idea of mine from 2008.

I'm confident it could earn the federal government billions in revenues.

Too bad it hasn't earned me even a dime.

For the sake of mental convenience, I’m thinking of packing up the family, all our stuff and moving the whole shebang to Newton Falls, Ohio.

That way I could age into eventual muddle-mindedness in the town that has perhaps the easiest zip code to remember in the entire United States.

Yep, welcome to Newton Falls, pop. 4,892, zip 44444. I don’t think the town, about about 30 minutes west of the dormant smokestacks of Youngstown, gets the acclaim it deserves.

I’m in the midst of a comprehensive study about zip codes for pin heads. It’ll be four years ago in February we moved one mile from near Latrobe, Pa. 15696, to postally proper Latrobe, Pa. 15650, and I still occasionally find my password-cluttered mind stumbling over the difference. It has me wishing I lived someplace where my zip had some zing.

Some place like, say, Schenectady, N.Y. 12345. Of course then I’d forever have to be spelling Schenectady and that would never do.

We are a numerically obsessed nation that shells out precious dollars for vanity license plates and fret whenever the fickle phone company threatens to bump us from our familiar urban area codes to something less comforting.

For the good of the nation, it’s time we extend that obsession to the humble zip code. I think it’s time the government begin selling zip codes to communities that stand to profit from the postal panache.

Why, for instance, is Las Vegas 89123 -- a lousy hand of a fold ‘em number if ever there ever was one -- when it could contribute $1 million to the national cause by paying for the unused 77777? Just think how much publicity it would get from the news if it paid for those lucky numbers, instead of having the ones randomly assigned by faceless bureaucrats at the U.S.P.O.

(Trivial Aside: The father of the zip code is a postal employee named Robert Moon, who submitted the proposal for a “Zone Improvement Plan” back in 1944.)

It’s a sure money maker and many cities and towns could have contests trying to claim one of the many unused numbers still available. And there are plenty of them. The post office only uses 43,000 out of the 100,000 possible 5-digit combinations.

Many of the good and obvious ones are still gathering dust on the postal shelf. For instance, 44444 in Newton Falls is the only five-of-a-kind zipper in circulation.

According to my research, the lowest number in the system is Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, with 00601, which begs the questions: What happened to the first 600? Did someone think we’d someday annex Cuba and might need 00001 through 00600? The nosebleed award goes to Yukutat, Alaska, with 99589.

Bond, Colorado, appears to be perfectly insignificant to the rest of the world, but how much publicity could it gain if someone with a puckish sense of humor bestowed them the perfectly obvious 00007? Reporters from all over the country would descend on Bond with each new Bond movie to write reviews that would appear under headlines like “Bond on Bond,” or “Licensed to Deliver, Bond 00007.”

Same goes for Salem, Massachusetts, which labors under the clumsy postal designation 01970. Why not cash in on their witch-hunting history and brand the local post office with the mark of the postal beast, 00666?

My wife Val speculates stratospheric bidding between Houston and Cape Kennedy would launch over who most deserves the available countdown zip of 54321?

Little Rest, Massachusetts looks like a line of binary code with 01010 and is the lowest aggregate total of any zip code because there is no reverse 10101 in the system and nothing with four zeros and a single 1.

I could retire to Sunrise, Florida, with its full house zip code of 33322. That’d be easy to remember.

(Trivial Aside #2: Sunrise is a planned retirement community that was originally named Sunset. But developers quickly found out that creaky retirees don’t like being reminded that the sun is setting on their lives so they nominally swapped the astronomical actions and sales grew robust. Sometimes perception is everything).

How much would Philadelphia pay to liberate 01776 from North Sudbury, Mass? Philly is the birthplace of the greatest nation in the world. 01776 would be a constant mail reminder of that proud history. Why surrender it to North Sudbury which gave the nation what? Geographic balance to South Sudbury?

For as long as I live, I’ll never forget the phone number of a man who left a thriving dentistry practice to become a shepherd (long live National Enquirer!). I asked him the best way to get in touch for a story and he told me, “Just dial GOD-PISS.” That’s what his number, 463-7477, spelled. I would think something similar could be done with zip codes.

New York could claim the unused 27753 (APPLE), coffee mecca Seattle could splurge on BEANS (23267) and the beer makers in Milwaukee would doubtless bubble with enthusiasm at the opportunity to snatch SUDSY (78379) from Riviera, Texas.

(Trivial Aside #3: Trivial Aside would be a dandy name for this blog if I ever get tired of 8Days2Amish. In fact, it practically nails the sum accomplishments of what I’ve been doing my entire life).

These kinds of trivial matters fascinate and distract me. Apparently, it is a zip code of enthusiasm I share with few others. I’ve pitched this story to numerous magazines over the past year or so. Would you like to know how much interest I’ve gotten from discerning editors?

You guessed it.

Zip.

When black men spike balls

We are witnessing a fascinating sociological phenomenon where a president many Americans despise because he’s black is taking flak from these very same people for not acting black enough.

President Obama doesn’t want to release the photos of bin Laden’s ventilated head.

“We don’t trot this stuff out as trophies,” he said. “We don’t need to spike the football.”

Good enough for me. Besides, I’ve already seen the rendition of the assault by the genius Taiwanese animators at Next Media Animation who not only envisioned every aspect of the secret raid, they posted animated insights of what happened to bin Laden when Satan welcomed him to hell.

(The uproarious video was removed for confounding reasons of cultural sensitivity, but check out their stuff).

Many of the people right now screaming for releasing the gruesome pictures to convince radical Muslims bin Laden is really dead, are the same Americans who refuse to believe the authenticity of the Hawaiian birth certificate of the man they’re imploring to release the real pictures.

It’s classic twistedness.

Releasing the picture has become another issue upon which to gauge or belittle Obama’s manhood.

Sarah Palin, god love her, injected the word “pussyfoot” into the debate.

Interesting historical aside: The origin of the word “pussyfoot” tips its hat to Prohibition. 

It was the nickname of  W.E. “Pussyfoot” Johnson (1862-1945). He was a staunch prohibitionist who used underhanded -- maybe underpawed -- methods to further his truculent and, I say, brain-dead opposition to Demon Rum.

Comment that a man named Johnson was the inspiration for a word featuring what is now an anatomical vulgarity will be left unsaid.

I’m no football historian, but I think you can trace the touchdown spike back to a black man known as White Shoes. That would be Billy “White Shoes” Johnson, who played professional football for the Houston Oilers in the mid-1970s.

Whenever he’d score a touchdown, and he often did, he performed a spike-punctuated gridiron version of soul singer Rufus Thomas’s dance, the “Funky Chicken.” 

Since then, the football spike has been elevated to an art form by diva receivers like the peerless Chad Ocho Cinco -- and, hey, Happy Cinco De Mayo, fair readers!

My favorite was his “Lord of the Dance” impersonation. This gold-toothed, 6-foot-1, ebony-skinned gazelle for just a moment convinced me he was a plucky little leprechaun.

I thought it was marvelous, but stoic traditionalists were outraged. 

They want flashy African-Americans to play football and attract that demographic, but when they score points they want them to act like pro golfers do after they’ve sunk a long par putt.

The men who are now running the NFL (and that’s “running,” not “ruining,” although the words are right now interchangeable) have even instituted penalties aimed at curbing what they call “excessive endzone celebrations.”

They might have even tossed a penalty flag on the euphoric crowds that gathered outside the White House on Sunday evening.

They are men who look and probably act like John Brennan, Obama’s chief counter-terrorism advisor. He’s a 55-year-old New Jersey kid who’s spent 25 years working with Republicans and Democrats in the CIA.

He looks like the mirthless kind of man who if he got into a staring contest with Dick Cheney dinosaurs would re-evolve and start devouring fast food joints before either blinked.

He’s pictured in that already classic photo of tense Situation Room where the current Decider and his team where watching the drama play out in real time (and I can’t wait for the movie).

He came close to chortling in admiration when he described Obama under pressure. Here’s what Brennan said: 

“There was nothing that confirmed that bin Laden was at that compound and therefore, when President Obama was faced with the opportunity to act upon this, the president had to evaluate the strength of that information and then made what I believe was one of the most gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory.”

Brennan, who looks like a man who favors salty talk, was probably sanitizing his true feelings.

What he’d probably meant was Obama has balls.

And that brings us back to the picture and another sound reason why Obama will not be goaded into releasing it.

A man who’s already proven he has real balls will wisely conclude he has nothing to gain by spiking imaginary ones.