March tweets & 4 random thoughts

Because my tweet output was a paltry 18 (I usually average 40), I’m splicing in a few random thoughts so no one feels like they’re getting cheated.

• People who want to appear more interesting get new tattoos. People who want to become more interesting get library cards.

• Never dreamed I'd say it, but I long for the days when Republicans seeking party sense used to say, "Let's wait and see what Sarah thinks."

• There are 310 million people in America. That means a million-to-one-shot happens 310 times every day. Maybe today 1 will happen to you.

On this day, in 1981 John Hinkley shot President Ronald Reagan and a guy who once came to me for pizza. The latter was Thomas Delahanty, at the time a 46-year-old D.C. police officer assigned that day to protect the president. He was shot in the neck, suffered permanent and debilitating nerve damage to his left arm and eventually succumbed to a craving for Pizza Hut deep dish pizza from the Banksville Road store where I worked in college. I recognized the name on the slip and then the face. It was about a year after the shooting and he was in town visiting family. I asked how he was doing. He said, thanks, he was doing okay. He’s 81 today and still living in D.C. And that’s the first thing I think about anytime I hear anything about the day Hinkley shot Reagan.

• I’d like to see a play about a demonic woman who works at an evil candle factory. I'd call it "Wicked."

• I wonder how many dermatologists think they're being clever when they write bios that promise "warts 'n' all."

• A spritely Irish elf is a leprechaun. A 3-card scam that ends up with a whole hand on the table is a leper con.

Val and I both highly recommend seeing “Get Out,” the inventive new Jordan Peele comedy thriller starring Daniel Kaluuya and Allison Williams. It’s earned a 99 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s funny/scary and I now have a crush on the beautiful Williams, who is the daughter of Anson “Potsie” Williams from “Happy Days,” which means she’s the great-nephew of the recently deceased Henry Heimlich, which is what I think about every time I think about Potsie and now his comely daughter. My Heimlich-fact story is here. (Editor’s note: Ugh, I just learned she is NOT the daughter or Anson Williams, but the daughter of BRIAN Williams, the disgraced NBC News anchor. I’d change the whole thing, but since it involves Brian I’m leaving it stand as a nod to reckless storytelling).

• People complaining new Facebook pop-up tab is distracting fail to appreciate that Facebook is nothing but one big distraction.

• Billy Idol selling tickets to multiple spring Vegas shows thus ensuring he'll not become idle Billy.

• Irony of living in these uncertain times is how so much uncertainty could produce so many who are absolutely certain they're never wrong.

• Team Trump contention that all its problems are result of deep state lead me to conclude they are the shallow state.

Not only was my tweet output paltry, March’s 14 posts was the lowest monthly blog output in six years. Being less of a slave to near-daily posting may be conversely productive. I think the topic selection and the writing have been strong and despite fewer posts, March is the second month to crest 10,000 views. It’s odd that the less I write, the more people read. Maybe it’ll take me ceasing writing all together to become a truly successful writer.

• I’m growing nostalgic for the days when I could tell nasty bald jokes without appearing truly hypocritical. 

• Anytime you hear of someone dying suddenly it should reinforce the need to ensure you’re always living suddenly. #PrayForLondon

• Given abundance of today's school activities coupled with my habitual hooky I'm now spending more time in high school than when I was in high school.

• I'm one of those guys who says he hates change, but still stoops in traffic for pennies and nickels. 

• If you do not have any friends who challenge your thinking, do you have any friends? Moot point for me; I have daughters.

Thanks to my friends who’ve forwarded the news that Crayola is tomorrow announcing the permanent retirement of one of its colors. Of course, that’s the obvious choice for tomorrow’s blog. Given my abhorrence to do anything obvious, does that mean it’ll happen? I think so. I have some news about my own crayons stuff and tomorrow will be a good day to break it. 

• I’m looking forward to the day when I'm so curmudgeonly I say whatever the hell I feel to whomever I please. I'm thinking it'll be Tuesday.

• Because it's bound to piss off all the people I enjoy seeing pissed, I hope when Obama re-emerges he looks just like this (see above).

• He said I'd get sick of winning. Don't think this is what he meant. Glad if I do get sick I still have my ACA.

• Reading newspapers on-line is to reading actual newspapers what phone sex is to lovemaking. Gone is the soul, the serendipity and chance to get your hands good and dirty during the touchy endeavor.

Thanks for reading!

Related …

March ’16 tweets

March ’15 tweets

March ’14 tweets

March ’13 tweets

March ’12 tweets

Weiner 'n' tweets

You’d think a guy eager to keep his blog fresh with timely observations about any national silliness would be all over the Weiner tweets.

But, right there, you just read part of my reluctance.

Just typing Weiner tweets feels unseemly.

I can’t get my hands around the Weiner tweets -- and I just don’t want to.

Is is a right wing prank? It certainly seems to be. Rep. Anthony Weiner -- and I’m relieved his parents didn’t call him Peter -- is an inviting target. He’s Sen. Chuck Schumer’s former spokesman, he’s a self-righteous and often whiney liberal and, hey, his name is Weiner.

Hacking his twitter account and posting a picture of his excited namesake inside his underwear would seem a natural, one I’d applaud as juvenile fun.

But I don’t know what to make of his many non-denial denials. It’s bizarre. If he wants to keep the mini-scandal percolating along he’s doing what can only be termed a swell job (I’m not touching that one either).

I know the idiot press in D.C. is loving it because it gives them an opportunity to pretend they’re witty. Indeed they are, but only to one another.

I think the rest of America just doesn’t care one way or the other.

There’s a whole lot of people out there who have no idea what Twitter even is. So they don’t care.

Then there’s a whole lot of people out there who use smart phones and Twitter to post naughty pictures of themselves for the whole e-world to critique. So they don’t care either.

Weiner’s said his political ambition is to become mayor of New York City and this will do nothing to derail that goal.

And I think he’d be a great Gotham mayor. He’s colorful, intelligent and his heart’s in the right place even when other bodily parts of him are not.

Here’s a dozen of my recent tweets from 8days2amish:

• Time doesn't fly. It drives a Maserati down the Autobahn, oblivious to the brick strapped to the accelerator.

• If some people suffer from Irritable Bowel Syndrome then it stands to reason that those of us who do not enjoy cheerful bowels.

• The Simon & Garfunkle song "The Sound of Silence" is 3 minutes and 4 seconds of titular contradiction.

• Hawaiians complaining about high gas prices. What? Has Hawaii run out of hammocks?

• Just wondering: will the change from incandescent to compact fluorescent have any effect on light years?

• Not only is Buddy Guy a blues legend, he also has one of the greatest names in history. Who wouldn't want to be friends with a Buddy Guy?

• Older gentleman friend told me he'd be unable to meet tomorrow because of scheduled colonoscopy. "Bummer," I said and wished I hadn't.

• Avid spankers are the only people on earth whose ambition involves repeatedly hitting bottom.

• It took a while, but today I finally saw a watched pot boil.

• Rick Santorum saying John McCain doesn't understand interrogation is like saying Eskimos don't understand snow.

• I think Obama Mideast speech would have more soulful impact if delivered dressed like Nat X, the old Chris Rock character from '90s SNL.

• Maybe the Rapture did occur and there were only like five or six Christians deemed worthy of saving.

• My great dread for the future is all the kids will think it's quaint when we say, "I remember when all the TVs had just 1,000 channels."

• Rhode Island isn't even Rhode Isthmus.

• Red Sox play White Sox tonight. I'll root for neither team. I don't cheer for underwear.

• It's better to be cool than cold, yet most people strive to be hot rather than warm. It's all very mercurial.

• Spouses who fake sleep to get out of either household chores or late night sex are bulldozers.

• Butcher tried to sell me cured ham. Told him I wanted ham that'd never been sick. He looked at me like I was crazy. He must've had sick ham.

• Enjoy a relaxing Sunday! That's not a tweet, but the sentiment is twue.

Reid, race and Nat X

I’m always flabbergasted when a politician, a breed renown for fibbing, gets in trouble for telling the truth.

That’s what’s happening with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. Here’s what he’s quoted as saying about why he thought then-candidate Barack Obama could win the presidency:

He’s “light-skinned” and “does not use a Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.”

This has produced a typical beltway firestorm with Republicans crying double standard and Democrats, Obama included, saying Reid’s record and subsequent apology are sufficient. Move on.

Not me. I’m not budging. I want to hash this out.

Apparently, and I’m still not sure about this, but the offending terms are “light-skinned” and “Negro.”

His comment addresses a segment of the voting population with which I’m familiar. He’s talking about the ignorant redneck. He’s saying, with accuracy, that many voters would reject Obama if he looked or sounded like, say, Nat X.

That was the uproarious Chris Rock character from the early 1990s recurring Saturday Night Live sketch “The Dark Side with Nat X.” Nat satirized an angry cable talk show host who saw every issue through the dark prism of race.

He had a defiant afro and was, according to his intro, “a man so black he sweats tar.” He always greeted guests by saying, “Sit yo’ ass down!” in what Reid would call a “Negro dialect.”

In politics, near majorities of Americans will vote for boring white guys who make even Mr. Rogers look urban. I’m thinking Mitt Romney or Al Gore.

But I do not foresee a demographic shift so dramatic that a majority of people will vote for a man like Nat X to lead.

We like to pretend we live in enlightened times. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

The media said race was the ugly undercurrent of the 2008 presidential race and in places like the trendy salons of Georgetown that may have been so.

But it wasn’t an undercurrent where I live. It was a rip tide. And the people who were opposed to Barack Hussein Obama didn’t use an archaic word like “Negro.”

No, they used the word that got Det. Mark Furman into so much trouble during the O.J. Simpson trial. And they didn’t whisper it. They said it with gusto.

Those raging political conversations always reminded me of the scenes from “Blazing Saddles” where the good people of Rock Ridge first spy the new sheriff (Cleavon Little), a man who looked more like Nat X than Barack O.

What’s their reaction? They reflexively want to kill him. Right away.

Here in my little Rock Ridge corner of western Pennsylvania many of them still feel that way about our president. Some of them even feel that way about Steeler coach Mike Tomlin. They’re infuriated that proud black men are in positions of authority over institutions they thought belonged exclusively to them and their kind.

This country is full to busting with people who hate someone because of how they look, who they love and who they worship. It’s like that all over the world.

Reid was making the political calculation that enough of these people would find Obama acceptable enough that he could be elected America’s first black president.

This differs from the Trent Lott dismissal in that Lott was saying, gimme that old time religion, America would have been better off if it had elected an avowed racist like Strom Thurmond president in 1948.

And so Reid spent the weekend calling black men and women who support an organization that still goes by the puzzling name National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to apologize for describing African Americans with the once acceptable word Negro.

The whole exercise makes me dizzy.

I’m sure we’ll some day get past this semantic sort of silliness to a day when we can speak the truth without fearing talking point reprisals.

A day when we can all call a spade a spade.

And, please, don’t read too much into that last phrase. It’s just a handy cliche from a confused man so white he sweats whole milk.