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My Plea: A Moratorium on Facebook ‘Thoughts & Prayers’

by Roger White

Those of you who’ve quasi-followed my mental droolings over the years understand that sometimes I’ll touch on a subject that’s a tad touchy. And because you know I’m not one to shy away from touching on a tad touchy subject now and again even though the touching of such can make for some uneasy touchy-feely feelings, you tolerate the touchings for the sake of a chortle or two. Maybe even a guffaw, if we’re lucky.

This, as you can surmise by now, is one of those touchy times.

It’s about thoughts and prayers. I’m sick to death of them. Not actual thoughts and prayers, if anyone truly engages in them. No, I’m referring to social media “Thoughts & Prayers.” And yes, they usually involve capital letters and an ampersand. Jee-iminy Bob Christmas, every time a disaster/mass shooting/hurricane/Trump twitter war/Harvey Weinstein allegation happens (and these have become a daily occurrence here in good ol’ ’Murka), people race to Facebook or their social media avenue of choice to be the first to gush forth: “Thoughts & Prayers” blah, blah, etc., etc.

Now, don’t get me wrong. If in one’s heart of hearts, a terrible event such as the Las Vegas shooting causes deep reflection and pause—and one truly takes the time to put these victims and their families foremost in their mind for a time, including offering a heartfelt mental telegram to their deity of choice—then that is wonderful.

But come on, simply banging out “Thoughts & Prayers” on the keyboard, and maybe even including a warm, fuzzy emoji or two, is doing nothing more than attempting to show everyone what a great and compassionate person you are. “Look at me! See how much I care! And I keyed it in faster than you did!” If you really believe you are helping a situation by calling upon higher powers to ease someone’s suffering, then just do it. And feel good that you did it. Why broadcast it? I’d much rather read about your endless spaghetti dinner at Olive Garden or watch your cat playing the piano than suffer through another maudlin, sickly sweet “Thought & Prayers.”

To quote the Big Guy himself, I do believe Jesus touched on the pompous show of piety in the Book of Matthew, did he not? “Take care not to practice your righteousness in front of men to be noticed by them, otherwise you will have no reward with your Father who is in the heavens. So when you make gifts of mercy, do not blow a trumpet ahead of you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be glorified by men.”

Then again, we are living in the New Age of Narcissism. One of today’s greatest narcissists spends much of his day tweeting out his personal views on everything from pro football to “Puerto Rican whiners”—and we have come to see this as normal behavior.

It could simply be that I’ve OD’d on social media. Other than the pious proliferation of “Thoughts & Prayers,” about the only thing more frustrating to me about sites such as Facebook is political rants. A completely non-scientific poll of FB shows approximately 32 billion 678 million political rants per day. And you know how many minds these rants have changed? To quote Dean Vernon Wormer of illustrious Faber College: “Zero point zero.”

I suppose we can’t turn the clock back to the good ol’ days, when Facebook was used primarily to share uplifting things such as videos of dogs eating peanut butter or guys getting socked in the crotch by various means.

Here’s offering my “Thoughts & Prayers” that we can return to simpler times. Simpler Times for Simpler Minds. That’s my new slogan. And “T&P,” of course. Did I touch a nerve?

Roger White is a thoughtful freelance human living in Austin, Texas, with his lovely spousal human, two precocious offspring humans, a very obese but mannerful dachshund, and a cat with Epstein-Barr. For further adventures, visit oldspouse.wordpress.com. Or not.

Tags: Blogging, Blogs, commentary, Culture, Humor, Internet, Life, Lifestyle, Living, modern culture, Modern Living, Musings, People, popular culture, Social Commentary, Web

That’s Right, I Invented Tokémon Woah.

1 Aug

by Roger White

It hit me—almost literally—the other day just how pervasive this Pokémon Go craze is when my daughter yelled at me to stop the car (in the middle of the road, mind you) as I was driving in our neighborhood. Panicked, I slammed on the brakes, fearing I’d unknowingly plowed over a squirrel or baby deer or a neighbor kid or two.

“Wait! Wait, I almost got him,” Lindsey ordered. She had her cell phone aimed at a stand of trees beyond the curb.

“What? What is it?” I cried, scanning the area for a gray fox or some rare albino ocelot or something.

“It’s Magmar. There, I got him!”

I kept eyeing the trees to our right, hoping for a glimpse of the magmar, whatever the heck a magmar was, until the driver behind me honked at me to get my butt in gear.

“Magmar?” I asked, waving apologetically at the driver’s one-finger salute to my traffic faux pas. “What is that? Like a roadrunner or something?”

My daughter scoffed at my ignorance. “Magmar, Dad. He’s a Pokémon dude. Looks kinda like an angry duck on fire.”

Lord. “You mean I almost got us rear-ended for that silly game?”

“Not silly, Dad. Magmar’s very important. He could help me take over a gym.”

I shook my head in amazement. I wondered what the most horrifying development of the year was: the prospect of the lunatic Donald Trump becoming the leader of the free world or our country’s absurd obsession with risking life and limb to capture imaginary cartoon characters. I’d heard the stories of people getting hit by trains and walking off sheer cliffs in blind pursuit of these Pokémon creatures, but I presumed they were cautionary myths. Not so, apparently.

Lindsey gave me a layman’s tutorial—Pokémon Go for Dummies—whereby she explained that there are three teams of different colors: Team Mystic, Team Valor, and Team Instinct. Players join a team based on whether they think they’re brainy, strong, or intuitive. The object of the game is to capture creatures that pop up on one’s cell phone while one is out and about in the real world, then battle each other at places called Pokémon gyms. I asked Linz if they had a Team Dad, wherein players could capture beers throughout one’s house and battle to take charge of the couch. No response.

This got me thinking, however. What if we came up with a local version of Pokémon Go? Ya know, Austin being Austin, how ’bout something like Tokémon Woah? Think about it. You could have Tribe Willie, otherwise known as Acapulco Gold. Members of Tribe Willie would be guided by music, a somewhat relaxed attitude toward paying one’s taxes, and simple pleasures—like sittin’ ’round in their underwear. Then there’d be Clan Kinky, or the Grandaddy Purple Tribe. Folks drawn to Clan Kinky would be inspired by satire, matzah ball soup, and delusions of living in the governor’s mansion. And then, of course, you’d have Clique McConaughey, or Tribe Redbud. Redbud Tribe members would be moved by such things as UT football and nude bongo-playing. Alright, alright, alright.

Now, the object of Tokémon Woah would be to venture about the capital city in search of various Tokémon creatures, such as Budzilla, Panama Red, Buzz Lighthead, Bong Bong, Roachymon, Spliffowak, Ganjasnorf, and the like. Once you capture a Tokémon, you pluck out any wayward seeds and take your Tokémon to the nearest Tokémon CrashPad, where you compare your particular Tokémon with those from other tribes. Once it’s established which tribe has the smoothest Tokémon Woah, that tribe enjoys dominion over the album selection for that CrashPad. No Stairway or Free Bird, however. Any playing of Stairway, Free Bird, or any and all Styx selections is grounds for immediate CrashPad banishment.

I got really stoked about this. I went so far as to fax my game proposal to the offices of Mr. Nelson, Mr. Friedman, and Mr. McConaughey. I got two “Cease and Desist” orders and a handwritten response that simply stated, “It’d be a lot cooler if you’d leave me the hell alone.” Hmm.

Roger White is a freelance writer living in Austin, Texas, with his lovely wife, two precocious daughters, a morbidly obese dachshund, and a cat with Epstein-Barr Syndrome. For further adventures, visit oldspouse.wordpress.com. Or not.

Tags: Beer, Blog, Blogging, Blogs, commentary, contests, Culture, Dad, Family, Human Evolution, Humor, Internet, Life, Lifestyle, Living, modern culture, Modern Living, Musings, Parenting, People, popular culture, Social Commentary, Web

Prine Was Right: Blow Up Your TV

4 Jan

by Roger White

“Blow up your TV, throw away your paper,

Go to the country, build you a home…”

—from “Spanish Pipedream,” by John Prine

I work for an education association, whose ebb and flow of timelines, lull seasons, and get-it-done-yesterday crunch times generally follows the public schools calendar. This does not mean I get the whole summer off or that I have to take some sort of final exams every semester. But it does mean I get a nice chunk of time off during the Christmas break. Or should I say Holiday Break, or Winter Break, to be properly PC. But if I say “Winter Break,” then I’m accused of waging war on Christmas—whatever that is—by the anti-war-on-Christmas people, whoever they are. Seems there are an inordinate number of highly sensitive, easily offended, extremely angry subgroups of people out there these days, and almost any topic—from eating a hamburger to wearing a headscarf to saying “bless you” when somebody sneezes—is now an emotional mine field of potential hurt feelings and mob-mentality retribution.

For example, overheard at a local Wal-Mart recently:

“Dammit, Zebulon, these friggin’ Moslems is takin’ over the place. Look over thar, in home improvement. Dang scarf-wearin’ terrurist jee-haddys…”

“Yeah, I here ya, Jebediah. Hey, Zeke! Lee Roy! We got us a … wait, that’s my mom in the scarf. She didn’t want nobody to see her curlers.”

“Oh. Well. That’s awright, I guess.”

But while we’re on the subject, wouldn’t the term “Winter Break” be considered offensive to those folks who deem autumn as their favorite season? We have Spring Break; we have Summer Break; and now with the newly christened “Winter Break” we are kicking poor, unloved autumn to the curb, aren’t we? We have no “Fall Break.” I’m pissed off! This is War on Fall! Anti-Autumn Armageddon! I’m organizing a protest! Where’s Fox News?

OK, wait. Once again, I digress. Anyway, yes, so this lovely fortnight of vacation I get every, uh, late December allows me the blessed opportunity to back away from the grind. To sit in the backyard with a fire in the fire pit, a warm drink in hand, and nothing on my mind but determining how to get the (insert your preferred holiday here) boxes down from the attic without upsetting the raccoon family that has taken up permanent residence up there.

I have found that during this heavenly lull I tend to watch less news on TV and scarcely come near the computer, which is where I usually receive my daily dose of terror, misery, innuendo, and fear-mongering via CNN and other websites.

And despite the season’s family dramas, gift-hunting mayhem, and traffic gridlock gnashing of teeth—not to mention the annual overdose of turkey, libations, and too much party silliness—I find that my anxiety level and blood pressure go way down. Two weeks without Trump, Cruz, Clinton, terrorist plots for world overthrow, Planned Parenthood bombings, Dow Jones doom and gloom, the affluenza teen, Bill Cosby revelations, and viral cat-in-the-microwave stories tend to hit me like a soft pillow in the face. The crap the media spews at us 24/7 isn’t our world.

And all you have to do is turn it off. You can blow it up, if you’ve a mind, but just hitting the “off” button will suffice. Aaah. That’s nice.

So why take only a (insert your preferred holiday here) break from the muck and the madness? I was never much on New Year’s resolutions, but I believe I have one for 2016: Less CNN, Trump, Hannity, msnbc, Fox, and all those “World’s Most Extreme Terrible Things” shows—and more backyard reflection. More walks, more friends, more board games. If you still have the old Aggravation board game gathering cobwebs in the closet, pull it out, dust it off, and get the kids around. It’s fun.

Don’t have Aggravation? OK, Monopoly then. Just try to ignore the fact that Monopoly is based on properties in Atlantic City, New Jersey, a town practically owned by…you know who. I’m tellin’ ya, if that candy-haired blowhard gets anywhere near the White House, I’m moving the family to…

Time out. Breathe. Forget Monopoly. Stick with Aggravation. Or the backyard fire pit. Aaah, there we go.

Roger White is a freelance writer living in Austin, Texas, with his lovely wife, two precocious offspring, a very obese but mannerful dachshund, and a cat with Epstein-Barr. For further adventures, visit oldspouse.wordpress.com. Or not.

Tags: Blog, Blogging, Blogs, Christmas, commentary, Culture, Family, Humor, Internet, Life, Lifestyle, Living, modern culture, Modern Living, Musings, People, Politics, popular culture, Social Commentary, Television, Web

This Installment Should Wet Your Appetite. Literally.

7 Oct

by Roger White

“It’s only words…”

True, Messrs. Gibb. But then words are all we have, in a sense.

I can understand when my daughter bursts in the front door, famished from her school day, and exclaims, “I could literally eat a horse.” I get it when an irate Facebook poster pronounces that the myriad evil-doings of the Obama Administration should be “nipped in the butt.” I realize that my kiddo could not sit at the table and consume an entire equine, and I know that the angry online Limbaugh actually wants to nip our dear POTUS in the bud, not in the posterior. I’m hoping on this one.

But when I read in a local newspaper’s restaurant review how the delightful menu of a new downtown eatery will “certainly wet my appetite,” then I start to lose hope. I do enjoy having my appetite whetted, but I’ve never savored the notion of having my appetite drowned.

This wasn’t in the Gazette, Will, so worry not.

Weekly, it seems, adherence to standards of correct grammar slips and slides down the well-greased slope of sloppy English employed by not only everyday people, ersatz authors, cashiers and bosses, and television snake-oil salesmen, but also civic leaders, teachers, and professional journalists—the very enlightened ones who should know better. Surely it’s not coincidence that the graph of language correctness falls in direct proportion to the rise of communications technology. In the days of instant messaging, pondering the spelling of a possessive proper noun just seems old-fashioned, I guess.

For that matter, who’s to say that this migration away from hard and fast rules is necessarily wrong? It may well be simply the natural order—a Darwinistic evolution of our native tongue, hastened by smartphones and Youtube. Rules of punctuation, letter-writing etiquette, cursive penmanship may all be truly obsolete. “I before e except after c” may go the way of the dodo.

However, for this installation, kids, I’m calling out the lazy operators of our lexicon. Relaxed rules and metamorphosed language aside, a blooper is still a blooper. Case in point: misused and mangled common sayings. And it’s not “case and point,” by the way. Here are some more colloquial clunkers:

Should of. As in, “I should of slowed down before the cop started shooting at my tires.” It may sound like should of, but no. It’s “should have.”

Free reign. I see this one a lot, and it’s easy to slip up here. But the saying doesn’t mean “free rule.” It comes from the days of horsemanship. To give your horse “free rein” was to loosen your hold on the reins to allow your steed more freedom of movement. Hopefully, your daughter didn’t come home afterward and literally eat your horse.

Hunger pains. That same daughter who wants to devour your herbivorous quadruped is suffering not from “hunger pains” but hunger pangs. Pangs, my friend, not pains. It pains me to have to point this out to you.

Peak your interest. This should actually be clumped together with “wet your appetite,” but I’m too lazy to box up this paragraph and move it. But anyway, it’s “pique your interest”—to stimulate, not unlike to whet or sharpen. I pique, you pique, she piques.

A mute point. Please. It’s not a point that lacks the ability to speak. It’s a moot point. Am I tilting at windmills here?

Pour over. Librarians would really hate it if people poured over their documents. You pore over documents. Not unlike “wetting an appetite,” pouring over a document would get downright messy. Those poor documents.

Extract revenge. This could get ugly, too. If you’re looking to “extract revenge,” it likely involves pulling something out of your intended victim. Yuck. What you want to do, then, is exact revenge. No extractions, please.

He did a complete 360 and reversed course. No he didn’t. He did a 180. If the guy did a 360, he turned a silly circle and ended up facing the exact same way he started. Shee.

That’s all I can bring to mind now. We’ll revisit, perhaps with nice scones and tea next time. I know there are many more misused and abused terms in my language suppository; I’ll drudge them up soon. I’m sure your waiting with baited breath. Irregardless, I know many of you could care less. Literally.

Roger White is a freelance writer living in Austin, Texas, with his lovely wife, two precocious daughters, a very fat dachshund, and a self-absorbed cat. For further adventures, visit oldspouse.wordpress.com.

Tags: Blog, Blogging, Blogs, commentary, Culture, Evolution, Future, Human Evolution, Humor, Internet, Life, Lifestyle, Living, modern culture, Modern Living, Musings, People, Politics, popular culture, Social Commentary, Technology, Television, Web

Suburban Worldsick Blues

27 May

by Roger White

With a tip of the hat to a master chronicler of the American age, it must be noted that Bob Dylan never lived in a 3/2/2 with central heat/air and two and a half mortgages during a time when, by all appearances, our society is on the verge of utter decay—all viewable with the click of a mouse or touch of a pad.

So I give you “Suburban Worldsick Blues.”

Perry’s in the Capitol, railin’ against abortion,

I’m lookin’ at my taxes thinkin’ it’s extortion,

The man in the trench coat shootin’ up the school halls

Says he got bullied so everybody must fall.

Look out, dad, the economy is bad,

God knows what we did, but the country’s on the skids.

You better duck down, turn page, watch out for road rage,

Another mass shooting, another senseless rampage,

Sterling’s on his cell phone reminiscin’ ’bout slavery,

Miley’s twerkin’ onstage, scandalous behavery.

Look out, mom, Gotta stay calm,

Soldiers in Kabul dodging roadside bombs.

Get sick, get well, they’re laying off again at Dell,

Are we winnin’ whatever war, it’s gettin’ kinda hard to tell,

President says our healthcare system’s unfit,

All Congress says is where’s your birth certificate?

Well, Hormel, GM organizin’ recalls,

Bad meat, bad brakes, pickets down at town hall,

Daughter’s college fees call for medical sedation,

Building border walls to stifle immigration.

Look out, pop, no tellin’ where it stops,

Younger daughter’s boyfriend working at a head shop.

Mortgage underwater, excess beer consumption,

Viagra wants to help with that erectile dysfunction,

The factory just made a Chapter 11 declaration,

School board says it’s gonna teach divine creation.

Text tweet online, your selfie looking so fine,

Kids in Bosnia steppin’ on old land mines.

Icebergs meltin’, droughts killin’ all the wheat,

Just global warmin’ lies of the liberal elite.

Well, get dressed, get stressed, face the day’s traffic mess,

Oops, your job’s just been outsourced to Bangladesh.

Don’t follow leaders, take pills for all the cedars,

Find yourself a new position as a Walmart greeter.

Look out, mama, you’re dyin’ from the trauma,

Increase yer Prozac dosage, tune in the dalai lama.

Well, jump down a manhole, filibuster gun control,

Think I saw a shadow up there beyond the grassy knoll,

Headin’ to the car, another day in the loony ward,

Shakin’ yer head ’cause the vandals keyed yer new Ford.

Roger White is a freelance writer living in Austin, Texas, with his lovely wife, two precocious daughters, a very fat dachshund, and a self-absorbed cat. For further adventures, visit oldspouse.wordpress.com.

Tags: Blog, Blogging, Blogs, Business, commentary, Culture, Dad, Family, Human Evolution, Humor, Internet, Life, Lifestyle, Living, Marriage, modern culture, Modern Living, Music, Musings, Parenting, parody, People, Politics, popular culture, Social Commentary, Technology, Television, Web, Work

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Writer’s Block? No, It’s COS–Creative Obstruction Syndrome

11 Jun

by Roger White

When I was a kid, living in what was then a tiny suburban town with a flashing yellow light on the highway and a few close-knit neighborhoods in which summer curfew was the precise moment the street lights came on, I was good friends with the son of the town doctor. Despite the fact that he was the smartest kid in town and half the time I couldn’t understand what the devil he was talking about, he was a fun kid. For several preteen summers, we hung around together just about every day. We’d take turns having sleepovers at each other’s houses. David’s house was the nicest in town, and I always had a blast exploring the attic crawlspaces with him. We had a secret room in one of the crawlspaces we called Project Asparagus. The tiny storage space we decorated with shag rugs and posters and a black light. It was our cool, clandestine hideout. We didn’t discover until years later that his mom knew all about Project Asparagus and could hear us every time we crawled around in there. She said we sounded like two overgrown rats.

Anyway, David’s dad, Dr. Brown, was a community icon. Back then, you pretty much figured that doctors knew everything. You trusted their judgment. Their diagnoses, their viewpoint on things, carried much weight. Doctors fixed you. There wasn’t anything that doctors didn’t know.

I’m not sure if it’s a product of cynical wisdom that comes with maturity or the overwhelming influx of white noise and myriad “expert opinions” of this information age (have a symptom—Google it!), but as the years have gone by my unshakeable faith in the medical profession has eroded somewhat. In fact, if you were to graph my advancing age alongside my trust in MDs, you’d have two lines angling in opposite directions. A lot of it could be due to the fact that today doctors have an official (and expensive-sounding) medical term for every human condition. And if they don’t actually know what it is that ails you, then they label it some nebulous multi-syllabic syndrome.

For example, lately our oldest daughter has been having stomach problems. She often feels queasy and lightheaded after she eats, and she’s even passed out a couple of times. It’s been unsettling, to say the least, so we took her in to a gastroenterologist. He took a quick gander at her, asked her a couple of questions, and pronounced that she was suffering from IBS—Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Cut back on the dairy and sugar and see me in a few weeks if it doesn’t get better, he said. Will that be cash or credit? What? That’s it? Irritable Bowel Syndrome? Geez, my bowels get irritable, too—every time I overdo the Tex-Mex and beer. Does that mean I have IBS? In fact, I would imagine everybody has IBS on occasion.

Don’t quote me on this, but I seriously think the word “syndrome” is either Greek or Latin for “best guess.” Just as “disorder” is code for “we really don’t know.” Instead of admitting they simply have no idea what the heck is wrong with you, docs assign you a syndrome. If you can’t sleep, you have Restless Leg Syndrome; if you’re tired a lot, you have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome; if you and your coworkers feel bad at the same time, you have Sick Building Syndrome. If you get mad, you have Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder. And, of course, let’s not forget perhaps the most significant medical discovery of the new age: ADD. When I was a kid, if you ran around a lot, couldn’t pay attention for long stretches, and hollered like a banshee, they called you normal and made you play outside until you were worn out. Nowadays, youngsters who exhibit the very same behavior are proclaimed to be suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder and promptly pumped full of prescription drugs strong enough to tranquilize a racehorse.

Ouch. I had a lot more to say about this, but my Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is flaring up. Meds! Where are my meds?!

Tags: Blog, Blogging, Blogs, commentary, Culture, Dad, Family, Human Evolution, Humor, Internet, Life, Lifestyle, Living, modern culture, Modern Living, Parenting, People, popular culture, Social Commentary, Web

Light Up a Smooth Chesterton’s and Enjoy This Column, Won’t You?

5 Dec

by Roger White

Wow. I’ve been reading lately how these crafty internet marketing types prowl the vast jungle of blog sites on this here World Wide Webby thing to see which ones are getting more and more hits as the days go by. Then they pounce, you see, and offer all kinds of payola and other goodies to the blog hosts to let them advertise on their blog sites. You see. The marketing types’ clients are happy because they get more traffic and word of mouth about their fantastic products and services, and the bloggers are happy because they get nifty payola and other goodies simply for referring their loyal readers to these guys who advertise on their sites. And the blog readers are happy, I suppose, because they get what you call “value added” bonus material (this can also be read as obnoxious advertising and teeth-clenching pop-ups) on their favorite blog sites. You see.

The only problem with this scenario is that the integrity of ye olde blog site owner comes into question. Somehow the purity of the message seems tainted when a corporate sponsor gets involved. You start wondering, now, did he write a whole column on how the Nazis were just a misunderstood political faction bent on strict law and order because he really believes it or because the Volkswagen logo is now splashed all over his web page? And kind of like how every first down the Texas Longhorns make when they’re playing at Royal Memorial Stadium is now brought to you by Taco Bell. Not that I’m implying that the makers of Volkswagen are Nazis somehow or that the only reason the ’Horns strive for every hard-earned first down when they’re playing at home is because they get a free bag of burritos with every 10 yards. But you get the idea.

So, anyway. Wouldn’t you know it? The very day I’m reading about how all this works, I get an e-mail from a guy named Mark Ettingtipe asking me if I would consider pasting some obnoxio—er, I mean, if I would consider developing some mind-nourishing value-added information for my li’l old blog site. How about that? Enough of you crazies have had absolutely nothing better to do than poke around reading my meandering streams of thought so that some crafty marketing types have been prodded to fishing in these waters for an advertising deal. I’m so flattered, you guys. (Insert Sally Field voice here.) “You like me! You really, really like me!”

I have to say, I gave some very serious consideration to the guy’s offer. I mean, jeez, an eighth of a cent per reader hit adds up over time. Let’s do the math. Say I get approximately 150 reader hits a day, multiplied by my sweet deal of an eighth of a penny per hit, and this comes out to about $1.20 a month. As one Jeff Spicoli once opined in Fast Times at Ridgemont High: “Righteous bucks.”

It was a tough call, but I turned ol’ crafty Mark Ettingtipe down. For one thing, I just can’t be untrue to my dear column—and to you, my loyal readers. My mission here is to provide those who know and love me the most with true pearls of wisdom and wit that can only come from a pure heart and a mind influenced only by the odd residual chemicals still left floating in yonder brain canals from my halcyon days of … well, let’s just call it “life experimentation” and leave it at that. I still say the color orange has a distinct sound.

And for another thing, I’m not certain I’m quite on board with the products Mr. Ettingtipe was wanting to peddle on these here pages. So you’ll be glad to know that you won’t have to ever wonder about the content on this site at least. They tried, yes sir, but they couldn’t get this old soldier to sell out to Madison Avenue. It’ll take much more than the lure of some easy money to turn the head of this ol’ keyboard banger. But this does remind me—you know what does turn my head? I’ll tell you, it’s the sweet, luxurious aroma of Chesterton’s 100s Menthol-Tipped Cigarettes. Whenever I’m tired from a long day of writing, I like to relax in my favorite easy chair with a cold drink and the silky smooth menthol tobacco flavor of a refreshing Chesterton.

Won’t you join me next week when I’ll be penning an enjoyable, light-hearted piece of humor about the wacky adventures of visiting the in-laws over Christmas? Pull up a chair, fill your best pipe with Chesterton’s nutmeg-aroma pipe tobacco, and we’ll share a laugh or two. See you then!