Random Thoughts

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There is no mess like the mess that coffee grinds escaping the basket and getting loose in the kitchen can make. I attempt to carry the plastic tray that holds the left-over paper filter and grinds to the trash can as if I am working at Chernobyl and disposing of nuclear waste. I walk ever-so-gently. I make damn sure the trash receptacle lid will stay up as I dispose of the damp, blackened grinds. I extract the plastic holder ever so slowly and carefully so as not to let loose even a single grind.

And yet, somehow, roughly twice a year there will be an “accident”. Somehow grinds are splattered onto the wall behind the receptacle. Or they somehow spill down the side of the trash can and onto the nice wood planking floor.

And then no matter how much you clean, no matter how many paper towels you use to clean up, the grinds seem to multiply, take on a life of their own, and smear everything in sight. You clean, think you are done, walk away, only to turn around and find more disgusting grinds. Now bleeding out a black awful seepage. So you clean again, then again. And still later you see a little clump of grinds that escaped the first two clean ups.

Oh my God, the level of hatred I’ve developed for coffee grinds. If you saw me in the morning, open the automatic drip basket, lifting the plastic tray, and moving gently, ever so cautiously toward the trash receptacle, you’d think I was performing vascular surgery, my movements so precise and carefully choreographed.

It’s that damn used paper filter and the contents. They’ve made a nice pot of coffee, but now are useless, except to foul the kitchen beyond my wildest dreams.

Can you tell that this morning we had “one of those accidents” getting the contents into the bin? Can you tell? I’m afraid to go into the kitchen right now for fear of what I’ll see. I’m almost certain there is a spot I somehow missed, with filthy used coffee grinds fouling the corner under a cabinet, and the wife will walk in, see it, and I’ll hear it. “What is this mess, what did you do”?

It could be two days from now. Damn leftover grinds. They are sneaky that way. And making matters even worse, I’m not even happy with the current coffee in use. Since we’ve all been told Dunkin’ went Woke and have to boycott them, I’m using WaWa coffee. And it is bland as all Hell.

Damn Dunkin’. The perfect blend between bland, and that chicory shit taste that Starbucks has. Damn leftover grinds. Ruined the morning.

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Why is “food porn” on Youtube so addictive? You start clicking, find a food video, and an hour later you’re still watching videos of people eating ribs, brisket, pulled pork. You look at the clock, you just wasted an hour of life, and you didn’t get any real enjoyment from the meal, so why watch?

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First thing I see on tuning into the football season is the “Black National Anthem” being played. Now that upsets me, because we are all one, we don’t get to have different anthems. We all need to pledge allegiance to the same country. We need to be e pluribus unum, and not just states, but as a people.

But the addiction to the NFL is so strong, though I want to punish them for dividing us so, I can’t. No one deserves a boycott more than the NFL, except maybe the PGAT for their mismanagement.

I don’t want to watch. I really don’t. But it’s the Ravens. The Ravens!

Oh, man, if you heard me during a Ravens game. Yelling at the television, cursing, getting up and stomping the floor, I become unhinged, and not in a good way.

I question. “Why”, “Why, why, why”. They just ran for eight yards. Why pass? Run it again, get into a rhythm. Haven’t we lost enough games on the arm of Lamar? I’ll take his legs over his arm every day of the week.

My wife has choice things to say about the behavior she has to witness. I try to tell her it’s all out of my control, that the Ravens make me this way. And that she should go into another room and leave me be.

The NFL owns a portion of my tiny brain.

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The local golf course I play has two courses. One a great links track, the other a much more difficult standard American course. There must be 5 holes on the course where I have no chance to play well. 200 yard shots over water required. 160 yard shots over marsh land. 190 yard shots over a river. Most of the time I need a hole where you can afford to hit a dribbler that runs up the middle of the fairway, not some huge carry over water and marshland.

So I want to play, the easier course is all booked up, and still I make time at the more difficult course. Knowing that there are 5 holes that are far to “big” for my awful game. And yet I still go play. And play terrible on that course. Because it really is too much course for someone of my skill level.

I don’t know whether to hate the course, or hate myself for continuing to book time there. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over, and over, and expecting different results, then it is true what the wife says, I’ve gone insane.

Insane, but at least the clubhouse is a Ruth’s Chris. The food is excellent, even after a bad round on that awful course.

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Speaking of food I’ve developed a thought. The dirtier the place, the better the cheesesteak. Prove me wrong.

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Haitians eating pets may be all the rage, all the talk.

What should be all the talk is how our government moved 20 thousand Haitians into a 50,000 sized town. Purposefully. Intentionally.

Poor, unskilled, by the thousands, who can’t speak the language.

Think that might break the social services? Tax the school system?

Eating pets is the least of your problems. How do you assimilate 20 thousand newcomers into a town of fifty grand?

Notice the town they resettle is never Martha’s Vineyard, or Santa Monica, or The Hamptons? No, it is always middle America.

Dumb ass John Legend is making videos in support of the “poor Haitian immigrants”. How many is he allowing to be “resettled” into his own home?

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I like buying odd shoes. The “Gayer” the better. The more “Italian designer” the better. The more I’d suspect those guys on “Queer Eye” are going to like the shoes, the more inclined I am to buy them.

So I was on this website, Nisolo, never heard of them before, and saw a pair of slip-ons with holes all in them. Different, weird and really nice. I ordered them off the website, even though I have a difficult time with sizing.

So I’m in a store the other day, woman behind me taps me on the shoulder and says “I really like those shoes”.

Made my day. I pride myself on buying something different the crowd doesn’t have.

I don’t have many pairs of shoes. Maybe 4 pair as I type this. But I’m a shoe guy where style is concerned.

In fact, back in the old days, when one daughter was going to LMU in Los Angeles, I used to buy all my shoes on Rodeo Drive, even though at the time we lived in Maryland. I did it so when friends told me they didn’t like my shoes I could say, “Oh, you don’t like them, well I got them on Rodeo Drive, so perhaps it is you that lacks all taste and sophistication to appreciate these shoes.

I dress like a slob, same khaki shorts every day, same style Henley shirt. But the kicks?

Stylin’ baby, stylin’. But only from the ankles down.

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Are your emotions always at odds with your sensibilities?

For almost 15 years we’ve had a pair of the cutest little dogs you’ve ever seen. Little balls of fluff. As noted in a previous column we lost one of them recently, and are down to one. The one left is a true gem, hard headed, obstinate, self-centered, and loyal; a true Herman if there was ever one born.

Grieving the lost one, and knowing this one is 15, we do look toward a time when we can begin to travel unburdened by a dog. Even when we come North each year it would be so much easier to have the car brought up by a carrier, and fly in and rendezvous with the car, than to drive the 17 hours we do now. At our advancing age it isn’t an easy drive.

But there sits the wife. Perusing “puppy sites”. And every five minutes showing me a dog we could pick up on the way home. And arguing that having a puppy around would give new life to the 15 year old who could play “mom” in her old age.

I whipsaw. From wanting to replace the hole in my heart for little Ollie who passed, to realizing “Hell no”, we are almost free, I want to ship the car and fly, not drive 17 hours twice a year. I want to go to Red Rocks, I want to go to Napa again, I want to tour Scotland. Absent having to worry about a dog.

I’ve had to murder my emotions a few times this past week. Otherwise I’d be driving to Carolina to get a Multi-Poo, or whatever the little fluff balls are called officially.

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It’s “Bike Week” in this little town we are about to escape. Holy Hell, the noise. It’s a continuous thunder out on the highway. And the crowd? Oh Dear God, there is a real reason for the stereotypes. Is it a requirement to buy a Harley you have to be fat, bearded, and just a bit menacing looking, as if your brain didn’t fully form correctly and you are mad at the world?

I know I’m up 20 pounds, but wow, I’ve seen some couples on those Harleys that are really stressing the pay load, whatever they paid for the shocks it was worth it, those shocks are saving the bike.

I don’t understand the culture, at all. Wear some kind of leather vest married to a denim outfit. Have a “chain drive” wallet, where there is a metal chain connected to your wallet. Wear big boots, even in Summer heat. Get soaked when it rains.

And the worst, act all counter-culture when Jesus, look around at these bike rallies. You all look exactly the same. If you are trying to be “different”, well yeah, compared to me golfing in my khaki’s you are different. But you look like a clone of the other ten thousand people that came to town for “Bike Week”. You need a lesson from Dean Wormer, man.

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Nobody, and I mean nobody, liked Kamala Harris prior to Joe dropping out. Nobody liked her, nobody cared about her, and no one out there was clamoring for her to become President. No one. She wasn’t even an afterthought.

If someone even said “Kamala” to you, all you heard was that “cackle”. That awful, ear assaulting “cackle”.

And now we are all to believe, because the same media that promoted “Russiagate” full-time, and the same media that told us “if you get the shot you can’t spread Covid, or get Covid again”, is all-in on her.

No way she is tied with Trump, not a chance. If this election isn’t a Mondale like thrashing to the Democrats, I’m out with you people. You vote for her, I’ll pick up Haitians and drive them to your front lawn and buy them tents. I’ll move them into your back yard.

I refuse to believe anyone is stupid enough to vote for Kamala. If you hate Trump, take the election off and don’t vote. But don’t do that to us, put an “empty suit” into office.

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What is with young women today and abortion? Do they understand the actual process? Have they actually seen a fetus after the abortion? Look, I’m pro-choice, even as a good little Catholic. You decide how to live your life. But what happened to safe, legal, and rare?

Women today are radicalized. They generally approve of third trimester abortions, and many agree with that Virginia Governor who said that the woman can have the baby, and talk to their doctor about what to do about that.

Young women have become radicalized and insane on the subject. Abortion is still legal across the nation, and Trump has said he won’t seek a national ban.

But it seems to me we’ve lost the plot. Hello, hello, I know it is “your decision”, but that doesn’t mean a baby isn’t killed. No-it-does-not.

We need to get back to safe, legal, and rare. We are losing our humanity.

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Memo to anyone out there who works in Hollywood. Can we get back movies? You know, entertainment on the screen. Not with a message, not with diversity as the first aim, and not all filled up with lessons. I’m thinking “The Sting”, or “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, or even “Titanic”.

We are all starving for entertainment. Can’t someone write, cast, and shoot an interesting story absent political and social bullshit?

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