Category Archives: Generic Rant

Thanx again (again)

Posted on by under Generic Rant

Looks as if I’ve got a tradition going. For the last two years I’ve written Thanksgiving Eve posts listing things I’m thankful for. (See here and here for some background.) Why not keep it up? It’s not like folks will get sick of something that only happens once a year or that I’ll run out of things to be thankful for before I run out of years. Besides, it’s good therapy to take a break and count my blessings.

So, here’s this year’s list of obscure stuff that mean little to others but are a big deal to me:

  1. Yahweh
  2. LOML
  3. The Kids!
  4. Grandchildren!
  5. New writing projects
  6. Still upright
  7. Still cycling
  8. Sleepovers
  9. Vineyard Square Wheelers swan song
  10. Huge family Thanksgiving celebrations
  11. Babysitting, even for non-babies
  12. Family photo book
  13. My right leg
  14. Weird lobsters
  15. Father-Daughter Shopping Day
  16. My bench on Edgartown Harbor
  17. Trekking poles
  18. Single-story living
  19. Helpful friends and relatives
  20. Simplifying life
  21. Memory Box
  22. Supper & Study
  23. Adventures
  24. Max and Leo’s
  25. Cycling partners
  26. Summer Street Grocers
  27. Pompano Beach Club
  28. Pressed Cafe
  29. Chelmsford Center for the Arts
  30. Puttshack
  31. Bar Harbor with the whole gang
  32. Problem solving lunches
  33. Surprise drop-ins
  34. Surprise run-ins (Acadia, Cafe12, Java Room, etc.)
  35. BFRT extension
  36. Solar eclipse road trip
  37. Salt Rock Chocolates
  38. Vineyard Square Hotel and (especially) Suites
  39. 13 MPH
  40. House phones
  41. Dewey
  42. Better World Club
  43. Scrolled
  44. James & Peter
  45. Clam runs
  46. Talented friends like Jerry
  47. The Bike Shop
  48. Brief getaways to MV
  49. The John Alden and The Original
  50. Salted peanut butter/butterscotch cookies
  51. Sunday connections with a Jive Turkey
  52. One last meal on Pater
  53. Sunsets
  54. The Bike Ferry
  55. Elizabeth Warren
  56. Fried chicken sandwiches
  57. Generous people
  58. Lessons and Carols
  59. Francis Collins
  60. Ad blockers
  61. Tello
  62. Whoonu
  63. The Holderness family
  64. New rail trails
  65. Don’s encouragement
  66. The remnant who refuse to bow to a false idol
  67. Gingerbread houses
  68. Faith… in things unseen
  69. Hope… when there seems to be little reason to
  70. Love… the greatest of these

Sorry. I usually list a couple dozen items but I got carried away. Y’know, I could go on and on with things we normally take for granted like sunsets, music, my car, an abundance of quality food, potable water on tap, climate control, waves, hugs, friendship, memories, pizza, light, ad infinitum. But there aren’t enough electrons to cover everything to be thankful for. They come at us fast and glorious. Don’t miss a single one.

God bless you.

Mexico is building a wall!

Posted on by under Generic Rant, Original writing

As one of her first moves as Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum has declared that she plans to build a wall along the border with the USA and she expects them to pay for it.

“We proud Mexican citizens are tired of all these people coming from the US ruining our country. They send rapists, mentally ill, liars, felons, misogynists, sexual predators, and bigots. Admittedly, the only person fitting all those descriptions is the newly elected president of that morally bankrupt country. But with that buffoon in charge, can more like him be far behind? Stay out of our country! They’ve never even had a woman running the joint. How backwards is that? Hello, losers! It’s the 21st century!”

They’re eating the Taco Bells!

That’s not all that concerns her. She continued, “As if all that weren’t enough, they’re going to come down here and try to open up Taco Bells. Taco Bell!! In Mexico! Are they kidding? Why not open a Red Lobster in Maine? Or Papa John’s in Naples? We’re Mexican! We know how Mexican food is supposed to taste and that ain’t it!”

She concluded by declaring, “Keep your crappy food and your corrupt leaders and their reprehensible ways out of Mexico. Stay behind that wall and pay up when the bill comes!”

Two candidates…

Posted on by under Generic Rant

One of the candidates…

…has promised us we’ll never have to (read: “get to”) vote again.

…has already fomented an attempted coup, which he later called a “love fest”. Six people lost their lives and 174 police were injured in the love fest.

…sat watching TV while everyone around him begged him to call off his mob of supporters who were on a rampage in the Capitol threatening to hang his Vice President.

…has threatened military action against his opponents.

…agreed with a supporter who told him that nuclear war isn’t so bad because Hiroshima and Nagasaki are back.

…suggested one of his opponents should stand before a firing squad.

…claims to know more than anyone about technology, drones, courts, campaign finance, TV ratings, ISIS, social media, trade, visas, renewable energy, taxes, debt, money, borders, Democrats, the economy, and a whole lot more. But he knows nothing about his own party’s Project 2025, David Duke or white supremacy, or the Proud Boys.

…repeats unsubstantiated stories he reads on social media and never recants when they are proven false.

…has been selling sneakers, coins, bibles, crypto, watches, and a whole lot more while campaigning.

…has been convicted of 34 felonies and lost many civil cases, being fined hundreds of millions of dollars.

The other candidate…

…is a woman. The US has had as many female leaders as the Taliban.

Goodbye, Teri…

Posted on by under Generic Rant, Movies

Yesterday, entertainment lost a massive and not-nearly-appreciated-enough talent. Teri Garr was a brilliant actor. Although mostly known for her comedic roles–“Mr. Mom”, “Tootsie”, and “Young Frankenstein” among them–I first discovered her in a small but decidedly dramatic part in the 1974 masterpiece, “The Conversation”. That aspect of her gift was equally on display in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “The Black Stallion”. To understand the respect she must have garnered in the industry, you need look no further than the impressive roster of directors who cast her: Coppola, Spielberg, Hughes, Pollack, Brooks. The list goes on.

Her loss hit me at home not only because I’m a huge fan of her body of work but because the cause of her death was a supposedly non-fatal “scum-sucking pig of a disease” (her words), multiple sclerosis, which I also have. It makes me cherish each day more and trust God more for the future.

Well, I mean… So…

Posted on by under Generic Rant

Everyone has verbal tics that pepper their conversation. There’s no shame in that. The two most prevalent in my speech are “I mean”—this happens to be a favorite among professional athletes as well, so I’m in good company—and “well”. The latter, I’ve noticed, is most often the opening of (too) many of my sentences. (The other common sentence kickoff is the useless syllable “so”. Pay attention and you’ll hear it everywhere.) It’s always been a mystery why I start so many of my statements with “well”.

Until now.

Like so many Boomers, I grew up on innocent, quaint, simple, yet outrageously funny TV fare such as “The Andy Griffith Show”, “The Dick van Dyke Show”, and the Citizen Kane of 60’s sitcoms, “Leave it to Beaver”. It was mostly in syndication by the time I came to truly appreciate it. I appreciate it even more now. While LitB (as us trendy Boomers call it) has been mostly written off as hopelessly naive, simpleminded, and outdated, it remains (to my mind) crazy funny and more edgy than most people give it credit for. Hey, it’s still streaming over 60 years later. That’s gotta count for something.

More to the point… (What was the point, anyway? Oh, yeah!) I was watching LitB a little while back and noticed that both Wally and The Beaver start most of their sentences the same way! To be more precise, they start them with a strangely abbreviated version of the word by saying, “W’l”. It’s not clear why they eliminated the “e” and second “l”. (Or was it the first “l”? No matter.) Perhaps they wanted to shorten the dialog so they could use the extra few seconds to shoehorn in another commercial or two.

Regardless, I’m pretty sure I picked up the whole “well”/”w’l” thing from that show. Along with some solid parenting skills and a lot of laughs.

In case you haven’t noticed (you haven’t, have you!) I’m increasing the frequency of these posts. This is neither for lack of anything better to do on my part or a sudden heightened demand on yours. There are just too darn many things in my backlog to write about. And you are my unfortunate victims. Sorry.

Thank your for you support!

Posted on by under About writing, Generic Rant, Movies

Typos are everywhere. I can’t think of a single book that didn’t have at least one. And I read a lot of books. In fact, a recent novel by one of my favorite authors had at least two. Heck, my books (You know, the ones listed here. 🙂 Ironically, a typo in one of those titles caused Amazon to list it twice! Can you find it?) barely have that many. One of my favorite examples is in the written word in the middle of a movie. You can read about that one in this post.

Sometimes, it’s not clear whether an error is a typo or whether it’s just ignorance of the English language. Here’s a prime example from an article about a local community, which bragged that it…

…is infamous for its support of our local artists, writers, and musicians.

In a world where literally and metaphorically have become synonyms, why not famous and infamous? (I know those two aren’t antonyms or even mutually exclusive, e.g. Trump, but hopefully you get the point. They’re way different.)

The most common typo, however, the grandaddy of them all (and as a grandaddy, I assure you I know what I’m talking about) is the substitution of “you” for “your”. This mistake is virtually (not literally) omnipresent in cyberspace. I swear I don’t read an email, blogpost or even legitimate article that doesn’t have this failure. The most recent I can remember is this comment I saw on an article I read not too long ago:

Thanks for writing you article.

I don’t recall if the article itself had the error. I hope so.

Amaaaaaazing!

Posted on by under Generic Rant, Movies

In this previous post, I pointed out the absurdity of the overuse of the virtually meaningless word “amazing”. It’s everywhere and serves as a putdown as easily as it does a buildup. Case in point:

In a very bad movie I recently watched (yeah, I watch a lot of bad movies), the following line was delivered by a person who had just learned of a loved one’s acceptance into a prestigious college:

“That’s amazing! I’m not surprised, though.”

She was amazed but not surprised. How does that work? To add to the inanity, another character, upon hearing the same news, says, “That’s incredible!”

The same news is incredible and amazing but not surprising. Furthermore, it’s also a nasty, though thinly disguised insult. If someone is amazed and/or surprised at your success, it means they weren’t expecting it, i.e. you’re a loser.

Who writes, and worse, who approves these scripts???

[As a follower of Jesus, I’m even more disheartened by the devaluation of the word “amazing”. The classic and wonderful hymn “Amazing Grace” loses much of its impact when the adjective is rendered impotent.]

Thot Dump*

Posted on by under Generic Rant, Movies, Original writing

From time to time, it becomes necessary to do a Roto-Rooter® job on my brain. Ideas, thoughts, whims, and other random ephemera (to borrow a phrase from the subtitle of my 9th book) clog up my scarred brain and need to be snaked out before they leak all over the place and/or my brain backs up. Either one would not be pretty.

Let me now foist some of these notions on your innocent and unsuspecting mind:

Not long ago I watched (for about the 14th time) the original “Terminator” movie. You know, the one where Ahnold is a bad guy and he says “I’ll be bahk!” As often happens after multiple viewings of the same movie, something new and absurd caught my eye. Sarah Connor and her protector, Kyle, escape from the police station that the Terminator had just gone bahk to and, well, terminated. For the first time, I noticed the vehicle they escaped in. It’s an AMC Gremlin! I love it! Could there be a more incongruous mode of transportation in such a movie? I’ve since learned that there are at least three Gremlins in different scenes in the movie. Can you spot them? (Now we know what happened to the rest of the car, toots.**)

You might see me as just another blogger whose writings captivate you with flights of literary genius, thus bringing you back time and again to reach new heights of reading ecstasy, but I’m a lot more than that. In all humility, I must tell you I’m a worker of miracles. In fact, I perform such miracles almost every day when I make a huge deal out of nothing at all. Ask my wife, she’ll tell you.***

My favorite activity (or at least one of my top three favorites) is something I do every chance I get. Whenever I see babies, the younger the better, I try to catch their eyes. Babies have an incredible ability to lock onto your eyes and never let go until it’s impossible to maintain visual contact because of distance or angle. They stare at me (or you!) as if I’m the most fascinating thing on earth. It’s great for the ego but I always wonder what’s going on in their impressionable, developing minds. I hope it’s not, “Wow, there’s a strange looking dude.” But I don’t care what it is. I just love looking into those beautiful, innocent, inquisitive eyes.

One last question: How is it that saying “something is up” means the same as “something is going down”? Just asking.

* See what I did? I shortened “thoughts” to “thots”, thus saving valuable time and electrons. Of course I’ve blown both by adding this asinine comment but, hey, you can’t have everything.

** Obscure reference to old Gremlin commercial from the 70’s. Yeah, I’m that old. And more. Sadly, I can’t find the commercial anywhere except in the dark recesses of my dark (and getting darker every day) mind.

*** She’ll also tell you that I’m adept at the equally miraculous feat of turning molehills into mountains.

What Went Wrong?

Posted on by under Generic Rant

Nearly my entire record and CD collection is loaded on a flash drive. By plugging it into my car’s sound system and setting it to play randomly, I never know what might play at any given time. I’m pretty sure I’m gonna like it, though. 🙂

When I got in my car today, a very special song played: an anthem, if you will, of my (boomer) generation. Here are the lyrics, reprinted without permission. (I hope the owner of the copyright will forgive me.*)

Love is but a song we sing
Fear’s the way we die
You can make the mountains ring
Or make the angels cry
Though the bird is on the wing
And you may not know why

Come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

Some may come and some may go
We will surely pass
When the one that left us here
Returns for us at last
We are but a moment’s sunlight
Fading in the grass

Come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

If you hear the song I sing
You will understand (listen)
You hold the key to love and fear
All in your trembling hand
Just one key unlocks them both
It’s there at your command

Come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

How did we go from this message of hope and optimism, which reached its pinnacle as performed by The Youngbloods in 1969, the summer of love, to this winter of discontent? When and how did the idealism of love and peace devolve into the maelstrom of fear, hatred, and terror that engulfs us today? How, given that admittedly naive idealism of 55 years ago, do we find ourselves, standing as we are, on the precipice of establishing an authoritarian state, as predicted by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her opinion on a recent judgement by the SCOTUS:

“The relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law,” she both wrote and read. “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”

I mourn the peace we never knew.
I grieve for the love God has given us to share with everyone that we reject and distort beyond recognition.
I lament the lives that have been and will be lost because this message was forgotten.

Come on, people.

* The song was originally written in the early 60’s by a man named Chester Powers, who performed under the name Dino Valenti. He sold the rights to hire a lawyer to get him out of a prison sentence for drug possession. (Maybe that’s part of the problem.) He recovered the rights before he died in 1994. I assume his estate owns the rights now.