Author: Crabby

I am devastated! Twitter deleted almost all of my followers! And you should know I had a lot of them. I am, after all, a Twittering Black Belt. (Like 95% of all Twitter users, I hereby offer to teach you anything you want to know about Twitter for a very reasonable fee. No refunds.) I had so many followers. And they were more than mere Twitter followers. They were my very best friends. Twitter had the audacity to make the completely unfounded and fake news allegation that they were bots. They think my followers were robots! Are you kidding me? Have you seen C-3PO? You think he can do Twittering, with those big mechanical fingers of his? And look at R2D2; he couldn’t even reach the keyboard. Twitter thinks my followers were bots. The nerve! After all, I spent fourteen hours every day with them. I woke up to them, I relied on them for solace, and I checked with them before I went to bed every night, just to make sure they still had my back. And they always did. They always assured me that they would keep track of every outrage of American society while I slept. And now they’re gone. One day I logged in and they were all gone, like a bunch of little Twitter birds that got sucked into a jet engine and blown out the back, nothing more than a puff of feathers and fluff. (Okay, maybe that was a bit intense.) I am in mourning. Please, allow me a moment to gather myself (sniffle).

As I sit in my favorite comfy rolling office chair that I bought at the Cedarburg flea market for $10, and stare at the screen, I lament the loss of so many. My followers list used to number 1,796. There was Yuri and Dmitry and Ivan and Vlad and Leonid and Alexei and Anatoly. And that’s not to mention Viktor, Vitaly, Sergei, Rostislav, Igor, Georgy, Mikhail, Nikita…you get the picture. I had a lot of friends. And those were just some of my bestest buddies. Now I’m down to two followers, CutsieSusie and SmartyPants. Not that they aren’t nice people, but holy cow, how many times do I have to tell them I’m married? Hundreds of times they have both told me they are 23 year old attractive ladies in need of some loving, and they’d like to share pics and personals (on their website). I know I’m quite a catch for any lady of the female gender (late sixtyish, half my hair still remains, blood pressure just 140/85) but come on ladies, give it a rest already! Can’t we just be friends?

True story: Shortly after setting up my Twitter account @CrabbyScrabby, I received a pop-up message stating I was locked out. They said someone may have gained access to my password, since my account was violating their rules, and I would never do that right? For sure! I would never do that! (Twitter trick #1: If you follow 20 people a day, an average of 4 or 5 will follow you back. But follow 50 people and then delete those who don’t follow back? That is Twitter naughty. I cannot divulge how I learned that.) (You all now owe me $29.99 for Twittering consultation.) To get unlocked I had to supply my cell phone number, to which some actual real Twitter person placed a call. After speaking to him the guy said, “Okay, I guess you’re not a bot.” So I ask you, why didn’t they do that with Ivan and Dmitry? Then they would have known they were not bots!

I contacted Twitter support to complain about their outrageous actions. They claimed they can tell these former followers of mine were not real and true people based on their IP address. Shame, shame on them! IP, you P, we all P. That only makes us human. I don’t care where people pee! Not everyone can afford to pee in a luxury condo. I call shame on Twitter for being so biased and shallow.

These were all real and true friends to me. I Tweeted my daily thoughts to them. They shared their deepest insights and concerns. And believe me, they were all true and Patriotic Americans. Like just the other day, it was:

Me (Tweeting): Today on ABC Cokie Roberts said politicians speak Gobbledyspeak. That’s kind of funny! 🙂

Ivan (Tweeting): All Amerika crazy these days, butt for you and me, and hour frends. We must do actions. Come march with us! 🙁

Me (Tweeting): Sunny and windy today. It’s supposed to get up to 50 F this week. 🙂

Ivan (Tweeting): All Amerika crazy these days, butt for you and me, and hour frends. We must do actions. Come march with us! 🙁

Oh yeah, you talk about good dedicated Americans; these are not people to just sit at their keyboards. They want to get out there and make themselves heard. And I’m right there with them. I went to a rally they set up, and there were lots of good people there. Everybody was waving their little flags, and wore their MAGA hats. It’s just a shame that Ivan couldn’t make it that day. I guess he got sick or something.

So now I have reached the end of my mourning period, and I am ready to move on. I am not someone to do nothing when I have been wronged. I will show those people at Twitter. And guess what? I discovered where my friends are hanging out these days, so I have rejoined them. I am with Ivan and Dmitry and Vlad once again. I have moved over to Instagram! And the best news of all is that CutsieSusie and SmartyPants are there too!

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Last week a company called SpaceX launched a most awesome rocket into space. What is the ultimate goal of this company? They want to go to Mars. In fact they want to put together a colony of one million residents on Mars. How could they possibly ever afford such a thing? Very simple, they will open a night club and call it the Mars Bar. But it costs a lot of money to go to Mars. If they want to turn a profit, I suggest they recruit all of the colonists from my home state of Wisconsin. We drink a lot. (Fun fact: we drink more brandy than all the rest of the U.S.A. put together. SpaceX can use brandy for rocket fuel, and we’ll drink whatever is left over after the flight.)

Why would SpaceX want to go to Mars? Well, because their CEO, a man by the name of Elon Musk, he’s just a crazy man. Just going to space doesn’t keep him busy enough. Mr. Musk is also founder and CEO of Tesla, the maker of electric cars. And he is working on electric semi-trucks, batteries for electric homes, and a nuclear powered laptop computer. I’m looking forward to that one. My laptop battery always goes dead just when I find a good YouTube of kitties. (Okay, so I made that last one up.)

The rocket launched by SpaceX last week was called the Falcon Heavy. That right there indicates Mr. Musk could use some new engineering brain power. They should have used the Falcon Light. Anybody knows the more weight, the more fuel. If they design a Falcon Light instead of a Falcon Heavy, there will be more brandy left over for the Mars Bar. However, I will admit those engineers are pretty clever. Their signature trick is they land their rockets back on earth again so that they can be used multiple times. In fact, the Falcon Heavy launch blasted one rocket up into space and landed two rockets back on earth. That’s a good way to turn a profit. But whoa, how did they do that? Did that thing multiply up there in space somehow, like a bunny rabbit? It could be. If you look at a picture of that big long Falcon Heavy with the bulbous tip and the two side-slung boosters down at the bottom, it looks a lot like a, well…maybe we should just move on.

I heard Elon Musk said that since this was the first test of Falcon Heavy, he would be happy if it just got high enough before it blew up that it didn’t damage the launch pad. But he is truly a master of spin. If things go explosively wrong, he calls that an RUD. That stands for Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly. And the beauty of it is, there’s no manual labor in that operation.

Falcon Heavy is designed to lift payloads to low earth orbit, take men around the moon, and even transport passengers from point to point here on earth. But I have no urgent business on the moon, have no relatives on the International Space Station, and really, I’m not in that much hurry to get to East Chicago. I think I’ll just drive.

But what about Mars? Do I want to go to Mars? No way! Do I want to go floating around weightless in space for months only to find that Mars is a stupid sandy gravel pit with terrible scenery? And on top of that probably never get back to earth again? No sirree! On the other hand, my brother who lives in Sweden, he can’t wait to go to Mars. But he’s always been more adventurous than me. After all, when we were young he moved to Sweden. I moved to Appleton.

So who, exactly, should we send to Mars? I have some suggestions:
1. 535 members of Congress.
2. One president.
3. His friend Vladimir Putin.
4. Harvey Weinstein.
5. Anthony Weiner.
6. Several cable news hosts to be named at a later date.

That’s about 550 people, depending on how many cable news hosts get the honor (the more, the better). If we’re going for a colony of one million, that leaves plenty of room for all the people who are going to send hate-mails to this website.

There is one dummy on his way to Mars right now. Unfortunately, it’s not any of the dummies mentioned above, and it’s not Vladimir Putin either. It’s an actual dummy, in a spacesuit, nicknamed Starman, and he’s behind the wheel of a red Tesla roadster now motoring its way to Mars. This is actually true! Check out the view from the driver’s seat on YouTube! Test launches like that of the Falcon Heavy last week typically carry a worthless payload in case they blow up. But Elon Musk, like I said, he’s a crazy man! He loaded his personal Tesla roadster into the nosecone with Starman at the wheel. The car radio was blasting Starman by David Bowie, and the digital screen on the dashboard read Don’t Panic. That Elon Musk, he sure is funny! That sure is a knee-slapper!

Have you heard the expression big boys play with big toys? For a man like Musk, the Falcon Heavy isn’t big enough. To get to Mars, he’s building an even bigger one. He calls it the BFR. That stands for Big F#@king Rocket. The BFR will be 30 feet in diameter, 347 feet tall, and lift a payload of 330,000 pounds. So all of you guys out there with 490 horsepower all-wheel drive diesel pickup trucks with exhaust pipes sticking straight up behind the cab? Give it up guys, Elon Musk has got you beat!

All of this didn’t come easy though. SpaceX made a few boom-booms along the way. I’m not sure you’re going to want to book passage after you see this, but check it out right here. You’re welcome.

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I have a still out back in the woods. And you should see it. It’s beautiful. It’s a great big, beautiful still. And I use this still to make the best vodka. Everybody loves my vodka, especially those Russians who live in that high rise down on Lakeshore Drive.

This still, by the way, is legal. I’ve never been convicted of it not being legal. But despite the fact that I’ve never been convicted, those people want to come after me. You know who I’m talking about. It’s those nasty people. They’re so nasty. We know who they are, don’t we. They wear blue uniforms and drive cars with bright flashing lights on the roof. But why would they come after me? I’ve never been convicted. There’s been absolutely no convictions! Still, they want to come after me and I’ve got to fight back. So I asked myself, how could I fight back? Then one day I turned on the news and it came to me. I will write a memo.

But what would be in this memo? Well, I figured out that this memo would point out just how corrupt those police officers are. If I point out how corrupt those police officers really are, then they will lose all their power and they won’t be able to come after me. And how can they be corrupt? Well I decided they would be corrupt by being on the payroll of my competition in the vodka business, and that competition would be my neighbors whom I would accuse of also having a still out back in the woods. Actually of course my neighbors don’t have a still, but that’s okay. If I say they have a still very loudly, and I say it often enough, then that’s the same as if they actually have a still. And if those police officers find my still, I’ll just say it’s my neighbor’s still. I don’t like those neighbors anyway. They’re just losers. They have only one American flag in their front yard, and I suspect that’s all they can afford. But I have twelve American flags. I’m so much better than they are.

So I called in my secretary. (Yes I know, most people have personal assistants these days, but that’s just crap, I still have a secretary.) (And you should see her. Wow, she’s a looker.) I dictated my memo to her because I don’t know how to type. Also I don’t know how to spell. But then I don’t know if she knows how to spell either, because if I don’t know how to spell, how would I know if she knows how to spell? You see how good I figured that out?

Of course I will need someone to deliver this memo. Everybody in town has got to see it. But how to do that? I can’t run an ad in the newspaper. The newspaper would know it’s from me. I need someone who will do this surreptitiously (my secretary says that means secretly, I hope she spelled it right). I need somebody who works cheap and who really knows how to deliver. Hold that thought, the doorbell just rang. Oh, the pizza is here. It’s the pizza delivery boy. Hey! That’s perfect! I’ll get the pizza delivery boy to do it! (And he’s so dumb, I know he’ll do it. He’s the dumbest delivery boy ever.) He can pretend that he wrote it and stick it in the mailbox of every home he delivers to. I just hope he doesn’t get caught because that actually is illegal. (Title 18, section 1725: Any person who knowingly deposits “mail-able matter” without postage in an established letter box shall be subject to a fine.) But if he does get caught, I never heard of him.

So me, my secretary, and my pizza delivery boy, we all sat down to write this memo. It reads as follows:

February 7, 2018
To: Majority Members of The City Council of This Made Great Again City
From: The Pizza Delivery Boy
Subject: Abuses Of Searching Woods Out Back Of Scrabby House By The Guys In Blue Uniforms

5.) The search warrant application also mentions information regarding a marauding raccoon, but there is no evidence of any cooperation or conspiracy between the drunken squirrels and the marauding raccoon. Text messages between the squirrels also reflect extensive discussions about the investigation, orchestrating leaks to the media, and include a meeting with officials of the Humane Society to discuss an “insurance policy” against Mr. Scrabby chasing any more squirrels with a shovel.

I think it’s a pretty doggone good memo, even if I do say so myself. As soon as it gets released, I will orchestrate a publicity campaign to get that search warrant declared illegal and completely inconvenient for me. But if anybody ever asks, it was the pizza delivery boy. It was all his idea. And I don’t even know him. I don’t even eat pizza.

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I woke up this morning with a great idea. I’m going to become a screenwriter. I even figured out the first line of my first screen play. It goes like this:

BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, (this is gunfire) BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM!

Pretty cool, huh? The second line goes:

RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT! (Machine gun fire.)

As in any script, snappy dialogue is critical, so I jump right in with this:

“Hey babe! I’m out of ammo, get me another clip!” (Hunky long-haired male actor who is all sweaty and somehow lost his shirt, speaking to twenty-year old blonde actress who for some reason is dressed only in underwear and was forced to run through an open fire hydrant moments before.)

“No, I can’t bear the thought of it. Get in the car! I’ll drive!”

What do you think? How can I go wrong? I watch a lot of movies, and I can’t imagine any job easier than being a screen writer. From what I can see, the only hard part about making a movie is rounding up enough gunpowder. And you’ve got to make sure that when the good guys, or even the bad guys, are walking around anywhere in the movie, they’re always moving in short dramatic motions with a pistol held out in front of them with both hands while they peer ominously over the barrel. Even when ordering a pack of gum in a store they’ve got to have that pistol pointed, and right at the head of the storekeeper scaring the crap out of him. (Check out Martin Lawrence and Will Smith in Bad Boys.) But you can’t let it get boring. At some point you’ve got to up the ante with a bigger gun. (Check out Clint Eastwood and his 44 Magnum which will blow your head clean off). And then there is the big finale, with the really big hardware that makes everybody laugh because it’s, you know, so big. (Check out Clint Eastwood again with his Law’s Rocket in The Enforcer.) (Even better, check out Steven Seagal and his 16 inch guns on the battleship Missouri in Under Siege.) There’s just nothing more entertaining than a guy with a big huge gun blowing the head off some hapless bad guy. Well, maybe a really hot sex scene, but then you couldn’t take your kids along. Better to stick with the head-blowing-off.

Of course a good movie is more than shooting bad guys. You’ve also got to blow something up. Without a whole bunch of explosions, you got nothing. Bruce Willis blew up that whole office building in Die Hard. That was so cool. Who among us wouldn’t like to blow up an office building? Not for real, just in our deepest and darkest fantasies. Come on readers, be honest. I can picture you all looking around right now, like, nobody really knows what I’m thinking do they? As for me, I’m thinking about Spectrum Cable. They turned off my TV in the fourth quarter of a Packer game. B@$t@rds. I think their corporate office would look good in my movie, blowing up.

Then the other side of a good movie is a really hot, sexy girl. In the aforementioned Under Siege, Steven Seagal gets the hot sexy girl who made her entrance by popping out of a cake and transforms herself from a frightened mouse into a cold blooded killer. In Sudden Impact Clint Eastwood gets friendly with Sondra Locke, who plays a hot sexy girl who shoots a guy in the gonads (ouchy). Then of course there is James Bond with Pussy Galore, and Austin Powers with Alotta Fagina. I don’t know how those girls didn’t get Oscars.

But it’s not just the girls who are pretty these days, it’s also the guys. I was watching a clip from the Oscars recently on YouTube. (I have mixed feelings about the Oscars. I only watch the Oscars so I’ll know how to act when I get best screenplay award. I just hope they have plenty of cheese and crackers at the after-parties.) There was somebody doing a bit on this celebrity male actor who was so gorgeous (no I am not gay) that he outshone his gorgeous celebrity wife. Nevertheless, while they interviewed her husband she was doing this posing thing these chicks do. You know, this swishing back and forth, holding her hair up with her arm, moving her face up and pausing for the cameras, then down and pausing for the cameras, then turning to one side, then to the other. And of course after each motion she‘s always pursing her lips. You know, these chicks have just got to be pursing their lips. It draws their face into a slightly sour look like maybe they just ate a pickle. Holy crap, I just hate that stuff those chicks do on the red carpet. What do they think, they’re some kind of goddess? They’re interviewing your husband for god sake, and he’s prettier than you are! I want to reach into the TV screen, grab her by the scruff of the neck, and shake her. But it’s just as well I can’t. There’s not much scruff on that dress anyhow. There’s actually not much of anything on that dress above the belly button.

So who do I have in mind for the hot chick in my first movie? Won’t you be surprised. I’m going for Melania Trump. Yes I know she’s busy being first lady these days, but I have a feeling she’s ready for a career change right about now. And she’s already got experience with acting. Shortly after marrying The Donald she made an Aflac commercial. (Yes that’s right, shortly after marrying The Donald she plays the role of a duck. Did she mistake him for Donald Duck? Is there something kinky going on here?) I suspect she’s been acting ever since. And she’s good at it. I’m not even kidding, this is good stuff! In case you don’t believe me, I leave you with a link, right here.

I’m nominating her for an Oscar.

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Do you know, can you possibly even imagine, that it took over two minutes to get my cheeseburger the other day? I pulled up to the little speak-into-it thing and ordered a cheeseburger, large fries, and a Diet Coke. The Diet Coke is because when you have a twelve hundred calorie burger and nine-hundred more calories in the fries, it all averages out with the Diet Coke. You know, the Diet Coke has no calories at all, so that is one of three things with no calories. So that brings the average calories of that meal down to fourteen hundred calories. (2,100 calories divided by three things, times two.) I am going on a diet starting tomorrow (that’s when I start all my diets) and henceforth I will order a cheeseburger, large fries, and two Diet Cokes. This will bring the average calories of that meal down to one thousand and fifty calories. (2,100 calories divided by four things, times two). After placing my order I pulled up to the little window where you pay, which took a total of 90 seconds. Then I pulled up to the next little window where you pick up your stuff. Here I encountered a problem. It took an additional one minute and nineteen seconds to get my meal. That totals out to an incredible two minutes and forty-nine seconds. You call that fast food? I mean come on! How long can it take to grab a pre-made burger off the warming rack and scoop a couple of fries out of the bin? And I needed to get through that line fast, because you can’t buy stuff without people talking at you. Then you can’t focus on the important stuff, like listening to the car radio. I didn’t want any chatter about catsup to disrupt my Rush Limbaugh. So come on people, execute. This stuff is important.

But that experience was nothing compared to my last trip to KFC. I ordered the twelve piece bucket, as usual. The usual question about original recipe or extra crispy came at me from behind the counter, and my usual response that there is only original recipe went right on back. With what, believe me, was a very sorry excuse for an apologetic look the guy said they had only five pieces of original recipe up and ready. What? This is KFC! How can you not have original recipe? We have some more in the fryer, he informed me. It will be ready in twelve minutes. Twelve minutes? Twelve minutes? You’ve got to be kidding me! This is America. We get our chicken in 90 seconds flat. Anything less is unpatriotic. You’re letting the nation down. The most galling thing is that probably four out of the last five times I went to KFC they didn’t have enough original recipe up to fill a twelve piece bucket. That actually is completely true, and I am presently boycotting KFC because I refuse to wait twelve minutes for my chicken. I deserve better. I am an American. I went back to my car, drove to a Taco Bell fourteen minutes across town, and got my tacos in two minutes flat! So there!

On the way over to the Taco Bell, somebody got in my way. He was only driving 33 in a 25 mph zone. Come on! Everybody knows you can go ten miles over the speed limit without getting a ticket. And likewise, everybody also knows that all automotive manufacturers tweak their speed-o-meters to read a few miles per hour faster than you’re actually going. So I was losing out on at least five mph in the case presently being discussed. I moved up to three inches behind his bumper until that bonehead got out of my way by pulling off into the ditch, rather rapidly. I’m sure nobody was hurt. And by the time the police arrived I was long gone. So everything worked out for everybody.

True story; a few weeks back I drove home from my daughter’s house in Stevens Point. It is 122 miles, and I made the trip in 105 minutes. I have no idea how that happened, officer.

Do you remember Pop Tarts? Well I guess they’re still around, but come on, they were introduced in 1964. You put them in a toaster. Nowadays we use microwave ovens to get warm cinnamon buns in 30 seconds flat. That perky little noise we used to get percolating our coffee? Now we all have Keurig’s. But why spend any time in the kitchen at all? Most of us dispense with 30 second cinnamon buns and 60 second coffee. That’s 90 seconds completely wasted when we can pick up our breakfast at Starbucks along with our $7.00 cups of caffeine. Sure, you might wait five minutes for your café mocha, but you’ll be so hopped up you’ll be moving at jitter speed the rest of the morning. Besides, Starbucks gets a pass on speed, because they’re cool.

In this country, it’s all about progress. First it was popcorn popped in a kettle of warm butter, which gave way to dry hot-air poppers, which gave way to paper bags of seeds soaked in microwave friendly chemicals. Yummy! First there was wise old Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News. Then there was cable TV with maniacal Morning Joe and his girlfriend Mika. Now we just pull out our cell phones if we want to know what the crazy man said ten minutes ago. (Don’t even pretend to not know who the crazy man is.) There is pizza delivered to your door in minutes, TV On Demand, broader broadband so we don’t get that buffering thing when we download those videos of kitties. (I saw a calico sit her little butt down on a man’s twenty ounce steak the other day. It was so cute.) And now Amazon is experimenting with package delivery using whirring little drones flying up and down your street. Imagine the barking dogs and the loonies with shotguns. But those drones don’t need to worry about boneheads driving only eight mph over the speed limit. That’s what matters here people.

The point I am trying to make is that time is money. A wasted moment is a wasted opportunity. We’ve got to hurry. We’ve got to get things done. Well, actually by we I mean you. I just retired. Holy crap! I suddenly have no idea what I will do all day. But whatever it is, you can bet I will get it done in a hurry, because I am a good, patriotic, red-blooded American.

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In reporting the news from the made great again United States of America last week, Swedish reporters were challenged to make a proper translation. They settled on the word skithål. The runner up was rövhål. From this we can deduce that hål is Swedish for hole. You figure out the rest.

How do I know this? I have a brother who lives in Sweden. He’s lived there his entire adult life, having gone there as a twenty-year old in pursuit of the opposite sex. Why else does any red-blooded American boy do anything? He was virtually out of our lives for over twenty years. Then someone invented Skype. And text messages. Last week one such text came in. It read as follows:

What in hell going on over there in WH? 🙁

I have been getting that one a lot lately. I’d estimate for about the past twelve months. A few texts back and forth resulted in the aforementioned lesson in Swedish. And now you, my rarified readers, have also been launched into that lovely language, like it or not. Information like that is easier to take when you don’t see it coming.

I asked him if Sweden felt left out. Did they feel jealous of their Norwegian neighbors? After all, our pusillanimous prez pines for scads of Scandinavians to grace our American shores, but neglected to mention the Swedes. Are they feeling forgotten, neglected, and unappreciated? (By the way, prez likes being described as pusillanimous, because he thinks it has something to do with p#$$y). I texted my brother across the pond, expressing my deepest concerns. His reply came back as follows:

LOL 🙂

Not to worry, my brother assured me, the citizenry of Sweden has little interest in answering the president’s call. Any potential relationship was strained last year when prez loudly proclaimed at a rally, “Look what happened in Sweden last night!” The implication was that terrorist immigrants were making the country uninhabitable. Well that was alarming, if you have a brother in Sweden. A quick text established the truth. Nothing had happened in Sweden. Well not exactly nothing. The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported the following:

’A wooden moose got the attention of a lovesick moose bull. It all happened in 79 year old Ove Lindqvist’s garden in Byske outside Skellefteå, northern Sweden. “I thought it was going to start a fight, instead it humped the wooden moose thrice”, he said.’

Since the Swedish are squeamish about Fake News, they admitted this affair of the moose had happened the prior autumn, during the rut (that is wildlife talk for humping season). That editor will never make it in America.

The unfortunate statement the prez made at his rally is not the only source of tension between our two great nations. It was recently reported that we had been scheduled to conduct joint military exercises, but there was a snag. Sweden decided to sign onto the U.N. Treaty On The Prohibition Of Nuclear Weapons. It’s mostly aspirational at this point, but hey, it’s the thought that counts. Nevertheless, the U.S. warned Sweden that if they didn’t buy into MAD, we would refuse to play with them. MAD, by the way, used to stand for Mutually Assured Destruction. Now it’s just our state of mind.

The story on skithål countries wasn’t the only thing in the Scandinavian news last week. We also learned that the Norwegians are now the proud owners of a fast and furious fleet of F-52 fighter jets. We know this because during a state visit with the Prime Minister of Norway, our prez announced that he’d made the sale. There is only one little problem with this, which is that the F-52 doesn’t exist. It is a fictitious fighter which is only found in a video game. Fake News media are crowing about this, claiming it points out a flaw in our prez. But no, I say! No, not a flaw but an amazing display of salesmanship! He sold the Norwegians a phantom! A figment of his imagination!

Certainly Norway is a noble nation, but Sweden also has much to be proud of. They have no need of American F-52’s, because they not only build Volvo’s, they build their own fighter jets. I’ll bet you didn’t know that! They have been doing so for years. These days they build the Saab JAS 39 Gripen. ‘The Gripen has a delta wing and canard configuration with relaxed stability design and fly-by-wire flight controls. It is powered by the Volvo RM12, and has a top speed of Mach 2.’ And you can take that to the bank, because I copied it directly from Wikipedia.

But Swedish designers have outdone themselves with their latest creation, a marvel in that most critical field of modern technology. Video games. But this invention, courtesy of the Swedish advertising agency Animal, is so much more than a game. It will relieve you of stress, allow you to blow off steam, harmlessly vent any frustration you may have. (Though I can’t imagine why you’d be feeling any of that these days.) Here, with the swish of a mouse, you can swing a trumpet around our president’s head, his eyes warily following it’s every move. With each click you will blast in his ear, or under his chin, and send his entire horrendous headful of hair flying. Beneath it, you will see a mostly bald pate. I suspect there is a lot of truth in this game. And I will consider it a public service to leave you with a link, right here. Enjoy!

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Last week I inexplicably wound up watching an infomercial on the TV machine. It must have been, I don’t know, at least twelve minutes before I snapped out of it. But it’s okay, because I learned a lot in that time. I learned that I could lose 16 pounds in two weeks just by doing yoga. I further learned that in just one additional week I could lose another 19 pounds, and I could lose a total of 65 pounds in about two months. All of this simply by stretching and bending. It must be true. Somebody said it on TV. They can’t say it on TV if it isn’t true, right? And the best part is, I can do this yoga thing (to be honest I’m not too sure what yoga actually entails) while watching all the other great stuff on the television these days.

For instance, there are all those happy dancing people on commercials for everything from various electronics products for the young and the hip, to all manner of miracle medications for the not-so-young-and-not-so-hip. Holy crap! How many of those #@$&#-ing dancing dork commercials can they make? I wish I were an advertising executive. I’m thinking there is no easier job in the world than being an advertising executive. Don’t have any catchy new ideas for your next television commercial? Just find some incredibly ordinary looking people who would appear incapable of graceful movement, and have them do a weird looking little dance step to a catchy tune playing over the background voice explaining how one little pill a day can cure AMD. (That would be Age Related Macular Degeneration for the uninformed among you.) (And why is it AMD, why not ARMD?) If you really want to swing for the fences, the dancer can throw in a repetitive and rhythmic head twitch which if tried at home would cause carpal tunnel of the neck bone. But don’t worry, there’s another little pill for that. I saw that on Channel 32.

Speaking of miracle medications, what is available these days is, you know, a miracle. They seem to have a pill for everything. I don’t know how anybody ever dies. They all advertise on television, and here is the really important point. They all treat some horrible condition known by a heretofore unknown acronym. Commercials for pills feature acronyms for two very important reasons: 1.) they sound impressive, and 2.) they free up air time for disclaimers about how this cute little pill may possibly cause heart failure, renal failure, shortness of breath (but there’s another pill for that), certain dangerous personality disorders, and black grunge of the big toe. On Channel 12, as I said, they have a cure for AMD. Over on Channel 6 is the cure for COPD. On Channel 4 it’s ADHD (with an ingredient originally found in jellyfish). On Channel 23 is the cure for DJD, and on Channel 50 its IBD. And the cure for ED? Oh yeah, that can be found on every channel up and down the dial. And every single such ad will inform you that if your cure lasts more than four hours, go see a doctor immediately. And guys please, wear a very bulky overcoat when you do so. There may be children around.

Commercials are both informative and entertaining these days, but here is the thing that annoys me. They keep getting interrupted by regular programming. It’s just getting so bad. I was intently focused the other day, learning how to achieve financial security in my old age by selling my life insurance policy 18 months before I’m expected to die. Unfortunately, the commercials kept getting interrupted by CNN. Somebody was trying to tell me that nuclear missiles had been launched at Hawaii. Who cares? It’s Fake News. I want to know how to score some cash so I can upgrade to the latest iPhone. (I took out a reverse mortgage, also as seen on TV, to upgrade to the iPhone I have now, but the new one is even prettier). Out of pure frustration I switched over to Channel 50, but after only seven minutes of fascinating ads I had to sit through eight minutes of Pawn Stars. Rick was explaining to some guy (with bald head, huge beard, and a guitar strapped to his back), why he couldn’t pay $9,000 for that Nixon/Clinton campaign button from the 1988 election. But there was a happy ending. Chumlee bought it later for 89 hundred bucks.

And what about those pizza ads? Why is there an ad for pizza every ten minutes? Pizza peddlers are the biggest buyers of ad time in the entire universe. Are they afraid we’ll forget that pizza exists? And speaking of pizza, every time I order one I pay for it with my new credit card which offers that great cash back deal. I learned about that from a TV commercial as well. They promised that the more money I spend, the more money I’ll make. Without television ads I would have never known about this great alternative to working for a living.

And my cash-back credit card is not the only good deal I’ve found on the TV machine. Thanks to television advertising I am now the proud owner of one handy dandy fruit and vegetable juicer which doubles as a mouse trap. I also got for no additional charge a second juicer which will serve as my backup, in case I get too many mouse guts in the main unit. Total cost for the two units was only $19.99, plus shipping and handling (that was $67.33, each). I have also recently snagged a miracle frying pan which is guaranteed to give me absolutely no stuck-to-it mess when I fry my bananas. (I’ve been frying my bananas ever since I sent my spittle based DNA into that website I learned about on TV and discovered I am one-tenth of one percent Latin American.) And let’s not forget the potato peeler which doubles as a Swiss Army Knife. Or the 900 piece screwdriver set which is great for, well, turning screws. Or the miracle mop which can be attached to the underside of my cat. Actually, that’s why I needed the vegetable juicer which doubles as a mousetrap. Kitty is completely incapable of multi-tasking. She just cannot catch a mouse with that mop duct-taped to her tummy.

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Spoiler alert for my readers in those parts of the world that are not America, in particular North America. If you think, based on the word football in the title, that this post has anything to do with a whimpy game played with a round white ball, you are sadly mistaken my friends. That game is called soccer.

I have been watching football for decades. And I’m like, very smart. I’m a stable genius, that I can tell you. But as I watched a game on the old boob tube the other day, it occurred to me that I know nothing at all about the rules of this game. And neither do you, trust me.

You know that trick play where the quarterback takes the snap, passes to his halfback, then the halfback passes it back to the quarterback? Here’s the thing. If the quarterback starts that play up under center then that play is illegal. And I do not mean illegal because he’s got his hands up under the center’s, you know, dingleberries. It’s illegal because at that point the quarterback is not an eligible receiver. However, if the quarterback backs at least one yard away from center and holds stationary in that position for at least one second before taking the snap, then he is an eligible receiver. Two feet back won’t do, he’s got to be at least three feet back. A half second in this position won’t do. It must be a full second. This came to my attention during the recent Chiefs/Titans game in which the Titans quarterback threw a pass toward the end zone, which was batted up in the air. The quarterback caught his own pass, and ran it in for a touchdown. The official ruled the quarterback was an eligible receiver because he had been lined up in the shotgun formation. Wait, what was that? Well the rules regarding eligible receivers is one of those mysteries of the universe which had bothered me for years, so I Googled it. That’s how I learned the rule stated above. But here’s the thing, the official had it wrong. The play was a touchdown, because the quarterback was an eligible receiver. But this was not because of how he lined up for the snap. It was because any pass batted into the air by the defense instantly transforms every player on the field into an eligible receiver. So why, exactly, don’t the officials know the rules? If you Google the General Rule of Eligible Receivers you will find it all so simple. It’s not exactly the General Theory of Relativity. It turns out that all offensive players not wearing an ineligible number are eligible receivers, providing they meet one of three criteria. Those criteria are: 1.) They are lined up at either end of, but in line with, the line of scrimmage comprised of players wearing ineligible numbers. 2.) They are lined up behind the line of scrimmage. 3.) They are a quarterback who…, well you already know that rule. All of this begs the question, what is an ineligible number versus an eligible number. In the NFL an eligible number is anything between 10 and 19 (wide receivers), 20 to 49 (running backs), or 80 to 89 (tight ends and more wide receivers). Except tight ends may wear 40 to 49 if all numbers between 80 and 89 are taken. Got that? Oh and by the way, if an ineligible receiver (see rules above) happens to wander across the neutral zone when a forward pass crosses said neutral zone, that is a penalty of ineligible receiver downfield. But what if the pass never crosses the neutral zone? Suppose the quarterback throws a swing pass out to a running back but behind the line of scrimmage. Can an ineligible receiver be downfield in that case? I have to tell you, I have no idea. And I have no time to look it up. I’m busy studying the General Theory of Relativity. It’s easier.

In the second quarter of the aforementioned Chiefs/Titans game, the Chiefs sacked the Titans quarterback. Said quarterback fumbled the ball and a Chiefs defender scooped it up, bound for glory. Whoops, the officials whistled the play dead. The rule says, he explained, that when the quarterback’s forward motion is stopped, the play is dead. Since the play is dead, there is no fumble. What? Yes, we have all seen this called when several defenders stand the ball carrier up and then try to rip the ball away. But this quarterback dropped the ball as a result of the initial hit. Believe me, there was nobody standing this guy up. He went down harder than Steve Bannon (don’t ever criticize family royalty in this country). The man was just flat out tackled, and he dropped the ball. Of course his forward motion was stopped. He was getting his arse handed to him by the Kansas City defense. But isn’t that just football? Let us stipulate that almost every time a runner gets tackled, his forward motion is stopped. The exception of course, would be if he’s running backwards, like Wrong Way Corrigan. How then, are there ever any fumbles in this game?

Now let’s talk about the ground. Yes I know the ground sounds like a very mundane topic, but in the NFL the ground is a controversial thing. The ground can suddenly and without warning jump up and cause a fumble. Or not. But which is the case when? Well as it turns out, that all depends (why am I not surprised). If the ball carrier is being tackled, and the ball pops out upon contact with the ground, that is not a fumble. If, however, the ball carriers is just a klutz and trips and falls and the ball pops out upon contact with the ground, that is a fumble. The lesson here is, don’t be a klutz. Then there is the question of the ground versus an incomplete pass. If a receiver goes down and the ball touches the ground at any point at all, that is an incomplete pass. Easy enough. However if the receiver gets both feet down, has control of the ball, and takes another step, that is a completed pass. If he subsequently goes to the ground and loses the ball, the rules regarding fumbles apply (see above) not rules for pass completions. But here’s what boils off my blood pressure medication. These seemingly simple rules lead to the infamous interminable replay. We are all treated to endless slow-motion, extreme zoom views of the ball from twenty-nine different angles. The TV announcers give their opinions. Oh the ball touched one blade of grass when the receiver went down. It moved one-quarter of an inch as the ball carrier was rolled by a three hundred-fifty pound defender, sacrificing his melon but protecting that ball, more precious than gold. (If the receiver’s contract is up at the end of the season, that ball is, literally more precious than gold.) In the end, it’s really all up to the officials, and usually some unseen guy in a replay booth in New York City two-thousand miles away from the game. Yes football is almost a religion in this country, but unlike the Pope, the officials (including the ones in New York City) are at times a little weak on being right. But let’s be honest, in football, as in life, it’s sometimes hard to know what is right. It all depends on whether your team just caught a break or got screwed. Unless your team is the Bears. The Bears always get screwed. But I’m from Wisconsin, that’s okay with me.

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