P.S. A Column On Things

Funny because it’s true

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a gesture intended to welcome the new pontiff, on Thursday Donald J. Trump offered to sell Pope Leo XIV a $60 Bible.

“You want to grab this deal while you can,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “It’s gonna cost a lot more after EU tariffs.”

Calling the Trump Bible “a very special Bible,” he added, “I know you have a lot of Bibles already at the Vatican, but none of them have parts written by Lee Greenwood.”

Meanwhile, in his first official act as pope, Leo ordered a photo of JD Vance posted at the Vatican security desk.

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Start of May 12 Column. More or Less Continuous News Service since 1998

P.S. A Podcast On Things

Danville Band Concert

The Danville Community Band, the one in which I play tenor sax, has a concert on Sunday the 18^th at 3P.M. at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek. I’m going. Be there or be square

Where We’re Headed

Podcast

Friends and family have been suggesting I start a podcast for the last 25 years. I wasn’t sure I had anything to say. For a quarter century I have listening to other people following in my footsteps who have nothing to say. Now, I join them. As New York Times columnist Russell Baker once put it, “Broadcasting the contents of empty minds is what most of us do most of the time, and nobody more relentlessly than I.” And a special note: my nephew Paul created the AI voice which intones the aphorism at the top of the show.

Teaching and Me Part 2

I had hoped and planned to teach English in high school. But at the school my daughters went to, I found the students smug and privileged. Their interest in learning began and ended with whatever it took to get into Cal or Stanford. Grades, not learning.  It’s easy to find the faculty lot—it’s the one filled with Honda Civics. The one with the Lamborghinis is the student lot.

Plus, after three decades a journalist, I expected to be able to teach writing to high school students. My master teacher said to me, “You can write. Can you teach it?”

Chorus v. Verse

Chorus v. Verse

SF Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll used to have fun raising this question about pies: crust or filling (he, like me, thinks crust is a sideshow).

Since I became a lyricist, I have noticed that the chorus (the repeating section between verses) is the only part of a song that most people remember. Clearly, to them, the verse is like the crust.

There are probably several score versions of It Had To Be You (“our” song) that consist of the chorus (It had to be you, wonderful you). Only a handful include the lyric (Why do I do just as you say). Notorious versehound Frank Sinatra is one who sings the lyric.

There are hazards to listening to a song chorus-forward. For one thing, you miss a lot. I am currently revisiting songs from all periods of my life and am flabbergasted by the lyrics, which I am listening to for the first time. (As Sherlock Holmes almost said, “You hear, but you do not listen.”)

I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) is a great example. In December, I said that my song, Nothing I Wouldn’t Do was an answer song, in a sense, because it was clear what I WOULD do. My friend of long standing Robert Malchman noted that what Meatloaf wouldn’t do is perfectly clear if you read the lyrics.

 

Big Mess O’ Memes

I am so far ahead on memes I feel I must share a bunch of them at once in a Big Mess O’ Memes.

Take The Power Back

You are not helpless. Take it to the Tech Bros where it hurts. Digital Exodus. The revolution will not be monetized. The only language the oligarchy understands is money. Talk to them in that language and they will jerk the choke chain on their lapdogs.

 

This and that

Future of College Journalism
A research paper written in part by a former colleague on the future of college journalism.
...
Time for the AI song Again
In the AI song, Clark Smith and I make fun of AI’s glaring faults.
...
Things I Didn’t Know
This collection of weird facts reminds me of  my year-end “things I didn’t know” feature. Even though we area advised,  “Plagiarize, plagiarize, why do you think God made your eyes? Don’t call it plagiarism, call it research.” Phil Proctor of the Firesign Theater brushed aside my apology for a big steal I committed in college. “We never use the “P” word. We call I it an homage.”
...
Watcha-call-it
Place holder words for an object that you don’t know what to call. Watcha-call it, Thing-um-a-jig, dealy-bob. Which ones do you use?.

Talking Dog Story

Thank you for reminding me of this joke, Robert Malchman .

Guy walks into a bar with his dog. 
Says to the bartender, "Hey, I have a talking dog.  Is that good for a free drink?"
Bartender says, "Talking dog?  I'm sure.  But yeah, if your dog can talk, you get a free drink.
Guy asks the dog, "What's on top of a house?"
Dog says, "Rooooooffff."
Guy asks, "How does sandpaper feel?"
Dog says, "Ruuuuuuffff."
Guy asks, "Who was the greatest baseball player?"
Dog says, "Ruuuuuuthhhh."
"Get the hell out of here!" the bartender yells and throws them out the door.
Outside, the dog looks up at the guy and says, "You think I should have said DiMaggio?"

End of April 12 Column (No. 980)

Start of May 5 Column. More or Less Continuous News Service since 1998

P.S. A Podcast On Things

Social Security: Not Going Broke, Being Broken

Social Security won’t go broke, it will be broken. Be afraid, be very afraid.

When Musk (on the Joe Rogan Experience; you can look it up) said Social Security is a “ponzi scheme,” he was only saying out loud what most Congressional Republicans quietly whisper in the ears of their billionaire Tech Bros/Contributors/Bribers. Someone whispered it in Musks’ ear, and he is so politically ignorant he said it out loud in front of a live microphone. House Speaker Mike Johnson won’t say it out loud until the job has been done.

Who doesn’t know about the decades-long, publicly announced Republican plan to gut Social Security? Musk was simply carrying out his co-president’s wishes, gutting social security by firing staff and closing offices, then coming up with a plan to break the computers that issue the checks. Efficieny my ass: destruction by another name.

Financial advisor Mary Beth Franklin: “[If] you’re claiming Social Security [early] out of fear, it’s like selling stocks in a down market.” Says a woman who will never be living in a cardboard box eating cat food.

She says she thinks people are afraid of Social Security going broke. Admittedly she made these comments last year. How could she know? By reading the papers; just like the people grabbing their social security before it’s gone.

I wonder what the weather is like in Ms. Franklin’s universe?

 

Wedding Vows

Tired of Kahlil Gibran? Here are a couple of good wedding vow quotes, if you get to write your own:

Marriage is that relation between man and woman in which the independence is equal, the dependence mutual, and the obligation reciprocal.
-- Louis Anspacher in a 1934 speech:

But the male individual must not neglect his female component, nor the female her male…. Knowing the male but keeping the female, one becomes a universal stream…
--Tao te Ching – The Nature of Polarity by Alan Watts