Credit: Grok
May 7, 2025–Don’t you hate when columnists write lists of disjointed observations?
Me too. So you can skip this one.
Still here? Okay, here we go…
If your town or state is named “New” something, it is derivative and therefore gives you less reason to be proud. It’s like calling yourself “New Bob” or “New Betty.”
I don’t like the acronym “IYKYK.” It screens out outsiders. Like it does if you don’t know what IYKYK means.
I always read “Garage Sale” as Garbage Sale.
I’ve been doing my own taxes for more than 50 years. You’d think I’d be over the anxiety every time I sit down to start them. After all, my situation hasn’t varied that much from year to year. Why does it cause such stress?
“Podcasts are the least-dense forms of media.”
True. The content per minute ratio is very low.
One thing they didn’t tell you about getting old: you can have a bloody scratch on your arm and not know how you got it.
The Sisyphus System of exercise: Pick up a large rock and carry it up a hill. Repeat.
(It’s really a good workout)
I lost a client because I wasn’t honest with them. We completed a project according to how they requested it, even though we told them it wasn’t best practice. When it wasn’t effective, they blamed us. A good lesson.
It’s really nobody’s business when your birthday is. A birthday party is a reward that marks no accomplishment.
I can’t tell you the last movie I watched.
Louis L’Amour writing about a dying tree: “The tree was slowly repaying its debt to the soil.”
Why at every public ceremony does there have to be so much “thanking?”
I don’t get profanity. How in human history did certain arrangements of specific sounds acquire the ability to shock and offend? They are just ordered phonemes. If you hear someone swear in a different language, it means nothing to you. Same if you swear at someone who doesn’t understand your language. Yet you wouldn’t stand up and yell it in church. And do animals swear? Are there sounds in chimp and heifer and alligator that offend them, yet sound like “oink” to humans?
If you AI an image of yourself, you just might be a narcissist.
I hate selfies but refuse to use a filter.
Everyone understands how your past choices can affect your future existence. But what if your future choices could affect your present existence?
As humans age, why do men become more like women and women become more like men?
I’ve been accused of being unemotional. I’m not unemotional. I just don’t waste energy. Because emotions are not physiological events. They are artificial states that we create internally and then nurture.
Scabs don’t heal scars; they protect new skin. (Credit to my 6-year-old grand who said it’s like how a snake sheds its skin.)
I make my own trail mix… a bag of M&Ms. Sometimes I add a few peanuts.
I don’t understand how meteorologist can be so confident in their forecasts when on any given day the three weather monitors in my yard give three different readings. By as much as 5 degrees. And why does anyone have three weather monitors in their yard?
When the weather says “50% chance of rain,” it doesn’t mean there is a 50/50chance of rain. It means it will rain in half of your area. Is this the most unhelpful piece of information you can imagine?
“There is a 25% chance of broccoli at dinner.”
“You have a 90% chance of saying something inane at the cocktail party.”
Why do we let meteorologists get away with this?
There is a 33 1/3% chance you finished reading this.