General Thoughts

 

I haven't been able to post in the past couple of weeks for several reasons.

As I've mentioned, my college roommate, with whom I've been close friends all these years, died from Pancreatic Cancer in late September.

It was quite a shock. He's fine in May. Calls in June to tell us the news. We see him in early September.  He's gone at the end of the month.

We went up to Bowling Green, Kentucky, for his memorial service. This leads me to my first general thought:  Older church folks bring food to comfort people in times of great loss.  It is something my generation and younger have forgotten.

I wish I could remember all of the food at my friend's house. Someone brought over a "Tailgate Salad".  I don't know what made it a tailgate salad, but it was good.

Another person brought over a tray of Chick-fil-A nuggets. My advice to anyone and everyone: always take a tray of Chick-fil-A nuggets. If someone doesn't like Chick-fil-A nuggets, they have hairy thighs and don't love the Lord.  Yes, I know Ludlow Porch came up with that phrase. Or maybe it was Lewis Grizzard. In any event, Chick-fil-A nuggets are marvelous.

Another thought. Atlanta traffic is based on this simple proposition: The person ahead of you in traffic is going to get to their destination before you and that is WRONG. 

I was driving on I-285 on Thanksgiving evening. It sort of resembled a scene out of "The Fast And The Furious" if every driver was stuffed to the gills with turkey.

Turn signals?  Why do you want to know?  Speed limits? More like Speed Suggestions.  Why is everybody driving with their headlights on like it is dark or something? 

Another thought.  People have strong opinions. Many of those opinions are insane, like "Die Hard" is a Christmas movie.

Fact: it is not. 

Yet some people have made this their destiny in life to proclaim "Die Hard," a Christmas movie right up there with Ralphie and The BB Gun.

Which reminds me, they have come out with a sequel to "A Christmas Story" called "Ralphie Has A Drinking Problem".  

Just joking.  It is called "A Christmas Story Christmas". Ralphie returns home for Christmas and meets all his old pals, including the guy who got his tongue stuck to the pole. I think he owns a bar.

 

Scut Farkus (yes, I thought it was "Scott", too) shows up and he is a policeman.  I don't know what happened to his crummy little toady, Grover Dill. Grover's probably in jail or moved to Georgia to work at Lockheed.

My son said it was a pretty good movie.  I taught him that "A Christmas Story" was a great Christmas movie like all great fathers should.  I don't know what he thinks about "Die Hard". 

This leads me to my final thought.  My son and his wife are having a baby.  Actually, my daughter in law is having the baby.  This mean my wife and I are entering a new phase of our lives: grandparents.

I don't know about you, but I always thought grandparents were supposed to be old and not young whippersnappers like me.  I remember my grandmother, she was about 180 when she stayed at our house.  I'm a spry 63 if I don't say so myself.

We are thrilled half to death, as we say down here.  I had a hard time dealing with the fact that I was somebody's father. Now, I have to deal with the fact that I am somebody's grandfather. 

It is pretty cool. I'm going to teach him how to tell jokes.  Such as: Why do cows wear bells?  Because their horns don't work.  My wife blocked me on Facebook because I post too many bird puns. Well, toucan play at that game. I used to make loads of money clearing leaves from gardens. I was raking it in.

 

The kid can't help but be popular.

 

I'm also going to tell him that certain football teams are bad like the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and the Florida Gators.  Then I'll him it is all in good fun and you have to take the wins with the losses.  Just please, Lord, don't let him become an Alabama fan.

Not So Instant Analysis

 

Look, I have good reasons for not commenting on the 2022 Mid-Term elections.

One: the election really isn't over. Sort of.  We have another run-off here in Georgia with two candidates who apparently didn't like their wives.  You can't imagine how thrilled we are here in Georgia that we have six more weeks of commercials.

Commercial One:  (Voice over)  "Herschel Walker.  My God."  

Commercial Two:  (Voice over)  "Raphael Warnock is the reason you pay five dollars for gas. Plus, he tried to run over his wife because Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi told him to TAKE HER OUT".

Two:  It apparently takes Arizona and Nevada weeks, if not months, to count votes.  How is this possible?  You knew the winner of "American Idol" the next day.  I hate to be partisan, but it is strange how these lengthy voting stories always seem to end with the person with the (D) beside their name winning the election

Three:  I've been really swamped.  As I mentioned in my last two posts, my friend Bill died.  I wasn't in the mood to write about Stacey Abrams and her big brain.

But while I'm at it, I'm not sure what office Stacey Abrams was seeking.  I kept seeing signs that she was running for governor here in Georgia, but at times it seemed like she was running to be Prime Minister of The Cool Kids Table.  She would tweet about wanting to be the governor of the "great state of Georgia", and then you'd see a news clip of her saying we were terrible and we needed to have a "conversation". 

Abrams was running against Brian Kemp. Brian Kemp is the only politician I've ever witnessed that does not know how to smile.  But, I give him this. He opened the state when everybody (and I mean everybody, including Big Bad Orange Man) was calling him a killer. Kemp also stood up to Trump when Trump wanted to "find" eleven thousand votes. If Kemp was from Vidalia, they would say he has onions.

In any event, the early predictions by the people who predict things for a living said there was going to be a "red wave" meaning the Republicans would take over the Senate along the House. 

That didn't exactly happen.

The Mid Terms basically kept the "status quo" (which is Latin for "A quo that is status"). Apparently there are several reasons for this.

One reason is The Dobbs Decision by The Supreme Court, which overturned Roe vs Wade, will somehow lead to Trojan condoms being outlawed.  The Democrats got their voters to the polls by fear- mongering that they would not be able to terminate a pregnancy after the baby was born.  As we all know, this country was founded on reproductive rights and everybody has the right to choose unless it is a vaccine.

The second reason is DEMOCRACY WAS ON THE LINE.  This is because President Orange and January 6th. One really famous historian, Michael Beschloss, said, “Fifty years from now, if historians are allowed to write in this country and if there are still free publishing houses and a free press — which I’m not certain of, but if that is true — a historian will say what was at stake … was the fact whether we will be a democracy in the future, whether our children will be arrested and conceivably killed.”

I watch FOX News, but I've never seen Tucker Carlson advocate arresting and killing children, so I'm not sure where Dr. Beschloss derived his opinion. But hey, he's made a living out of being a history major, so I salute him for that. 

It just seems like Democrats understand the game a little bit better. They have convinced people that standing in line without a slice of pizza is cruel and inhuman. They have convinced people to fill out a ballot at home, and they will drop by the house and pick it up for you and take it to the election polling place to be counted. That's so sweet.

One result of this lousy election cycle for the Republicans is that it looks like maybe, possibly, the Republicans are ready to move on from President Trump. That is if it is all right with him. 

Well, it won't be.  Trump will hit the RINOS (Republicans before 2015) with one of his zingers, and they'll go back to begging Trump to mention how cool they are to one of his golfing buddies.

Another result will be President Pap-Paw thinking he is doing this SUPER job. The people love paying more for gas and groceries! People love being called terrorists for having the gall to question a school board. Worry out loud about a nuclear holocaust?  People can't get enough of it.

It looks like we're going to have more of the same. Way to go, guys, way to go.