A Dad Joke Riddle

 I am between 4 and 6.

I am not Five.

What am I?

Using Your Money to Bribe Billionaires

 There are murmurs, whispers, and threats the Chicago Bears might move to NE Indiana.  I am beyond skeptical. 

Fuzzy has a great breakdown at his place. The Mayor of Hammond (the basis for the fictional town in the movie A Christmas Story) thinks the stadium will generate significant new business, a “Bearsville ” outside the stadium. 

Does he realize the team will only play 8 or 9 games a year in that stadium? No Ruth’s Chris nor high rise hotel can survive on traffic from game days only. Has he driven to Chicago and looked around st the entertainment offerings right around Soldier Field? 

Exactly, and Chicago has far more going on than Da Region. 

I think the Bears are using this offer as a velvet hammer to force Chicago and  Illinois to a weaker negotiating position. 

I’ve run across this strategy more times than I can count in negotiations. “We.don’t want to change, but your competition has a better deal on the table…”

If I was a betting man…I am pretty sure who is getting played here. 

Don’t Panic, Have a Cigar

 I took a late lunch yesterday afternoon and smoked a small cigar out on the patio. With the temperature in the upper sixties, I perfectly comfortable in a sweatshirt. Are those things bad for me? Yes. Do I care? No. I’ve been smoking cigars since I was about eight, so I think I’ll be okay. 

Yeah, I worked late to make up for it. 

No Friday music because Google is being a jerk. 

Definition of schizophrenia

 Temperatures will push the 60s for the next couple of days before snow flakes fly this weekend. 

'Nuff said.

Boo Radley is dead

 

I read Robert Duvall has died. I believe he is one of the best character actors to grace film or stage. 

From Thhe Godfather to Lonesome Dove he was excellent.  I particularly liked him in Open Range. 

He may have appeared in an occasional bad movie, but he was never bad in a movie. 

Sound the fog horn, Smitty

 Ahhoooga. 

Dense fog blankets the neighborhood this morning. The neighbor's porch lights are fuzzy lights in the distance. I'm not worried about my commute in the low visibility conditions,  I walk down hall to get to my office. 

I got ambitious and made a pan of lasagna for dinner. Actually,  I made two pans since I divided it into two baking dishes. We took the extra pan over to my daughter's. The wife and I still have enough leftover for lunch today. 

After dinner I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies while the wife did laundry.  Normally baking is her purview, but she asked and I did. 

Today is my mother's birthday. I miss you mom.

Annual Screed

 We have once again reached that time of year in mid-February were I need to make a proclamation. No, not Happy Valentine's Day (sure, that too), no, IT IS TIME TO TURN OFF YOUR CHRISTMAS LIGHTS.

Look, you don't have to take them down, but you can unplug them. It's not hard. 

I rant on this every year. There are three houses within a block fighting hard to maintain the Christmas spirit. Whatever, time's up. 

I'm convinced the lady on the corner believes you just leave the lights on until they finally burn out sometime in April or May and then just replace them next November. 

Side note: are you OK Freddie?

She'd walk down through the garden In the morning after it rained

This week was one of those strange collection of days that individually seemed to drag interminably, yet here we are at Friday wondering where the week went. 

It seems we are slated to get a big warmup, with temps peaking in the fifties and sixties next week. I'm ready for the snow to go away. 

You might have guessed from the previous entry I've been working on the Great American Novel. I'm rewriting what is the final draft. Maybe. Probably.  I hope. 

I think this effort is far better than my last book. That one needed about three more revisions to make it passable. So it goes. 

I've thought about trying to submit this novel to an agent and trying to get it published by a real publisher. We shall see. In the end it is probably just more meh drivel. I can live with that. Still, I'm no judge, but I think it is not too bad. It is very different from my previous effort. 

Yeah, yeah, you don't care about any of that. I know why you are here -- Friday music! Well, here you go:

I’ve got questions

Would you read this book?:

In rural small-town 1930's Indiana, a boy becomes a bootlegger-- and a man too.

Fifteen-year-old Matt Wyatt knows the Depression is squeezing the life out of his family's farm. When the Crawford clan offers his father a lifeline -- cash in exchange for quiet runs of moonshine--Matt becomes the least-suspected bootlegger in Polk County. What starts as a thrill soon plunges young Matt into a world of violence, loyalty, and moral compromise.

Anchored by the girl who steals his heart, Matt navigates dusty back roads, outlaw justice, and the thin divide between right and wrong as one run goes terribly wrong and the consequences will follow him far beyond the Indiana flat lands he calls home.

Spanning the last days of Prohibition to the shock of Pearl Harbor and World War II, Hoosier Flats is a coming-of-age novel about duty, family, and the heavy price of growing up in hard times.

My impersonation of snow this week

 

Where and When

 My wife has the right to criticize me. It may be true I have bad breath, an inability to fold towels to her standards, or fart too much, but I have a reasonable expectation she isn't detailing my shortcomings to a random stranger in the cereal aisle. There is a time and place. 

Likewise, athletes are entitled to an opinion. As an athelete you might think Dave's Coffee is bitter swill. You might even express this opinion to your friends and family, but when you are in public, Dave's Coffee has a strong expectation you tell everyone within earshot Dave's is the reason you get out of bed to train eight hours a day. They are sponsoring you and that is the trade-off. Every athlete understands this dynamic. 

When you are at the Olympics the USA is your sponsor. The Dave's Coffee logo isn't on your sleeve. The uniform says USA right there on your chest. The Dave's Coffee jingle does not play when you win, it is the National Anthem. You can have an opinion. Leave it at home. 

There is a time and place. 

How long until baseball?

 We have to be quiet this morning, the granddaughters came for a sleepover and they are still asleep. Turn your TV down. Whisper. 

We had a great time last night. I made spaghetti and we played games and watched a movie while munching popcorn. Once they are up and hungry we will make fried biscuit donuts. I miss seeing those girls every day. 

This evening I will watch the Big Game and root for both teams to lose. I have not had so little interest in a Superbowl in a very long time and I have even less interest in the halftime show. A dude in a dress doing hip-hop in Spanish? I will pass. 

Have a great Sunday.

Dig it

 

No music videos and you are welcome

We find ourselves on a Friday morning. We may break above freezing for the first time in a couple of weeks after some snow showers this morning. It's winter. 

The wife is getting vacation fever. She wants to go somewhere warm. What she really wants is another cruise. All it takes is money. I have earned a good bonus at work. I exceeded every one of my KPIs (goals). Whether the company pays it out is another question. The automotive division had a rough year, so we will see. When I exceeded my goals a few years ago I got bupkis because the company did not do well. I will be angry if that happens again, but my only recourse is to quit. It took me so long to get this job. I really like my job, except the pay. Anyway, vacations come from the bonus pay, especially a big one like a cruise. 

I told her to stop looking. She never pays attention to me. "But you get to go places," she says. Like New Britain , CT or Valley City, OH, or St. Louis are ideal destinations. I may "get" to go to Grand Rapids in a few weeks. Western Michigan is a joy to travel to in the winter. 

Is the sarcasm font working?

More importantly,  why would anyone care about any of this?

One final thought, it is egregious Reggie Wayne is not in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The very definition of tiresome

 Idiot Target employees in Minnesota  (where else) are protesting outside of Target headquarters demanding management refuse to let ICE officers into the stores.

I suppose if you want to also invite the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice to go after your company, you could ban Federal Officers, otherwise these leftist asshats display an astounding ignorance of the Constitution.  

Arguing with the calendar

You might think March or perhaps October has the craziest weather here in the Midwest. You would be wrong. 

February clearly suffers from short man syndrome since it only has 28 days. It over compensates by throwing extremes of weather in our faces. The record low for February in Indianapolis is -21F. The record high is 77F. Based on my history major math that is a temperature variation of nearly 100 degrees (98 degrees if we are going to be all scientific and mathematically correct). Yes, bow down, I did that calculation in my head. I win math this morning.

I'm sure February weather would be far less schizophrenic if we would just pay the global warmingcoolingclimatechange tax. February wants to know why January and March don't pay their fair share, whatever that means.

No matter how many times I tell February that it has plenty to offer, it still feels shorted. "Look," I say, "You have Groundhog Day, Presidents Day, Valentine's Day, The Superbowl, you even have Black History Month!" I tell February it is special because every four years it gets an extra day. June does not get that. April doesn't. All January offers is a let down from glorious December and cold crappy weather. And clouds. Lots of clouds. We all hate January. 

I think February merely likes to complain. "I'm spelled funny. I only have 28 days. Everyone dislikes me because I'm still winter." 

Boo freaking hoo, February.  I've better things to do than pump up your monthly self-esteem.  Maybe if you gave us more of those 77F days we wouldn't loathe you so much. 

Randy Newman had it right. Short months got no reason...

Quit your lecturing you leftist harridan

 Dear Billie Eilish,

If you are so sure we are all occupying "stolen land", stand up for your beliefs. Give any property you own to the nearest recognized tribe. You should also give up all of your earnings, to compensate for your privilege.

Otherwise shut the hell up you leftist fool.

You asked

 

A two-fer-- polka for Cappy and a tribute to Kevin's mom. 

John Candy filmed all of scenes in one day and reportedly ad libed most of his dialog.

And for the polka part:

PS stupid groundhog

Shine On

I've always believed the best Pink Floyd album is Wish You Were Here. Like the author in the link, I think the album has depth beyond any preceding music from the band, including Dark Side of the Moon. Conversely, Wish You Were Here avoids the pretentiousness of the later hit album The Wall. 

Of course most casual fans of classic rock will find my position curious. After all, Dark Side spent decades on the charts, The Wall is, well, The Wall. 

I won't pretend I've always felt this way. Forty, twenty, ten years ago I would have unequivocally stated Dark Side was the pinnacle album in the Pink Floyd discography ( I never did care much for The Wall as a whole). Further listening to Wish You Were Here over the past few years has changed my opinion.

Perhaps as I grow older and have lost loved ones and seen changes in my life that occasionally cause me to look at the past with nostalgia, makes the music resonates more. Who knows? 

Music is subjective and that is what makes it so wonderful.  My musical mood changes. Today i might be listening to progressive music, tomorrow country, the next Sinatra. But always, since I was a young teen, music has been part of my life. It plays softly in the background as I work, it plays as I type this post. It always plays deep in my brain as I slouch through life.