Endorsed by Joe Friday

So much talk about 'fake news' these days. Here's a page from the past that will stop you in your tracks. 

Talk about getting a leg up on law enforcement.
-bill kenny 

Big Doings on the Blue Planet

Having spent the last three months (or more) bleating piteously about the awfulness of our winter (I'm sure much to the simultaneous annoyance and bemusement of those who had real winters), I'm now whining about all the rain and grey skies we've had since Spring officially began.

Yes, I could calculate, assuming a lowered atmospheric and ground temperature, just how much snow the inclement weather I am complaining about would have produced, which would have shut me up quite nicely, thank you, as I'd be outside even now probably with a snow blower and mukluks (the perfect name for a grunge band, imho).

Instead, I got up both yesterday and today with temperatures above freezing (a novelty of sorts) and weather struggling to make up its mind. Poor me. In honor of April Fool's Day, perhaps a snowfall of mini-marshmallows might be a practical joke by Mother Nature, or, in light of how many of us have yearned for Spring's arrival, real snowflakes that look like marshmallows.

We could stand outside and stick out our tongues and hold cups of cocoa, with peppermint swizzle-sticks. Except I dislike peppermint in cocoa nearly as much as I dislike mint in my chocolate ice cream. 

The first three months of 2026 are in the books, their passing marked by this day, a celebration of sorts for pranksters and practical jokers. And we turn to face the Spring, or what we hope will be spring soon enough. I have always found people and places slightly more attractive when the trees' buds are just about to burst and the birds' songs are louder because they are more numerous.

Unless, of course, I've parked my car under a tree and returned to find it covered in something that makes me wish wistfully for snowflakes and mini-marshallows.
-bill kenny

Send Me the Pillow You Dream On

I have more free time than is good for me, and what at times feels like an unlimited choice of television programming that is at the same moment entirely unsatisfying. I had a dream recently where one of the sports stations was broadcasting rooster wrestling. I believe I was dreaming, or hope I was, though I thought the competition was sponsored by Nike, so I'm not all that sure. I believe it was being hosted at the Calaveras County Civic Auditorium, but, as I mentioned a moment ago, I'm not all that certain on that detail either. 

However, what I watched, sort of like a wreck on the highway, Saturday afternoon, puts rooster wrestling in the shade. It was the Hush Pillow Fight Championships, on ESPN 8. The namesake sponsor covers all manner of bedclothes, not just pillows.  (I suspect such catholicity was the critical factor for why Mike "The 2020 Election Was Rigged" Lindell didn't land the sponsorship deal).  

It looked to me like the championships were held in a high school gym, and one that had an ice cream sandwich concession, since every shot of the crowd and their reactions had people eating ice cream sammiches. Perhaps Klondike Bar should sign on as a co-sponsor.

The announcers were enthused about the ringside action and very knowledgeable about the scoring for what they referred to as "Three Pounds of Fury," a reference, I assume, to the weight of the pillows. Not sure how much tactics and strategy played a role in the bouts, as it seemed to me the more muscular of the two combatants always won. 

The victors received a PFC Championship Belt and a briefcase with (I am guessing) a cash prize, labeled 'hush money,' while the crowd roared its approval. I'm sure there are franchise opportunities available to get in on the ground sheet, so to speak, but I can only dream what they might cost.
-bill kenny   

Pardon Me Miss, But I've Never Done This....

A month from now, assuming I survive (with a capital A), I'll turn seventy-four years old. As if by magic, in recent months, I've gone from a vibrant and engaged biped (at least in my mind) to a crotchety curmudgeon who could give Miniver Cheevy charm lessons. 

I came of age with manual typewriters and rotary-dial teelphones through whaever we're up to now. I had great hopes as ARPANET became the internet, believing that with a powerful means of sharing information, we might, as a species, become more educated and better-informed. I know, "How'd That Work Out?"

I have all the technological tools of the Twenty-First Century, including a couple about whose purpose I am less than clear, though it would appear, based on very recent evidence, that some of us have redefined their function. 

This showed up over the weekend as a message in WhatsApp or Telegram, perhaps both or just as likely neither. 

My evil twin, Skippy, wonders what happened to going door to door selling magazine subscriptions 'to bring in extra funds.' Probably still works, but the pages stick together.
-bill kenny 

Faithful While Faithless

Raised in the faith of my fathers, I know that today, Palm Sunday, begins the most important week in the Christian calendar, even if you've lost your faith as I have done along the way to here and now. 

If I could think hard enough, what follows might be considered a contemplation. I can't, so it isn't. It may not make sense to you; that wasn’t my intent. I needed to hold the world still for one moment to make sense for me. Your mileage may vary in ways neither of us can contemplate.

Karl Glogauer was the wrong man at the right time.

The protagonist in Michael Moorcock's novel, who travels from the future to the time of Christ, Glogauer, instead, meets a profoundly retarded child of Mary who is, in Moorcock's account, most definitely NOT the Son of God. 

Glogauer then assumes the persona of Jesus of Nazareth, based on his recollection and knowledge of the accounts in the Gospels of the New Testament, culminating in his crucifixion to fulfill those accounts, which shaped history to the moment in the future in which he journeyed into the past to complete the story.

Perhaps the most simultaneously unsettling and reassuring aspect of Behold the Man is not the death of someone else in place of the Son of God but its emphasis and reaffirmation of the importance of the belief that He lived at all. 

For you, for whom today is an Ecce Homo experience, my sincere congratulations are tinged with more than just a little jealousy and envy.

Not everyone has the comfort of your beliefs and the reassurance of your faith. Some may not wish to have it, while others who once did are forced to realize again the distance traveled from then to now, involved a bridge of faith that, once abandoned, has been destroyed and can possibly never be rebuilt.

As even Mark reported, help for one's unbelief is not easily obtained, and perhaps the realization that such assistance can only be given, never earned, is part of why pride becomes the greater sin, especially for those with so little reason to be proud. 

It's the shadow of doubt that creates the chink of vulnerability in an armor of faith that condemns a wanderer to know the path but refuses to walk it again.

Sometimes it's the belief, and sometimes, the believer.
-bill kenny   

Say "No" to Rapists and Racists

If you're not outraged at the mess the Pedo President and his cabal have created not only in this country, but throughout the world, you haven't been paying attention. 

Now the US Treasury is going to put his signature on our paper currency, but even if it's on every bill printed for the next three years, it will still have appeared more often in the Epstein Files. 

Wake up and act up. 

The greedheads who are looting our nation and corrupting everything they touch, as well as the red ballcapped gomers who go along hoping to get along, aren't going to go away unless and until we make them.

As a nation, we were the hope of the world. We can be that again. Together.
-bill kenny 

Lafayette, We Are Here (kind of)

The state of the union, in my opinion, is such that sometimes English fails to capture the frustration, confusion, and anger of any given moment. 

Steve Martin once noted the French have a different word for everything, and in this case, it's a whole sentence, courtesy of retired French Army General Nicolas Richoux. It's spot-on.

‘qu’il aille se faire foutre.’

Merci beaucoup. 'Et je vous remercie de votre attention à ce sujet.'
-bill kenny