The New Romantics

I spotted the toddler first-I think because I liked being a dad when our kids were young, so even today I scan the two feet from the ground first. And there he was. About three with a Mohawk dyed a shade of sunshine yellow so bright it hurt your eyes, and because he wasn't visible enough from space yet, add alternating electric red stripes the length of the Mohawk. We're talking a thing of beauty.

He was notionally on the hand of his Dad, who was pushing the shopping cart. I say it like that because he was jumping around like maybe a pallet of cane sugar had fallen on him in the store and he'd eaten his way out of the pile that threatened to bury him.

Alongside Dad was Mom, pushing a stroller with a little tiny person who (Dad's perspective again) didn't look old enough to be sitting up in the first place. I chose to NOT say anything to the Mom because I am a mellow fellow. That, and her husband being about six and a half feet tall and no more than 1% body fat, may have influenced my desire to be silent.

The pair had been shopping, I would guess, for most of their lives at Animal Skins R Us, and I smiled, thinking how big a frownie face the PETA folks would have if they could see this pair. But that's not the best part, and when I say best, I mean not best.

Just below the shoulder blade on his left arm, and of course, when you're styled and shaped like he is, it's a sleeveless shirt, he has a tattoo in jet black ink, "Her Stud." 

As the late Billy Mays used to say repeatedly, 'But wait, there's more.' 

On Mom's right shoulder, and she is as slender as the chances of pony rides on my birthday, in very much the same place in the darkest of tints, she has a tattoo with "His Bitch." Hopeless Romantics. And somewhere Norman Rockwell is suddenly not so sad he shuffled off his mortal coil at the moment he did.

-bill kenny

The Upside to the Shutdown

Having endured it on too many occasions, as a federal employee, the kabuki theater that is Washington, D.C., during a government shutdown, I don't have a lot of good to say about it.

Except a plague on both your houses.
-bill kenny

Upcharge for OJ

I was in my neighborhood Mickey D's yesterday morning for breakfast. I always smile when I hit these joints not because I'm happy to be in the places, but rather the contrast between the television portrayal and the reality always cracks me up. 

Do you remember when we were kids and how the cafeteria ladies always wore hairnets if they were on the serving line? What happened to those rules, and who decided a ball cap (if we're lucky, otherwise a visor for the most part) offers the same protection from hair in my food as the old school hairnets? 

When I sat down at my table and looked up, there were two women seated across from one another at a table near a window, heads bowed, hands clasped, saying a prayer before beginning their meals. From their age and attire and the simple silver bands on their left hands, I realized I was looking at two nuns in mufti and not folks who were seeking Divine Help for the Breakfast Burrito.

I flashed on a childhood recollection of 'saying grace' at our family table before tucking in; a prayer that, as we grew older in my parents' house, became more of a race to see who could finish first and get started while the food was still hot since Mom always made a big deal about letting things get cold as you picked at them. I can only hope the Lord grades that kind of behavior on a curve, but fear I know better.

I smiled, here in the present, to realize that it was good that someone (in this case, TWO someones) remembered to say thank you as the rest of us were oblivious to the gift we were receiving on a lovely Saturday morning in Southeastern Connecticut. 

Later I learned that Saturday, is Saint Francis of Assisi Day (the Hallmark store has no cards; I checked) and smiled again as I thought of the two witnesses on their pilgrimage through the world and why, for more reasons than are between Heaven and earth, breakfast is still the most important meal of the day.
-bill kenny

Re-Open the Federal Government

There's some $hit not even Mikey will eat. And the arguments for why our federal government remains closed are currently #1 on this list.

To summarize the 'debate':

Congress/White House: get the feck back to working for all of us.
--bill kenny

Why Wasn't This an E-Mail?

Before I retired, I used to spend a frightening amount of time in meetings. I wasn't the subject of them but more like a prop or part of the G(r)eek chorus. Truth to tell, I spent much of my meeting time wondering why it had been called, since most of what went on could have been a phone call or a group e-mail. 

I thought about those meetings the other day while watching Pete "Hollywood" Hegseth, the Secretary of War on a first-name basis with Johnnie Walker, offer a TED-talk to the most senior career military leadership of the United States.

It was pretty goofy, and his "F. A.....F.O." closing did almost nothing for me except set the tone for the Pumpkin Dotard who followed. 

Seriously? Who voted for these morons?
-bill kenny

Vote for Me ....And I'll Fix Everything

Election season is like Trick or Treat for adults, except we registered voters seem to end up with a lot of Mary Janes and salt water taffy and way too few Dove Bars and Reese's Cups. 

Thirty-three days from now, we'll be knee deep in big muddy hitting levers, blackening circles, chopping chads (sorry, Florida) as the will of some of the people (at party nominating conventions this summer) is transformed into the will of all the people. The miracle of democracy, coming to a ballot box near you. Unless you are someplace that can still vote absentee.

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard ." Sing it, H. L.. I'll hold the hymnal while you turn the page. Of course, in this country for the most part, hardly anyone has an opinion on how well democracy works since we rarely get above thirty percent turnout by registered voters in an 'off-year' (= non-Presidential) election.

Living in one of the thirteen original colonies (I still think we should get silk jackets, have colonial colors and maybe a secret handshake; just to shut up those ba$tards from the West Coast with their nice weather and fresh fruit all year round), I'm watching the wheels as I'll have the opportunity to vote for members of the Board of Education, a Mayor, City Council, three french hens, two turtle doves and a porridge in a print tee. Plus, in my town, Norwich, Connecticut, we'll have local referendum questions, though the pygmy pony initiative failed to make the ballot. Again.

You'll have about the same range and scope of choices where you live-but only if you choose to vote. The same folks who'll sit on hold for twenty minutes for a call-in show can't take ten minutes to go vote on Election Day. We may have neighbors who believe you must pay a fee to cast a ballot, or lack a calendar that informs them when Election Day is. 

The same people who call DWTS hundreds of times to get their favorite to the next round don't think it's appropriate to have an opinion on the direction their city, state, or nation should take.

If you don't choose, you lose. And don't tell me you don't have enough information. In this country at this time in our history, if there's one thing we have TOO much of, it's information. The trick is to turn it into knowledge you can use to make an informed decision. Because that's what we're lacking....
-bill kenny

An Enigma Walking

I know none of this is real. Or, perhaps better phrased, it exists as a reality in a manner (ones and zeroes) I could not deconstruct into its present shape on your screen (or mine). It's all vapor and electrons with a heaping helping of whimsy but when I sit in front of the monitor (and there's a reason why they look like windows) and see a note from someone about whom I was just thinking, or just NOT thinking about, I marvel at the sequence of discoveries that had to happen when they did and how they did for all of that to become all of this.

We can use technology to track terrible and terrifying weather to provide otherwise helpless people with the advanced notice that will save their lives. We can see and say greetings to friends and family halfway and more (oh?) around the world from our desktop and develop relationships in cyberspace that rival any we have on terra firma. It's all the same and, yet, very different.

"We can't play this game anymore, but can we still be friends?" Despite, or is it because, the answer is contingent on conditions that are never defined, we often never know. The other day, a note from a FBF, Facebook Friend, whom I shall never in this life meet, who attended a family celebration and met another (mutual) FBF whom I have met only once and will also probably never meet again.

We three are a galaxy, without a sun or a moon, revolving around one another even as we are components of a larger movement comprised of many and more just like, and also unlike, us, to include you.

The only thing we three have in common is...wait for it, one another. And, here's the part that makes me smile, it's true for each of us and for all of us. Based on their posts, adventures, shared photos, and comments, they live out loud and enjoy their lives at max vol. Maybe that's you? 

Or perhaps you are me in your galaxy, the flavorless gelatin guy, not because I do not deserve a flavor but because I don't want to make trouble. But I'm only saying that while building a towering rage at being overlooked/underheard, even as I assure others all is well. There's one in every crowd.

Look at yourself and those around you and see if you too aren't part of a tripod-possibly the most stable and flexible construct we have in our arsenal of social structures. The shades of gray and nuances across the color spectrum are a subset of the larger issue and not essential to the discussion. 

I contend neither white nor black are actually colors at all, since the latter is the absence of light while the former is the absence of color. But like so many who so believe, I see my world only in those two.

It's the mingling with colorful people, some of whom I'm related to by blood and marriage, others via keyboards and mouse clicks, and still others by a variety of means and in a manner defying description, that helps me maintain and retain the fiction of human credentials. All the while, I marvel at those who drink like it's water and dance like no one is watching.

-bill kenny