The best way to sum up this particular time of the year:
When I was walking Birch to the woods I saw the leaves falling, each captured by the light in way that made them seem like flakes of gold. And it was 80 degrees. By the end of the day the humidity relaxed, a cooler front wandered in, and the rains came. If it’s just an ordinary day, it’s rain, but if you want to be pretentious and poetical, it’s rains. You bless the rains down in Africa, for example, at least according to Toto.
Who wrote that song? From the wikipedia entry: “Paich, who at the time had never set foot in Africa, based the song's landscape descriptions from an article in National Geographic." That’s okay. About the video: “The video features Toto in a library, as they perform and showcase various aspects of African culture.”
I don’t think you could do that now.
Today’s exciting accomplishment: changing the autopay on my water bill. As I mentioned yesterday - and I know this has nagged at you all day, wondering how that all turned out - I knew not my login, my password, or my account number. For all I knew I actually had no account, no autopay, and had accumulated a decade’s worth of bills. It does take a while before they cut you off. It would’ve been highly amusing if I’d sat down to figure this out, sent a request for a password reset, gone inside to get a drink of water and discovered that the taps had run dry. Call them up: no really I was JUST ABOUT TO PAY. Really!
The nice lady asked what she could do, and I said I didn’t know my account number, login, or password. Other than that I’m totally up to speed here. She told me that I didn’t have an account set up. This seemed odd, as I had the account login and password in my password manager, but best to assume that they just nuked everything at some point and made everyone make a new account. Anyway, it’s not as if someone could’ve hacked my account and stolen my water.
Then, because I am retired, I went to the grocery store to redeem a can of coins. I took the cash option, since I didn’t want a DoorDash card. Why? Because I don’t want to pay extra for cold food. I just assume everything’s going to be room temperature, delivered by someone harried and unhappy. The receipt had to be redeemed by a cashier. She was busy with a rather stolid and uncommunicative customer who was trying to get money orders in large amounts. Her card was repeatedly declined, like a Lionel Richie lyric: Once, twice, three times a deadbeat. The woman just stared at her screen, scrolling. She barely said two words to the cashier. When it was my turn I was excessively cheerful and chatty, and the clerk was sweet and friendly. She scanned the barcode and announced a total thirty dollars under the correct amount. She apologized and said she just wasn’t all here at the moment.
You want to say where is the rest of you, then? Disassociated, pursuing its own agenda with a freedom permitted by severance from your moral core? How much of you isn’t here? And why? Oh, I was late for work, had to run out the door, left the part of myself that correctly adduced sums sitting at the kitchen table with milk dribbling out of the corner of its mouth.
She gave me my bills and I recounted them, since it seemed an odd way to count out the money, and she pointed to them and added them up, and I said of course, I’m not all here either. I almost said “Fourteen percent of me is standing in the front yard wondering about power washing the ornamental stones,” but I don’t think she’s a Bleat reader.
Another survey of the half-price bins at Lundsanbyerly’s. What can we learn from these failures?
The affluent and upper-boomer clientele of the store liked Red Ragious more than 10-flavor Mega Mix. But it wasn’t enough to save either Mike or Ike.
I doubt the average person can detect the subtle distinctioons in the 10-flavor Mega Mix.
Perennial Q: Were there actual Mikes and Ikes?
The origin of the Mike and Ike name is obscure, even to the company. Just Born has claimed it originated from a vaudeville song, an internal naming contest, or the names of the inventors.
You’d think they’d know.
People have also claimed that the name is from the Rube Goldberg comic strip Mike and Ike (They Look Alike); Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose nickname was Ike; the Matina Brothers, two of whom were nicknamed "Mike" & "Ike," and were billed as circus dwarves and appeared as Munchkins in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz
I think it had no specific origin. It was just a phrase floarng around the culture for a few decades.
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A melange of Gummy Sharks. Primary flavor seems to be lime. Gummies are utterly overrated. It’s just stiffer-than-usual flavor. |
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This may have been rejected because the good people who trade here know there is no such thing. No such thing at all. You cannot have watermelon licorice unless you have completely redefined licorice. What you have here is a slightly less dense gummy. | |
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Never heard of it. I’m guessing it’s aimed at the Moms who do not want to pack a “sugary juice box” so they go with this stuff.
Might have been discontinued. |
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Why in the name of Bog would you try to go up against Oreo and use a name that sounds like cowardice | |
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Any parent who buys these should be shamed, publicly, and have their face printed in the paper with a large rotted molar superimposed at 35% opacity. I am, however, pleased to say that there was, once, an actual Maud. |
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I think we know why this one’s on the out. Bit late. I know you could bury these with Tut and bring them up centuries later and they’d still be pliable, but the time for Red, White, and Blue is long gone. We’re deep into Brown and Orange, and Red and White, minus Blue, is dead ahead. | |
That's it for the latest assessment. Not sure what we learned, except that sugar isn't moving the way it used to.
I was in a meeting about the release of my next book, and I really wasn’t very happy about it. I don’t know why. I was in sort of a tired mood and didn’t seem interested in what happened with the book. The next day everyone was very unhappy with my behavior at the meeting. I wasn’t quite sure what they were referring to, but my cousin Bruce handed me a letter that detailed my actions. I accepted it criticism with weary indifference, and I didn’t read it.
Later, I was outside, and I saw that we were very close to the terminal where you could buy airplane tickets. We haven’t bought our tickets home yet. We were in Detroit. So I walked over, and sure enough there was the terminal. II went to see if I could get tickets.
They had a booth for every state. I went to Michigan, until I realized no, I want to go to Minnesota. There was no one at the Minnesota booth. I walked back to the Michigan booth and they said no, you have to go to the Minnesota booth, when I turned around there was somebody sitting in the Minnesota booth. I figured just my luck, now I have to wait, but I actually was a pair of old people who were the clerks. I went over and told them that I wanted to do. The nice old lady made the arrangements for the tickets, and then I left and picked up daughter.
We were hanging around somewhere when I realized that I may have arranged the tickets, but I no money had changed hands, and I didn’t have them. When I went back to the Minnesota with my wife was there, and she was quite cross with me, because apparently something I had said at the last meeting with the publisher had gotten someone fired. He had been catering the party as a freelance weatherman, and when he mentioned that he’s been with his partner for 25 years, I said “oh, common-law,” and apparently that was enough to get him fired. I scoffed at this and said it was ridiculous. That had to be another reason, like the inaccuracy of this forecast, and why was a weatherman at a book-release party anyway.
The rest of the dream consisted of increasingly desperate attempts to get everyone to get to the airport so I could pick up the tickets. When we left I got the feeling that everyone was happy to see me go.
I don't know what affliction plagues Lance in the first panel. He looks like a 50 year old traveling band leader.
Lori, a hard-nosed reporter, ought to tumble to this gridiron phony. Solution here.
This has the sound of a local fave that got a shot at a national breakout, but forgot to come up with a melody that had more than two notes. Bet it sounded great live, though.
According to the comments on the video, there is doubt about the band's composition, singer, and existence.
That'll do! Heck of a Friday! Show your appreciation by heading over to the Substack and signing up for a cheap subscription, guaranteeing five, count 'em 5 updates a week/
Cuban money continues at Curious Lucre. I hope I earned your patronage, and I'll see you Monday.
