Policemen police. Runners run. Writers write. And we all look over our own shoulders now and then.
This week I write about what I missed. And what I didn’t.
I cherish a few beliefs about myownself. This blog isn’t about me. These columns are what Faux News calls fair and balanced. And I AM never w-r-r-rong.
OK. Two out of three ain’t bad.
Last month, in writing about millionaires, I admitted that Id rather be a millionaire than not. I’m not going to increase my personal wealth much by putting a Paypal button on this site. The week before that, I confessed that I now understand why liberals don’t geddit. And just two weeks before, I told the story of my mom at the corner of High and Gay.
This is my 333 entry since I started blogging in 2008. 220 of them have been in the op-ed category I call Random Access. Many of those (151) fell in the Politics and News category. I imagine you can figure out what topics I covered.
“Politics is like the weather,” I wrote in 2008. “Everybody talks about it. People think they can predict the weather. Or change it.”
The pieces that had more impact were more personal. 2010 was a busy year. Liz Arden sent me a family picture of herself with her parents and I riffed that into a story about my mom as an elderly woman who could have been slain by a taxi. We learned that “full” in a small town parking lot is different than “full” in Miami or New York. gekko and I wrote an ongoing series together.
My family didnt have a lot of stuff when I was growing up. We had a boat but not a lot of cash. My dad’s job was the typical junior exec and we shared the homestead with my grandfather; we all had to work for what we did have. I came out of that feeling depraved but not deprived.
Rufus missed [bleep]ing Asbestos Dust back in May. He was amazed. The rest of us about died. A week earlier, I had written that “Kids arent allowed to eat dirt.” Number One daughter had been banned from classes because she wore a t-shirt to school.
I did spend some time wondering why my friend Swampy Swamtek, with all his brainpower, with all his education, with all his belief in conservation, can’t remember to turn out the lights when he leaves a room. I remembered that, since the heady days of Apollo 13 forty years ago, no man has had to walk twenty-five miles to school every morning, uphill, barefoot. Both ways. According to this presidents plan no American man ever will again.
And I took some time off from worrying about the claim that womens hot flashes are responsible for Global Warming to reminisce about my sports car races in the 70s.
I somehow missed the fact that the Mets did not make the World Series. I didn’t once write about the United/Continental airline’s merger that brought together 700 planes, dropped employment from 88,000 to 77,000, and shared 7 bags of 2003 peanuts among us. Airlines put fares up $20 across the board. I never once mentioned Christine O’Donnell’s Rhodes Scholarship in comedy which is at least as credible as her candidacy turned out to be.
I’ll keep hammering the small town politicians who want you to believe that paying twice as much for half as many police officers in your town is a way to save you (tax) money. And when Congress acts on H.R.6907, a measure to ban further activity at Eyjafjallajökull, you’ll hear about it here first. Most important, in the spirit of WikiLeaks, pretty much everything personal rattling around between my ears will sooner or later fall out on these pages.
Politics is like the climate. Everybody talks about it. People think they can predict the climate. Or change it.
Let me begin by starting with Chris.tine O’Donnell. She is a woman, and her first name is Chris.tine. That’s an inside joke that only a few will find humorous.
The most important thing about her candidacy is that she actually got a lot of votes against her opponnent. If I were him I would be embarrassed enough to resign.
I continue by saying that I thoroughly enjoy reading your blog. Someone once wrote that the qualifications for being a blogger is: can’t write; can’t have sex; and can’t eat spicy food. I can almost pass the test because spicy food agrees with me.
I look forward to another year of enjoyable reading.