The odds were against the team that faced the number
one team in college football. In the first half, the
challenger took a commanding lead, but in the second
half, the #1 team took over and ran away with the game.
A man and his buddy watched the game. The buddy was
a big fan of the challenger. When it became apparent
that the #1 team would win decisively, the man tried
to make his buddy face statistical reality and perhaps
feel better by telling him this pun: There was a person
who sent ten different puns to friends, in the hope
that at least one of the puns would make them laugh.
No pun in ten did. “The odds were against you, buddy,”
the man said while his buddy picked up his football
and went home.

I’m loving Nancy more every day;
she’s saving our representative democracy
until the Occupant goes away,
hopefully, before he drives us all crazy
or pushes the button and blows us all away.

The refrigerator is crepitating —
in the middle of the night it goes snap, crackle and pop.
At first it was frightening
and now it is just irritating and I wish it would stop.
I would call the management company
for help in getting the crepitating to stop
but I bothered them about internet access
when it was all my fault — wrong password for my laptop.
And so each night around three
I awake and anticipate a snap, crackle and pop.
Actually, I think I would miss it, if there were no crepitating —
just a creepy stillness without any comforting snap, crackle and pop.

They sat at the nearby, winter rate
beachside restaurant bar enjoying a

split of the Friday evening special of a
New York Strip done medium rare, tilting

toward rare, with a Caesar salad and
mashed potatoes with real bacon and

green onions for ten bucks and glasses
of wine for three bucks, questioning if

this is the place they really want to spend
their winter months where there apparently

are few of the cultural activities they are
used to enjoying and then they looked at

each other and he said, “A really good New
York Strip for ten bucks and pretty good

wine for three bucks and Wednesday’s
special of shrimp scampi and chicken

Parmesan for eight bucks and two-dollar
glasses of wine, I think we can find the

symphony, the ballet, the theater and an
art exhibit or two on PBS, darling, and,

darling, one more thing, the price for
cable is included in the rent.”

The article was about the three things that make a person
a toxic element in the workplace:

1. You Make Everything About You.
2. You Say and Do Passive-Aggressive Things.
3. You’re Jealous of the Success of Others.

Well, if we are honest, we can see some of ourselves in
those three things from time to time, right? But seriously,
who immediately comes to mind? Yeah, except there is one
caveat, does the White House qualify as a workplace these days?

We are bombarded by commercials
subjected to commercials, saturated
with commercials all getting into our
heads even when we don’t realize it —

pounding away at our psyches like
the pounding of a pulse on the sides
of the head, getting into our brains,
insidiously telling us we need this,

that and whatever else they are sell-
ing by featuring pretty, young, athletic
people and handsome, retirement
aged people and super cute kids,

materially successful people, con-
fident people, people we should
want to emulate, be like and if we
bought the product, if we had the

prescription in spite of the dire warn-
ings of possible death, we would be
just like them and we want so dearly
to be like them, except they are all

actors who look really good all made
up for the commercial and one of the
ways we can fight back against the
pulverizing effect of those mind-bend-

ing commercials is simply to hit the
mute button and talk to the dog and
blow a kiss to your spouse or partner
or breathe deeply and say, “Om,” and

then go back to watching the Bears
game and wonder why you took the
TV off mute or switch to your local
PBS channel assuming it is not into

one of those seeming eternal, season
to season fundraisers or just turn
it off and go for a walk; then you
might not need that prescription

that just might cause sudden death
or a slow, agonizing descent into
the nether world of utter despair
and oblivion.

Robert is the son of Gosta
Robert Edwin (Gostason) Dahl
14 Nov 1944, Chicago, IL
Gosta is the son of Olof
Gosta Edvin Oliver (Olofsson) Dahl
24 Aug 1905 StoraTuna Kopparberg, Sverige
Olof Edvin Dahl
Robert is the grandson of Olof Edvin Dahl
and Gerda Ottilia Randstrom.
Robert is the son of Jeanette (nee Vander Myde) Dahl
Jeanette is the daughter of John Vander Myde
and Frances (nee Van Es) Vander Myde.
Swedish and Dutch.
How did all the English work its way into Robert’s DNA?
It wasn’t the Swedes; as Vikings, they spent it all way, way back in the day
and didn’t have anything left for a roll in the hay.
The Dutch kept crossing the English Channel, but they won’t say.
And here they postured being religiously conservative
and sexually chaste and such and such.
Me thinks the Dutch do protest too much.

“The EU on this day (Dec. 4, 2019) agreed to phase out all single-use plastics by 2021!!” — a note from a friend

As for the environment, we now look to the EU.
Wouldn’t it be nice to look to the US, too?
Politicians are corrupted by lies.
Everything Donald touches dies.
Psychiatrists say he’s dangerous in the extreme.
I just want to fly fish in a clean stream
and forget about the last three years
and all the existential worries and fears.
And the Dems go this way and that.
Directing them is like herding cats.
Let’s impeach and get out the vote
before the US and the EU and everyone
else goes belly-up, bankrupt and broke
(or maybe even worse).

He addressed the pastel
blue, silkscreen octopus,
“I hear your species knows
how to survive in evermore
polluted waters.” He turned
to another wall and addressed
the beige and brown plastic
crab resting on three plastic,
brown, woven mats, “You are
pretty good at filtering out
the pollutants, right?” Then
he asked the wall hangings,
“Are you recyclable?”

Not normally given to a particular
visual awareness of his surroundings,
he sat on the couch of the cottage

just off the Gulf of Mexico where he
and his wife and their Chocolate Lab
would be spending two winter months

away from the Michigan cold and
maybe even a Polar Vortex. The
walls were pastel green, the wood

furniture painted off-white, the wall
hangings all furniture outlet nautical
themed — silkscreen of an octopus,

a plastic crab, a mirror hanging from
a boat cleat, cleats in the bathroom
upon which to hang towels and shav-

ing kits, a lamp made of plastic shells
reflecting morning light coming in from
the rising sun, a lamp of a plastic

anchor, a plastic bouy, a plastic fish
secured to a piece of distressed wood,
wall hangings with words extolling the

area — “Beach House, Flip Flops, Paradise”
and the solitary hanging — “Beach.” He
thought about his home along the shores

of Lake Michigan, the neutral walls upon
which hang original art by artists known
by the family, his wife’s award-winning

mixed-media sculptures on tables and the
mantle. He sat on the couch covered with
a bedsheet they put on to protect the

pastel green couch from stains. He
looked forward to hearing the crunch
and squeal and the feel of sand that is

real under his feet on the saltwater
shore on a day away from the cold.
And then he thought, What the hey;

it’s warm where we stay.
And just think of all the fresh
seafood.