• If I had raised my children without antibiotics, they would be safer to eat today.

• Edgar Allan Poe… who would have guessed he would one day write poetry?  We should be glad he wasn’t named Edgar Allan Bigot.

• A few days ago, while I was eating habanero ice cream with Satan, The Red One offered to whisk me off to Abbey Road Studios, circa 1967, and sit me down in the control room as Sir George Martin recorded The Beatles performing Strawberry Fields Forever, A Day in the Life, and I Am the Walrus.  This sounded wonderfully tempting to me —  but what did Satan want in return?  Nothing, really… or maybe everything.  “It’s up to you,” Satan said as he ate his last spoonful.  “Would you rather hang onto your fantasy or see the reality?”

• Popcorn is so sad.  It’s like you are eating the past tense.

• If I had My Way, I would be rich, or Paul Anka, or both.

• In my self-appointed role as Potentate of the Point-and-Shoot, I have declared that April is No-Cliché Photography Month.  In observance of same, I will be refraining from clicking LIKE on social-media pics of sunrises, sunsets, and rocky cascades of milky-looking water, and I urge you to do likewise.  If this goes well, then next year I will add restaurant food, foggy seascapes and scenes of architectural decay to the No-Cliché list.  That will be tough on me, especially when I am behind the lens.  I may have to start shooting cats.

• A Persian-American woman started a fashion veil business.  She designed a new line and traveled to Iran to unveil it.  This confused the authorities — she was lucky to escape.

• As most of you know, Asheville sits in the middle of America’s Bible Belt.  The Asheville-Greenville axis has been named the ninth-most “bible-minded” area of the country, based on how often people read it and how accurate they think it is.  So I should not have been surprised to see Spiritual Warfare Jesus’ Way in the book section of our local supermarket, on the bottom shelf, among the children’s selections.

I couldn’t imagine how Spiritual Warfare Jesus’ Way would appeal to children, until I saw the subtitle: How to Conquer Evil Spirits and Live Victoriously.  Now I get it — it’s sort of like Harry Potter, with sandals.

• One morning in America, Ronald Republican was walking his dog.  The dog pooped on the sidewalk and Mr. Republican unwittingly stepped in it, soiling his shoes and making them smell.  The now-outraged Mr. Republican stormed around, flailing his arms and kicking his feet.  But he didn’t yell at his dog for pooping.  And he didn’t yell at himself for stepping in it.  Instead, Mr. Republican stood there and yelled at the turd.  The turd is Donald Trump.