• If Donald Trump is the “national embarassment” that GOP Congressman Richard Hanna says he is, then so must be the 36% of registered voters who are solidly behind Trump, none of whom read this blog.  Most of my relatives don’t read it either, which is an even worse embarassment.

• I went on Twister the other day and tweeted for the first time.  At first, I felt really stupid getting down on my hands and knees, but then I started to enjoy making cuckoo sounds and taking up contorted positions.  Now I understand why Donald Trump goes on Twister — he likes to do the very same thing.

• Leonard Cohen, composer and performer of songs such as So Long Marianne, Suzanne, Hallelujah and The Future, will soon turn 82.  I never saw him perform live (other than live on video) but wish I had… though I could say that about hundreds of performers.

Former co-workers, with whom I played poker once a month way back when, mocked me for having the temerity to play a Leonard Cohen album one night.  They would remind me of my affront to their sensibilities on many poker nights afterwards, but I went on playing.  (Leonard, however, would not be played again).  To quote Cohen from Beautiful Losers, “My interest in this pack of failures betrays my character.”

• What?  Oh it’s Twitter, not Twister.  That’s different.  Never mind.  Love, Emily Litella.

• I am pleased to have a new friend, Enrique, whom I have not met in person but hope to one day.  I encourage you to introduce yourself to Enrique, via his diverse and eclectic blog Prior Probability or his personal, revealing bio, “The Evolution of a Latino Law Professor.”  It is so nice and unexpected to encounter kindred spirits at my age.

• The “fresh” fruit sold in Asheville supermarkets sucks.   Yes, I know, we live in the hills, not the citrus belt.  Still, the produce in upstate New York supermarkets was much fresher than what is available here.  Take plums, for example.  Here, even when you buy them in the middle of summer, our plums are hard, reddish-black orbs that must be allowed to “rest” in a fruit bowl for three days.  But even after that, the outsides have become mushy, the insides mealy, and the juiciness, to put it tactfully, compromised.

I love fruit, but I think seasonal fruit was better in the 1960s.  It may have been available only a few weeks a year, but those weeks were memorable and juicy.

• Seems that I’ve fallen out of the photography habit over the last few years.  I no longer feel compelled to record every scene of natural beauty/graceful decay or every intriguing composition that is presented to me.  More often, it seems, the eyes suffice.

• Do you know what extra-virgin coconut oil is good for?  It’s good mostly for lining the pockets of people who sell coconut oil.  Coconut oil is a commodity that costs 75 cents a pound in bulk but goes for ten times that much when it is sold in a jar with a colorful label at the local Walmart. The designation extra-virgin means nothing, by the way, but doesn’t it sound impressive?

• To my dismay, almost every time my wife and I spend an evening with another couple, the conversation will devolve into separate man-to-man and woman-to-woman threads, no matter what effort I make to promote or restore groupwise discussion.  I like listening and talking to women as much as men — why do I get pigeonholed?

• What?  Oh it’s Thoughts at Large, not Tots at Lodge.  That’s very different.  Never mind. Love, Emily Litella.

The New Season of Klingon’s Got Talent