• You know you are watching a bad movie when… the protagonist opens her eyes to find herself wandering through a bizarre and disorienting landscape, after which she proceeds to act out a violent subconscious wish, and then it is revealed that the scene was a dream.  Or was it!!

• “Let’s agree to disagree” is something said by those who won’t admit they are wrong and don’t want to be confronted with it.

• You know you are lucky when… you dip into this bowl of coleslaw your wife has made and you say to her, wow, this is delicious.  And you eat and eat until the bowl is clean.

And then there is more coleslaw the next day.  And you notice there is a lot more coleslaw in the refrigerator.  Looks like an eight- or nine-day supply of coleslaw.  And you say, I love coleslaw but maybe luck has its limits.

• For some mysterious reason, the maker of Kleenex doesn’t bother to advertise half the ways that its product is useful besides blowing your nose — such as capturing millipedes and stink bugs; degreasing the butter dish before it goes into the dishwasher; temporary blood-clotting aid for nuisance skin wounds; and wiping off the dipstick before you check your engine oil.  These uses all add value to your purchase of Kleenex.  That said, I think Kleenex engineers should work harder on the product’s usefulness as emergency paper.  Kleenex sucks as emergency paper — ink bleeds on it and the product rips apart with the slightest pen pressure.  Really, they could do a lot better.

• Until then, I have an idea for states like Kansas, Missouri and South Dakota — and all other ultra-conservative government-gutting tax-hating states — that you could save a lot of money by printing your election ballots on Kleenex this November.  Just a suggestion!  Think of all those hard-earned tax dollars saved — not to mention how your hard-working citizens could use those unreadable ballots to dry their tears after the election.

• You know you are getting old when… your notion of things lost overwhelms at times.

• Cities have limits; counties and states have lines; nations have borders.  These invisible markings have different names but serve the same function: to define areas where people within may make and enforce rules to their liking.  This penchant for those in power to draw imaginary lines and make self-serving rules can be seen in factories, stock exchanges, ladies’ neighborhood book clubs and police precincts, among countless other places.

• You know you are in a hospital when… things are done to you in a non-linear fashion with little or no explanation, followed by long stretches of inactivity, anxiety, uncertainty and discomfort accompanied by sleep-killing background noise, and then a Doctor-God shows up and makes some pained and undecipherable pronouncements, after which you are hesitantly allowed to get dressed and leave, with less of a nod to your stay than when you check out of a Comfort Inn.

• The Confederate States lost their racist, craven war and surrendered to the United States 155 years ago.  It is possible that someone alive today once met a participant in that war.  Let’s say a 15-year-old boy was conscripted into the Confederate Army in 1865 and lived to be 100.  That Civil War vet may have told his stories to a great-grandson born in the 1930s. The great-grandson would be near 90 today.

However — current support for Confederate symbols, statues and tenets is being voiced by young and middle-aged people, not 90-year-olds.  Evidence enough that, unlike love, hate is a story taught to younger generations unfamiliar with the events.

• Not incidentally, I support the removal of any statue or monument in the U.S. honoring persons who were “heroes” of the Confederacy or who supported slavery.  So, given that George Washington was a slave-holder, what do we do with the Washington Monument?  Here is my idea: paint the monument black for 77 years, representing the time from when our Constitution was ratified (with its abhorrent three-fifths-of-a-person language) to the time when its 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, was ratified.  That could serve as a symbolic first paragraph of any reparations act.

• On a mildly positive note, NASCAR has announced that Confederate flags will be banned from the grounds of its future events.  But take heart, Southern Men:  you can still cheer the wanton burning of fossil fuels in car engines… there will just be a less-racist exhaust.