𓃑  On a recent CBS Sunday Morning, we watched 7-year-old Xuanyi Geng solve the 3×3 Rubik’s Cube puzzle in 3.05 seconds, a world-record.  I was duly impressed, because this is almost 100 times faster than I can mix a second martini.

🛟  Of my handful of phobias and triggers, the one that bothers me the most viscerally is the “stranded at sea” film premise, especially if treading water is involved.  I’ve endured too many films in that genre (Adrift, Open Water, The Reef) and refuse to view any more.  I was never a confident swimmer; but having my tow-rope break while water-tubing in Lake Erie decades ago, and only then finding out that my life-jacket was more-or-less an anti-flotation device…

It was all I could do to bob up and down in the chilly lake water and catch quick gasps for what felt like forever until the boat could circle around and pick me up.  Not to mention the feeling, as the boat oh-so-slowly turned around, of the live end of the broken tow-rope slithering through my ankles as I worked to keep my head above water.

The two noteworthy parts of this story: there were no sharks in Lake Erie that afternoon; and I lived to write about it.

🐻  I’ve been pondering how best to scare away treat-seeking black bears that visit our deck and/or climb our dogwood trees.  Whistles aren’t that effective and clanging pot lids only mildly startles them.  Now if bears would only growl insults about Trump, I could count on his MAGA troops taking care of them for me.

🐧 Here’s what I’ll say about animals.  Animals may crap in the woods all their lives but animals don’t churn out millions of big-screen TVs and laptops and electronic devices and appliances that last a few years and then wind up in landfills, buried next to the boxes they were shipped in.  If Amazon even remotely resembled a responsible organization, it would buy landfill space equal to the volume of crap it ships to its customers every year.

🍔  Let’s talk about sloppy joes.  [Vegetarians, you may be excused from this item.  I’ll let you know when it’s safe for you to return by displaying a cucumber emoji.]  Now, regards sloppy joes — you are either the kind of person who heaps the sloppy joe mix onto the bun and tackles the mound with knife and fork, or the kind of person who eats sloppy joes in a more refined way, with a dry top, like a hamburger, but secretly thinks the other way looks way more delicious.

Me, I used to be in the latter category but age has allowed me to the embrace the truth and the mess of the former.

🥩 Fake out!  Not a cucumber!  Can’t come back yet!

🥒 George Harrison’s song “What is Life,” from his 1970 solo album All Things Must Pass, disappointed me when I first listened to it, in that its title promised far more than the song delivered.  I was just 17 and looking for answers — while Harrison was 27 and presumably had the answers, because he was a Beatle!

Is it better to be young and not know what you don’t know, or to be old and know too late what you should have known?  If only we could choose — but that is life.

🤠  Kristi Lynn Arnold Noem, seen below in her official X photo, has been U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security in the reign of Donald II since January 25, 2025.  Kristi was born to the Arnold family in 1971.  At age 18, she claimed the title of South Dakota Snow Queen.  Kristi appended the N to her KLAN initials at age 21 upon marrying Bryon Noem.

“We were a rodeo family,” she said. “So I always competed in the rodeo queen contests that they had. I think I won one of them one time.  My mom believed in doing those kind of things because they taught you basic horsemanship and also the interview skills she knew were very important and public speaking and interaction with other people.”

Yay for interactions with like-minded people, the one and perhaps only thing she’s good at as a shill for Trump.

🥨 I’ve had a lot going on this year, healthwise, that I haven’t shared here.  Not that I’m hiding things but it wouldn’t educate or encourage discourse.  Once my issues are settled, hopefully soon, I am anxious to resume posting my usual dumb comics, marginal poetry, obtuse science and math problems and other commentary that I hope makes people wince or smile with me.  Preferably the latter, but the times often dictate otherwise.