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I’m sure worse scenes have been shot in the name of entertainment — Clockwork Orange<\/em> springs to mind here.\u00a0 I only hope that all those actors’ memories were, in fact, short.<\/p>\n \ud83d\ude20 Speaking of what now passes for popular entertainment: I’d like to propose a boycott of show-runners whose means of attracting and holding an audience is to craft a uniquely repellent bad guy, whose main purpose is to make sure we spend one episode after another longing for the bad guy’s comeuppance.\u00a0 I had thought this tired practice had peaked with King Joffrey<\/a> (Game of<\/em> Thrones<\/em>) but no, it goes on and on and on, in the name of draining viewers’ wallets.<\/p>\n Streaming<\/em>, if I may redefine the term, is the process by which money streams from your bank account to those of Amazon, Netflix, Apple and Paramount.\u00a0 Did I miss anyone?<\/p>\n \ud83d\udc94 Poem for Soured Lovers:<\/p>\n Our love was like a lemon wedge<\/p>\n I gave you a squeeze<\/p>\n and was left with the rind<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \ud83c\udfdb\u00a0 I seldom make endorsements (I’m no influencer, so who would care!) but I must say how pleased I’ve been over the years with our Capital One Quicksilver card.\u00a0 I signed up for this card years ago because it has no annual fee and 1.5% cash-back on purchases.\u00a0 But other features have also come in handy: my card and my spouse’s have unique numbers and security codes; there is no fee for international purchases; and Capital One notifies me via email of possible duplicate charges, international transactions and other unusual activity.\u00a0 Say what you will about big corporations, this is pretty user-friendly.<\/p>\n \ud83e\udd68 Pretend you own a supermarket and you are \u00fcber-organized and shopper-friendly.\u00a0 Your decision: among what other products would you <\/em>shelve bread crumbs?<\/p>\n Ingles, our local supermarket, decided to shelve bread crumbs to the left of ramen noodles and matzo meal, to the right of instant mashed potatoes, and above the prefab stuffing mix (see image above<\/a>).\u00a0 This placement does serious injustice to bread crumbs, not to mention shoppers.<\/p>\n Bread crumbs, corn meal and like dry food staples belong in the same aisle as flour, sugar and rice — they surely have nothing in common with instant mashed potatoes and ramen. I say, bad decision, Ingles!\u00a0 What do you<\/em> say?<\/p>\n \ud83e\udd5a I am in my seventies and I’ve had several colonoscopies.\u00a0 (It is true — and it rhymes!)\u00a0 As my fellow subjects know, the sweet-salty colonoscopy prep drink — and whatever you choose to mix it with — is nothing one’s palate ever forgives or forgets.\u00a0 Little did I know that, due to my chosen mixture, ginger ale would forever be ruined for me.<\/p>\n My most recent colonoscopy made me think, why not invent a tongue-cover so that people wouldn’t have to taste that shit on its way down the chute.\u00a0 But of course, someone already thought of this — I found just such a product on Amazon:\u00a0<\/p>\n Next time I need a colonoscopy, I’m checking this out — it may be my next endorsement.<\/p>\n \ud83d\ude31 Chapman University<\/a> of California recently released its 2025 list of top American Fears<\/a>, things you and I supposedly fear the most, based on its survey of 1,015 adults.\u00a0 Here are the top five items on Chapman’s fear list:<\/p>\n My first observation:\u00a0 I could argue that the root causes of these fears are all interrelated, hence not independent fears.\u00a0 My second observation:\u00a0 One’s fears are highly correlated to one’s age-cohort.\u00a0 For example, people in their 20s don’t need to worry so much about the people they love becoming ill or dying — that gets real a few decades later for most of us.\u00a0 What young people really need to fear is how AI has a non-zero possibility of upending everything we know about authenticity and the role and value of people.\u00a0 Amazingly, that didn’t even make Chapman’s list.\u00a0 Let’s check in with them next year, shall we?<\/p>\n \ud83d\uddd1\ufe0f\u00a0 One thing I am NOT going to endorse are Kenneth Cole Reaction wallets.\u00a0 I decided to treat myself to a new wallet last Christmas, and I ordered a Kenneth Cole Reaction trifold.\u00a0 I waited until Christmas Day to open it, and only then discovered that Macy’s had shipped me the wrong wallet, a bifold.\u00a0 By that time I thought, oh well, I’ll live with it.\u00a0 It was only a matter of weeks until the wallet started to deteriorate, leaving residue on my credit cards and falling apart at the seams:<\/p>\n This was the wallet after just ten weeks.\u00a0 But I was so disgusted with it after six weeks that I ordered a new, hand-made wallet from Popov Leather.\u00a0 No more Kenneth Cole Reaction for me — my reaction is, what a P.O.S!<\/p>\n \ud83e\udd78\u00a0 My spouse asked me, “How do you spell Borders<\/em>, like the book store?”\u00a0 My response: B\u2011A\u2011N\u2011K-R-U-P-T<\/em>.\u00a0 I was sort of proud of that, being that snappy comebacks generally come to me ten minutes too late.\u00a0 In fact, my comeback was so good that I felt compelled to write it down before I forgot.\u00a0 So you’re welcome — weeks after the fact.<\/p>\n Here’s another:\u00a0 “That isn’t a wine glass.”\u00a0 “Any glass that has wine in it is a wine glass.”<\/p>\n I felt compelled to write that down too.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0Preface: I aim to get to No. 100 before I end this series.\u00a0 Four to go.\u00a0 Thoughtward! \ud83c\udfb1\u00a0 The I-Me-Mine Rule:\u00a0 Whenever a film or novel makes an early reference to a mine, you can be sure there will be … Continue reading ![\"supermarket](\"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-content\/uploads\/bread-crumbs.jpg\" "\\"Bread")
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