Tom King's Blog, page 6

Self-Pity Memes

There are memes like this all over the Internet - exercises in self-pity. Nobody loves me. Everybody hates me. I think I'll eat some worms and blame you all for all my troubles. So is the meme above true? Will family not cross the street to see you when you are alive but will only show up for your funeral?  That depends on whether or not you've crossed the street to support them. Some people spend their lives sitting in their own little box waiting for people to make them happy, to meet...

Sensei Sheila and the Karate Guy

(c) 2012 by Tom King

A Pain in the, Well...........Everything

You know how actors, comedians and some of us old people develop catch phrases over time? Stuff we repeat over and over a lot. Donald Trump's is "You're fired!" Che, Emeril Lagasse says, "Bam" a lot. The Robot on Lost in Space says, "Danger Will Robinson!" Billy Crystal used to say, "You look mahvelous" when he did his Fernando Lamas schtick. My own catch phrase used to be "I'm working on it." Sheila would ask me if I'd finished something she'd told me to fix and.....

Sheila and I have develo...

HAL 9000 Gets Recycled as a GPS Device

DAVE:  "Good morning, HAL. I'm running a little behind this morning. Can you give me the best route to work."

HAL 9000:  "Turn right at Henderson Boulevard. Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, Dave?"

DAVE: "Is there something else you need to know to get me to work. The destination is already punched into you. You've got the GPS coordinates of where we are. What else do you need to know to get me to work?"

HAL 9000: "Turn left at Hamilton Avenue. Forgive me for being so inqu...

The Further Adventures of My Mom

Mom and Lily checking out the raccoons
raiding Lilly's dinner bowl on the porch.
Wild animals are a feature of life on the prairie.I talked to my brother in Nebraska the other day and he told me the story I am about to tell you. He and I had a kind of bet going as to whether Mom would tell me if when I made my weekly call to her.
Never got a bet going because we both bet the same thing.

Ring, ring! 

Me:  Hi, Mom. What's up?
Mom:  Oh, nothing....
Me:  Nothing at all interesting...

An Open Letter to My Republican Congressman Who is Wrong on Net Neutrality

Dave Reichart (who by the way
is being considered for FBI director).
If he doesn't get that this is a leftist power
grab, do we really want him in charge
of the FBI? I know I don't.I finally got a response to an email I sent to my Congressman almost a month ago. I wrote him to discourage him from trying to reinstate the Obama administration's so-called Net Neutrality Rules which the new FCC governors wisely rejected shortly after Trump reconstituted that governing body. To my horror, it turns ou...

You Just Always Got a Story, Dontcha?

A friend of mine made the argument that it was better for government to run things because the government doesn't have to make a profit. If they run out of money, he opined, they can just make more. And besides government does that sort of thing better than the private sector BECAUSE politicians and government workers don't have to worry about making a profit. That sounds like it makes sense, but it doesn't work out in the real world. My friend is dead wrong about that.

The government is very...

Stitching up the Chink

Guys are NOT raised to get all emotional where I grew up. We're Scots and Saxons, not limp-wristed Frenchies. We put on our emotional armor before we go out of a morning. But it's all a front. We scions of the warrior-poet races also know that writing poetry attracts women. That's why, at first, that we tuck a pen into our belts beside our sword.

The flip side of being a poet is that the act of creating poetry opens up that soft spot we've all been protecting with the armor (I personally think...

My Mom - Tough As They Come

Mom & Lilly checking out the raccoons
on the front porch....Yesterday, my Mom spent the morning in the emergency room. Scared my sister half to death, because if Mom asks to go to the ER, something is terribly terribly wrong you can count on it. Mom has no trace of hypochondria about her. Actually, it's quite the opposite. But yesterday, she was having severe neck pain and she asked Gina, my sister to take her in. The doctor. as doctors do, asked her to rate her pain on a scale of one to...

Is it Really Boomers vs. Millenials?

Millennials need to remember how fast us old
Baby Boomers can get organized.
 There's been a spate of articles lately about the apparent friction between the Boomer generation and the so-called Millennials. Apparently, our precious snowflake grandchildren can't understand why us old geezers don't shuffle off to Buffalo now that we're old and useless. It's our fault their taxes are too high and that we're taking 14% out of their paychecks just to keep us on life support. Why can't we just d...