The lady has my number
So, recently I retired an old cell phone number I’d been using for more than a decade for work purposes. As it turns out, the number has since been reassigned and now belongs to a nice older woman who can’t understand why weirdos are calling her asking for some clown named Mark, or one of his many, many appellations. You’ve got to pity this woman, getting called repeatedly, at all hours, by cops, criminals, street people and the guys who run that Russian bride outfit that I totally didn’t sign up for so just forget I said anything about it.
Bitstrips
If you use Facebook you know what Bitstrips are. You know them, you hate them and yet you can’t resist the compulsion to create one all your own, possibly to portray yourself brushing your hair, arguing with your roommate or riding your motorcycle in cartoon form. I’m here to kindly advise you to knock it off. Unless you happen to be Nancy, Garfield or Blondie (she is so hot), then you’ve not earned the right to enter the realm of cartoon. Although, if you decide to create a Bitmap with full-frontal nudity, I’d be happy to take a look. Not.
Truants
In Auburn, the truant officer has been out and about, giving stern lectures to children who chronically miss school and advising their parents to get their youngsters back into the classroom. I bring it up only because when I heard this news, I shrieked for a solid hour and may have wet my pants. I know truant officers have always been around, but when I was a kid, they were nothing but faceless phantoms that might be anywhere at any time in any form. We’d skip school and every person we saw over the age of 17 was feared to be the Truant Officer, come to collect our souls and imprison them in Summer School. The guy filling his tank at the gas station? Truant Officer! Everybody run! Old man sleeping on a park bench! Truant Officer! Head for the hills! I tell you, not knowing what the officer looked like made him 10 times as fearsome. That faceless dude ruined more games of Asteroids than I can count.
Old Blue Eyes
Have I mentioned that I really like the new lights in the clock tower over Lewiston’s City Hall? I do. Those arched upper windows are like benevolent blue eyes staring out of a softly lighted face, watching over the city and all of its inhabitants. It makes a fellow feel safe, secure and loved as he staggers the downtown streets, stopping occasionally to pee in the alleys or scream at park benches. In fact, I anxiously await the addition of pale pink lights as the face of our brick sentinel begins to blush.
Toronto mayor
Doesn’t everybody in the world have an eccentric uncle just like beleaguered Mayor Rob Ford who’s always embarrassing himself and his entire family tree through a never-ending series of foul actions and crude comments? Always fumbling through an apology that actually turns out five times worse than the original transgression? Always stumbling to your house in his holey boxer shorts at 3 a.m. and asking for your help with an unpleasant situation involving Sudafed and a flaming mobile home? No? Well, maybe that’s just my family.
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