Little Men With Little Feet

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"I am not a woman, so I don't have bad days." -Vladimir Putin

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

My late wife's grandmother, whom I never met (I've been told this is not necessarily a bad thing) because she was my late wife's, late grandmother by the time I came along...

{There's something really, really wrong with you, you know that, right?}

...is famous for, among other things, advising that one should avoid short men with small feet. She thought that men of diminutive dimensions could not be trusted. 

I have no firm opinion to offer as to whether or not encountering a little man with little feet is necessarily indicative of anything, but I have personally known several short gentlemen in my life that, if given the chance, I'd cross the street to avoid encountering. 

In my defense, I don't automatically assume that short men, anyone actually, should be avoided based on their physical appearance with the exception of anyone carrying a machete or a machine gun while hanging out at the mall. 

I take 'em as I find 'em. I pride myself on attempting to maintain an open mind at all times. I'm willing to interact with anyone, for at least a minute or two, before going to DEFCON 1. 

Also, I don't think that most problematic short men are overcompensating for their height, I think they're more likely to be burdened by a shoulder chip that is the result of having been physically bullied by men and psychologically bullied by women as they were coming up.

I once met Dick Goddard "an American television meteorologist, cartoonist, and animal activist." He was the creator of the Cleveland area's world-famous Wollybear (caterpillar) Festival. You may have never heard of him but he's (regionally) famous enough to have his own Wikipedia entry.   

{What's that got to do with anything?}

Well, he is, or was (he's now the late Dick Goddard) a very small man with very small feet who was perfectly proportioned from head to toe. This was rather shocking to me because when my late wife and I watched him "do" the weather on Cleveland's channel 8 there was no way to discern his diminutiveness.

{I still don't see what...} 

Well, he was as nice in person as he appeared to be on TV. Also, maintaining a reputation as an all-around nice guy in a blue-collar metro area like Cleveland, Ohio — a city wherein a river used to regularly catch on fire that's now knee-deep in rust — would be tough to fake.   

This brings us to the Pooteen.

{Who? It does?}

I speak of Vladamir Putin, Dana. Who, it turns out, is a relatively little fella.

He's not even all that short, being either 5'-6" or 5'-7", depending on who ya believe. That's about the same size as America's favorite fighter pilot, Tome Cruise. But I recently saw a picture in which the Pooteen and some of his minions are celebrating annexing a chunk of Ukraine. He looks like he would've been the last kid picked when the other kids were choosing up sides to play basketball.  

I don't know his shoe size but I can't help but wonder if Mrs. Pooteen's little Vladdy, who began his working life as a KGB agent and rose through the ranks to become a world-famous brutal and corrupt dicktater, was picked on by the boys and rejected by girls back in the day:

-  From Wikipedia, "At age 12, he began to practice sambo and judo. In his free time, he enjoyed reading the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Lenin."

-  He's well known for photo ops in which he appears without his shirt. 

-  He's also well known for breaking into his neighbor's houses countries, folks who would just like to be left alone to pursue happiness as they define it, and breaking things just because he can. 

- Also, he...

{The breadth and depth of your scholarship are truly impressive.}

I'm just sayin'. If it walks like a duck...

Fortunately for his fellow young communists, little Vladdy didn't start killing his enemies, real and imagined, till after he matured, at least as far as we know. 

Unfortunately for the planet Earth, little Vladdy is now aging Vladdy; H. sapiens and chimpanzees share a common ancestor; the Pooteen is the boss of a nation with 6,300 nukes, and history seems to bear out the truth of Lord Acton's observation that "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Brothers and sisters (and others), let us pray.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Feel free to love, hate, or troll me on my Facebook page. I post my latest columns on Saturdays; other things other days. Cranky don't tweet, but in light of recent events, I'm considering it... Go Elon, go!

Based On Facts That Meet Fiction

A Random Randomnesses column. 

Image by Magic Creative from Pixabay 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device

"We'll try to cooperate fully with the IRS, because, as citizens, we feel a strong patriotic duty not to go to jail." -Dave Berry 

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

The title of this column is a phrase that was displayed on the screen at the beginning of a TV show I watched relatively recently. I'd give credit where credit is due but I can't remember which show it was. 

{The old gray horse's short-term memory, it ain't what he used to be.} 

Harumph, gray stallion is more like it.

{I was going to say gray gelding given the state of your sex life, or the lack thereof.}

Double harumph, As it happens I'm a vcel thank you very much, Dana. Unlike incels, vcels are voluntarily celibate H. sapiens who have chosen this path for a variety of reasons. 

{My bad. I just assumed it was because in your case that...}

Could we move on, please? 

{You're the one writing this stuff.}

The phrase in question caught my attention because I also relatively recently encountered the term representationally accurate at the beginning of a different TV show — it may have been a movie — that also caught my attention. 

Both phrases are as disingenuous as the classic based on a true story but both sound way cooler. The same translation will suffice for all three.

The content you're about to consume is an allegedly more or less sorta/kinda accurate depiction that has been sliced, diced, tweaked, sexed-up, dumbed-down, and/or altered in any number of ways to make it more entertaining and hopefully more likely to make some money. It's based on a true story, is representationally accurate, and is based on facts that meet fiction.

I read... well, intensely and purposefully skim, a carefully chosen gaggle of websites dedicated to news and opinion in the course of the day to satisfy my addiction to current events and provide grist for my columnist's mill.

{Grist?}

Cool, huh? I've never written that word and I've been more or less literate for better than 60 years. Anyway, it occurs to me that the phrase based on facts that meet fiction might be a useful addition to the definition of purple journalism in my website's glossary.

Purple Journalism: Journalism as currently perpetrated by many news outlets that claim to be professional, unbiased, and factual. In reality, they are partisan, prone to sensationalism, and motivated primarily by the bottom line — and are based on facts that meet fiction. 

ln case you missed it.., The IRS is going after those rich sons o' bitches that haven't been paying their fair share of taxes. Empowered by a provision of the American Rescue Plan, passed last year by the Depublicans (the party of social justice) without a single Republicrat vote, the IRS is bringing the hammer down.

Americans that received electronic payments for goods or services provided to their fellow citizens via companies like PayPal, Venmo, etc. in 2022 will be receiving some unwelcome mail next month, an IRS form called a 1099-K.

Say you sold off your late aunt Thelma's collection of collector plates this year and used an electronic payment service to get paid. The service will be sending you a form 1099-K to helpfully remind you that this is income that must be reported to The Fedrl Gummit.

They also must report this information to the IRS.

See, the reporting threshold has dropped from $20,000 to $600. Surprise! Now all of those evil, thousandaire blackguards who have been making as much as an extra unreported $19,999 a year (or $601) via the black market will be forced to pay up.  

In case you missed it 2... Last May, the Black Lives Matter organization shared an IRS form 990 with the Associated Press news service. The form in question publicly disclosed BLM finances for the first time. I confess I missed the resulting AP report. 

According to the AP, of the $90,000,000 in donations that were received in 2020 (when all the mostly peaceful protests were on the news every day), $32,000,000 was invested in stocks, "which is expected to become an endowment to ensure the foundation’s work continues in the future, organizers say."

BLMs 2021 fiscal year ended with $42,000,000 in net assets on the books.

My favorite phrase from the AP story is, "...the tax filing shows the foundation paid nearly $970,000 to Trap Heals LLC, a company founded by Damon Turner, who fathered a child with Cullors; and $840,000 to Cullors Protection LLC, a security firm run by Paul Cullors, Patrisse’s brother."

Patrisse Cullors is one of the founders of BLM and a well-known real estate speculator. Follow the link for a, um... highly informative analysis of the BLM organization by the Daily Beast. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

THIS JUST IN! BREAKING NEWS!

{Oh c'mon!}

No, seriously, just today (12/23), Congress has postponed dropping the minimum threshold of 20,000 whopping damn dollars to $600 (In case you missed it...) for a year because we the people have been raising hell. Based on facts that meet fiction, I may or may not have had something to do with this.

Scroll down to share this column or access my golden(?) oldies. You too can be a patron of the arts! Click here.    

Feel free to love, hate, or troll me on my Facebook page. I post my latest columns on Saturdays; other things other days. Cranky don't tweet, but in light of recent events, I'm considering it... Go Elon, go! 

  

  

Welcome to Pottersville

It's a wonderful life.  

                                                         CC0 Public Domain

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"It's a grand life, if you don't weaken." -Thomas Carter (and my mum)

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

Yes, Virginia, there is a Pottersville (are Pottersvilles?), several in fact. Also, there's a movie... but it's probably not the one you're thinking of, particularly if you're of a certain age.

{Huh... Well, this is interesting, a pair of dated cultural references and a much newer, but obscure one squeezed into the same opening sentence.}   

Oh... Perhaps I'd better explain. Yes, Virginia, there is (a Santa Claus) is from a famous newspaper editorial written in 1897, Dana.

{Man, you are old!} 

There's a Pottersville in the highly-regarded classic movie It's a Wonderful Life, a movie in which, as hard as it is to believe, no one gets naked "because it's necessary to the story" or gets their head blown off. More on that Pottersville anon. 

Now the 2017 movie Pottersville, which has nothing to do with It's a Wonderful Life, is about what happens when "Maynard, a beloved local businessman, is mistaken for the legendary Bigfoot during an inebriated romp through town in a makeshift gorilla costume." 

It demonstrates that occasionally the preview accurately portrays just how awful the movie actually is and what happens when world-class actors need (or just want) a payday. 

One can easily make a case that America seems to be devolving into a country that embodies the zeitgeist of the Pottersville portrayed in It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

{Pottersville syndrome is ravaging the Republic?}

My research assistant, Dabney, assures me that It's a Wonderful Life is still a very popular movie and...

{How many times are you going to repeat the title? You're a click-slut, aren't you?}

Please! This is, more or less, a family-friendly column. Anyone familiar with... the movie, knows that the town of Frostbite Falls would've become Pottersville — a place that made both Sodom and Gomorrah seem tame and dull by comparison, at least by 1946 standards — if Jimmy Stewart had never been born. 

{That's not... You're... Never mind.}  

However, if the angel Clarance had revealed to Jimmy Stewart what America would be like by the turn of the millennium, Jimmy might've decided the hell with it and tortured Mr. Potter till he gave up the bank deposit that he stole from Uncle Billy and subsequently framed Jimmy for. 

Next, he'd clean out any remaining money in the safe at the "wonderful old building and loan," blow Mr. Potters's head off, tell Clanance to kiss his arse, and then run off with Violet Bick. They would then become a late 40s version of Bonnie and Clyde and have lots of sex... till they eventually got their heads blown off.

Geezers and geezerettes, well, many of them, tend to bang on about the good ol' days, it's almost a rule, droning on about how life in America, when they were young, was so much better than life in the current version of America. 

But any discussion, by almost anybody, about the current quality of life in America (pretty much everywhere I suspect), includes elements of what one (not necessarily accurately) has been told, taught, or remembers that it was in the past.

Sexy senior citizens, grups, callowyutes, and kids are all in the same large boat but living on different decks. Many geezers and geezerettes fondly remember a past that they actually weren't particularly pleased to be living in when they were living in it. 

Many of the grups currently charged with getting out of bed every morning to make sure the lights stay turned and the kids get fed wonder how it was once possible for one adult with a full-time job to support a family and still have a day or two off every week.

Some deluded Wokies, wackadoos, and callowyutes claim America is rotten to the core and run around tipping over statues, "canceling" heretics, and claiming racism is fine as long as you hate the right race. 

Many people, I suspect most (the muted majority?), wonder why everything has been politicized and who it was that decided that everything that was once considered deviant, antisocial behavior — not just behavior the culture at large should, and has, learned to accept  — is not only acceptable but should be taught to the kids A.S.A.P.  

Merry Christmas, and welcome to Pottersville. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share this column or access my golden(?) oldies. You too can be a patron of the arts! Click here.    

Feel free to love, hate, or troll me on my Facebook page. I post my latest columns on Saturdays; other things other days. Cranky don't tweet, but in light of recent events, I'm considering it... Go Elon, go!