Friday Donuts

Friends, Many folks have common shared memories of things that never happened –and, yes, I mean you. Whether you think Hamilton was a US president, the monopoly guy wears a monocle or Dorothy said “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto”, you’re wrong! Explanations for this phenomenon, known as the Mandela effect, range from the logical (the way the brain processes and stores information) to the fantastical (a hole in the fabric of reality made by CERN’s particle accelerator). Speaking of which, I hope now that the writers’ guild is no longer on strike, they stop using the multiverse as plot hole caulk to solve all historic storyline inconsistencies. Yeah, I’m not holding my breath on that. In any event, all this talk of false memories has opened-up my appetite. I think I’ll have to grab a Crispy Cream Donut (or is it a Krisly Kreme Doughnut?) Happy Friday!

Friends, The Great American Beer Fest kicked off last night to great bagpipe fanfare. As a member of the Safety Team, I enjoy my front row seat to all the beautiful mayhem created by a mob of ten thousand inebriated souls. The cumulative effect of a few dozen 1 oz. pours shows in many ways. The silent disco fills to capacity with a wildly gyrating crowd. Taster glasses dropped ever more frequently, followed by the telltale “ooooooh” chorus that fills the great hall after each mishap. Personal space gets smaller, voices get louder and suddenly everyone is your friend. Walking the floor, I make a mental note of which beers I must sample on Saturday (that’s when I go from volunteer to participant). I won’t bore you with a list. Suffice it to say I’m intrigued by 903 Brewers’ Blueberry Donut Slushy . The fact they describe the beer’s style as “berliner weisse“ makes me smirk, wondering whether JFK’s “ich bin ein Berliner” speech was ever interpreted as “I am a donut” by the crowd. Sadly, i

Friends, Few things are more frustrating than going to the doctor and hearing that the ailment you want them to fix is actually a new "feature" you need to embrace. It’s like going to the mechanic for a new noise your car started making and being told to buy earplugs. Aches and pains are a normal part of aging, but different symptoms arrive at different intervals for each of us. Genetics and lifestyle play a role, but, is there an ailment list that says all people will get X ache by Y age? A baseline, if you will… or are physicians just winging it? Seems to me it’s the latter. “Let’s see… Where does it hurt? — I see… you’re how old now? — I see… yup, that’s normal for your age”. On the bright side, it’s Friday and donuts are here (at my house, that is… you’ll have to fend for yourself!) Happy Friday!

Friends, My younger self tended to interpret things literally. News of my sister “breaking” her head conjured visions of exposed brain matter (the actual wound was a rather small cut). While this propensity has been tempered with time, my first pass at processing information is often literal. In a world of similes and metaphors, this creates plenty of opportunities for inner chuckles when the intended meaning becomes apparent. Over time, a few marketing terms have fallen into the humorous gap created by the cognitive dissonance between the figurative and literal. Smile inducing marketing jargon includes churn rate (how fast milk is turned into butter), conversions (a measure of your religious proselytism’s effectiveness), and brand equity (giving animals who produce similar farm products comparably equal third degree burn scars regardless of gender, species, breed or other status). Which brings me to abandoned carts . Here are a couple I ran across this week. This cart got flooded with

Friends, It’s Wednesday evening and I’ve spotted the super blue moon. Distant objects in my frame of vision make the satellite hovering over the eastern horizon look super big in comparison. The only thing blue about it is the sky it lights up — and the fact it’s the second full moon of the month. My thoughts drift to the tide (the lunar influence on the ocean, not the laundry detergent), then onto the small crater that was Luna 25 (the failed Russian lander, not the boy band). Somewhere in that vicinity, near the South Pole, a little Indian rover will be zapping lunar soil samples for a couple of weeks — then die. I squint and realize I’m imagining it in the wrong spot. How foolish! Maps have conditioned us to think south is down, when it’s actually on the right hand side of the moonrise (or left of the moonset). A lunatic smile covers my face as I consider having a moon pie in lieu of my customary Friday donut. Nah. I’ll stick with the classics. Happy Friday!