As I sit here on a Saturday morning in early December after slathering and masticating the Dickens out of my standard weekend breakfast, I scroll through the notes I’ve made on my iPhone over the last several months while the same device pumps a recording of a live concert performance I made a few years ago into my standard issue, wax-cavated ear holes which reside on either side of my flesh toned torso topper.

Last night, I watched the first half of “Life Itself”, the documentary about Roger Ebert.  One of the first things I learned about the late film critic was that the man had a masterful way with his words.

I was reminded of that tidbit as I wrote the term “flesh toned torso topper”.

Irregardlessly, I didn’t come to the laptop this morning with bagel and energy drink in hand and stalking dog in tow with any real sort of idea about what to discuss.  Thus, the notes app.

Sometimes, at points in the day when it would be disadvantageous to stop doing the things that people pay me to do so that I can do things that people don’t pay me to do, a fleeting sliver of brilliance takes a shortcut through my flesh toned torso topper on its way to other opportunities of being squandered elsewhere.  I memorialize those flashes in my notes app so that I can refer to them later in the slapdash curation of verbal brilliance that is the website before you now.

Roger Ebert would be proud.

Among those notes from recent months are:

• For those of you who continue to look for a theme in gift items you feel compelled to give me, I’m no longer accepting any merchandise attached to the various sports teams, rock bands, or movie franchises I’ve followed over the years.  The purchase and gifting of these materials in recent years has become indiscriminate and borderline insulting.  On the other hand, if themes are the way you have to go, Black & Decker, DeWalt, and Ryobi are acceptable.

• Seems like California is trying to solve the homeless problem by killing them off with plagues from the Middle Ages.

• My question to the candidate:  During the Trump Administration, unemployment has gone down, markets have gone up, blah, blah, blah.  What are you going to do to reverse the good times, and more importantly, what steps will you take to make Apple fix their IOS issues which assign incorrect album covers to songs on an iPhone?

Okay, cheese it.  The dog just came in, confirmed that it’s Saturday morning and is now demanding an extra vehicular excursion with the requisite colonic extrusion and a trip around the frisbee golf field.

My return is imminent.

**Pause for effect / affect**  (Take your pick.  I ain’t gonna look it up right now.)

I’m back.

There was a slight chill in the Texas air on our sojourn at the park, but it was nothing compared to what I endured in my formative years during this time of year on the great plains.  I’m sure I could find other things to bitch about, like that asshole in the Mazda crossover who drives like a maniac at least once a month on the same thoroughfare I take to work, the asshole (a different one) who keeps moving my lunch sack in the breakroom fridge to make room for their insulated lunch box which doesn’t need to be in there in the first place, or the fact that I’m treated as the only one around here who knows how to empty the dishwasher, the recycle bin, the trash, or the epidermal sluff station.

Quick side note.  I went out to the internet and did an images search to accompany that last term I just threw out there for your consideration.  Please understand right here and now that I exercised excellent judgement by not including one of those images here.

Instead, I will leave my aimless babbling off right there, and post an image featuring 13 different pictures of a majority of the dogs I’ve known chilling in the back yard while breaking the laws of multi-dimensional existence, proportionality, and blending photos correctly to hide the stark differences created by 40 years of time travelling dogs captured on at least three different camera types using a wide variety of light sources.

Respectfully,

Randall G. Tharp

Employee of the Month – October 1990

Sears Greenspoint Mall, Houston Texas