Zoom meeting

Over in England, a fellow named Mark Cody, 36, lost his grandma during COVID-19. But it was not the virus that took her. She took her own life because of the feeling of isolation she felt. 

Cody had been planning to take her for a ride in his fancy car, but ... “My promise to her was always to take her out in a Lamborghini and the opportunity never came, so I thought I'd love to be able to exist to stop someone being in the situation that my nan was in,” Cody told the BBC.

So what he did, he started a new program called "Granborghini." Participants round up elderly people and take them for the ride of their lives to make them feel young again. According to the article I read, there are few things that can break a senior out of their daily routine quite like a blast in a Lamborghini or a McLaren. Maybe it's more fun than the Wild Mouse down on the boardwalk. That's one I'll never forget!

Cody has a squad of volunteers who share their time and vehicles with the folks. I really don't know that going 148 miles an hour up Dulaney Valley Road would do it for me, but who knows?  Take it from Robin Gibbons. Robin hauls people around in his McLaren, he enjoys seeing the looks on his passengers' faces: "You buy these cars to make people smile, and that's the value for me," he says.

I smile just thinking about it. See you in line for the Wild Mouse.

The phantom knows

Our pantry door hinges had a little bit of a squeak going on, only when you opened the door, or closed it. At all other times, no noise at all.

First chance I got (give or take three months) I grabbed the WD-40 and now there is no more squeak at all. 

So here's the crazy thing! How come, every time I open the pantry to get cat food, pretzels, more cat food, or whatever, I still expect it to make that noise? Did I psychologically condition myself to plan for that squeak, and now that it's gone, I miss it?

I was watching a tv movie wherein a woman suffered the loss of her lower leg, and had to deal with the phenomenon of "phantom pain," the sensation of feeling pain in a body part that sadly no longer exists. This thing with expecting the squeaking noise is not painful at all, but it just seems odd, almost like I miss the stupid sound.

Maybe I'll go outside and plants hollyhocks.

Tiger burning

 

The car you see, what's left of it, belongs to Tiger Woods, the troubled golfer. It got bent up that way when, like so many luxury SUVs in his past, he drove it when he was no in condition to do so.

PEOPLE magazine is out with an article saying  Tiger is "embarrassed and ashamed" following his most recent arrest for alleged DUI.  We all saw it, like so many times before. Google "Tiger Woods car" some time and see the junkyards' worth of demolished steel he's left behind.

And the article goes on to say that “Tiger can be defensive at times but he was embarrassed and ashamed at the latest accident. He wants to fix his problems. There is nobody more interested in seeing Tiger come out a winner again than Tiger," the friend went on. "He doesn’t do well with defeat and embarrassing public situations.”

Tiger is no longer 50 and it's sort of a wonder he's made it that far. What bothers me about his behavior is that it's so......continuous. It's mistake to drive while unable to do so, it's a sin to do it twice, and this is, what, the third time for him? Unforgivable. 

Most of us would be in the hoosegow for quite some time with a record like this, but Woods only was at the police station for several hours at the jail before bonding out. He stands charged with DUI with property damage, refusal to submit to a lawful urine test and careless driving. 

His breath-alcohol test came up negative. He's not drinking, he seems to be gassed on hydrocodone pills, and the pain he is in is said to be the aftermath of multiple spinal injuries and numerous surgeries. And some say the intensity of how hard he swings a golf club has worn and torn his spine, resulting in a spinal fusion and a lumbar disc replacement.

Not to mention the toll that his various car crashes has taken on him.

So now he is "stepping away for a period of time to seek treatment and focus on (his) health."

And his friends and family are behind him, everyone wishes him the best, and it's just a good thing that he only seems to drive on deserted road where he doesn't have a chance to smash up other people's cars and bodies.

A friend tells the magazine, “People are quick to judge Tiger but he’s living through a lot of pain and has been for enough years where it has taken a toll on his quality of life in addition to his golf game."

He's been a menace on the roads for years. Let's see how a judge judges Tiger. That's enough second chances.

 

Sunday Rerun: Another reason for brownbagging

 In the first place, before we get to the "meat" of this story, I have to say that of all the fast food joints that dot the nation's highways and boulevards, I have to rank Arby's down toward the bottom, and Five Guys at the top, for taste and snappy serving.  Five Guys cooks each burger to order, and Arby's might have slapped together that Chicken Bacon Swiss yesterday morning, for all you know. 

And another reason not to like Arby's so much is the way they refused to sell dinner to a police officer in Pembroke Pines, FL last week. Sgt. Jennifer Martin says she ordered up at Arby's drive-thru on Tuesday night. Windowman Kenneth Davenport, 19, took her credit card, but restaurant manager Angel Mirabal, 22, stuck his head out of the window without a bag of food in his hand, saying, "[Davenport] doesn't want to serve you because you are a police officer." 

So the police officer, whose only offense was ordering meals from these goons, went back inside to get the refund on her card and ask for the employees' contact information. She says that Mirabal laughed, and said Davenport was allowed to refuse her service. He gave her back her money and his contact info, but Davenport refused to give his name.

Remember this, if you plan to invest a million bucks into a franchise selling roast beef loaf and reconstituted chicken sandwiches:  all that money, all that marketing and promotion and work to build up a business, can be undone by turning over the keys to some 22-year-old whose main qualification for the job is being able to clean out the grease trap in the Fry-O-Lator.

Sgt Martin reported it to her chief, the local news got involved, and the HMFIC* of Arby's, one Paul Brown, wrote a corporate PR statement of apology, and offered a free combo meal to any officer in the area last Friday.

Wow!  A free combo meal! You could get a Grand Turkey Club AND a small fries AND a small drink just to make Paul Brown feel the sweet satisfaction of expiation!

Yuck-o

Oh, and they fired the manager but "as a company that highly values trust and fairness, we ultimately found that the crew member (Davenport) was not involved other than to attempt to remedy the situation," the corporate geniuses said.

Davenport's grandfather told a local TV news station that the whole thing was a joke, and that young Kenneth's words were "taken out of context and blown into something much bigger than what it should be."

Ha ha.  What a hilarious remark!  You can't have the dinner you just paid for because you're a police officer!  

As Homer Simpson would say, "Be more funny!"

And as I would say, you're a part of the reason your grandson is a jerk, gramps.

*Head Man For Internal Correspondence

The Saturday Picture Show, April 11, 2026

 

Artemis II sent back this amazing picture from the other side of the moon. Taco about an amazing view! This will wrap up our space coverage for today.

What is the square root of an oak tree?

This will make a nice wallpaper for you, if you wish...it's the most-recognized symbol of Baltimore's Harbor: the Domino Sugar sign!

Here's why you might be out-foxed if you spend the money on the name brand crocs.

OK - you followed instructions very well. Just not sure you understood the plan!

The guy driving the street-striper truck isn't so good at thinking outside the box, either.

The great thing about boiling up herbed potatoes for dinner is, if you have leftovers, you slice 'em up and fry 'em up for breakfast!

We see a sunrise every morning, but you have to be really out of sight to see an earthrise! (and I said no more space coverage! oooops!)

The fire department wherever this is spotted it and went to ask the homeowner what's the deal. He told them the hydrant is on his property and he has the right to fence it in. It's such a shame that people are allowed to be so foolish. Try and stop them!

Read and heed!

Where'd he come from?

If you believe in teleportation (being moved from place to place by means of magic or something like it), then you might have seen the story about Gregg Phillips, who is some sort of senior official with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and said, during a podcast whose audience is likely in the single digits that he "was involved in multiple incidents of teleportation, including once where (my)car was flown through the air to a church and once where (I) ended up at a Waffle House, like 50 miles away from where I was.” 

Gregg, my man, many of us have had episodes where we find ourselves with syrup all over us after a night out. I don't know about cars sprouting wings and coming to a landing at First Baptist, but I'm sure it could happen. 

Phillips claims the Waffle House in question is in Rome, Ga. The New York Times went down to Rome, ordered a #2 platter with eggs over easy, and grilled the staff about any recent teleportations. No one saw anything of the sort, although they did agree that a pickup truck loaded with U of Georgia football fans drove into the lot, tried to stop, but couldn't, due to failing brake pads. Seems accurate.

In Times-ese: "None of the interviewees said they were aware of anyone traveling to the 24-hour restaurants by paranormal means.”

"I’ve seen it all,” (and don't you know THAT'S true!) longtime Waffle House server Shastoni Burge told the paper. “But I’ve never seen that.”

But Phillips, the man who said it happened to him, came back with a tweeter: “God will not be mocked. People can debate me. Question me. Even ridicule what they don’t understand. I know what I’ve experienced. I know Who (sic) I serve.”

No one here is mocking God. We respect God. Guess whom I don't.

On the radio

Assuming that you are not really interested in the difference between a low-power local FM radio station and a real full power station, I'll just get to the story here by telling you that some smaller communities have licenses for low-power stations that are simply designed to serve the needs of a small town or part of a county.  The low power means that not many radios can receive the station's signal, except for those living close by. LP stations tend to feature the sort of programming that not a lot of people want to hear. And they are non-profit enterprises, so there's not a lot of loot involved.

Now then. There is currently a station known as WKRP-LP serving a section of Raleigh, North Carolina since 2015. The call refers back to a popular 1978 - 1982 sitcom called "WKRP in Cincinnati," about the wacky doin's of the people at a fictional radio station.  The people at the LP station say their format is "what radio used to be 35 years ago in small-town America...Greats of the ‘80s, Sounds of the ’70s, ‘90s Rewind,” as well as local news and “specialty programming.”

The original situation comedy cast. I promise you, no one who ever worked at a real radio station looked like these people.

And they have a weekly two-hour show “Weird Al and Friends,” all about the musical prankery of Weird Al Yankovic.

Well then. The people who run the station are getting older and are losing interest in their radio hobby (after hearing "Beat It" so many times, can you blame them?). But they are going out with a bang: they have auction off the call letters to a group from Cincinnati who wants to put them on a real station, so get ready, Reds and Bengals fans and all else who call the Queen City home: soon you will be able to hear the modern equivalent of Dr. Johnny Fever and Les Nessman, and have a Herb Tarlek kind of guy try to sell you advertising time.

And as they always say on sitcoms, "That's crazy! But it just might be crazy enough to work!"