Sunsay Rerun: Money talks, and says goodbye for five months

 Because my father was in the Navy in World War II, serving aboard the USS Delta, he was served Spam (the meat byproduct, not the fake email) as often as three meals a day. One result of this was his lifelong disdain for fatty canned meat foods, so we never once had it for any meal around the house when I was supposed to be growing up.

Not that I am any kind of gourmet, but I never eat circus peanuts (or their bastard cousin candy corn), cilantro, beets, bologna, baloney, hummus, anything that looks like hummus, and anything pumpkin spiced.

And Hot Pockets! Never had one. If I want a calzone, there are plenty of sub shops around to find a good calzone, so why get some frozen substitute?

And don't even mention that they have a Hot Pockets Breakfast fruit pastry.

I am glad to be no fan of the Hot Pocket, now that Michelle Janavs, the daughter of the co-founder of the brand, owned up to being one of those helicopter moms who paid big money to have their unqualified children get into college.  In her case, she reached into her hot pocket and pulled out $200,000 to have her daughter get into the University of Southern California.  It's all part of that “Varsity Blues” uni admissions scandal. Last week, she was sent to the Ironbar Hilton for five months.

Wondering if they serve Hot Pockets in prison

For the record, here's the apology she uttered: “I am so very sorry that I tried to create an unfair advantage for my children,” Janavs said, telling U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton that she decided to lie and cheat because she loves her children so doggone much.

Gorton pointed out that the “vast majority of parents do not brazenly try to push their kids in the side door…They don’t love their children any less than you do. They just play by the rules of common decency and fair play.”

Janavs also thought it a good idea to shell out $100,000 for an ACT proctor who corrected her daughters' exam before turning them in to be graded.

Sing along with Hall and Oates: "You're a rich girl, and you've gone too far."  America's too-wealthy class never lets me down.

The Saturday Picture Show, May 3, 2026

Pretty! Colored raindrops on the sunroof window!

There used to be a website called antipodes map. You put in your address, and it told you where you would wind up if you started drilling and went all the way through to the other side of Earth. Offer not valid for anyone who thinks the world is flat. Their exact oppo is Omaha.

Swallows made themselves a little nest up by the ceiling.

Baltimore crabhouse window art!

Pretty sure the last time I bought Pop-Tarts, Lindbergh was on his way to Paris. But people are saying they're getting skimpy on the gooey smear of icing on top. Cover photo for comparison.

There may be worse Mother's Day gifts than cleaning products for dear old Ma, but you'd have to go to that store in the mall that sells glittery t-shirts and whoopie cushions to find any. She wants a book, some bath salts, and a little peace and quiet. You're welcome.

Look what's back! It's Endless Shrimp at (the few remaining) Red Lobsters, including a new dish for this year improbably called Marry Me Shrimp. I cannot advise marrying any form of marine life. Shrimp have limited ap-peal.

And speaking of advice, I keep reading how much better life would be for all of use if we would only eat about 85 beets per week. Never gonna happen for me.

There are two gray hosses in today's Kentucky Derby, although this one is named Great White and is not really all that gray. I've always wanted to see a gray horse win the Run For The Roses!

 If I ever become a judge (highly unlikely!) I will incarcerate people who cut, tear, deface, disfigure, or destroy library property, for much more than two months. Their children's children will have to visit them on Sundays.  And people who talk out loud in libraries will face the swift sword of justice as well. This is a library, son, not one of your swing joints.

Occupation?

 I don't cut my own lawn anymore, so I don't have to go to the lawn mower repair place around the corner.  And between the price of mower repairs and the price to hire some really dependable guys to mow our 1/4 acre, I figure we break even.

But I drive by the shop because, like I say, it is right around the corner, and last week one of the mower repair guys was outside cutting the lawn of the shop. So that got me to thinking.

I guess barbers and hairdressers are more or less obligated to cut each other's hair. But if you're a a butcher, do you have to supply the rib-eyes for the neighborhood cookout? If you're a baker, does it fall on you to show up at family gatherings with a nicely done up gâteau? If your profession is making candlesticks, does everyone wait for you at dinnertime to light the wicks?

Let's say you're an air traffic controller. ("You're an air traffic controller.") Now let's say, when you go on vacation to see the folks back home in Crystal Falls, do you climb up in the tower and help land a few? Kennel workers, do you find others expecting you to groom their pets? Servers, does Aunt Minnie expect you to dish out the chow on Thanksgiving?

If you work at the local US Post Office that is supposed to bring us our mail, I don't expect you to do anything. I'm shocked any time you show up, frankly.

And yes, I know from asking, meteorologists are always being asked for weather forecasts. ("Minnie's daughter Eloise is getting married on the 23rd of next month. Do you think it will be sunny and nice that day?")

And, anyone who has ever been on the radio is used to people saying, "Say something like you would say it on the radio!" The only answer is, "I just did."

Tales of long ago

I was hauling out the bags o' trash the other night when I saw him. Short, red-haired, pointy face and nose. He was lurking around the house across the street, and then, suddenly, he took off in pursuit of a rabbit. No further details.

Suspect #1, the short red guy, looked like this to the sketch artist to whom I described him:

There used to be a sizable warren of foxes over near I-95, but when they widened that road so they could charge you extra to ride in a lane with fewer cars (which I have never done and never will, owing to my lifelong parsimony) those foxes and their friends and kinfolk moved up past the mall and into our neighborhoods. They are welcome; they give the place a rustic feel and, as omnivores, you never hear them complain about their food choices. 

They do not attack people unless cornered, and even then, their main weapon is their keening howl and irritating panting.  Although...I had a tough time convincing a woman of that back in the way. She had called 911 in the middle of the night and refused to take the operator seriously, so she wound up talking to me.

Her chief complaint was that a fox was walking down her street in one our county's toniest neighborhoods. I told her that walking down the street in the middle of the night was pretty much what a fox would do after a night out and that she had nothing to fear. Close the door, go back to bed, read "Town & Country" magazine awhile, and get some sleep, I urged.

"BUT! What if he gets in the house somehow and gets me and the children!"

I shouldn't have been this insouciant, but I said, "Ma'am, is it just barely possible that you're thinking of the Big Bad Wolf, huffing and puffing and blowing your house down? We've dealt with this before and Natural Resources says just leave him alone and you'll be fine."

At length she relented and we both went on with our lives. But I still wondered for a while if she still fretted about unprovoked fox attacks, or "UFAs" as they would be called if they ever happened.

Line up by name

Odd spellings of names, do you mind them?

I mean, I don't mind how you spell your name; it's none of my beeswax. And as a person named Mark, I see a whole lot of people spelling my name "Marc." But as long as they get my pizza order right, it's fine.

But I really want to hear from people whose parents named them with an intentionally odd spelling. Let's say your name is pronounced "Frank" but your folks thought it would be interesting to christen you "Franque."  Or "Lennard" for Leonard, or "Dayvid" for David, or whatever.

Besides growing awfully weary of saying to strangers, "No, it's "A-L-I-K-Z. Alikz," there's the pain of not having one of those little name license tags for your bicycle.

I just want to know if the uniqueness of having an alternately-spelled name makes up for the corrections and explanations.

Crime Scene

I was talking to someone who spends their free time cleaning rivers in Maryland of all the junk people toss away.  And she showed a video of her "haul" - these aren't hamburger wrappers and beer cans people are throwing in the river. Shopping carts, truck tires, wooden platforms...and why? People think so little of our natural resources that they befoul rivers with the junk that should be in the landfills.

I was reading about Baltimore County police arresting a man and two women for stealing more than $14,000 worth of jewelry from people around Catonsville.

Police say the game was, the crooks would pull up to their victims in a car and ask them to step over to them. Then they would ask for directions, or offer a blessing, following that up with snatching the victims' necklaces and zooming off. 

They've recovered more than 150 pieces of jewelry.

It will always astound me that people will dump their unwanted household detritus on the property of others, or go around literally ripping off the possessions of others, and act like they're not doing wrong.

Police recommend that we stay far away from these people. In many cases, Chicago wouldn't be too far away from here.

What a deal

You may have heard that Mauricio Jimenez, a former Home Depot Manager from Florida, was arrested for giving frequent shopper discounts that the Home Depot know nothing about and which cost them millions.

Jimenez

Jimenez, 48,  could stand trials for organized fraud of $50,000 or more,  and first-degree grand theft.

Apparently, he had a scheme to use "deliberate" and "systematic" fraud tactics by giving big savings on at least 4,500 unauthorized purchases from December 2023 to April 2026. The shady deals totaled around $55 million in merchandise.

Jimenez's attorney says, "There's nothing that says that he was receiving any kickbacks, like he was getting any benefit from this. It just says that he was issuing discounts to different companies.”

BUT - by building his store's sales volume, he was compensated with larger bonuses. So that's the crime they allege.

It all reminds me of the supermarket some time ago, I think it was in West Virginia, where all 11 of the cash registers rang up big happy sales every week. BUT - it turned out, they were only supposed to have 10 registers. The manager had come up with an extra, set it up, and whatever that extra cashbox took in was all gravy for the manager. 

You have to hope that when he got to prison, they put lots of nice gravy on his meatloaf dinner.

There are as many crooked schemes as there are crooks, and very few of them work as intended. But they keep trying!

Sunday rerun: Put it on my bill

 It is said that if you stand in Times Square in New York City long enough, you will eventually see every person you've ever met.  And that never made sense to me, since it assumes that every person you ever met will a) go to New York at some time and b) go to Times Square.

On the other hand, if you go to Central Park, you'll see all sorts of sights you never thought you would, such as a Mandarin duck.

A flamboyantly-feathered mandarin duck has been hanging around in the pond there since October. As you'd figure, that's a kind of duck that's normally found in east Asia and parts of Europe. It didn't come from any zoo in the area, and park ranger Dan Tainow says it was probably someone’s pet. It could have also flown from either New Jersey or Long Island, although it's not known if it flew coach or first class.

At first the wildlife officials in NY said they planned to capture the duck for its own safety, but now they believe it's comfortable living in Central Park.

"The animal, from what we've seen and heard, is healthy. It's able to fly, it's able to feed, and it seems to be social with the other water fowl in the park. So, there's no risk of anything bad or negative happening, and the animal itself isn't hurt, from what we can see. So right now we're going to leave [it] alone," reads the statement from park officials.



They go on to say that people dump unwanted pets in the park up there, and it is illegal to keep a duck as a pet in New York.  "A lot of people dump animals in the park, which is unfortunate... For example, red-eared sliders, they're not a native species of turtle, but they're a common house pet, and people will just put them in the park when they don't want them anymore. And that's a bad thing," say the rangers.

Rangers said the duck has a band on its leg, but no one has come forward claiming to be the animal's owner. Ducks are not legal to keep as pets in the state.

The city will capture the duck after all, if it shows any signs of injury or illness.

It's a cool-looking duck, is all I know. I hope he has a good winter. Holden Caulfield is not around to worry about the Central Park Ducks any more, remember.