Just can't take it

 Boy howdy, those farm stands really have everything nowadays! Tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, chard, lettuce, onions, carrots, blueberries, raspberries, video cameras....

Ooops! The man you see here heaping fruits and veggies into a tote sack did not know about that last thing, or he would not have tried to rip the farmer off by loading up with produce and hitting the road.

The cameras worked great, and so did the shaming, because the farmer showed the videos on Facebook and asked if anyone knew this man, wearing Fire Department hat and shirt, and by the next morning, the farmer was able to report that the guy showed up and paid his debt.

It was interesting to follow along on Facebook. Most people said it was shameful, and represented that certain sense of entitlement to which no one is entitled, be they firefighter, police, teacher, whatever.  You don't get to steal food.

But some people were saying that maybe the man was confused and thought the stuff was out there for free. This is the new style of bending over backward to adjust our moral compasses that many are employing. 

"It's ok to steal from where I work because it's part of my pay, or should be."

"Everyone is cheating on their taxes/vehicle registration/final exams/spouse, so why should I be the only one not doing it?"

"It's only a crime if you get caught."

"It's a victimless crime anyway; no one gets hurt."

"They expect a certain amount of shrinkage or pilferage anyway and they adjust the prices up, so I'm already paying for it."

"I give them plenty of business all year; time for a freebie."

To which I say, no, no, no, no, no, and no. I hope this guy, even though he finally paid up, is being shunned by his friends who work and pay for what they get.

I'd be ashamed to know him.

She had it her way

 You see this ten-story office building in Glen Burnie, Maryland? 

It's called Empire Towers, and this is an old picture of it. A new picture would show zero cars on the parking lot and barricades all around. The building was deemed structurally unsafe last week. Apparently, people have been working on the underground parking garage and the building's moorings are not quite up to holding the building up, so even if there's a bank branch in there, no one can hold that up either. It's a huge deal down in Glen Burnie, legendary home of Maryland's Motor Vehicle Administration and 47 car dealers in a two-block radius. Nearby businesses are closed until someone figures it all out.

You see the Burger King right next door (also currently closed)? Therein lies a tale. I worked around the corner at  WISZ  AM-FM from 1973 to 1978. I started out on the evening shift. Most nights I would pack some sort of lunch - a little salad, some lunchmeat, Potato Stix (I still love them!), maybe a Pop-Tart. BUT every now and then, I would skip packing a lunch and hit the BK for something substantial, maybe a Double Whopper, large fries, a vanilla shake.

I packed about 160 lbs on a 6' 5" frame then, so calories were not a concern.

You know the drill at places like the King: order, pay, and wait to get your chow in a bag. And so it was that one day I was waiting for my BA order, along with a hippie-looking girl who ordered a plain hamburger and a soda.

My order came up, the guy slid it across the counter at me, and BAM! The freakazoid snagged my bag the way Brooks Robinson used to pick up hot ground balls, and then she ran out the door like Ed Reed after an interception. 

The guy at the counter looked like this was not a first. He remade my order and I was on my way to play Conway Twitty records very happily, and as far as I know, her original order is still sitting there.

If Burger King ever opens up, if Empire Towers doesn't collapse, it's probably still there waiting for her.

Sunday rerun: I'll have a Danish

 The other night, watching the Orioles game, Peggy jokingly referred to left fielder Heston Kjerstad as "Kierkegaard," and a good time was had by all.

Now, Søren Kierkegaard was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social observer, and Christian author. He was only around for 42 years (1813 - 1855) but in that short life, he founded what is called the philosophical school known as existentialism.

"Søren The K"

Existentialism is often confused or misidentified as the very concept of existence. You're likely to see this among the blurbs on the back covers of cheesy novels in whose scenarios frustrated, unfulfilled suburbanites seek the meaning of life as they pilot their Range Rovers home from Whole Foods..."Walston was struck by the existential nature of life, realizing that if he hadn't joined the water polo team at Yale, he would never have known the love of Heather, whose father owned a chain of lumberyards in the Fair Hills area."

Walston's imaginary plush life notwithstanding, Existentialism holds that we have the freedom and responsibility to make the right choices to lead our lives down successful, proper paths.

In other words, "If it is to be, it is up to me."

The most notable existentialists include Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, and Orioles color commentator Ben McDonald, who pointed out in a game this past Saturday against the Tigers that each player is responsible for his own performance. 

And therein lies the meaning of life! 

Ben McDonald can hold 7 baseballs in his hand.

The Saturday Picture Show, July 11, 2026

 

One might think that this woman is suffering an unbearable loss or a soul-rending tragedy. But no. She's just cheesed off because the officials are telling her and her party they had to leave the Freedom 250 site last Saturday in DC. If you'll recall, tremendous storms with wind and rain came in and did some damage. But she chose to stand her ground because she wanted to see the fireworks. Even her daughter knows better.

My suggestion (and I am full of them): Change the name of the company to "Schindler's Lifts."

On the other hand, try telling these birds they have to vacate their perch. It's written right there!

After all these years, people still line up to view the tomb of Ramses II.

One simple comma or colon would have changed this from something funny to a lesson for those who want to keep all their extremities.

Hot a-mighty! That is my favorite salad right there. Hold the greens, Mabel!

Well, Daniel L, I can understand, because when I was a little tacker, they said I always got carried away. I can't tell you how many owls it took!

Did the person who named this bucolic grove know what happened the last time the Donner Party camped out for a picnic?

"If you're going to commit serious crimes,  A) don't talk about your plans out loud and B) make sure no one is recording you when you do." Good advice from beyond the grave from Richard Nixon, whose Oval Office shenanigans were recorded for posterity and prosecutors on this very machine.

The Dodgers had their annual Pride Night last month. Not all of the boys were grown up enough to participate and wear the rainbow hat that 24 of the 26 players wore. Here's pitcher Blake Treinen, # 49, on the right, who just can't bear the thought of two people  being able to express their sexuality the way he does. To Blake and all the other pearl-clutchers out there, here is my chant: "I am straight and the hat looks great!"

The Dressing Room

A Swedish 24-year-old named Elsa Thora, in our country for the World Cup, seems to be the one who kicked off the avalanche of fan support for our Ranch Dressing. “Why did no one tell me ranch sauce is like crack?” 

Unfortunate drug comparison aside, ranch is popular here, and, apparently, unknown in Europe. We usually call it ranch dressing, but make no mistake; it has been America's favorite salad dressing since 1992, when it overtook Italian. 

Ranch dressing is a sassy mix of buttermilk, salt, garlic, onion, black pepper, and herbs, stirred into a creamy sauce. It was first mixed up by one Steve Henson, a plumbing contractor working in Alaska, where he fed his crews a lot of salad with his homemade dressing. He retired from the plumbing business and moved to California, where he bought a ranch where guests could stay for a visit. He opened a steakhouse and served (you guessed it) a lot of salads, started selling his dressing on the side, and soon reached a point where he was able to give up renting rooms, and concentrate on selling his sauce. The rest is dressing history. The stuff is everywhere, in America, at least. But...

And now Thora, who is quite the social media influencer, is all over the board after proclaiming “EUROPE WE NEED RANCH ASAP.”  Thousands "liked" her post and thousands more tried to take bottles of the white stuff home with them, only to run afoul of the Federal Air Traffic Armed Security Service.

F*A*T*A*S*S responded and told international travelers to pack their smuggled bottles in their checked bag, and Kraft Foods published a picture of regulation-compliant mini-packets of ranch, although no one has seen any of them coming through the scanner line.

And I'm over here reaching for Trader Joe's Romano Italian dressing.

Lookie here

Judiciary note: I found it interesting that a man was found not guilty in Towson District Court after being charged with two Peeping Tom charges.

There's no doubt that the man on trial, Johnnie Wade Jr, was looking into a first-floor window at the Donnybrook Apartments in Towson. Two women who lived in the apartment testified that they caught him peering in.

Judge Krystin Richardson found Wade not guilty on both charges. She said the prosecutors failed to prove that he actually saw any of the three women who lived in the flat, so he was not really peeping at anyone.

This peeping and creeping has been going on for almost a year in this apartment complex, and the police worked with the community to catch these creeps, only to have the first to be tried beat the rap because no one was seen.

State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger said there are two other men who were caught loitering with intent to peep around the complex, and now he doesn't know if there will be any change to those charges after this ridiculous decision.

Céilí Doyle reported in The Banner that Shellenberger said, “I have never felt that there had to be somebody in the room,” he said. “If you’re crawling up to the room, and you’re looking in, your intent is to see the person.”

The three men were charged with misdemeanors under a law that says you break the law by conducting “visual surveillance of an individual in a private place without the consent of that individual.”

Make me the judge, and I will find that if you break into a safe, only to find it empty, you are still just as guilty as if you had found a pile of hundred dollar bills big enough to choke a horse. 

But I'm not a fancy lawyer or anything, just a man trying to carve out a little frontier justice here on the prairie.

And I can't help but feel that the judge would have found him guilty if his name were Tom, but that's just me.

 

Not funny

Last week, a United Airlines flight going from Newark, N.J., to Palma de Mallorca, Spain, did not get to its destination before the pilot hung a uey and went back to New Jersey.

It was all because there appears to have been a suspiciously named Bluetooth device on board.

And they were 4 hours and 24 minutes into what was supposed to be an eight-hour flight!

 

The friendly skies of United said in an email to NPR that the flight turned around "to address a potential security concern." Posts on social media from other passengers said that a Bluetooth device on board the plane was the problem.  

All anyone knew was that the flight attendants were asking everyone to shut off their devices, and this communication was overheard on air traffic control radio:

 "There's a security detail out there, someone had a Bluetooth speaker and they named it a certain four-letter word," another voice responded. "So they have to inspect the whole aircraft including the cargo area [and] passengers have to evacuate."

It turns out that the four-letter word was not a curse word per se, but some genius named his Bluetooth network "Bomb."

Smart, son.

Everything was checked out and the flight took off again, missing a few hours of Sangria time and getting to Palma de Mallorca nine and a half hours late.

I hope it's not a problem that I named my wifi "IT HURTS WHEN IP."