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.

The Saturday Picture Show, April 25, 2026

 

It's a new one on me. These are called "Asperitas" clouds. Maybe we don't get this sort of cloud in Maryland.  We do get asparagus, to my dismay.

It only took one good spring rain for this tree to lose most of its blooms. But what was so pretty up on the branches still looks nice on the ground!

Interesting overhead view of the Beatles in concert in Paris, 1966. Today, even the local teenage band down the street has more equipment than this to lug around.

When we had that gigantic snow this winter, Baltimore's Public Works workers did a respectable job removing the snow to the parking lot at the old Old Town Mall on the city's east side. It's mostly gone now, eking out a final few days as slushy mud.

The insurance gecko is still hanging around!

Apple brought you the AirTag and the AirBud already. Coming soon: the AirBox.

There used to be a website listing the payphones still extant in each zip code. There are darned few of them, so if you lose yours, you'll have to count on the kindness of strangers.

Here's a turtle either being surprised by the flash of a camera or pleading innocence. Either way, cool.

A brand-new baby elephant has come out to play at the Smithsonian National Zoo in D.C. Come say hi to Linh Mai!

Here we see the honorable MarkWayne Mullin, United States Secretary of Homeland Security, and the cowboy boots and six-inch podium he needs to stand on so he won't come up short.

Bang Bang!!

I promise you, if I ever have to seek medical attention for a sprained neck, it's going to be because I can't stop reading stories like this in the news.

A man named Gage Flood, 19, stands charged with armed robbery, first-degree assault and other firearm-related offenses (nine counts in all) after he tried to commit a robbery in a dorm at Towson University last week.

He's not a student, not affiliated with the U in any way, but the object of his felonious intentions was a $1,000 Celine hat.

You can stop rubbing your eyes now. Someone was wearing a French hat that cost a thousand simoleons, and Flood wanted it, so he tried to remove it from their head and place it on his own.

In the process, he shot himself in the leg.

This TV screenshot shows the ALLEGED gunman being taken away by Baltimore County paramedics, none of whom were wearing $1000 hats.

Then he handed his weapon over a student who was present during the entire caper.

Don't worry; he's going to be all right, and I will keep you posted about his upcoming trial.

I can hear the defense attorney now: "Your honor, my client has never known the luxurious feel of a thousand-dollar hat, and he felt he deserved to have one."

 

Punishment

Before the word "Yoo Hoo" became associated with a chocolatey soft drink, it was involved with a famous US Army incident just before World War II.

Dateline, July 6, 1941, five months before Pearl Harbor. Outside Memphis, Tennessee, an Army General named Ben Lear was playing golf in 97° heat when a convoy of some 80 Army trucks rolled by. Some of the soldiers got a glimpse of some women on the golf course wearing shorts, and responded most ungallantly with catcalls, salacious suggestions, and shouts of "Yoo Hoo!"

General Lear

Lear went bazoo, ordering the convoy halted, delivered a pithy lecture on military discipline, and then ordered all 350 of the men in the convoy to go on a forced 15-mile march in the blistering heat.

Marching along

This became known as the Yoo-Hoo incident, and Lear took the nickname of "General Yoo-Hoo" to his grave in 1966.  Of course, back on the homefront, the debate about the appropriateness of the punishment raged for but a short time, since by the fall, war clouds were gathering, and the United States entered the War in December. 

Was the General too harsh? Or was he upholding chivalry in a proper manner? We may never know, but one thing is certain. In 2026, you never hear anyone hollering "Yoo Hoo!" to anyone, unless they want that watered-down "chocolate" "milk" drink.

Fun with Clownfish

 Clownfish are hermaphroditic - they are all born as males, and have the ability to step up in class and become female.  Clownfish schools are led by a large dominant female. And then if she dies, the dominant male in the school will change over and become the dominant female, and then a younger male takes up the mantle and becomes the dominant male.

But he knows his days of wearing the pants, so to speak, are numbered.

Holiday dinners must really be fun with these fish!

If they all could turn back time

News item:  In an April 19 interview, Kayti Edwards — the step-granddaughter of Julie Andrews — said that she has a 15-year-old daughter, Ever, with Cher's younger son, Elijah Blue Allman.

I read these People magazine stories for you to save you the trouble. Reading further, I find that Ms Edwards is the former girlfriend of the man always described as "beloved actor" (now deceased) Matthew Perry.

He looks just like his father. She looks like people who used to look like Cher.

Elijah B. Allman was in the news last week because Cher filed papers to put him under conservatorship, because he seems to spend almost every nickel he gets from his father's estate on drugs, food, and alcohol, and just wastes the rest. He is currently being held in preventive detention, incarcerated at the Rockingham House of Corrections in Brentwood, New Hampshire. He committed several b & e's in New Hampshire for no apparent reason in February and March.

Allman, who goes by the professional name P. Exeter Blue I for reasons best known to himself, was born six days after the American Bicentennial, July 10, 1976. Cher and Gregg Allman were married at the time, for reasons best known to themselves. 

In your wildest imagination, could you have ever imagined that Gregg Allman (when he was still alive) and Julie Andrews could be linked by family relations so close that they could have done a duet on "Ain't Wasting Time No More" after Christmas dinner one cold December?

Let's hope that everyone involved gets help and that Elijah will be around for America's semiquincentennial this July.

This made him Happy

This happened last year. I didn't hear about it then; if I had, I would have broken my neck to tell you about it, because it involves honoring someone whose cultural contributions to his adopted home of the US of A are manifold and glorious. He's an Englishman by birth, but has made his home in Westport, Connecticut for 41 years, while sharing his talents as a musician, singer, author, and actor.

We're talking, of course, about Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, the first recipient of the Connecticut Governor’s Award of Excellence. That's a new honor celebrating residents who epitomize the state’s core values: creativity, resourcefulness, passion, dynamism, and generosity.

Keith received a custom-designed medallion and a ribbon at the ceremony, where he delivered remarks both witty and wise.

“I’d like to say thank you to you all, and thank you to the state of Connecticut,” Richards said in accepting the award. “You kind of get lost for words with something like this around your neck. I’ve been here for 40 years, and it’s been a great place for me. I brought the kids up here. When the kids were young, I said, I have to get the kids out of New York City before they don’t get any fresh air at all. So, we moved up here, and ever since, we’ve had a great life. … I’m incredibly happy about everything, especially things like this, because you don’t get them every day.”

Keith was recognized for his work with a group called SPHERE, which enhances the lives of adults with disabilities, and The Prospector Theater, which provides meaningful employment through the magic of film.

What's more, Governor Ned Lamont recognized Keith for advocating for arts, education, and accessibility initiatives across the state, and said, "I’ve been inspired by the Rolling Stones for more than 50 years, I hope you have as well. Keith Richards is an amazing member of our community. We’re so proud that he’s here and I’m so proud to have the opportunity to give him this award of excellence.”

And in closing his remarks, Keith Richards spoke highly of his adopted city and libraries all over:

“This is a great building, a wonderful library, which even I didn’t know the full extent of.  Without our books, without knowing things, without knowing their special meaning — this isn’t movies, this is not someone drawing you images. This is a book, and you have the movie in your head. It’s very important that we keep our books unburnt.”

Stirring words from a great man!

 

Sunday Rerun: A saint and a sinner

  “More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.” - attributed to Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

Saint Teresa

I saw this quote as the epilogue to an essay about the life of Truman Capote (1924-1984), the novelist/essayist/poet/critic/biographer who was born with a great facility for written language and turned it into great success in many fields, only to waste it all away by overindulgence in drugs, alcohol, and debauchery.

Saint Teresa was a 16th-century Spanish saint, a noblewoman who became a Carmelite nun, church reformer, and mystic. The chances are good that, had she and Capote existed at the same time, they would not have traveled in the same circles, for she gave up social prominence and chose an ascetic lifestyle, giving up the sinful pleasures to attain higher spiritual goals. She came from a well-to-do background and forwent the mundane pleasures, while Capote came from a simple Southern background and strove mightily to taste of those pleasures until his life became all party and no worthwhile work.

Capote

My life, your life, and the history of the entire world are all filled with examples of people who miss planes that crash, people whose car broke down on the way to work and kept them safe on 9/11, jobs we wanted that we didn't get and it was better that we didn't...it's an endless cornucopia of lessons learned.

As an admirer of Capote's work, I wish he had found it in himself to do more of it. In Cold Blood, his 1965 classic book was one of the first, and certainly the best, attempts at telling a non-fictional story in the style of detective fiction. Capote actually moved to Kansas to follow the arrest, trial, and conviction of two men who murdered four members of the Herb Clutter family in Holcomb in 1959. He was a perfectionist in his writing, known for spending a day fussing over one word on a page of his brilliant prose, and the world of books has been the less for his passing.

Although self-awareness was not always a hallmark of Capote's personality, he was wise enough to take a friend along to Kansas to help him gain the trust of the locals and take notes as he interviewed them. He knew that his...quirkiness...might not play too well out there in the Grain Belt. That friend was his friend since childhood...Harper Lee, who somehow found time to work on her own novel, the excellent Pulitzer prize-winning "To Kill A Mockingbird.

Capote first published his findings in serial form in The New Yorker before editing them as a book. It was later that he revealed that the magazine had sent him out to cover the story and had given him the choice between the Clutter murders and a day with a New York cleaning lady as subjects to write about. He chose the Clutter story first, but later spent a day with his cleaning lady in 1979 and wove the tale of her work and life into a short story called "A Day's Work."

Choices...we make them and wait to see how they turn out.

The Saturday Picture Show, April 18, 2026

 

Many neighborhoods in Baltimore don't have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. The Arabbers, as they are called (pronounced AY-rabbers) rent a horse and cart and take produce to the people. My grandma used to buy watermelons from a guy who came up the back alley chanting, "Waaaatermelon! Ripe to the rind!"

The tropical version of those Russian nesting dolls.

Nice ride, lots of fun, but I have to ask about getting on it and getting off it.

It's true! Those World War II army jeeps so important in winning the war were shipped overseas unassembled in wooden crates. They were easy to assemble, once you got the hang of it with the first 75 or so...

The message is, get cool, or you'll wind up in a place even hotter than this.

With temperatures in Baltimore this past week tipping over the 90° mark, I thought I would bring up this image from last winter's snow. As a reminder, no matter how much it snows and how cold it gets, you can always put on another sweater.

Well, this shopper was in such a hurry to go, they left their Yeti behind. Haste maketh waste as always.

The Beatles said it and it's still true - Love is all you need!

There's a lot of buzz around this new restaurant that doesn't even have a name...

Well, they've been living at the shore since, well, forever, so maybe seagulls get bored and have to yawn now and then.

She's not well

If you weren't around catching the news in October, 1987, let me catch you up:

Eighteen month-old Jessica McClure fell into a well in her aunt's backyard in Midland, Texas. For the next 58 hours, the nation, yea, the world, hung on by their cable TV, waiting for "Baby Jessica" to be rescued from the well, 22 feet below the surface.

They got her out, all right, and she was so widely known that even The Simpsons did an episode about Bart being stuck in a well.

The last we heard of the woman known now as Jessica McClure Morales, she was doing ok, but now comes news that she was arrested Saturday night following a reported domestic disturbance at her Midland County home.

Jessica made my mugshot collection

 Police say the Midland County Sheriff’s Office responded to a residence in the area of South County Road 1140 around 10 PM last Saturday. Morales, now 40, was taken into custody at the scene, charged with assault causing bodily injury involving family violence.

The County says it might take up to ten days for the arrest affidavit to be released, so we know nothing about how she wound up trapped again, although she did bond out over the weekend.

So, now we wait for details, which I will pass along as soon as. Here's a piece of advice, Jessica: maybe get out of Midland County. It's nothing but pitfalls for you.

 

How's your old tomato?

Faithful people will tell you that anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can tell you the amount of apples in a seed.

Think about it! You plant the seed and who knows what will grow...

James Prigioni took that leap. Taking two tomato slices from two McDonald’s Quarter Pounders, he took the seeds and wound up growing healthy tomato plants in 124 days.

He went two ways with his seeds. The one tomato, he planted two seeds in a red Solo cup.  The other, he sliced off a sliver and put that tomato morsel into a Solo cup filled with soil.

He kept both cups inside for 23 days, and then moved them outside- the sprouting seeds in a bucket and the slice right into the ground.

By the 94th day, he was picking fruit off the vine of the ground plant. 

And below, the results of the plant grown from the slice! It had dozens of little tomatoes on its branches.

Prigioni's taste test: “No acidity, sweet but a mild sweet,” he said. “The kind of tomato that you could just eat a bunch of.”

And if you ask him why, since you can get a ton of Roma tomatoes at Lidl for next to nothing, he will tell you, “For me, it was just about fun. And it actually helped improve my whole garden because I was so excited to get out there and see how those tomatoes were doing… that I stopped and looked around at the garden.”

I've written before about the horrible soil around our neighborhood, which was built over the long-ago-cleared out remains of a huge gravel pit. One of the neighbors grew some tomatoes once. They were baseball-sized. And they tasted like baseballs.

See you at Lidl, but gardening caps off to Mr. Prigioni!

 

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!