Bowieball

The city of Bowie, MD, is our fifth-largest city in population (after Baltimore, Frederick, Rockville and Gaithersburg, but ahead of Accident, Chevy Chase, Indian Head, Accident and Boring) and there used to be a horserace track there, with a lake in the middle of the track.  And one day in 1955, people who came to the track were surprised to find a cabin cruiser afloat in the lake.  And no one knows why.

In 1961, a train carrying bettors from Philadelphia went off the train tracks near the race track, killing six and injuring over 200. Survivors - some of them among the injured - were seen climbing out of the wreckage to clamber down to the racecourse to get their bets in.  And no one knows why.

Speaking of things we don't know, no one knows why the town name is pronounced "Boo-ie" (as in Baba Booey) and the name of the late great performer David Bowie was "Boh-ee" like a bow tie. 

But now the two are coming together in one magnificent night of minor league baseball and rock.  And roll.

Tonight, the Bowie Baysox (the Baltimore Orioles's AA league team) are hosting a David Bowie Tribute Event at Prince George's Stadium at 7:05 p.m.

Besides the ballgame against Erie, there will be Bowie music, contests and tributes all evening long. 

The Baysox will wear special David Bowie-themed jerseys, and after they are finished getting them all sweaty wearing them, the uniform shirts will be auctioned off, the proceeds to benefit Feeding America.  

I'm hoping that when a manager comes to the mound to relieve a struggling pitcher, the stadium will rock to "Changes," and that they'll play "Let's Dance" when some slugger slugs a homer and sashays down to home plate.

Sounds like fun, even if you don't like baseball.  Tonight, you will see at least one future big league star as the team salutes a former star whose light will always shine.

"B" is for Bongo

How long has it been since you saw someone playing a set of bongo drums?

Just asking rhetorically, because many of us have never seen the sight of someone beating the hell out of a pair of little drums from Cuba (by way of Africa) held between the knees.

Drum historians, of which there are not too many, trace the bongos back to late 19th-century Cuba, where the influence of African music was added to the local flavors by recent immigrants from Central Africa.  The little drums became a part of various Cuban musical forms such as nengón, changüí, and son. 

By the 20th century, Havana became a tourist destination and Americans who had visited the Cuban capital brought the music home with them.  Sometimes, travelers even brought souvenir bongos home with them, handing them to the kids when they got home ("Lookit! I broughtja somethin'!") just before the kids went up to their room and mastered the hand drum technique in a matter of days, if not weeks.  

James Dean, man.

And it became the instrument of choice for guys like James Dean and Marlon Brando to bring to parties in the 1950s to sit around and brood over. Like the bagpipes, it takes no musical training to play them as amateurs.

Marlon Brando, man.

I suppose the heyday of the bongos came in the 1950s, when it became illegal to have a beatnik hootenanny (a gathering of Bohemians where coffee flowed and authentic folk songs about horses named Stewball were sung by bearded young men, and when they were finished, everyone snapped their fingers instead of applauding) without someone whaling away on a set.  There was a hit record called "Bongo Rock" by Preston Epps, but his efforts at a followup hit floundered, with tunes such as "Bongo in the Congo", "Bongo Rocket", "Bootlace Bongo", "Bongo Boogie", "Flamenco Bongo", "Mr. Bongo", and "Bongo Shuffle" all being soundly rejected by an increasingly discerning audience.

A group called The Incredible Bongo Band did a new version of "Bongo Rock" in 1973, and I facetiously mentioned the other day to a good friend that it was the recessional music at our wedding that winter.  No, it was not, but one main reason why Peggy still puts up with me, almost 43 years later, is that I never owned or played a pair of bongos in our home.

Read a book instead!

I like food and I like buying food and so I go to the supermarket a couple of times per week.  I always get a laugh out of the Enquirer and the other trashy tabloids that sit by the checkout counter like ants at a picnic.  

The headlines on these fishwraps tend to be of three sorts:

• Some actor or actress is caught in either a "dope den" or a "love nest" with a person who is not their spouse
• Some star you haven't seen since Carter was president is now in his or her "brave final days," and there is a picture of that person in which they bear a great resemblance to The Crypt Keeper, or Don Imus
• "Jennifer Aniston: Pregnant at last!"

The fascination that America has with Jennifer Aniston is hard to figure out.  She played Rachel Green on "Friends," which I watched about 4 times before I couldn't take David Schwimmer anymore. But plenty of people watched that show the whole time it was on, and continue to watch it in reruns when they could just as easily be watching something funny.

And people were thrilled when she married Brad Pitt, and broken-hearted when they broke up.  Why the marriage of two actors matters to some people is something I can't explain.  

I have seen Jennifer in a few movies..."We're The Millers" and "Horrible Bosses" (and "Horrible Bosses II") and she is a good actor in light comedies like that, and let's face it, I'm not looking for her to play Desdemona in "Othello," or to play the board game Othello with someone named Desdemona.  Light comedy suits me fine.  I can enjoy her as a crazed dentist and move along, never once stopping to think about whether or not she is having a baby, wants to have a baby, can't have a baby, whatever.  Why would I care about that?

She has not had too much to say about all this, but Ms Aniston did write a piece for the Huffington Post the other day in which she says, "For the record, I am not pregnant. What I am is fed up. I'm fed up with the sport-like scrutiny and body shaming that occurs daily under the guise of 'journalism,' the 'First Amendment' and 'celebrity news.'

It's worth your time to read, even if doesn't make you think twice about spending your hard-earned money (or your hard-earned time) on these dumb papers.  Read these words instead, and think about what she is trying to get us all to understand:

"We are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child. We get to decide for ourselves what is beautiful when it comes to our bodies...We don't need to be married or mothers to be complete. We get to determine our own 'happily ever after' for ourselves."

I'd be happy ever after if there were less public interest in matters like the private lives of actors.  But that's just me...

Oh really? No. O'Reilly.

Bill measures up

Bill O'Reilly, FOX news bloviator, was interviewed on CBS Sunday Morning the other Sunday morning, and he made the interesting point that he was born without the gene that makes some people need to be liked.  O'Reilly says he has no need to have people like him, which, in his case, is a very good attribute.  Pomposity and arrogance serve him well, and who would want to compete with him for how much he likes himself?  No one could top him at that.

Anyway, let him be.  His statement got me to thinking about the need to be liked.  I believe that a person of healthy mind (and I do know some!) has a certain need for this.  The goal should be to avoid letting the need for acceptance and praise occupy too much space in our noggins.  I mean, I need all the room I can find up there for phone numbers, dates of upcoming doctor visits, and directions for restoring audio to the TV in the living room.

“Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

So I found online a list of ten reasons why we shouldn't care what others think of us, and I really really truly hope that everyone will like it and embrace the ten reasons in the very core of our souls:


1. It’s Not Their Life, So It’s None Of Their Business
Unless they're going to come fix your tire or tutor you in English, they haven't got a nickel in it, so do what you gotta do.

2. They Don’t Know What’s Best For You
Making decisions about your life requires having all the information.  Someone might decide to make you a pistachio/tapioca cake, not knowing of your rare but deadly pistachio and tapioca allergies.

3. What’s Right For Someone Else May Be Completely Wrong For You
Same deal, but don't let that pistachio/tapioca dessert go to waste. Send it to me at once, please, so it can go to waist.

4. It Will Keep You From Your Dreams
You're the only one who knows about your lifelong desire to be an extra in a Tom Cruise movie crowd scene, and you're also the only one who should.

5. You’re The One Stuck With The End Result
"Success has many parents," said a wise man, "but failure is an orphan." And do you know who that wise man was?  Or who his parents were?  Neither do I.

6. People’s Thoughts Change On A Regular Basis
Look back at your high school yearbook to see that stonewashed jeans and big big hair, once thought to be the best way to look, are no longer cool except for Retro Night at the pool.

7. Life Is Simply Too Short
I'm no psychiatrist, but this is one item on the list I would question.  I'm not sure that it's good to remind a worried person that all their worries might come to an end in the next few hours.

8. You Reap What You Sow
So don't fear the reaper.

9. Others Don’t Care As Much As You Think
While you fret about what Jimmy and Kenny and Mabel and Doris are thinking about you, it turns out, they aren't.

10. The Hard Truth: It’s Impossible To Please Everybody
The great Rick Nelson taught us that "you can't please everyone, so you've got to please yourself."  I see no reason to dispute this.

Now get on out there and like yourself as much as I like you!

Phi Beta Whatsis

I might have to quit watching the morning news and just stick with reruns of "That 70s Show."

Beside the daily cavalcade of floods, fires and hyperloquacious politicians, I keep seeing examples of people who are supposed to be at the top of their professions, by dint of their superior brainpower, demonstrating that they really aren't much smarter than Baba Booey.

The people who run cruise ships. You would assume they are far above the norm, but a little 8-year-old boy died on July 11 after falling into a pool, found unconscious in that swimming pool aboard the Royal Caribbean Anthem of the Seas cruise ship, not long after the ship took off.

The Anthem of the Seas has 1,500 employees aboard, none of whom are lifeguards.

The people who thought it would be a good idea to come up with a car that drives itself. They were the big shots in the Science Club in high school, you may be certain, but in a country where 92 Americans die EVERY DAY in traffic accidents (33,580 meet the reaper on the highway per average year) in vehicles where, supposedly, sane sober people are driving and controlling the cars, trucks and I don't know what-all else, how can it be a good idea to have cars running around that don't need driver participation? (They call them "autonomous" cars.) A former Navy seal was driving a Tesla car on autopilot in Florida. A semi turned left in front of him, but the car failed to notice this event because the sun was shining and the truck was white. Uh huh.

I humbly suggest that a nation that has secretaries of defense and homeland security and housing and agriculture and so many chiefs and underassistant deputy HMFICs could use a person appointed to be secretary of good sense. This person could just go around and say, "If you have an accessible pool, you need a lifeguard on duty, or put up a fence!" and "Stop telling people they don't need to pay any attention while their cars are in motion! If you're going to drive, then drive, doggone it!"

 And of course, wear your seat belt.

Sunday Rerun: Bad Office Manners

Never ones to be outdone, the good folks at the Comcast website have published a list of the Top Ten obnoxious things that people do at work.  I looked it over, but I can't say they hit everything.  I mean, for some people, the obnoxiety starts before they even GET to work, the way they drive and, once there, take up two places or so.  The other day, we got an email advising that someone had parked out front in a B.A. Ford Excursion, taking up FOUR spots at once.  That's got to be some sort of record, but where would you look it up?

I haven't even taken a gander at the Comcast list of offensive things to do at work.  I thought of my own - and I must point out that this list is not reflective of where I work now!  Those people are all angels, and put up with my singing and bad jokes. 

But let's go with:

I like to use a picture every day. Say hi to Phil Silvers!

1. wearing stanky cologne or perfume or aftershave, or having other forms of bodystank.  Will cause people to use the fisheye.
2. playing someone's favorite music loudly on a scratchy cheap broken clock radio that they didn't want in their bedroom any longer, it's such a brokedown relic, but it's good enough to play Cyndi Lauper's execrable "Time After Time" every day around 10.
3. having an office that looks like the Rain Forest down at the Aquarium, with vines and trailing arbutus hanging in one's face when one stops by to pick up the Bramblebury account folder.  Notice: this sort of foliage is often accompanied by macrame.  Beware.
4. Setting up what looks like the Salad Bar area from a Golden Corral buffet on the work area.  
5. Similarly, setting up what looks (and smells like) the coffee section at a WaWa.  Mr Coffee, Keurig, French Press, Drip-O-Lator: we've seen all the coffee setups in offices, with the little note about remembering to feed the kitty, and the IOU's in the coffee mug where dollars ought to be.
6. The people who have something to sell on behalf of their children, fraternal group or Chowder And Marching Society every week.  Every so often, sure, and everyone likes a chance to purchase pizzas and candles and popcorn, especially when it benefits a good cause.  But...every week?? For young Brattleboro's Free Form Ballet group?  How much candy can we eat?
7. Smokers who congregate right by the door so they can exhale something KOOL right in your face as you enter the building.  I am sorry for smokers, a group that once numbered me among them, but I am willing to betcha that most smokers would still go out and puff up if they were required to put on some sort of clown costume and ride around the parking lot on a unicycle while getting their nicotine fix.
8. People whose cell phones are set on maximum volume with the weirdest ringtones you ever heard...and will hear...all day.  Enchanting as the lilting love ballad "Beaten, Gagged, Bound and Chained," by Sadie O' Masochist might be to you, others  might find it, well, repugnant.
9. People who "speak' to service personnel by using only hand gestures (pointing the index finger at them, and then pointing that finger at a spill or pile or trash) or third-person irregular ("Custodial! Custodial! Overflowing bidet in executive men's room!")
10. Insensitive, inappropriate "jokes" or comments about someone else's race, color, creed, ethnic background, physical condition, area of domicile, or sexual preference tell us a lot about the boors who spout this bilge.

That's your Top Ten, and be sure to tune in next week to see if anything changes.  "Using swear words, cheap vulgar terms or taking the Lord's name in vain" is moving up fast!

The Saturday Picture Show, July 16, 2016

 The Clown Motel, with its free internet and welcoming policy for truckers and pets, is in Tonopah, Nevada. I don't care how far it is to the next town and the next motel, and I don't care if this place is full of truckers and yapping chihuahuas.  It's the clown format that will send me down the road.

These are the engines of the Titanic, showing the effects of deep-water immersion for over a century.

Landscapers all over the world, here is your competition!

I believe this is a ring for tying up a horse or some livestock. I like the way it looks, old and rusty but still workable.

With the worst heat of summer coming on, this is the new air conditioning system I am having installed at the house. (It's actually the Russian Soyuz MS spaceship, but I can dream.)

I've always liked kale, but a lot of people don't, possibly because the only way they've had it is boiled for three or four days until it's as crisp as last week's salad.  Try it sauteed in a little olive oil, with a little shredded parmesan cheese, bacon crumbles and croutons.

I've been puzzling over this for several nights, and I still don't get it. Model railroad tracks in a guitar case.  If it makes sense to you, please let me know!

Hi, I'm Red Panda, and it's just too hot to be anything but a bump on this log!

Tender Is The Afternoon

You know how memories can get stuck in the wisdom tooth of your mind, like a raspberry seed that gets all wedged up in there and you try brushing and flossing and a toothpick, until finally you give in and go get the needlenose pliers out of the garage?

Of course.  Memories.  It's funny that some other thought will dislodge them and you're suddenly transported back...back...to 1967...

It was a long hot summer, made all the hotter because I spent five mornings a week sitting in the same high school classroom where I had sat five afternoons a week during the school year.  It was the Algebra II room, and since my Punchinello antics and general lack of attention had earned me a D in the class during the regular year, I was invited to play extra innings and take it again in summer school.  Our teacher was a goodhearted woman named Mrs Doris Saunders.  If you can imagine spending hot summer mornings with a room full of math-challenged hormone-rampant kids who weren't smart enough to avoid a summer in a brick hell, she made the best of it, gently encouraging, prodding our noggins, making us understand why we need to understand why x³ - y² = something I could care about.

A guy named Dave in the class (I guess that was his name outside the class too) drove a really boss '57 Chevy which, if he still has it, is his ticket to a cushy retirement, if he sells it.  Dave was motorvating onto the school parking lot one steamy August morning, and he was in such a hurry to get to class on time that he nearly collided head-on with a car being driven by Mrs Saunders. As he slid into his seat, he asked if she had seen him on Aigburth Rd that morning, and she replied that she thought that would be the last time she ever saw anything on Aigburth Rd.  

That was 1967, and in the summer of 1993, long since Algebra had ceased to have any meaning in my life, I was idly thumbing through a York PA newspaper when I read that Doris Saunders, a retired math teacher from Baltimore County, had been killed in a head-on auto accident in Pennsylvania.

I remember thinking about that nice lady and the irony of it all.

There's nothing ironic about the next memory that popped up the other day.  I don't even know why I had forgotten it for so long, but it took place in my junior year, in Spanish IV class. (Maybe that would be a great way to learn a foreign language...an IV drip!)  The class was assembled but the teacher had not arrived yet.  Teachers who found me heckling them from a seat in the room tended not to hurry to get there, so Mr Micozzi was waiting until the last second to walk in and get us into a lively discussion of "Don Quixote," which we were reading in Spanish, ay caramba!  

Suddenly, in a scene that sounds like something out of a Fellini movie, a guy not much older than us walked into the room. He was dressed in a jockey outfit.  I mean it...the silks, the boots, the white pants, and I can only assume that he was wearing Jockey shorts to keep his horses in their respective stalls.  He began uttering a line of gibberish, talking in English, but the words sounded like he had cut up a dictionary and was just saying random words in no particular order, without meaning.

Sort of like the 1968 version of Rush Limbaugh.

We all were shrugging and laughing it off, but suddenly he started picking on the girl sitting next to me, saying rude things, and then...And then he started throwing pennies at her.

Quixotic then as now, I stood up and attempted to dissuade Jockey Joe from throwing more coins at the young lady by pushing him into the chalkboard, and he swung back at me, and then in walked Mr Micozzi, who got to start his instructional day by refereeing a fistfight between his Bart Simpson-style student and a guy dressed like Eddie Arcaro.  I did think thought it was really unfair that the teacher crouched down with a towel around his neck, giving the guy fighting tips to knock me out.

Just kidding.  He hustled us both down to the office, just like Glenn Ford in "Blackboard Jungle," and I had to go to the court commissioner's office that afternoon to testify against the guy. It turned out that he had walked away from the local mental institution that once housed Zelda Fitzgerald, and he went back there and I went back to class, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

And he didn't even send me a Christmas card, or offer a rematch.

Loving Day

Some people are trying to make June 12 a national day of commemoration called Loving Day.  I think it's a good idea, and of course I like the idea of saluting our great freedom to marry whom we want, and one other fact...

I am crazy about the wry twist of fate that the people involved in a Supreme Court case, about the right to marry the people you love, were named Loving.  I mean, it would be almost that cool if baseball immortal Darryl Strawberry started the first strawberry farm, or the sandwich had been invented by the Earl of Sandwich.  

Oh wait.  It was.

The Loving Family

But, to the point, in 1958, in the state of Virginia, in the freedom of the United States of America, a couple of young people fell in love.  They were not allowed to get married in that state, because he, Richard Loving, was white and she, Mildred Jeter, was black.

They eloped to Washington, D.C. and got hitched there, since it was legal in the nation's capital, and then came back to their home state, only to be arrested at 2 AM for the crime of being in love and married because of that.

This was during my lifetime, that two people were told by some redneck judge that their marriage was a crime.  That distinguished man of the law, hizzoner Leon Bazile, of the Caroline County Circuit Court, made the following statement from his bench:  

"Almighty God created the races, white, black, yellow, Malay, and red and placed them on separate continents, and but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend the races to mix."

Judge Bazile

as he ordered them to leave the state for 25 years. I can hear him now, banging on his gavel, spitting tobacco juice into a brass spittoon, pulling on his hood...

Well, Richard and Mildred Loving left Virginia, all right, but for some reason they wanted to return, so from their temporary home back in D.C. they sued, and it wasn't until June 12, 1967, that the US Supreme Court ruled that it was ok for people of different races to be married.  

Mr Loving died in a car crash in 1975, but Mrs Loving survives, and I think it would be nice if she felt some appreciation for her bravery. She lives privately now, but told the Washington Post in 1992, "Since the older generation is dying, the younger ones . . . realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry."

Uh yeah! Still stunned to think that it took Supreme Court action during my lifetime to say so!

It's just business

As Americans, we live in a capitalist society.  Many a rags-to-riches story has been written here and it's not even worth mentioning that some people who came from nothing and made a fortune still dress in raggy clothing. 

But you know the deal.  In a free market, if you have something to sell, you can sell it* and make money from it.  The classic example is the Pet Rock, from 1975. Someone figured out that Americans would pay a couple of bucks for something they could find in the nearest yard for free. That someone got rich.

Having a license to run a radio station is often the same as a license to print money.  The federal govt. sets up an orderly system to determine who gets to broadcast over the air we all share.  This is why you can't run out and buy a 50,000 watt transmitter and put your collection of Keith Urban songs on the air to delight your neighbors.  The Federal Communications Commission allots a certain number of stations for each town and then it's up to the people who run those stations to put on programming that people will like enough to listen, and then when enough people are listening, advertisers will pay to put their commercials on the air between the records or news stories or calls from Lou in Edgemere about how much more he knows about managing a baseball team than Buck Showalter does.

But a station in Seaford, Delaware has gone the good old Go Fund Me route to repair their transmitter, recently damaged by lightning.  The fix will cost $10,000 and they only have half of that on hand, so they are appealing to the public to fork over the other five large. 

Nothing is wrong with this, per se,  but it makes me wonder how I'd feel about going into a restaurant that was passing the hat among its diners to raise money for a new deep fryer.  Or, let's say you go see a lawyer about writing a will for you.

"You go see a lawyer about writing a will for you."

Fine.  Now let's say the lawyer writes the will, files it for you, and you pay the bill he/she sends.  And now let's say, a week later the lawyer sends you a letter saying that his law firm needs a new copy machine or stapler, and would you mind chipping in a few semolians to allow them to keep the firm in business?  Asking the public to fund your private ventures takes a lot of nerve.  And as of yesterday, the radio station had garnered a whopping total of $25 of the $5000 goal.

It strikes me as odd.  If you have a music station, play the songs people want to hear and sell commercial advertising time and retire to the south of France like everyone else in that business does**.  


*pursuant to state, federal and local laws and regulations
**your actual results may vary

It's in the bag

We've been married for 43 years in December, and for most of that time, Peggy did the laundry, but by dint of some clever maneuvering, I managed to wrest away that chore from her, and now I get to do it all the time.  

I love everything about doing the wash. The very idea of taking some dirty clothes and putting them into a machine, opening the water valve, tossing in some liquid soap and pushing a button, and then coming back in exactly 35 minutes to find clothes with all the dust and dirt agitated out, and then tossing the whole wet soggy pile into the machine next door for drying (40 minutes) appeals to me terrifically.  I like it when things are supposed to take an exact amount of time and then they do it.  The washing machine never says, "Oh I need five more minutes more to get this iced-tea stain out of your polo shirt!" and the dryer does not come up with pallid excuses for still-damp handtowels.

And my little laundry secrets - using blue Dawn as a presoak for tough stains, tossing in a capful of Pine Sol to give the whole wash that piney outdoorsy scent - I got from friends online.  And so did the solution to the only problem the laundry ever gave me.

Socks were the bane of my laundry.  I wear socks and Peggy wears socks and somehow, between the two of us, we can go through 6 or 8 pairs of socks in 2 or 3 days.   And you know what happens when you put that many socks in with a pile of kitchen dishtowels, hoodies, cargo shorts, t-shirts, and undies...you get a pile of dry laundry that smells just ever so of the woods, and mismatched socks

I fought it for years.  I would have to trudge back to the machines to find the missing pink sock for Peggy or the one with the A for Alabama (mine) lying there all forlorn and missing its partner. Sometimes, the elusive sock was in the sleeve of a sweatshirt or the pocket of Peggy's robe or who knows where else?  Then, valuable time is lost while I unfold all the folded clothing and look for one stupid sock.

There's the answer up above! Sock Sacks! Got 'em from IKEA. One for Peggy's socks, one for mine...just put in your socks, zip up the sacks, and run them through the cycles.  When you're putting away the dry clothes, just take the socks out and pair them up like lettuce and tomato, or brown and serve. 

I tell you, if I had figured this out years ago, I would have saved enough time that tomorrow would be today already!

One and a million

We hear all the time of people who win the various lotteries in the state and around the nation.  Sometimes, it turns out for the best, and the winner retires at age 35 to a life of ease and servants and mansions and resorts and caviar and no more bologna sandwiches with American cheese on white bread.  Inevitably, these winners reveal that they chose the winning numbers based on a combination of their mother's birthday, the number of times they donated vital organs to complete strangers, their ID number from the years they devoted to working for a charity agency among the hopeless, the amount of times their spouse walked out on them with a traveling carnival worker, taking the kids and all the money (but leaving the bills behind), and the "lucky" number that has worked so well for them for all these years.

The TV news report always ends with, "Just whether Ronnie will play the lottery again, now that he is 457 million dollars richer, remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: He'll be buying his tickets in a much nicer neighborhood!  Reporting from Mar-A-Lago, I'm Tessie O'Hoolahan, for Toledo Tonight."

The other story, covered much less on TV news, is that the poor winner goes through his moolah like a hot knife through cold butter and is flat broke again within six months, only now he has his mother-in-law and other undesirables living in his hut, and the neighbors are complaining about the traffic from trucks coming up and down the street to repossess furniture (that lovely 18-foot BarCaLounger in Spanish Mint and the breakfront with a broken front) and electronics (a Home Edition Jumbotron and a deluxe Pong® game).  Despondent, the poor soul wishes he had never plunked down a buck to buy the cursed ticket in the first place.

And that may be why Marylanders are leaving their winnings right where they will do something good for someone by NOT claiming lotto money.  At 4:30 PM last Friday, a million bucks that someone was supposed to win went back into state coffers.  Unclaimed bucks are deposited into the lottery’s Unclaimed Prize Fund, which helps to pay for the Lottery’s second-chance contests and promotions.  

How about that?  The lottery gives second chances.  Does your boss?

The ticket in question was purchased at a Royal Farms in Dundalk, but may now be used as a bookmark for someone reading a book called "Broken Dreams, Shattered Hopes." And this Wednesday at 4:30, a ticket sold at a 7-11 in Bladensburg for the January 13 contest will similarly decrease in value, from being worth a million to being worth the same as Ubaldo Jimenez's chances at winning the Cy Young Award.

There's a thin line between love and hate. I'd love to win a lot of money and I hate to think I never will.