Sunday rerun: When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie

 Not that this will keep the Baltimore Orioles top management awake at night, but I am not a huge fan of the Oriole Park at Camden Yards. I know it's the Taj Mahal of baseball, a magnificent edifice constructed on a great idea that former club officials Janet Marie Smith and the late Larry Lucchino had. The state of Maryland had acquired the property at the old Camden railroad warehouse. Smith and Lucchino said, instead of tearing down the warehouse (the longest building on the east coast) let's build right up to it. And they did, and it's a great park. 

But it's downtown, and I'm not. I'm about the most sub-urban boy you'll ever meet. I see plenty of people packing the ballyard these days, since we have a winning team, and that is all good.

Please permit me to wish they had kept the old mid-town Memorial Stadium around so they could play a few games there every year, just for the hell of it. Sure, that place was decrepit and had no swank about it, but there was a certain basebally-ness to it that the new place lacks. I see fans at the games now with crucial moments in the game in front of them, and they are looking at their phones or jawjacking with the people behind them. At the old stadium, you had to pay attention, in case a ball or bat (or fan!) came flying your way.

At the old stadium, for some reason, I enjoyed the smell of some cheap cheroot cigar being smoked, and I never smoked stogies in my life. It just seemed like part of the atmosphere, like the aroma of popcorn and the sound of kids running around stomping on old soda cups. They don't do that anymore, either.

One thing I believe the new park is trying is growing tomatoes. Yes. Tomatoes. This all started back in the 1970s when Earl Weaver, the manager back then, challenged groundskeeper Pasquale “Pat” Santarone to a tomato growing contest. Santarone carved out a little dirt triangle down where the left field foul line met the stands, and Earl planted his Better Boy tomatoes in his back yard garden not too far from where we live now! I'll be glad to drive you past the historic site someday.

Earl and Pat even went into business together as they argued about the size and quality of their respective fruits. They marketed a tomato fertilizer and I'm sure a lot of people around here have enjoyed homemade pasta sauce and salads much more because they had used the Earl 'n' Pat secret 'mater food!

I have heard that the current club has tomato plants growing out by the bullpen, but it's not the same.

You can travel all around, and you are not going to see things in other cities like you see here!

Pat (l) and Earl

The Saturday Picture Show, July 25, 2025

A welder made a rear bumper step-up and got something that people will notice as he drives along merrily.

The sun says, hold the electricity, I'll light up this lantern for now!

The company that does the road striping on Eutaw Street in downtown Baltimore has a whimsical bent that helps to zip things up nicely!

I imagine a lot of people would look at this and wonder if this giraffe is wearing false eyelashes. 

Be careful where you park on your first day at Toronto Fire Station 143!

It's only fitting that Pennsylvania, a state named for "(William) Penn's Sylvania," would be the home of this lush greenery. 

Note to backyard gardeners: keep on eye on the vines, or the squash will try to sneak out through the fence!

Someone took a freeze-frame of a Monopoly game and the table on which it was being played and covered the whole thing in a half inch of Epoxy and now it's forever.

Down in Ocean City, a shark obligingly poses for a photo as a Beach Dad works on his relocation. And now, you've got that Baby Shark song going on in your head!

 You have to wonder what happened here - why not give every apartment a balcony? I don't know; something about this whole building gives me the willies something fierce.

Hooking Up

 Being an old geezer retiree, I am able to keep up with the world because of my finely-honed computer skills, the most notable of which is being able to ask young people how to do computer stuff.

But I have a computer, scanner, cell phone, tablet, all the things that help me stay up on things, if you will.

I worked for Baltimore County, and every month since my golden retirement day of 3/1/12 I have received, via US Mail, a pay stub of sorts covering my pension check and the deductions, etc. That has been handy for Peggy to keep up with the financials around here.

But they don't do that anymore; as of this month retirees have to go online to a county portal and print out their "advice" (as they call that monthly printout.) It's no problem for me, but what about those who don't have a computer to keep their records straight? 

It's like this creeping disappearance of shows that used to be on regular tv, but now you need cable. I guess it won't be long before all the NFL games are on cable only, along with the playoffs and Super Bowl.

We invented and developed and created ourselves right into a hole. What once was so simple ain't so much anymore.

Here's the wrong way to get connected...

Just the tip, just for a second

With the Whirled Cup in our rearview, and real football still about a month away, the talk on the sosh media this week has been all about "do I need to tip at a carry-out place?"

I'll say this. If the person at the counter gives exceptional service (helps you out the door, tosses in some extra hot sauce packets, etc) sure, that's worth a little something.

But people are saying that they go to the counter at Pete Sirria's to grab the xtra-lge pepperoni they ordered online, and when they go to pay, the screen lights up with "Do you wish to tip?"

Tip whom? The computer that took the order? 

Now some people are saying that it's nice to tip the counter person, and one would hope that they would divvy it up with the people who made the pizza. But you can't know if that will happen.

In a restaurant setting, where a server brings you the menu, answers questions, makes suggestions, brings water, appetizers, entrees, sides, coffee, dessert, and another fork after Uncle Nutzy drops his, that's where tipping is appropriate.

How about tipping the person in a clothing store who helps you find just the right tie? How about the cashier at Try'N'Save who rings up your order, shares the local gossip, and tells you the joke about the traveling preacher from Keokuk? The guy in the money booth at the gas pumps with a sign about you must be born before this date in 2005 to purchase tobacco? 

The 911 operator who takes your call about the brush fire down the street? The firefighters who extinguish same? The teacher who taught little Abercrombie how to solve quadratic equations? Your life insurance salesman? Your favorite actor? the president of your community association?  The guy who writes a blog you have read more or less daily since 2007?

Just ideas, you understand.

Stick It

Can you drive a stick shift? The answer, more than likely, is "no." A lot of people will tell you they can drive one, but you get two blocks down the street and the car is hugging and chugging and stalling and the "driver" says, "Well, it's been a long time..."

If you can really drive a stick, you don't forget how. Put the clutch down, move the lever, let out the clutch and go...two or three times, and then start all over after you stop.

I mean, now you have cars you don't even have to drive, so changing the gears is hopelessly passé, I guess.

And this, for stick shifters: last year, less than 1 percent of new vehicles made for the U.S. market in 2025 were stick shifts. 

The commonly accepted wisdom used to be that you saved gas by shifting at just the right time, but now those engineering wizards have gotten the automatic transmission working so well that you can't top their fuel efficiency.

What's more, the average new car today with automatic tranny has seven (7!) forward gears, and you wouldn't want to shift that many times yourself. Let the automatic handle it!

Plus, you don't see people zipping around in the little sports cars of yesterday. More and more, you see SUVs on the streets and the parking lots, and just try to find yourself a manual transmission in a RAV4. They haven't made them like that since 2022. Toyota only make three cars now with the option for a stick.

And think of this - if you do drive a stick, don't plan to drive it to a lot with parking valets.  An 18-year old is not going to know what to do with that third pedal on the floor.

I would be willing to trade stick-shifting lessons for lessons on how to tie a bow tie, though. Not that I'm going anywhere wearing a bow tie, and you're not buying a manual car. 

It would just be a secret between us.

Nothing to Snicker about

Members of the rock band Van Halen used to insist that all the brown M&Ms be removed from the jar of candy they wanted in their dressing room.  They had nothing against brown M&Ms. They just wanted to make some poor soul go through all that candy with tweezers, because being annoying is pretty much what Van Halen did, day in and day out.

That's not going to be an option for anyone soon, because the makers of M&Ms have promised to eliminate artificial dyes from their candy pellets, but they are having trouble getting rid of the blues and the browns. The candymen told the Wall Street Journal, it's turning out to be "expensive" and "difficult."

Two more words that describe Van Halen, if I may say so...

Mars, the people who make M&Ms, were able to make red, orange, and yellow dyes out of natural ingredients like turmeric and beets. (How tasty!) And they came up with a real natural green, but nothing works to make a blue candy coating. They even tried spirulina  - a blue-green algae - as a replacement for blue, but it turned out to be a giant hassle.

And didn't we just go through a whole thing about green algae? And would you want it on your candy???

Getting M&Ms coated in brown uses a lot of blue dye, surprise to hear, so there will be no more brown or blue M&Ms soon.

When the new dye-free M&Ms come out on your grocery shelves, there will only be red, yellow, orange, and green.

Van Halen tribute bands will have to find something else about which to be peculiar.

Up for sale

Do you enjoy prowling thrift stores as I do? I would probably buy all my clothing that way, but my size is hard to come by at Goodwill.

I have to find out where the Ravens drop off last year's wardrobes and go there.

Anyhow, there's a guy named Quinn Brown who knows how to go mining at Value Village, a thrift in his town of  Tigard, Oregon. 

He even goes on Senior Day, although, at 19, he is way short of the discount. It doesn't matter. 

Quinn was there with his twin sister Ellie when he found that diamond in a junk heap that everything would love to encounter. 

Quinn actually find such great things at the thrift shops that he re-sells them at profit. He has turned over nearly 10,000 items over the past four years. But this day, he saw a another teenager pick up a yellow item and then toss it back in the bargain bin.  

Quinn swooped in and grabbed it up, paid $3.07 for it, and it has since been verified as basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain's Los Angeles Lakers warm-up jacket from their 1972 championship run.

He didn't know Wilt Chamberlain from Neville Chamberlain, but with the size of this jacket, he knew it was custom made for a 7-foot man, so he figured he was onto something.

 

Sotheby's has verified the provenance of the jacket. It's legitimate, and is going up for auction soon and might bring in a quarter of a million dollars.

Pretty nice return for a $3.07 investment!

Sunday Rerun: The Sound of a Fury

 The past few Septembers have been dotted with a non-specific sort of agitation, as if something somewhere were missing in my life.  I took inventory of my emotions (confusion, mild rage, skepticism, scorn, delight, joy, happiness and pure bliss) and found them all intact, and then it hit me.

September used to mean new TV shows and new cars.  And not any more, for the most part.

Man, I'm telling you, the time was that TV networks would show promos for new shows coming on right after Labor Day and excitement reigned.  "They're making a 'Dennis The Menace' situation comedy," people screamed! "How many more days must I survive until the premiere of 'CPO Sharkey,' starring Don Rickles?" pondered many.  "I can't wait until that new 'Maury' show comes on!" cried many.  And then it came on, and many more cried.

Now, instead of three networks with new shows that no one wishes to watch, there are 237 networks, and the only shows that people are looking at feature poorly-educated, un-shaven-and-shorn rustics.  We revere televised individuals from whom we would move away, were they to sit next to us in a diner.

This is a Plymouth Fury.  It was not a rocket ship.

And, even worse, do you remember the tiny thrill you got when the new cars came out!  "The new Plymouths have tail fins the size of half a cow!"  "Dad wants to go down to Rustee Ford to look over the new Galaxie 500 XL!" "Is it a Falcon or is it a pickup?"  All these huzzahs rang out every September, in a country not that far away, not that long ago.

Today, the Toyota Camry changes the door on the gas cap every couple of years, and that's about it.  The NASCAR cars all look like the same non-NASCAR cars.  And can you tell me three differences between a Corolla and a Civic?  What in the devil is a Passat, a Tiguan or a Touareg?

Every kid could tell you the difference between the Chevies..the el cheapo Biscayne, the moderately-priced BelAir, the top of the line Impala, and the top of the Impala line, the Impala Super Sport.  Ford, Mercury, Plymouth, Dodge, and the rest of the GM line (Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Cadillac) of cars all had major changes from year to year, and the new models all came out every September, while Liberace never did.

The Saturday Picture Show, July 18, 2026

 

When life was so much simpler...Times Square at night, 1949.

Say hey to "Gus"! He's a 67 million year-old T-Rex skeleton who recently fetched $50.1 MILLION dollars at an auction. And that was just a bare-bones offer.

She decided to beat the high cost of movie snacks by smuggling in her own. It was easy to see through her plan, though.

Here's a debate I will always entertain. When you park in a garage, you're going to have to use Reverse at some point, am I wrong? Why not get it done early? It's easier to leave that way, but the head-first crowd won't see that far into the future.

It would seem that this person has made some bad choices over the years, and wishes to help you avoid his pitfalls. There was a guy around the corner from us who had signs on his yard complaining about the poor quality of his car. Next thing you know, he went out and bought the new model of the same car. There's a lot to say for brand loyalty!

If I were this bird, I would ask for a name upgrade! It's the Common Loon.

Canadian Wildfire smoke is vacationing in the Northeast USA this summer. Please stay indoors and read!

Here is a combination that blends one of our favorite things - a Little Free Library - with the packaging colors and design of Baltimore's own Old Bay seasoning (yes, we put it on everything!)

We are lucky that Maryland borders Pennsylvania, because 80% of American pretzels come from there, and we love our pretzels!

All the ships at sea

I relate to Michael Scurr, a long-time volunteer at Britain’s National Archives. He spends a morning every week foraging through old papers and documents to have them in sort sort of order so that future researchers have easier and more organized access.

I too love to rummage through old papers, but never in my wildest dreams did I ever figure to find something like he did! 

He was sifting through the letters of an 18th-century Royal Navy captain this past May, and came upon a report dated Christmas Eve 1776, when the American privateer (a government-sanctioned non-military boat asea for the purposes of piracy) Dalton was captured. Scurr opened a paper attached to that report (I wonder what they used before paper clips and staples) and saw the word DECLARATION printed on the top of it.

Sure enough, that piece of paper so long stored away has been positively identified as a rare early copy of America’s founding document. It was printed just days after the original was signed on July 4, 1776, and declared to all that the 13 colonies had cut off all ties to Britain.

It is one of just 11 original copies of the so-called Exeter printing of the declaration that are known to exist, and the only one identified outside the United States, the British National Archives said.  This version was printed in Exeter, New Hampshire, between July 16 and 19, 1776.

John Hancock's John Hancock on the paper authorized the ship to disrupt trade and do battle with the British Navy.

And that turned out pretty well, for us.

 

 The thinking is that the captain of the Dalton read the Declaration to the crew of his 18-gun vessel to let them know that they were in the fight and why.

 I would write more today, but I'm going to the basement to go through some old boxes.

Cash Patel

 It was Wednesday, it was warm in Baltimore, and I needed some groceries and prescriptions. I got the Rx'es just fine, but when I went to pay for the food, things went down the disposal.

The young male cashier roused himself from his daze so he could tell me the total: $31.35.

I said fine, here's what I'm going to do. I gave him a 50, a one, a quarter and a dime. He looked as if I had tried to pay with ancient pieces of eight from a treasure chest, so I tried to coach him, saying, just enter the amount I gave you and see how it comes out.

Next thing I know, he's digging in the drawer for a ton of change. I said there should be no coins involved here; you owe me twenty flat.

"But I forgot to ring up the dime, so your change is $19.90 because I can't go back and add it in."

I looked at him with disbelief. He wasn't arrogant or anything, just monumentally unconcerned with doing his job.

I said, "Take that dime out of your hand. Put it in the drawer along with all that change you were trying to give me. Hand me a twenty-dollar bill. Then you're square and I'm square and we can all go on with our lives."

He did just that. Now I have to see a chiropractor because my neck hurts from all this headshaking.

The Gums of Navarone

 Elvis Presley became the King of Rock because he brought something to this earth that blended many types of music with his own talents as a singer and performer.

His family is now represented by one Navarone Garibaldi. Navarone is Elvis's first wife Priscilla’s son with her second husband. Navarone is also the half brother of Elvis's only child, Lisa Marie.

Last week, Navarone started a GoFundMe out of his driveway in Los Angeles. He wants your money to help him kick off an “affordable organic pizza” business.

He's looking for $5,500 to buy an industrial pizza oven. Naturally, given the fortune that the Presley family sits on, people are wondering why he doesn't just go to his mom with his hand out and ask for a handout.

Priscilla and Navarone.

People just jumped all over him on Instagram after he put out the GoFMe, and Navarone said, “Haters gonna hate… and I’m sure I’ll have to explain this many more times to ignorant people who think I should ‘ask my mom’ or that I have money….. YEAH, I also have a lot of bills, I also have a budget.”

And he told TMZ, “She loves the idea but I can’t ask for money for every whimsical idea I have or we both would be broke.” 

He also told TMZ he is confident that once he has that pizza oven up and cranking out the pies, his 81-year-old mother will swing by for a slice or two.

Our National Pizza Desk will keep an eye on this story for you. Meanwhile, up in Heaven, Elvis must be heaving a mighty sigh, baby.

 

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." 

Kindness abounds

A friend mentioned this on Facebook and it really struck me as being a wonderful gesture. Up in my second favorite state, New Jersey, in the town of Morristown, right there on South St, there's a nice looking place called the Swiss Chalet Bakery and Cafe. 

As you might have heard, we here on the east coast of the USA took it on the chin over the Fourth of July, and the Fifth, and some of us, on the Sixth. Typical July...hot, sunny and humid all day, and then storm clouds, followed by thunder, lightning, heavy winds, torrential sheets of rain, and the worst...trees and wires down, property damage, the whole sad panoply of summer problems. 

I saw a guy on Facebook musing that it's a good thing all that rain wasn't snow, because it's just too hot to shovel snow.

Anyway - this cafe, the Swiss Chalet, they took care of their neighbors, many of whom have had no power for several days and have lost their food and supplies and even more, sadly, They offered up a breakfast sandwich or pastry with water or coffee FOR FREE!

Here in Maryland, the legislature just passed a law prohibiting "surge pricing," which is when greedy moneygrubbers figure "people are in need, so let's fleece them and charge 40 dollars for a bacon/egg sammy." You will see those people in hell someday, so don't go there! And they will not be from Maryland as of last week.

As my friend said, "What a sensational gift for people of Morristown who maybe worked overtime cutting down trees and clearing brush, or assisting with flooded basements!"

I've only been outside of the US once, and even that sparked an international conflict, so I am no globetrotter, but I believe it is such a quintessential American thing to help our neighbors like this. So the next time I'm in Morristown, NJ, I'm off to the Swiss Chalet for a nice "Barbarian" Cream donut, as we say here in Baltimore.