It’s a question I get all the time from my millions of admirers: What’s the one incredible achievement of my life that brings me the greatest satisfaction? I understand why people would ask this, of course. After all of my trillion-dollar philanthropy and all the times I have saved humanity from imminent destruction, you’d think it would be difficult to pick only one.

And yet, the choice is very simple. There has been no heroic feat, no philanthropic contribution, no single gift to our world that makes me as proud as my work at the Chicago Banana Hospice. As bananas contemplate the last stages in their terrorized existence, I strive to make their final days on earth as calm and painless as possible. It’s God’s work, and I am humbled by the opportunity to serve.

Thankfully, none of us will ever experience the untold evil inflicted on bananas. Living in peace and resting in the sun, they look forward to a long and happy life with the same bunch of friends they’ve been connected to since birth. Then, one day, without warning, they are attacked by machete-wielding terrorists, separated from their homes, confined to cardboard cages where no sunlight can enter, and tossed into cold bins where they can be poked and squeezed by predators. Soon, all they can anticipate is the ultimate pain of being skinned alive and cut or mashed or simply devoured by their new captors.

Their only hope is Chicago Banana Hospice. We work with the brave rescuers at Instacart, who miraculously find a way to save our poor friends and bring them to us for their final days. Here at our banana hospice, we provide a calm and quiet countertop where they can escape the terror and spend their final days in peace, still connected, literally, to the friends of their youth.

We are non-denominational at the Chicago Banana Hospice, accepting Doles and Chiquitas and Del Montes, and even store brands, because they are all equal in the eyes of God. We don’t accept plantains, though, because we have to draw the line somewhere. We know you understand.

Our work at the banana hospice is challenging in many ways. Watching our friends as they deteriorate can be heartbreaking. Sometimes we wonder if we shouldn’t simply end their suffering in a banana bread or a disposal, but we refuse to give in to those cruel interventions. Instead, we provide physical and spiritual support as they transition from yellow to brown to black and, ultimately, a state of ooze that will be mark their end of days on the kitchen counter.

Only when their suffering has ended do we bring them to their final resting place. Then, we waste no time in reaching out to Instacart to rescue a new bunch of frightened victims that we can support on their journey to eternal rest. We hope you'll join us in this noble quest and create your own banana hospice. All you need is a kitchen counter, a grocery app, and the ability to walk past your bananas without intervening for at least a week.

Is it any wonder that this is the pinnacle of my gifts to the world? Yes, I’ve saved children from burning buildings and created cures for more than 3,000 illnesses and defeated intergalactic evildoers, but all of that is nothing compared to my work at the Chicago Banana Hospice. As long as the terror continues, I will provide a safe haven for bananas from every brand and every corner of the world.

Am I a hero or what???

I’ll be tied up with some new heroics next week, but subscribe now and you’ll be sure to see our next post, whenever I get around to it.
 
 
 

I've discovered some great jobs that demand much less time than I was led to believe, and a whole lotta monkeys are not missing the stigma at all. It all makes sense when you consider:

• Do I get my birthday off? Clearly, the easiest part-time job in the world is Chief Executive Officer. Elon Musk is supposedly in charge of at least four companies, which makes each one 25% of a job, and then he spends most of his day tweeting. Maybe if he spent more time running SpaceX, fewer of their rockets would explode. Just sayin’.
• Lotsa personal days? Apparently, the same part-time attendance is no problem for other jobs, including Senator, Governor and even Vice President. They’re really critical, 24/7 roles with crises and deadlines and no time to sleep, unless you’re running for president or vice president or something. Then you can be out of the office indefinitely and still get paid as if you were at your desk, tending to the people’s business.
• A gift from the distant CEO. Meanwhile, the new CEO of Starbucks negotiated a deal that lets him run the company without having to live near headquarters, commuting as needed on the company jet. I know it sounds like just another CEO perk, but it’s really a gift to all the headquarters staff and their families. Historically, companies have had a strange bias toward moving their headquarters to wherever the CEO lived, upending the lives of workers who must either move or find work elsewhere. I’m sure all Starbucks HQ staff are grateful for the CEO’s sacrifice on their behalf. 
• It wasn’t the masks? Recent studies indicate that kids entering kindergarten today are less prepared for school than people in that age group before the pandemic, even though they didn’t lose any class time when schools were closed. Maybe it was all the developments of the time, including family stress, quarantines, deaths, et al that combined to affect even the littles and not any specific thing we dislike politically.
• Name blame. In contagion news, Mpox is spreading rapidly, killing hundreds and threatening to march across the globe. On the positive side, no monkeys will be ostracized for the epidemic. 
• Trauma queens. As I get to know more about the people in my universe, it’s hard to find any who didn’t go through some type of trauma on their journey to today. Yes, there are a rare few whose lives have been idyllic, but most have just learned to deal with the scars and carry on. It makes me wonder why we’re so unforgiving when we see other people in crisis.
• Follow the money, and the submarines. Whenever I see some controversy online, one simple way to find the truth is by checking in with the people who have skin in the game. The Navy is looking at the impact of global warming on submarine maneuverability through the Arctic, so it’s real. Big-time investors stayed in the market through the Kamala crash, so it isn’t.
• Absolutely not. There are a few questions that can always be answered with one word: No. “For instance: Am I the only one who…” “Is it just me, or…”
  

Next week, we'll figure out whether the guys I met on the street are entrepreneurs or panhandlers, because it's really a toss-up until a couple of decades from now. You'll want to become a subscriber to learn the truth.  

Today’s pop quiz: How is a woman who’s crossing the street while staring at her cell phone the same as a guy in a bunker who’s railing online against people he’s never met?

They’re both part of the largest social experiment in the history of the world, an experiment so vast that it includes all of us and offers no option to sit it out. It’s not a scientific experiment, though, so there is no control group and no way to stop the chain reaction.

Our pal with the cellphone and our bunkerbuddy on his keyboard are both getting carried along the stream of technology that leads inexorably to isolation and narcissism. The same tools that were supposed to create a worldwide web of connections have created 8 billion armies of one, each a hero in their own minds and each besieged in a lonely tower.

It seems we’ve all started to believe the world revolves around us. It could be that we’ve spent so much energy cultivating our ‘best lives’ that we lost the ability to connect with everyone else. Possibly, we’ve been told so often about the incredible hellscapes outside our doors that we’re afraid to venture beyond our portals.

Whatever the explanation, the result is the same: the ultimate test of nature versus nurture. Do we instinctively need to connect with other humans in real life or do we only need to experience the rest of humanity on a screen? For millions of us, during the Covid lockdowns, our most frequent interaction with outsiders came when the (essential worker!!) delivery guy brought us our pizza and ammunition. We’re getting out more since then, but we’re interacting with the world much differently than in the time before.

On the street outside my apartment, people stare at their phones when they walk, silently demanding that everyone else look out for them to keep them safe. Cars, trucks, bicycles, scooters, skateboarders and pedestrians dare me to violate their space. In the bunkers where preppers wait for the civil war, every infraction anywhere in the world is a very, very personal assault, directed specifically at them by people who know who they are and where they are and are coming for them very, very soon.

None of this is exactly new, of course. Drivers forgot how to use turn signals a decade ago and everyone shares photos of their food instead of the other people at the table. Bunker Bob posts images of his gun collection and the gun range, but he never offers up a group photo from the family picnic. The prevailing photo format of the 21st Century is the selfie, a photo we have to take of ourselves because we’re all alone. Or so it seems.

There’s still some hope, though. Brave patriots are venturing out to the beaches in Chicago, gathering at neighborhood festivals, and dining at restaurants in the vicinity of total strangers. These are acts of rebellion today and these are the true heroes, battling to regain what has been lost and reject the tyranny of technology. You won’t read about them in the mainstream media, but they are our last hope and they cannot afford to falter.

Perhaps I am naïve to dream of a day when people can speak without a keypad, when we can take group photos of our dinner parties instead of our dinners, when we replace the selfie with the ussie, or maybe the weie or the groupie. Yes, I might be naïve, but I have a dream of a better day. It’s only my dream right now, but I am the center of the universe and everyone will follow my lead now that I’ve shared my views online.

Right?

Right?

Hello?

Look at me, sitting alone in my bunker and railing at the world. End my isolation by subscribing  now. You might not be glad you did, but I will certainly be much happier.

The Democratic convention runs this week in Chicago, so we're going topical for a change. So much stuff in my mailbox and online that I cannot help but wonder...

• Mind melt. I’m beginning to think people might be right about that whole dementia thing with Donald Trump. I just received my fourth e-mail from him today, asking for the same money he asked for two hours ago. And he’s not the only one. I’m getting at least three notes per day from a half dozen senate candidates who seem to have forgotten I don’t live in their states. Must be a side effect of Covid, or the Covid vaccine, or possibly a brain worm.  Take your pick.
• Trump change. Speaking of which, could we get some rich patriot to send Trump $5 million? Almost every day, I get a note saying he needs $5 each from a million people, but it would probably be simpler to get $5 million from one rich guy. Frankly, I don’t think my five bucks is going to make a difference, but the guy who gives $5 million might get an ambassadorship, or at least a thumbs-up photo op at Mar a Lago.
• Rich guys only. Beyond the swift boating attacks on Tim Walz’s 24 years in the National Guard, the craziest complaint about Harris’s VP pick is that he isn’t rich. That’s because all the millionaires in Congress have done such a great job managing the federal budget and looking out for the middle class.   
• Driven to distraction. It’s hard to believe how easily we get distracted by arguments over verbal gaffes and the size of rally crowds and lose track of the real questions for our future. I guess the campaign committees realized it’s cheaper to come up with fake issues than to spend any money on bread and circuses.
• Deja vote. Every time I hear someone accuse their opponent of being an impossible combination of socialist, communist, anarchist, antichrist, fascist vegan, I am amazed that we aren’t over all of this by now. The same candidates have been making the same claims for so many years, how is it possible that anyone is still reacting to this crap?
• X marks the bots. It’s all politics all the time on Twitter, but I think my feed would be just two posts per day if it wasn’t for the bots retweeting the same exact posts all day long. Elon Musk has the power to cancel all those accounts, but that would be a First Amendment violation and bots are people just like you and me.
• No slackers allowed. There’s a million legit reasons to criticize any/all of the candidates on offer this year, but Americans will never be afraid of hard work. Instead of taking the easy way and carping about real stuff, our online warriors labor tirelessly to create false quotes, deep fake videos, and outlandish stories about things that never happened. I am so proud that the American Work Ethic is still the envy of the world.
  
• Second wind. Am I the only one who’s noticed that Joe Biden seems a lot more energized since he dropped out of the presidential race? If this rebound continues, maybe he’ll decide to get back in the scrum.

Next week, we'll be comparing guys in bunkers with gals on cell phones and you won't believe how much they have in common. Subscribe now. 

I forgot to buy special glasses in the spring, so I missed the opportunity to look directly at the solar eclipse. I had a schedule conflict that kept me from checking out the peak peek at the northern lights in May, so that’s another moment that passed me by.
 
Even worse, I rescheduled for night two of the northern lights and drove out to a forested area where I spent three hours staring in vain at an uncooperative sky.

Even worser, there were a dozen people at the same spot, and all of them showed me pictures they had taken the night before. One after another, they displayed glorious images of the night sky, shot from exactly where we were now standing, and each person marveled that I really should have been there 24 hours earlier.
 
I was pretty miserable about the whole thing, but I had a great time that night. I was already there, so I figured I might as well get the most out of it.
 
The people I met that night were much better informed than I am, so they introduced me to a sky I had never really seen before. They pointed out a satellite or two and, maybe, the International Space Station. They showed me an app that predicted where the northern lights were going to be, which turned out to be just a bit beyond the horizon from where we stood. They were happy to tell me all the camera settings they used to capture great images of the heavens the night before I arrived.
 
As the moon flew over the lagoon, I marveled at the reflection of the trees across the water. As the sky darkened further, I spotted at least one shooting star. As more cars pulled up at the clearing, I remembered how events like this can bring us together for a purpose other than politics. I also learned that many people don’t seem to know how to turn off their headlights when they want to see something in the dark. Deer came out to graze on a nearby lawn and, undoubtedly, the rustling sounds nearby signaled creatures scavenging for food at night.
 
There’s no question my journey was a bust, at least for its intended purpose, but it was still a great night. Do I wish I’d seen the light show? Of course. Am I happy I went anyway? Absolutely.

That’s the way life works, isn’t it? Allen Saunders said life is what happens when you’re making other plans. Equally unheralded, Michael Rosenbaum recognized that, “I’m not getting today back.” And the most important question we can ask when things don’t go our way is, “Now what?” Life has more detours than roads, which means we're almost always asking ourselves what we're going to do next.

Stay. Go. Laugh. Cry. Rejoice. Complain. It makes no difference to the moving finger, but it makes all the difference for us.   

There’s this meme that really annoys me for some reason, and it’s probably one of the many reasons that I’m absolutely going to hell.

It pops up every month or so on my Facebook feed, an image of people being reunited with their loved ones during their first minute in heaven. Actually, I think the thing is called “your first minute in heaven,” or something similar, and it drives me nuts.

First, the drawing shows a bunch of individuals meeting with one person each, or maybe with a dog, which makes me wonder how all these people with only one friend made it into heaven. Of course, I could be missing the theology here. Maybe we’re each assigned one guide to bring us to wherever we’re supposed to be going or maybe the artist just got tired of drawing and skipped all the third cousins and work wives. Or, maybe, we ticked off more people than we knew on earth, so not a whole lot of people are rushing to welcome us until they’re sure we’ve changed.

We’d have to change, wouldn’t we? Even saints were human at one point, with all the frailties and failings that won’t cut it in the rarefied atmosphere beyond the pearly gates. So, once you get to heaven, will you be you? You won’t be able to maintain the personality quirks that counted against you in the heaven/hell rating, which means you won’t be you when you make the leap.

What? You thought everyone else would be different, cleansed of their irritating habits and dad jokes, but you’d be the same old irascible self? Dream on. On earth, we're imperfect, but our imperfections are cleansed in the afterlife, or so I'm told, and that means we'd arrive in paradise as changed specimens. Changed for the better, of course, but we'd be transformed nonetheless.

But, wait, someone is saying. It is our soul that is transported from this mortal coil, giving us life without the mundane challenges of life on earth. There will be no illness, no anger, no discomfort, none of the variations that make our lives lives in the first place. In a very real sense, we won’t be human at all.

That might be a good thing, since people are the absolute worst and we all know we’re part of the problem. Well, some people know they’re part of the problem and the rest run for political office. Still, if we aren’t people when we arrive in heaven, what difference does it make if we do or don’t run into some other soul that also isn’t the same person we knew on earth?

Different cultures and religions present varied images of a life beyond death, but they leave too many unanswered, and unanswerable, questions. For instance, exactly what do we do all day that makes us happy? You know those friends and relatives we’re meeting in our first minute in heaven? We missed them when they passed on, but we didn’t miss all their annoying habits. Maybe they’ve been cleansed of those habits in heaven, but what if they were very happy with the way they were and they haven’t changed at all. Now we’ve got to spend eternity with them and we probably aren’t allowed to complain up there.

As with most concepts, I don’t think people have really thought this through. There might be a heaven and it might be absolutely terrific, but our new existence won’t be something we can imagine and it is very unlikely to be the homecoming image that annoys me every few weeks. Or, maybe it’s exactly as pictured and it’s seriously heavenly to spend eternity with one true friend from the moment you arrive.

I hope I get a dog.
 
Next week, back on earth, we take a look at one more detour on that road with good intentions. Subscribers will love it, or so we suppose.