So which obit did you want?

Web-surfing and puzzles are taking up way too many hours, which isn't leaving enough time to write my memoirs. Too bad, because I saved all the really good stuff for the book...

• We’re the Cheapest! There was a guy who ran a bike store in the old neighborhood who always had the lowest prices on any item you asked for, but only when it was out of stock. Once the item was on his shelves, it was a different story. I’m reminded of him every time I hear some candidate making promises about what they’ll do once they’re in office.
• Sorry about the explosion. Why is it that people in power save the really useful information for a book they won’t publish for five years and never tell us what’s what when it could make a difference? “Here’s the code that would have prevented that nuclear blast. Yeah, I could have told you before the bomb went off, but I thought it would be a great detail to save for my memoirs.”
• Why aren’t you dead yet? Some guys on Twitter keep posting about “the obituary I didn’t want to read today” and I wonder if they have a most-wanted list. Do they have people who are on the list every day or do they have specific holidays or seasons for their favorite unfavorites?
• Worse and Worser. What’s it like to be on the International Space Station and have only two options for getting home: Boeing and SpaceX? NASA was probably smart to choose SpaceX, because Boeing’s doors can fall off at any time, but a SpaceX rocket that doesn’t explode on the way up will probably be okay on the return.
• One across. I’d like to think I’m well informed, but it turns out I spend most of my time doing puzzles. I’m zipping past the headlines in the NYT to get to Connections and the first thing I read in the WaPo is Keyword. On Sundays, I settle in for the crosswords and I never quite get to page 5 of the news section. Don’t ask me what’s going on in the world, but if you need a six-letter word for excessive pride, I’m your guy.
• TMMI. Along the same lines, reading the Sunday papers takes a lot less time now that I’m no longer opening the opinion section. To be frank, I’m totally overdosed on opinions long before the weekend arrives. Whether it’s Twitter or Facebook or, increasingly, Linkedin, online visits reveal the greatest leverage of all time; 0.0001% facts transformed into 99.9999% rants.
• Talk amongst yourselves. Why is it that conspiracy theorists are so busy fighting the mainstream that they never get into battles with each other? Why don’t the people who blame Jews for 9/11 argue with the people who say it was the Bush Administration? Why don’t the people who say 100 million illegal aliens voted in 2020 argue with the people who say it was the voting machines or the people who say it was China or a wireless link from Italy or…you get the idea. The world would be a calmer place if they just fought with each other over whose conspiracy is real and left the rest of us alone.
• Class Warfare. Am I the only one whose Facebook feed is non-stop stories about some poor person or poorly dressed person who is abused while sitting in first-class on the plane, only to reveal that they are just so super-duper deserving of their seats that everyone wants to kiss their filthy—but very worthy—feet?  I think they’ve finally run out of ideas at the click-bait factory.

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