YES, I AM STILL HERE peeking out of the newspaper’s window on Main Street and I am keenly aware that many of you are rightly impressed by my incredible modesty.
If I didn’t tell you how modest I am, you might never know.
For that reason — my incredible modesty — I am QUIETLY congratulating myself on the number of stunning ideas I have had in just a few short decades behind this window that would make Nashville — and the world — a better place.
Just a few examples:
• Downtown J-Turn Enforcement Officer. The only persons I know of who object to my appointment to this important and vacant post are the mayor, the municipal judge, many city police officers and some idiot in the Background Investigation Office at Arkansas State Police headquarters who is obviously stalling my application for a concealed automatic firearm permit. I refuse to go on duty armed with only a shrill police whistle.
• Howard Memorial Hospital Senior Citizens Ear and Nose Hair Clinic. Just think of the health benefits to be enjoyed by the whole community.
• Halloween sanitation — removal of my wristwatch before scooping goo out of the insides of a pumpkin in order to make a really skeery jack-o-lantern.
• The establishment of a summer camp for majorette baton twirlers, or twirling baton majorettes. Whatever.
• Weight Watchers Rehab, and/or Weight Watchers Remedial Rehab.
• City-wide free mismatched food container exchange in the park.
• Development of the satellite tv Unexpected Competition Channel Surfing Division in which the Cooking Channel and the RAW professional wrestling channel are combined. I haven’t yet decided if it will be bakers wrestling each other violently, or if it will be heavyweights in colorful costumes devising new and exciting dishes — main courses AND desserts. Or maybe bakers physically confronting wrestlers. When we get ready to put it on the air we might call it “Blessed are the Cake Makers.”
Hosts would be U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and U.S. Rep. George Santos — as female wrestlers. Marjorie would be the one behind the mask. They would have an intrductory acrimmage which would be televised from the kitchen of the U.S. Capitol coffeeshop, carried live on Fox News.
I have been blessed with countless other stunning ideas, as I am sure you are aware.
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ANIMAL CRACKERS. My neighbor has reported the sighting of a coyote in her backyard about 50 yards from my patio, and warns others to take their pets inside. I recently asked one of my cowboy friends if coyotes were a problem for cattlemen, and he said that wild-roaming dogs were just as bad.
And I’ve already heard one report of a snake sighting.
A pack of pesky solar energy salesmen have swarmed my neighborhood and nothing seems to scare them off.
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I ALMOST hate to mention this because so many of my breathless night sky hopes have been gross disappointments, but we’re gonna have another comet. It goes by the typically weird name of C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, named for the two planetariums which claim they discovered it.
The article in LiveScience says that by the autumn of 2024 it MIGHT be as bright as stars in the sky. And then, on the other hand, night skies of autumn 2024 might all be overcast. I hate to get your hopes up.
I don’t fully understand how we can even see it at all since it is speeding along at 181,000 mph. This particular comet hasn’t sailed past Earth for about 80,000 years, the perfessers say. I was in remedial kindergarten at the time.
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TROUBLE IN PARADISE? Her Highness, the new guvernor of Arkansas, has declined to endorse the former president in his run for the 2024 nomination. She’s probably waiting for a better offer.
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THINGS I LEARNED by opening an email: The Great Pyramid of Khufu on the Giza Plateau in Egypt was built 2,000 years before Christ. It is 456 feet high, roughly the length of one and a half football fields. For about 3,500 years it was the tallest building on Earth, until in 1311 when the Cathedral Tower in London was completed.
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WORD GAMES. Succulent siblings: Liver and Onions. Hated by some; loved by others.
A physician friend of mine once said to me: “Instead of eating chicken livers, Louie, you should just go ahead and swallow a used Fram Oil Filter.
I told him: If Fram Oil Filters were as good as fried chicken livers I would just camp out at the 10-Minit Lube and bring my own deepfryer.
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HE SAID: “Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.” Charles Dickens, novelist and social critic
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SHE SAID: “Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.” Margaret Mead, author and anthropologist
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
