Rant #3 078: Out of Touch

How was your Presidents’ Day?

Mine was pretty dull, to be honest with you.

I did have a story to edit for work, one which I bypassed during the past few days, so I did that early in the day to get it out of the way.

I did my normal daily stuff—including writing this Rant—and then I went to the supermarket to cash in my family’s bottles and cans.

I do this every other week, and this just happened to be the Monday where I cash in my bottles and cans, so I did just that—and it went smoothly, which it rarely does.

The supermarket I go to has the old-fashioned bottle machines, where you have to shove the bottle into the machines for it to process the can and for you to get your money, not the ones with the belt that basically pulls the bottle seamlessly into the machine.

Those old machines break down all the time, but yesterday, I had absolutely no problem with those machines, and, in fact, I was the only one returning bottles, so it took me about 15 minutes to return all the bottles and get my payment, as opposed to the at least 30 minutes or more it normally takes.

And then, the rest of the day was as dull as could be, which was fine with me.

Having no other work to do, I was basically a couch potato during the rest of the day, but I did digitize a number of my records.

I often get on musical kicks, and right now, I am on a Daryl Hall and John Oates kick.

I have always liked their music, and during their time of their highest popularity—the early 1970s to the late 1980s—I bought as many of their singles and albums as I could possibly could, so I have a pretty wide selection of their music in my collection, maybe 20 to 25 albums and 45s combined.

I decided to digitize all of their singles that I have, so yesterday was the perfect time to do this, and I rediscovered just how good these records still sound all these years later.

The duo really jumped all over the place in their sound—from doo-wop to blue-eyed soul to rock to pop to new wave and back—and some would probably call them “pretenders” for not staying in one groove for very long.

But their singles do hold up, and if you watch TV, you know that their music is being used to sell one item or another, so their commercial sound is now being used in commercials, which I guess is a somewhat natural progression for what can be considered an ‘oldies” act nowadays, since the duo hasn’t had a real big hit single in about 30 years.

And later, I watched the news, and saw the mentally ill legislator George Santos pee all over himself once again, admitting in an interview that yes, he did lie about just about everything … but he did not lie about attending the prestigious Horace Mann High School—even though there is no record of his ever attending this elite educational institution—that his mother died in the 9/11 attacks—even though her name is not found on any list of deceased people that anyone has from that horrible day—and that he is Jewish—even though he said himself that he is “Jew-ish.”

This dummy also can’t answer to his financial improprieties, either, such as where he got money for his campaign and how he misused certain monies on himself—but he stressed that he is not going to resign.

Funny how this interview took place on Presidents’ Day, and that our Founding Father and our first President, George Washington, claimed to have never told any lies in his life.

Whether true or legend, Washington can’t have told as many lies in his entire life as Santos has told in just a couple of months, and what’s worse, he continues to stick to these lies as truth as if they were affixed to him with Gorilla Glue.

And later on, at about 9 p.m., I nodded off into dream world, and although I woke up once or twice during the night, I did have a restful sleep.

So that is what I did on Presidents’ Day.

Nothing too exciting, but it was a nice day just to be able to R-E-L-A-X.

Today, I am really back to the grind …

I just found out that the aide that we have for my mother cannot make it today, so I know that I am really back to reality as Presidents’ Day 2023 slides into the rear-view mirror.

What other wonderful things will happen today?

I do have to wonder.

That’s the way it is, I guess, so “forward march” into Tuesday, the day after the day we honor our Presidents.

“Tally-ho, and away we go!