Rant #3,886: My Funny Valentine

Yes, that special day is right around the corner.

Is it Friday the 13th today, which obviously isn't right around the corner, or is it Valentine's Day, which is right around the corner tomorrow?

I guess it depends on how you look at it.

Today is Friday the 13th, and this is traditionally a day where you have to have some good luck, or bad luck is going to hit you.

I don't know if I have had good luck or bad luck in the past few years, but I think I can get through today without much negative happening--

Although you just never know for sure.

Valentine's Day is what it is, celebrating your sweetheart in the best way you know possible.

My son and I hope to take out the Mrs./mom tomorrow.

We haven't been out to a restaurant since our cruise several months ago, and I think it might be high time to do it again, even though the prices are ridiculous.

It is a nice way to celebrate the one you love, whether, in our case, it is your wife or your mother.

We just buy cards for each other, no chocolates or roses or anything, and that is pretty much that, but it serves the same purpose as buying each other a gift.

It is a nice day to sit back and see how lucky you are for having a person you love right next to you--

And thus, it kind of cancels out all the bad that you are supposedly going to experience on Friday the 13th.

It has actually been 11 years since Friday the 13th on a Friday was followed by Valentine's Day on a Saturday, and honestly, I don't remember how we celebrated the occasion in 2015--

But I know that we did.

I have learned that one never forgets Valentine's Day.

My father used to say that since the day is really "St. Valentine's Day," it was a non-Jewish occasion, so he didn't have to celebrate it with my mother.

It used to irk her to no end, but my father ultimately would come around and get her something or take her out somewhere to celebrate the occasion.

Me, I guess I learned from all of that, and I never forget Valentine's Day, because if I did, the sting of Cupid's arrow would not be in my heart, but somewhere else where it would probably hurt a lot more.

And my wife, well, I feel she is the greatest lady around, so why would I ever not acknowledge the holiday?

And my son gets into it, too.

Maybe one day he will have his own sweetheart, but right now, it is his mom, and he sees how I celebrate the holiday, so it kind of rubs off on him too.

Again, we don't go overboard on all of this, but a nice dinner out will be fine.

Where will we go?

Good question.

I don't really know, and I probably won't know until we are about ready to leave to go out to eat on Saturday.

But wherever we go, it will be a nice occasion.

Friday the 13th?

By that point, it will be nothing but an afterthought.

We actually had our own Friday the 13th on Monday the 9th, when we did our taxes, so maybe we were smart to get that annoyance out of the way really early--

Making Friday the 13th pretty much nothing with nothing.

But that is how we did it.

Enjoy today as much as you can, have a great Valentine's Day and a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday--

When I have to get a catscan.

Will Monday the 16th turn into a late Friday the 13th for me?

Only the scan knows for sure.

Rant #3,885: Take a Fool's Advice

OK, I guess it is now my time to chime in on this Nancy Guthrie kidnapping episode.

Everyone seems to have an opinion on this very sad situation, and I do, too.

I am no criminologist, and maybe I am a fool to speak my opinion, but I am going to do it anyway.

As you know, the elder Guthrie, in her 80s, was kidnapped several days ago, and what made this national news is that she is the mother of Savannah Guthrie, the popular host of NBC's "Today" Show.

The woman was seemingly abducted from her home in a secluded but pricey part of Arizona, and there were blood stains that matched up with the older woman's DNA.

The police also found that her video door bell had been dislodged, as well as some other cameras in and around the property.

The family, Savannah and her brother and sister, have made video pleas to the kidnapper(s) to release her, and have even agreed to pay a ransom for her, based on supposed ransom notes that were delivered to a local TV station.

The woman is not very mobile, and takes medication for undisclosed ailments, and since removed from her home, she obviously hasn't been taking them, so there is further fear and worry about her heath and well-being.

Doorbell video that the FBI retrieved shows a hooded male who evidently disconnected the doorbell just prior to the abduction.

A person of interest was taken into custody, but then was released.

And now they have found a black glove about a mile and a half away from the house, a glove which resembles a glove the person who disabled the doorbell wore as seen in the video the FBI made public.

The police there say they hope to find the woman alive, but are pretty much open to any scenario or outcome at this point.

There are so many assumptions and opinions swirling around about this terrible episode, and whatever you think about the TV personality--like her, hate her, or somewhere in-between--your heart has to go out to the family.

This is simply a terrible, terrible tragedy, and collectively, I think we all hope that the elder Guthrie is found alive and well.

But there are some things that perplex me, and perhaps you, too.

Personally, and my opinion obviously isn't worth a hill of beans, I think it was something of an inside job--

Perhaps a family member--all have thus far checked out OK--an acquaintance, someone who has worked for the woman, perhaps even a contractor--since the woman's house's roof was just redone--might be the culprit here.

It is just too fine a story for me to think anything else, and since there were no signs of forced entry, you have to believe that the elder Guthrie somehow knew this person, even if it was somebody so benign like a newspaper delivery person, a meter reader or her landscaper.

Yes, as I mentioned, there was blood found, but I am sure this older woman put up a great fight when she realized what was happening.

And you just know that whoever did this knows there is money in this for them, because TV's Guthrie, I am sure, is paid pretty well for her job.

There are rumors about that the elder Guthrie was not an innocent old lady, that she was very involved in left-wing causes and was very well known in that sphere, but whether she was or wasn't, I guess this possible link has been checked out and not thought to be a viable one.

And the police there ...

Is it only me, but does the sheriff act like a modern-day Barney Fife and doesn't his department appear to be an annex of the Mayberry Police Department?

Whenever reporters question him, he acts like Sgt. Schultz from "Hogan's Heroes,"--

"I know nuthink."

The FBI has stepped into the fray, and maybe they can be more helpful than the local police has been.

But then again, perhaps they are all keeping mum because the case is so fresh that any verbal misstep could mean this woman's life.

We certainly haven't been told everything about this case, but I am sure that the TV host and her siblings are not just relying on the local police department and the FBI to find their mom--

They have the means to hire their own high-priced private investigators to probe into this case, and I am sure they have done that, but there has been no indication that they have.

And then again, we have the fact that a celebrity is involved in this mess, and that brings up another question:

"If it was your mother or my mother, would this horrible case get the same coverage as this one is getting?"

Probably thousands of people are kidnapped, of all ages, every year in our country for one reason or another.

I am sure that there are elderly people involved in those horrid incidents, but you just don't hear about them.

Certainly, the TV host is a well-known person, and that, alone, is fueling interest in this case.

Common-folk like us ...

No, I don't think the media would be obsessing over such a terrible thing as they are in this case, when it involves a celebrity.

As you are reading this, my hope is that the woman has been found, the kidnapper(s) put in jail, and the family can breathe a little bit.

This all might be old news by the time you read this, but something tells me that this story is far, far from over.

As for that belief, I hope that I am very, very wrong.

Rant #3,884: Taking Care of Business

We finally did our taxes, and as predicted--

My son did well--

My wife and I did not.

And just so you know, if you are over 65 years of age, you do get a tax credit, but it does not remove the tax entirely.

This credit did help us out to an extent, but we still owed plenty of money to the state and federal government.

Again, most of it can be attributed to the fact that I am considered to be an "independent contractor" with my job, and I have to pay taxes on that money that I make from being a remote worker, and I have to pay it at tax time.

Simple as that.

And if you need to take money out of other areas to pay off things, it is considered to be income, and you have to pay taxes on that too.

So what it all amounted to was that we had to pay the piper once again.

I am just glad that it is all over and done with for another year.

But this year, I found that a lot of the institutions we deal with took their time sending us our tax forms.

Now, I thought it was a law that all of these forms had to be in by January 31, and honestly, I haven't had that much of a problem with getting these forms--save one or two, including from my workplace--before this year.

This year, many of these tax forms that we needed were sent after January 31, and we even got one or two on the day we filed our taxes, a couple of days into February.

This is just plain wrong, but I guess if there was a law about this, it is not in force anymore, and if there wasn't a law, companies just sent these things out by January 31, but many simply don't anymore, for whatever reason.

But it is all done for calendar year 2025, and that is the important thing.

Tax, tax, tax ...

And you know who gets it in the end.

The poor don't/can't pay taxes because they have no money, and the rich don't/can't pay taxes because they have plenty of ways to avoid doing so--

Leaving the middle class to foot the tax bill.

It has always been like this, it isn't changing any time soon, so you just have to learn to live with it and just manage to do the best you can do under the circumstances.

Tax day is not my favorite day of the year, but after all is said and done, I am just glad that it is over and done with.

First, getting the staples out of my head, and now, paying our tax bill ...

Two things weighing on me that I don't have to worry about anymore.

What's next?

It is just too taxing on my brain to think about that right now.

Rant #3,883: Superman

Hip hip hooray!

We are finally past all of the phony Super Bowl hype--and the Bad Bunny nonsense--and we can move on from all of it.

I have absolutely no interest in the Super Bowl, and for once, there were actually things for me to do so I didn't have to get the least bit involved in this utter stupidity.

My son worked on Sunday in frigid temperatures, so he was my main priority--

Getting him to work and bringing him back home.

In the morning, my wife and I did our secondary shopping as we normally do, and we picked up a few things that we didn't get in our main shopping on the previous Friday.

I then ate lunch, and after that, I watched NBA basketball, where the Knicks played the Celtics, and the Knicks won in a runaway.

After that--and after I took my son to work--I digitized one of the LPs, the soundtrack to the 1969 film "Alice's Restaurant," the comical Vietnam War protest film that I took quite a liking to way back when.

The film was good, the music was even better, and how could you not sing along to the "Alice's Restaurant Massacree," Parts I and II?

Then came dinner, and after that--and after my daily exercise regimen, which I am back to doing after my staples incident--I sat down to watch the TV news, and then, I watched a binge of "Here's Lucy" on the "Catchy Comedy" channel.

The show is true old fashioned comedy, and the channel was showing a lot of the episodes where famous stars of the day appeared, including Helen Hayes, Joe Namath, Petula Clark and Donny Osmond.

The shows are corny, they don't really hold up at all, but they are pretty funny, so it made for a smooth transition into 1) picking up my son from work, and 2) bedtime.

And boy did I sleep!

I had one of my rare nine-hour sleeps, from 10 p.m. to about 7:30 a.m., a sleep that I only have when I am really tired.

And I guess staying away from any mention of the Super Bowl made me tired, but honestly, this was the first Super Bowl Sunday in recent memory that there were actually great alternatives for me to spend a nice weekend day, and not be pounded with the game, which has become so political that it really isn't a sporting event anymore.

And don't get me started about the Olympics, which have had little or nothing to do with athletic achievement since that fateful day in 1972 when Israeli Olympians were murdered simply because they were Jewish.

I haven't watched a minute of any Olympics since then, because even at 15 years old in 1972, I pretty much knew where the games would be headed now and into the future.

And I was correct in my assumptions.

All politics all the time, all hype, phony nationalism, etc.

Just to sum it up, I had a great, and very relaxing, Super Bowl Sunday without even a hint of the Super Bowl in my activity during the day.

(On Monday, I did have to edit a story for work about Super Bowl festivities at one of our bases in Germany, so I wasn't completely immune to this fever, but--)

Who won the Big Game?

Who cares? 

Rant #3,882: The Truth Will Set You Free

I am staple-less!

The staples came out on Friday afternoon, and to echo James Brown--

I feel good!

It hurt a little bit when they took the staples out of my scalp.

There was one staple that when the doctor took it out, for a millisecond, I felt a bit dizzy, but I got my composure back quickly, and before I knew it, it was done.

No staples, no cancer, it is over.

Now I can relax a little bit, but next month, I go to my retinologist to see how my detached retina is doing.

I have some other lingering ailments, but at least for right now, I am OK.

Let's move on ...

To something that I don't really want to talk about, but I will anyway.

President Trump.

I think he has done some good things as our President.

I did not vote for him, but some of the things he has done are impressive, including at least laying the groundwork for peace in the Middle East.

But alas, there are some things that I think he has done that have me scratching my head, with staples in it or not.

The latest is the uproar and furor surrounding his recent post, on his own platform, where he depicted former President Obama and his wife as monkeys or apes or baboons or whatever it was.

The President denies putting this video up, stating that one of his aides erroneously posted it without his knowledge--

But you know what? That explanation really doesn't register.

And the fact that he won't apologize--because he said he didn't do it--really doesn't suffice either.

The whole thing goes back to the tired--and I mean VERY tired--premise that he can't simply drop, that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

It wasn't, so let's move on.

But he can't, he won't, and he refuses to do so.

He portrayed various politicians he doesn't like related to this canard by placing their heads on jungle figures--

I mean, he is the KING of the jungle, isn't he?

And Obama and his wife were portrayed as being monkeys, or baboons, or whatever it was.

This is just plain wrong.

No matter how much you despise someone, you don't do this, and being that the two are black, it just makes it more horrendous--

And to do this during Black History Month, however you feel about that, it is wrong during this month, or the other 11 months of the year.

Both Republicans and Democrats pretty much came out in unison against what he did, and for once, they were both correct--

And the President is wrong, wrong, wrong.

I don't care if his little grandchild did it, it was under grandpa's name, under his watch, and he owns it, whether he actually did it himself or not.

His press secretary, who was put in a really awkward position answering questions about this post, told reporters something to the affect that we should all "move on to something more important," but I mean, what was she going to say to try and cover for her boss?

Trump was wrong, 1,000-percent wrong, and whether he actually did it or not, he should apologize to the Obamas and to the public for this outrage.

And what's worse is the reverberations this will have in the future for the Republican Party.

Looking to the future, some of his unpopular actions are going to make it very difficult for the party to maintain its stance in the near future elections, and his behavior will make it almost impossible for the Republicans to win the next Presidential election.

His approval ratings are way down, and the Democrats have made great strides in winning a number of key elections across the country during the past year or so.

Do you think that utter nonsense like this is going to allow his party to make gains in the near future?

And it will completely doom whoever the Republicans choose to be their presidential candidate after Trump.

And based on the past, you just know what the President will do when his party's choice loses--

He will distance himself from that person, say that he won twice, and say that he actually won three times, and this guy or gal is simply a loser.

Again, I do not think that President Trump has been a bad commander in chief, but many of his actions are so based on ego, and ego alone, that it is turning off so many people--

Voters that the Republicans need to maintain their margins in Congress and in the White House.

This latest imbecility pretty much puts the focus on just how brittle his relationship with the public really is, and if I were advising him, I would tell him--implore to him--that he has got to tone it down a bit--

If not for him, then for Republicans in general.

It doesn't take staples in my head to see that he is making some great mistakes, and this latest thing might be the worst of the worst.

Take ownership of it, apologize, call onto the carpet the aide who supposedly did this--is there really one?--and move on.

You can't sleep?

Get off Truth Social, and get a hobby.

Rant #3,881: Up, Up and Away

Today, I am happy to say that I finally get the staples taken out of my scalp.

Hopefully, everything is good up there and I will be fully on the road to recovery.

It has been difficult since the cancer was removed, but somehow, I have gotten through it.

Onto other matters ...

We lost two more personalities from our Baby Boomer youths this week.

One was Mickey Lolich, one of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball during the late 1960s and early 1970s, who carried the Detroit Tigers on his shoulders when they went on to win the 1968 World Series.

He won three games in that series, and that is in addition to winning more than 200 games during his career.

Lolich, 85, was second fiddle to Denny McLain, the last 30-game winner in a season, but when it came down to it, Lolich was the better pitcher and had a much longer career.

He is another guy who should be in the Hall of Fame, but isn't.

And then we have a name that you might not know well, but you certainly knew his image well at one time.

LaMonte McLemore, a founding member of The 5th Dimension, died Tuesday morning. He was 90 years of age, and he died from natural causes following a stroke suffered several years ago.

McLemore was the "tall" guy in the group, and while he usually was in the background when the group performed, he was in the foreground in the background, if you know what I mean.

He was the arranger of the group's music, so he was perhaps the most important cog in the 5th Dimension's success. In that capacity, he mapped out the music for different instruments and different voices, and based on his group's success, he was a master of his craft.

Doing a little research on this guy, I found out that he was an athlete--he had played minor league baseball--and an avid photographer, chronicling the group's hit cycle in photographs in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The 5th Dimension, along with Three Dog Night — which lost Chuck Negron the other day--were perhaps our most popular singing groups during this period, and while Negron was out front with his group, McLemore was in the background in his act, but he was pivotal in the success of songs like "Go Where You Wanna Go," "One Less Bell To Answer," "Up, Up and Away," and "Aquarius," among all the massive hits the 5th Dimension had.

So, two more from that era are gone, and with the passing of Demond Wilson, this has not been too good a week for people who excelled during another time and place.

Have a good weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday--

Without the staples in my head ...

Although there is supposed to be more snow coming to contend with.

Would I rather have snow or staples?

For once, I will take the snow.

Rant #3,880: Taxman

Yes, it is tax time!

How exciting!

My family and I always get hit pretty hard by the taxman.

My son usually makes out OK, but my wife and I ...

Fugedaboudit!

The problem is that since I am a remote worker, I am, pretty much, an independent contractor, and the taxman hits me pretty hard when it comes time to pay up.

My father, as a licensed New York City medallion cab driver, used to go through the same thing each and every year during his more than 50 years of cab driving, so I know all too well that it is now time to pay the piper.

And then we have Social Security, which greatly impacts your taxes, where you get double taxed, when you get your monthly money and then, when you have to pay Uncle Sam.

President Trump, when he was running for President this time around, told us all that one of his major thrusts would be at cleaning up Social Security, where monies were going out to those who didn't deserve it, like people who were getting monthly checks for those who had been dead for years, and in some cases, for decades.

That was clearly fraud, and he stated that he would weed those poachers out.

But he also vowed to eliminate taxes on Social Security, and I have to tell you, I am not sure if he did this in his "Big Beautiful Bill" or not.

We still pay monthly taxes on our Social Security payments, but are we supposed to be getting that money back when we do our taxes?

I thought that for the next two years--2025 and 2026--we are supposed to get that money taken off our taxes, but I have heard differing reports on this--

So I am confused, to say the least.

I guess we will find out when we go to our accountant, and yes, it greatly impacts myself, my wife and my son.

The next thing is that as of this moment, I do not have my tax material from work.

I don't know if this is because I am a remote worker or just from negligence, but it seems every year that I have to ask for the form, and this year is no different.

I have contacted the person at work who handles this several times, and I have yet to get anything.

And I have learned that it isn't just me who is waiting for this form; at least one other co-worker is in the same boat that I am.

I get my daily message from the post office about what is in my mail, and lo and behold, on Wednesday, it once again was not in the mail, so I contacted the office on Wednesday morning to tell them that it is not in the mail, and I was told that, supposedly, it is going to be taken care of.

That is fine, but it simply adds insult to injury that I have to go through this seemingly each and every year--

And this is going on six years as of this writing.

Not fair, not fair at all.

So as of this moment, I have not made our yearly tax appointment with our accountant, because while we have everything else we need, this crucial piece is still missing.

I just want to get this process over and done with, I don't want it to linger, and since it is officially tax season, let's get this thing done already.

The guillotine is sharp, it is waiting, and the time has come to get my yearly head chopping.

I may still have those staples in my head, but let's get this done already while I still have a head to chop.