Let’s talk about my diet. Not the foods I eat, but the weight I want to lose. When I quit working at the Y five years ago, I sat at an appropriate weight. Maybe pushing the upper healthy range on the American Body Mass Index scale, but, just like people always say, it was all … Continue reading My New Plan
Humor
iShower
I took a shower!!! Confetti-cannons fire. Balloons drop from the ceiling. Strobe lights flash and sirens scream. The crowd erupts in cheers and applause. Conversation: Nephew: I shower twice a day. In the morning and after I work out.Me: You Americans shower too often. I used to be an American. I started each day with … Continue reading iShower
Average, Ordinary, Run of the Mill
In my favorite scene from the movie American Beauty, Mena Suvari, representative of a typical high school cheerleader—blonde and thin—spars with Wes Bentley’s character Ricky Fitts. Suvari’s character compares herself to Fitts’ girlfriend Jane: Yeah? Well, at least I'm not ugly! Yes, you are. And you're boring, and you're totally ordinary, and you know it. … Continue reading Average, Ordinary, Run of the Mill
Don’t be a Karen
Maybe you’ve seen the meme. A photo shows a peanut butter and jelly sandwich cut poorly on the diagonal. The left ‘half’ is about sixty percent larger than the right. The caption: Serve this to your OCD friend. It’s not really funny at all. There’s nothing clever about it. It breaks no new ground. It’s … Continue reading Don’t be a Karen
A Parade of Names
Congrats! The Other Stuff is getting noticed. herekittykitty and 3,898 others have started receiving updates. Yay, a new follower. A parade of names, thousands of them. Are any of them real? They arrive, a steady drip, three, four, seven a day. Names lacking an account, just a string of letters—sometimes numbers—linked to nothing, maybe there's … Continue reading A Parade of Names
What’s a Bit?
-- 2016 -- Aliens invented time. I’m not talking about the passage of time: the counting of days and years, of aging and decay. What aliens invented is the way we humans “tell” time. The generic concept of time seems to be attributed to God, even though the Bible makes no reference to the day … Continue reading What’s a Bit?
¿ Dinner ?
I’m traveling up the coast. I found a pizza place online and ordered my dinner over the phone: Me: I'd like to order a Stromboli roll. Guy: Just One? Me: Oh, I don't know, how big are they? Are they much food? Guy: Well, how many do you want. Me: I don't know, is one … Continue reading ¿ Dinner ?
WTF, Neil?
Caution #1: This post contains *salty* language. Caution #2: Old, privileged, white guy whining about his ridiculous first-world non-problem. Aargh!! Neil Young has pulled his music catalog off of Spotify. There are two types of people in this world. Those who could not possibly care less about this, and the rest of us—that’s 6,128,499 people … Continue reading WTF, Neil?
My Fix
I bought M&Ms at lunch today—Peanut M&Ms, my long-time favorite… at least until a couple of years ago. Like all familiar products from my childhood, Mars added options, lots of options. I think the idea is to flood shelf space with M&Ms and leave less room for Reese’s Pieces. Let me introduce you to the … Continue reading My Fix
Meat Adds Flavor!
Gettysburg is known for three things: Ghost tours, ice cream and pizza. If you abolish those three business categories, the storefronts are empty. There’s nothing left. No place for the tourists to go. Tourists? Oh right, I guess Gettysburg is also known for its civil war battle. I live in the sort of town where … Continue reading Meat Adds Flavor!
Quarantine
Crap. Now I have it too. For five weeks, I’ve obsessed over the coronavirus. With my browser open to CNN’s COVID-19 Live Updates, every time they posted any new tidbit of information, I got an alert. I watched the charts and stats and calculated death rates, growth rates and recovery rates. I watched a slow-motion … Continue reading Quarantine
300
How many blog posts is a lot? L. Stevens over at Everyday Strange does a daily quote. And poems, and a weekly calendar, and micro-fiction. I’ve been following her for years. She must have over a thousand posts. Same with Jo Hawk the Writer, she sometimes posts three times a day, how many times has … Continue reading 300
MACH3 Turbo
How long does a razor blade last? Google this, but it’s hard to come up with an answer. First, I got dumped into a bunch of Reddit forums about a gaming computer called Razer Blade. It seems Razer Blades have a reputation for frequent breakdowns. After five minutes of reading about Razer Blade’s short shelf … Continue reading MACH3 Turbo
Happy Tourette Christmas
Hey! Chingedy ching, hee-haw, hee-haw It's Dominick the donkey. Chingedy ching, hee-haw, hee-haw The Italian Christmas donkey. Tourette Syndrome (TS) is a weird disorder. It makes you do things you don’t want to do. Yes, we’re all aware of the stereotyped guy who f-bombs in church, but he’s a pretty slim minority. Most of us … Continue reading Happy Tourette Christmas
Sneakers
It’s an on-going argument in my house. How do you define “sneakers?” On the spectrum of topics to consider, this is of pretty low importance. Pale in comparison to the other principal topic running through my head: Is it racist, sexist, and homophobic to support Joe Biden simply because he’s the candidate I think most … Continue reading Sneakers
The things I don’t understand about Fortnite.
In my house, Eli games on the family TV. It sits in our sunroom, the place we all hang out. So, while I have zero interest in his computer games, I spend plenty of time watching him play. Writing, mid-sentence, I’ll look up from my computer, thinking, searching for the proper word, to find Eli … Continue reading The things I don’t understand about Fortnite.
Dad-Jokes
“What an adorable little house!” This was Fiona’s friend talking. They came over to babysit Sophie. Eli wasn’t born yet. It was a long time ago; Eli’s now thirteen. Actually, only Fiona came over to babysit, we told her she could bring a friend. It was close to Sophie’s bedtime. My adorable little house was … Continue reading Dad-Jokes
My Spot
On Saturday, he woke up sick. Not sick in a way worth blogging about: no visits to the E.R., no uncontrollable vomiting, no diarrhea, he didn’t even have a fever. He was stuffed up, congested. He moved from bed to the corner of the couch, the spot where I always sit, next to the ceiling … Continue reading My Spot
Six Word Story
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, kaboom. Copyright © 2018 by Jeff Cann All rights reserved. No part of this story, in full or by segment, may be copied, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including analog or digital print, photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior … Continue reading Six Word Story
The Other Stuff 