Good news!  Contrary to the rumors swirling all over social media, my three month absence was not the result of having been trapped under a rock or succumbing to the ‘Rona.  No, no such tragedies have befallen me.  Instead, I have simply been the victim of a slow news quarter.  Seriously, can you remember a less eventful summer?  Me neither.  My hat is off to professional journalists.  This is when they earn their money.  How they’ve managed to find stories in this news-desert over the last three months is beyond me.  But that’s why they get paid the big bucks, right?  I’ve sat at my laptop for hours at a time over the last three months, trying to come up with something – anything! – to write about, to no avail. If only there were some major news stories to get the juices flowing, like a global pandemic, a revolutionary social justice movement, or a presidential election.  Can you imagine?  What a writing bonanza that would be!!

Ah, I kid.  The truth is that if anything, I’ve been paralyzed for the last three months by too much news.  Where do you even start?  There’s just so much to choose from!  And everyone is soooo serious right now.   For someone who loves a joke, this environment doesn’t feel like the best time to be cracking the funnies.  Call it a hunch.  I also got sucked into the hell hole that is Twitter, which can quickly suck up hours of your day and leave you convinced that we all hate each other and we’re mere days away from the end of civilization as we know it.  What a terrible and delightfully addictive place that is.  My foray into Twitter led me to reflect recently on the question, “How much Twitter is too much Twitter?”, and I think I’ve come up with some good guidelines.  The optimal amount of Twitter is just enough to keep you informed of current events that may have a direct impact on you, therefore allowing you to take precautions if necessary, but not so much that you are emotionally invested in an argument between two strangers in another country in the comments section of a tweet that someone you follow retweeted.  So, for instance, if there’s civil unrest (formerly known as ‘rioting’) occurring two blocks from your house, Twitter is a very effective tool to stay informed on the status of said unrest, allowing you to ready your firearms and ammunition should said unrest spread to your house.  However, if there’s civil unrest on the other side of the country, let’s say Portland, for example, and you’re arguing with someone in England about whether it was a ‘protest’ or a ‘riot’, you’ve likely reached the point of diminishing returns on Twitter.  

The point is (I always get there, albeit very slowly), it took some time, but I realized that I’ve been busy consuming rather than creating content, to the detriment of the blog and probably my sanity.  So rather than continue to delve into any of the hundreds of inflammatory topics that our beloved media is doing an extraordinary job of politicizing and dividing us over every day for ratings and dollars, I will return to my specialty: the mundane and idiotic.  Unfortunately, those of you thinking it will mean a greater focus on sports will be disappointed, since they’ve managed to politicize those too.  There are plenty of places to get hot takes on politics disguised as sports commentary, so if I wade back into sports, I’ll be sticking to the obscure but vitally important stories, like what’s up with Phil Mickelson’s sunglasses at the PGA Championship.

Hey Phil –  there’s a member of the Highway Patrol out there who wants his sunglasses back.