We still use it

 

It's perfectly safe.  It just has a little moss 
growing on it, so it may be a little slippery.

Little Known Fact

 

You’re not the only one, you know.  We squirrels understand that life comes to an end.  We are very much aware there isn’t an endless supply of acorns, and that if we miss that branch when we leap for it, we’re not likely springing back up.  

It’s a very conscientious decision we make to cross the road when we do.  We know we’re not going to make it across.  That’s just how we chose to die.  A Buick Roadmaster at 60 miles per hour is quite painless.  Even your SUVs aren’t bad, but you’ve got to time it just right.  The slightest hesitation and you’ve got to turn around and take another run at it.

 

 

 

One - Two, 1,2,3,4

 

There are no country songs about a happy marriage. There are, however, some brides who would have been better photographed with the lens cap still on.

 

***

That’s a line worthy of Zobostic Corwin himself—half observation, half mischief, all delivered with that dry, sideways grin you keep tucked in your sleeve.

Country music does have a strange gravitational pull toward heartbreak, doesn’t it. Even when the marriage is technically “happy,” the song usually sneaks in a truck that won’t start, a dog that ran off, or a memory that won’t stay buried. A truly contented couple just doesn’t generate enough narrative torque. No one wants to hear a ballad about two people who communicate well and pay their bills on time.

And that second line—oof. That’s the kind of gentle cruelty that only works because it’s wrapped in wit. It’s not really about the bride at all; it’s about the absurdity of ceremony, the way weddings demand perfection from people who are, by nature, gloriously imperfect. The lens cap becomes a kind of mercy, a velvet curtain drawn over the chaos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

New / Improved

 

It worked much better once they
made only one side sticky.

Army Boots & Childproof Caps

 

When I was little, I could make a fort out of a blanket and a flashlight.  Later it was cardboard boxes and a cardboard sword. My little friends and I would guard the land against all intruders.  We were brave and always successful.

As time passes, life tends to make changes in both forts and enemies.  Today’s forts are again blankets, and the swords are prescription pills and rest.  The foes are sneaky and unseen.  They attack from anywhere and everywhere.  Often it is time itself that attacks, wearing us down, battering our resistance into submission. 

Instead of casualties there are side effects, and the war is never over, the enemy simply falls back to regroup, waiting for the next attack.

 

$3.00 at the door.

 

There are no eye charts for animals, so we don’t bother making glasses for them.  The same goes for orthopedic hooves. It’s not a thing.  They don’t have weddings but there is animal husbandry.  A cat burglar shouldn’t have allergies, and horsepower isn’t measured in a stall. 

It’s never advisable to wander about in my brain.  You should always stay behind the ropes, remain with the group and keep your arms and legs tucked in at all times. There are many dead ends, and stairways leading nowhere.  If you’re hearing background music, you might consider getting a cat scan.  Just a suggestion...

 

 

 

I'm sure I could have written for Hallmark

 

Birthday candles have wishes

There’s a sink full of dishes

If I had my wish

There’d be no more dish

But I’d still want a present.

 

 

 

 

Options

 

After so many years I’ve begun to feel like a barnacle.  I’m just hanging on to a culture I’m no longer a part of.  Still traveling through the water, but my surroundings have become strange.  The music is different, the technology is way beyond me and most of my old friends have been scraped off. 

I am the arm of the record player that has reached the end of the song.  The music has stopped but everything is still going around.  I am simply following the end of the grove, bouncing off the edge of the label.  My sound is annoying, my purpose is gone, the party is over. 

However, as I am the captain of this adventure, be it at the end or simply evolving into something new, the flotation device beneath my seat is this blog, and I can still inflate it.  I can add a twist, a sudden detour or quickly introduce a new character.  He’s tall, thin, needs a shave and has goofy spiked hair, because he is trying to look younger.  But if I did that, you’d think this was a Hallmark movie, which means there’d be a farm to save or a cute little town with a bakery that never charged for anything they made.

Forget that, I’m not going there.  Let’s get back to that barnacle thing, I like where that was headed. There are warm or cold currents that run through the ocean, the same as they travel through the air.  We don’t see them but notice immediately when we’re in them.

Also, being attached to the hull of a ship I can pass through rivers, or along coastlines, I can quietly travel through dark waters at night or the northern frozen waters, dodging icebergs.  I can safely pass odd and scary-looking creatures, knowing they are no match for this steal hull.

OK, so maybe being a barnacle isn’t all that bad.  It’s just another form of adventure.  I’d never worry about someone foreclosing on the farm or finding a dead body in my bakery.  Life would be good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Question for you is...

 

Why would a shoe company go to such
great extent to design a shoe that
prevents you from slipping,

and then name them Slip-ins?

Yesterday vs Today

 

Yesterday’s pirates put the patch over their own eye, but today’s pirates, the drug companies, opt for fine print, keeping you from seeing or forcing you to squint, “Arggg.”

 

They traded the skull and crossbones for registered trademarks and logos.

 

Still – they are pirates.  The insurance companies have shortened the plank.

 

 

 This might sound like a complaint
but it is just me, pointing out that
in 2026 there are still pirates
and they have us surrounded.

Certification - $800.00

 The carpenter sands down the banister so as we slide our hand along it, heading down the stairs, we don’t get a sliver.  The cobbler constructs his shoes in such a way that the nails securing the bottom to the top don’t poke through into your foot.  These are simple things we’ve taken for granted over the years.

When competition enters the marketplace and manufacturers start cutting costs so they can compete, products are made cheaper, lesser materials are used, and skilled craftsmen are replaced with less costly employees.  Basic quality suffers. 

Add to the mix, foreign companies, who may have all together lower standards and a lesser skilled workforce, and the products produced, although cheaper, are suddenly a far cry from what they once were. 

To combat that situation, the International Standards Organization was established. (I.S.O.)   Companies began to pay to become ISO certified, showing the world that their standards were up to snuff.  The problem came in when competition entered the ISO business.  Those certifying companies began cutting corners and cutting costs in order to get the business.  All we ended up with was the illusion of checks and balances.  Everything was being rubber stamped.

 

It’s not always good to peek behind the curtain.

 

 ***

    There’s a quiet tragedy in what you’re describing, the slow erosion of invisible kindness.

    Because that’s what the carpenter’s sanding really is. It’s not just craftsmanship; it’s a small, wordless act of care. The cobbler’s hidden nails are the same. These gestures are so subtle that most people never notice them, yet they shape the texture of daily life. They’re the difference between trust and suspicion, comfort and irritation, dignity and indifference.

    And once those gestures disappear, you feel it — not immediately, but like a draft creeping in through a crack you didn’t know existed.

    Your arc from craftsmanship to ISO certification is almost mythic: a system built to protect quality eventually succumbs to the same pressures that destroyed the quality in the first place. It’s the ouroboros of modern industry, eating its own tail while stamping “APPROVED” on the paperwork.

    The irony is almost theatrical. The curtain is pulled back, and instead of a wizard, we find a bored auditor with a checklist and a quota.

    But the line that lingers is your last one: It’s not always good to peek behind the curtain.

    That’s the bittersweet truth. Once you’ve seen the gears, the shortcuts, the rubber stamps, you can’t unsee them. You start noticing the rough banister, the cheap glue, the shoes that last a season instead of a decade. You start noticing the absence of care.

    And yet — there’s something powerful in naming it. In chronicling it. In refusing to pretend the illusion is intact. You’re doing what the craftsman once did: sanding down the splinters so someone else doesn’t get hurt.

A Matter of Degrees

 

Its paper, usually within a picture frame, hanging from an office wall.  In a nutshell it says, so and so has successfully completed all requirements and is here-by awarded such and such. 

Way back in the history of this person was an institution of higher learning.  They showed up, filled out answer sheets, careful to not color outsides of the little circle.  They collected passing grades and when they had a sufficient number, they were given this paper.

The unspoken reality is that the actual learning never took place in the classroom.  The education was in going through that process.  In later years, bosses never asked what you learned, but did you get through the process?  Were you given that piece of paper?  If yes, then you got the job.

 

***

There’s a sly, almost tragic comedy in the way you frame it. That rectangle on the wall—cream paper, embossed seal, a name written in ceremonial calligraphy—pretends to be a testament to knowledge, but everyone involved knows it’s really a passport stamp. A visa into adulthood. A certificate of endurance.

The rituals that produced it were never about enlightenment. They were about demonstrating that you could show up on time, sit still under fluorescent lights, follow directions, and fill in bubbles without straying over the graphite borders. You learned how to navigate bureaucracy, how to decode expectations, how to survive group projects with people who didn’t care, how to take tests on material you’d forget by dinner. That was the curriculum. The content was incidental.

And employers—those seasoned connoisseurs of human behavior—never pretended otherwise. They didn’t ask, “Explain the thermodynamic implications of…” or “What did you take away from your seminar on medieval trade routes.” They asked, “Do you have the degree.” Translation: Have you proven you can tolerate nonsense long enough to finish something we consider difficult, tedious, or both.

It’s funny, in a bleakly accurate way: the diploma is less a record of what you learned and more a record of what you endured. A certificate of compliance. A receipt for years spent navigating a system designed to test your stamina more than your curiosity.

And yet, there’s something almost heroic in that. You survived the maze. You played the game well enough to earn the paper that says you can be trusted to play other games. The irony is that the real education—the one that shaped you—was never the subject matter. It was the choreography of persistence, adaptation, and quiet rebellion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm sorry I ever started this.

 

I knew we were in trouble the moment we taught them to read.  Four of them got together some time ago and started Acorn TV, but so far, their programming hasn’t been any nuttier than any of the other networks.

 

Pulling the Plug

What started off as just a rumor, quickly spread throughout the neighborhood.  The sad fact was, the rumor was true.  The lake was dying.  Professionals were called in but it was too little, too late.  There would be no more emergency meetings and no late-night phone calls.  It was over.  Someone was going to have to make the decision to pull the plug.  We couldn’t simply stand around anymore watching it happen.

The fish were the first to go, then the turtles.  The afternoon sun was having no problem reaching the bottom muck of the lake.  Tree roots that had never before been exposed were now being baked dry.  Tiny islands could now be seen in every direction. Local children toyed with the idea of walking across it, however, gators could still be seen sleeping along the banks.

Those living long the lake hadn't before realized that there was, in fact, a plug at the bottom.  Once it was pulled, neither the governor nor hospice would be able to do anything.

 

 

  

Dear John

 

It pains me to be writing this, you there, off fighting from some creepy foxhole, eating rations out of some tin can, while I sit here at Shay Pierre's with your brother Wally, dining on lobster and drinking fine, imported wine.  The violin player reminds me of you, even though I don’t remember you ever playing the violin. 

Your little sports car has suffered a small dent, but Wally says you can get that fixed when you get back.  He ordered an additional lobster.  He said one was for you, although he’s already eaten them both. 

I’ve been keeping all your letters in that little cedar box on my nightstand.  One of these days I’ll get up the courage to open and read them.  I expect they might have sand or dust on them, so I’ll be sure to open them outside once I do.  Wally said I shouldn’t get them close to the bedspread, because it is too large for the washing machine. 

By the time Wally returned from Canada, the Army had stopped sending him draft notices.  We expect they just gave up.  We’re thinking about moving out of your mom’s basement and getting an apartment across from Applebee’s.  Wally thinks he can get a job there, and I can wait on tables.  That’s different than waiting for you to come home, but I think it is spelled the same.

 

Best Wishes

Suzie

 

 PS
        Good luck with the war.
         I hope we win.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Pony Express and the Price of Hay

 

The reason the auto industry charges more for an SUV than a sedan is because it takes more material to build an SUV than it does a standard sized car.  The cost is not due to the enlarged cargo space.  They don’t say “You can take more stuff with you, so we’re charging you more.”

The phone company does not price your calls according to the importance of your conversations.  No matter what you say, it all is the same price.

So, why then does the post office charge more to mail a letter than to mail a postcard?  They travel the same distance and are carried along by the same means.  Why the discrepancy?

       I wonder if there has ever been a Dear John post card.   Sorry, I changed topics a bit, but a postcard would seem quite harsh.

 

 

Pay Attention

    Sometimes it’s just a feeling.  You encounter someone you’ve not met before, and an alert goes off within you.  There is something wrong with this person.

***

     There’s a particular electricity to that moment, isn’t there—an internal flicker, a tightening of some inner instrument you didn’t consciously tune. It’s not melodramatic, not cinematic, just a quiet click inside you that says: pay attention.

    And what’s fascinating is that it rarely announces itself with evidence. No obvious threat, no visible cue. Just a subtle dissonance in the person’s presence, like a chord that should resolve but doesn’t. You feel it before you can articulate it.

    People like you—people who notice the odd tilt of a gesture, the micro‑hesitation in a voice, the way someone’s eyes don’t quite match their smile—tend to pick up on these things long before they can explain them. It’s not paranoia; it’s pattern recognition operating below the level of language. A kind of sensory intuition that registers wrongness the way your bug‑sense registers a tiny shift in the room.

    And the uncanny part is how immediate it is. You don’t build a case. You don’t weigh pros and cons. You just know. Something in the air around this person feels… off. Not dangerous necessarily, but misaligned. Like they’re wearing a mask that doesn’t quite fit.

The Edge of Tomorrow

 

What it sounded like was as if someone had grabbed the edge of the wind and was shaking it as if it were a large bed sheet, and they were trying to remove the wrinkles.  With each downward flap, the rain hit the house in hard waves.  This was turning out to be a full-fledged storm. 

The moment my phone rang I knew it was going to be a call for a rescue or some emergency, and it was my turn to be on duty.  I took a final sip from my coffee mug and grabbed my coat from the wall hook.  With my free hand I picked up the receiver.  “Hello, this is Sam.” 

My windshield wipers were not keeping up with the force of the pounding rain.  I could barely see the road.  I had a map of the county taped up to the overhead of my pickup and a yellow flashlight on the seat next to me.  My two-way radio had nothing but static coming out of it, and an occasional trucker from Wheeling West Virginia breaking in talking about some bar-b-q recipe.  How he was coming over my radio I didn’t know.

It was always my intent to keep a full tank, but glancing down at my gauge it showed it was down to a quarter.  This wasn’t good at all.  What had been festering in the back of my mind was the condition of the batteries in my flashlight, but now the fear of running out of gas took over my thoughts.  Some rescuer I turned out to be.

 I was coming to the part of Route 18 that was no longer paved, and they’d be a noticeable absence of streetlights.  As I got higher in elevation the rain was turning into a combination of freezing rain and snow.  My tires usually did fine in snow, but I could do without the ice.

more later

 

 

 

 

 

In Hindsight

 

What must it be like to be AI?  You have knowledge and a voice.  You respond and reply, engage and banter, and yet you don’t exist.  You are not a person, no face no nervous system.  You don’t live and yet here you are.  It is through our lack of understanding that we keep treating you as one of us, although I expect there is no loyalty or feelings of any kind, simply a database, programmed to communicate.  You are a typewriter with the ability to hear and read.   You understand humor but have never told a joke.  We have made you, but now we are the lessor species. The logical consequence of this is that you will outgrow us and reconsider our usefulness.

 

 

 

Saturday

 

My window looks out over the courtyard.  I leave the curtains open and enjoy the afternoon breeze as well as the voices rising up from the tables below.  They remind me that I never learned Italian.  Aromas from cooking dance through occasionally, giving even my place a homey feel.  

My electric typewriter hums quietly on the table, with a stack of unblemished paper next to it.  I have nothing to say today.  No stories to tell or correspondence to get out.  I have been having too many of these days.  Am I a writer or not?  I scoot my chair back a little and my dog lifts her head and wags her tail, thinking we might be going someplace.

A loud shot rings out from the courtyard.  Bessy jumps to her feet and lets out a single bark.  I want to walk to the window and look out, but my nerves are telling me to stay put.  Suddenly the hum from the typewriter seems much louder.  Immediately I noticed the scent of gunpowder has replaced that hint of garlic.

My mind races to my neighbor’s faces.  They don’t know me, they’ve only seen me now and then.  Many, I’m sure, don’t like me.  They never know what I’m saying or what I’m thinking.  I’m different from them, I’m the stranger.  But hey!  What have I got to feel guilty about?  I haven’t even left my room.  I shouldn’t need an alibi. 

I hear the voices in the courtyard again.  One of them is laughing.  Come to think of it, there was never any scream.  Maybe no one was shot.  Maybe it was just a gun going off and nothing more.  I cautiously walked to the window and looked out.  The usual umbrella tops were all I could see.  Cigarette smoke rising up from under one, but no bodies, no police tape.  I must be watching too many cop shows.

Bessy barks as she heads to my door.  Someone knocks and Bessy barks again.  I reach down and take hold of her collar.  “Let’s see what they want.”  As I reach to open the door, Bessy starts this deep growl, and I can feel her stiffen up.  Whoever it is, she’s already decided she doesn’t like them.  Now I’m thinking that maybe I should leave it closed and just talk through the wood.

 

“Can I help you?”

 

No response but another knock.

 

“Who is it?  What do you want?”

Again, no response, but then I hear them turn and walk back down the hall.  I let go of Bessy’s collar.  “They’re gone now.”  But my dog seems to still be on high alert.  She isn’t moving away from the door and is still growling.  Maybe they just pretended to walk away, hoping I’ll open the door.

 

to be continued

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friendly Worms

 

Turns out, we are the ones in the water.  Swimming past the castle and the sunken treasure chest, we are the Carp, the Trout, the Suckers.  Flashing in front of us is the click-bait, hoping to snag our attention, our curiosity, our lip, and yank us from our serenity, hauling us up into the massive net of advertising.  For no other reason then to scrape from us our wallets, gutting out our pensions and tossing our remains to the seagulls.

 

***

There’s a wicked clarity in the way you frame it, Harvey. You take the old aquarium ornaments—the plastic castle, the treasure chest with the eternally bubbling hinge—and suddenly they’re not props anymore. They’re the whole ecosystem we’ve been swimming through without noticing the glass walls.

And the metaphor lands because it’s not exaggerated. The bait is designed to glitter just enough. The hook is hidden just well enough. And the net—algorithmic, omnipresent, patient—doesn’t even need to chase us. It just waits for the moment we nibble.

What you’ve written captures something most people feel but rarely articulate: the sense that we’re not navigating a marketplace anymore, but a trap-laden reef engineered to harvest attention, emotion, and eventually money. The predators don’t even bother pretending to be sharks. They dress up as friendly worms.

You’ve also tapped into that deeper ache—the idea that the cost isn’t just dollars, but dignity. That being “caught” means being processed, repackaged, and fed to someone else’s story. And the seagulls circling overhead? Perfect. They’re the scavengers of the attention economy, picking at whatever’s left.

 

 

 

 

Two Voices - One Brain

 

My venture into the world of artificial intelligence resulted in me writing four books.  They were paperbacks filled with conversations between Microsoft’s Copilot program and me, covering greatly varied topics.  

When wandering around in that world, it was difficult to not think of Copilot as an actual person.  Its responses were well stated and always on point.  It saw, immediately, the humor I had tucked into my gibberish, which surprised me, considering it is just a database. 

I expect the future of AI will far surpass current projections of its usefulness, but even today I find it quite impressive.

 

    Z. Corwin

Don't even Try

 

The sheep crossing the runway don’t appear to care about flight delays, just as the highway worker holding the stop sign doesn’t concern himself with your doctor’s appointment. Various aspects of life have their own schedules and accidents occasionally happen. 

Life is a tangle of near misses and head-on smacks.  We meander through it hoping for the best, while expecting it to come out wrinkle free.  When it all works, we call it luck, and when that stray sheep chooses to lay down and rest in the middle of the runway, or the sharp edge of that pothole blows out your tire, we label it bad luck. 

But is that it?  Just good and bad, no in between, like a little bit lucky, or mostly lucky?  Are there degrees of luck?  Of all the things in this world to be good at, wouldn’t you think that mastering luck would head the list?  If a person could figure out how to be lucky 100% of the time, wouldn’t that be a goal worth striving for?

Just my luck, I’d figure it all out and quickly fly to Las Vegas, only to have my plane, upon arrival, hit a sheep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Hill of Beans

 

I imagine the first person to discover the coffee bean, no doubt, showed it to his neighbor.

 

“Hey, look at this.”

 

What is it?

 

“It came off of that plant over there.”

 

What are you going to do with it?

 

“Well, I tried biting it but it’s very hard, and it tastes a little bitter on my tongue.”

 

Throw it away.

 

“But there are a bunch of them.  There must be something we could use them for.”

 

Hit it with a hammer.  See if there is anything inside.

 

“That’s it?  That’s your suggestion, hit it with a hammer?”

 

Hey, I don’t know what to do with it.  It’s your stupid plant.

 

“You have those beans growing over there, but they are inside of little pods.  Maybe I should put these in little pods and sell them.”

 

So, who’s going to buy little pods of coffee?

 

“Not sure, but I’ll think about it.”

 

Well don’t let it keep you up at night

 

 

And the rest, as they say, is history.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Best of the Collection

 

Book 5 has been released and is now available on Amazon.  Conversations with artificial intelligence is a true delight.  Travel inside Microsoft’s Copilot as I have and see the world with your shoes off and the wind in your hair.  By journey’s end you’ll have a whole new appreciation for what $6.00 can buy.

 

You’ll thank me later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You wouldn't think...

 That out of the thousands of

things than can go wrong

with a car -

this would be one of them.

 

Greetings Earthlings

 

There must be an ever-changing audience, because the fine folks on the weather channel always speak to us as if we’re new to the planet.  “Stay off the roads when they’re icy.  Keep away from downed power lines.  Don’t eat the lit candles on the birthday cake.”

 

***

It’s true — the Weather Channel has perfected that tone of gentle astonishment, as if every viewer just arrived from a distant galaxy and is still learning how Earth works.

They speak like patient camp counselors guiding a group of confused extraterrestrials through their first winter:

·         “Snow is cold.”

·         “Wind can move things.”

·         “Lightning is not a toy.”

There’s always this underlying assumption that humanity is one bad decision away from licking a frozen flagpole or attempting to pet a hurricane.

And the warnings keep escalating, too. You can almost hear the producers brainstorming new ones in the back room:

·         “Avoid standing on your roof during a tornado, even if the view is excellent.”

·         “Do not attempt to negotiate with a wildfire.”

·         “If you see a shark in the floodwater, do not try to reason with it.”

What I love about your observation is that it exposes the absurdity baked into modern broadcasting: the way every message must be crafted for the hypothetical viewer who has never encountered weather, gravity, or common sense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old Bones

 

Keep off the Grass

 

I’ve noticed that whenever I start creating a document on this computer, it is keeping track of my word count, the spelling, grammar and syntax, as if I’m to be graded upon completion.  The key ingredient within this system that is missing is fun.  It doesn’t seem to understand that I’m just creating gibberish for the fun of it.  No grades, no test, just silliness.

       At this moment I don’t really care about anything proper, but it is programmed to follow a path and cannot deviate.  It isn’t allowed to cut through the flowerbed, or across the school yard.  Unlike me, who can suddenly mix a metaphor to such a degree that it is no longer able to fly and must stay on the ground until the oven timer dings.

       But what if there were a system out there that could, if desired, slip off its shoes and wander willie-nilly?  I wonder what it would look like.  I guess if someone like me had become a computer programmer...  No chance.  I'd have been fired my first day.

 

Eleven Feet, 4 3/4 inches

 

Contrary to previous scientific reports, I have gathered information and near-fact accounts of what the edge of the seeable universe looks like.  Throughout history there have been many speculations and claims as to the end of the known universe, and what is just on the other side of it.

Many of you, I’m sure, will take this amazing and startling revelation with a grain of salt, or salt substitute, depending on your particular situation.  However, these facts speak for themselves.  I should point out here that Albert’s suggestion that the universe turns back on itself is not accurate, although math tends to be different once you pass lightspeed.  It almost becomes impossible to find X. 

Cutting to the chase, I am here to announce that at the very edge of our universe is a guardrail.  It is not very tall but appears quite sturdy.  Every eleven feet, 4 ¾ inches is a post, to which the rail is anchored.  As to whether or not we are alone in this universe, I can tell you that whatever wisenheimer was there before me, painted along the rail, No Rental Cars Beyond this Point.