My experience over the years has taught me that nobody reads blogs on Fridays, especially not late on Fridays. So that makes this the perfect time to try to slip a few things by you:
- What to expect at the coronation of King Charles III — and how to watch it. — Um, let me guess — we should expect a guy to put on a fancy hat, right? Oh, and I saw a picture of the Stone of Destiny this morning, and there was no sword stuck in it! Who overlooked that? I don’t mean to commit lèse-majesté or anything, but these kinds of “guides for the breathless” headlines irritate me. The only ones I hate more are the ones that go, “What you need to know about…” This is a close relative. I reassure myself that the reporters who have to write these hate them as much as I do…
- Too many tattoos in Five Points? — Yes, absolutely! In fact, I see too many tattoos pretty much everywhere I go. It’s like every street in America has become the red light district near Subic Bay, circa 1971. But that’s not exactly what you were asking, was it?
- The Next Fear on A.I.: Hollywood’s Killer Robots Become the Military’s Tools — Hey, A.I. offers enough things to worry about, and I’ve been meaning to right a post about it. But this consideration alone is bad enough. Like, nightmarish.
- WHO declares covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency — Hey, great! So what does that mean? By the way, you know what my eldest daughter had last week, for the second time? Yeah, COVID! Meanwhile, this is also being reported today: “Disease experts warn White House of potential for omicron-like wave of illness.” Oh, and before y’all make me out to be some obsessed COVID alarmist — that’s not what’s happening here. I don’t go around wearing masks anymore, except maybe on airliners (and I often forget there, too). I’m just saying this is not 2019 again, or anything stupid like that. Hey, but if we do get to do a year over, how about 1971? I really enjoyed that one..
- Man who died in Spartanburg jail was ignored for hours, records show — Folks, if we’re going to keep locking people up — and that’s a very popular thing to do here in South Carolina — we’re going to have to spend some money to make these places safe for humans! This is obscene…
- Yevgeny Prigozhin: Wagner Group boss says he will pull fighters out of Bakhmut — This is the oligarch who runs the big mercenary operation that’s been fighting for Putin, and getting a lot of its guys killed, in Ukraine. It’s not that he’s against killing innocent Ukrainians, it’s just that he doesn’t want his guys doing it without ammunition, so he’s ticked at the Russian supply people. (There’s something kind of oxymoronic about the phrase, “Russian supply people,” isn’t there? I mean, what’s the last government in the world you would rely on to keep you supplied when your life depended on it?) Finally, check out his picture: If you were trying to find a guy to play a Russian oligarch who runs a mercenary operation, this is pretty much the face you would cast, right? This is like Dr. Evil’s way scarier twin brother…