how did donald trump get into prestigious wharton school of business?

people tell me donald trump was a terrible student, just terrible.
so how does a horrible student get into wharton, one of the finest business schools in the country, after screwing around for two years at fordham.
i don't know but maybe his rich daddy got him in, like he did for his private school and military school education.
everyone wants to know so why doesn't he just release his school transcripts and tuition payment records.
he keeps promising to tell us everything but we don't know a thing about him.
he's the most secretive real estate tycoon around.
what's he hiding?
some people have even suggested, and i'm not saying it's true or false, that he wasn't even born on earth and if you think of it, his hair is the kind of hair aliens would come up with to make them look like one of us.
i mean i hope it's not true  but in the meantime i've hired some terrific investigators to look into his records and hair samples and get to the bottom of this and i'm telling you they are telling me some unbelievable things.
i can't share them with you yet but they are coming up with some fantastic stuff.

(from the files) 637. jim cantore of the weather channel

(written about two years ago, i pulled this out because jimbo is still at it)

jim cantore of the weather channel is odd.

he's the bald headed fellow who strikes me as the type of guy who struts around the weather channel set challenging others to arm wrestling or rattling off his latest bench press record.
but when the cameras roll and it comes to weather, he's all button down the hatches and tuck up in a ball.

last night he moderated a panel discussion on: are people more or less prepared for hurricanes than in the past?
first, the only reason i'm watching this at all is that i just came from the channel next door, msnbc.
they chose to interrupt the olympic games for inane banter among tiki, jenna and tamron, which has become an intolerable situation—a national crisis really.

anyway,it's hard to imagine this weather discussion panel question about hurricane preparedness is on the minds of more than five people: jimmy c, the three panelists, and bartley smuckers down the road who got hit by lightning not that long ago.i'm talking about the "he is a professional" part.

an odd fellow he is, albeit professionally.


let's face it, a quick assessment from good old dr. stevey boy lyons is more than the whole affair deserves.
but this is a panel discussion, and believe you me jimbo managed to squeeze the subject bone dry, asking the hard hitting questions and tripping up his weather colleagues with tough follow-ups.
i was impressed.
he sure does take his weather seriously.

and today, when i stopped by the gang for a quick update on hurricane fay, there he was, standing on a beach in south florida with goggles on, demonstrating that when 75 mph winds blow on a beach, it picks up sand that can get in your eyes if left unprotected, all the while reminding us not to do this at home, that he is a professional.
well, i for one, am glad he cleared up that little mystery.
not the sand in the eyes part—i think most of us understand with maybe the exception of poor lightning struck bartley smuckers.
no,

writing it down

he spoke he loved her but the noise about her was so great she could not hear his words and she grew tired of feeling alone and being away and seeing her passions sink below the horizon, baring only the darkness that comes from not knowing how she came to this lowly place or what emptiness lay ahead.

so he took to writing it down, that he loved her, that love was all he had for her at the moment, and that love could be enough, that is until they would be together again, when they could cast a light on her passions once more but this time plow a path paved in their image.

he did this knowing that noise has little dominion over the written word but only if she read his words to learn this for herself.

so he sent her the link to his words to be sure she did read them because that's what you do nowadays.

filled with easter spirit

keaton and alix are somewhere in holland.
my son is quite busy with his mom and step-dad.
so i'm home alone with annabel, our beloved yellow lab.
but it's easter and although i'm leaving in a few hours to join the brothers crane in what should be another memorable afternoon of storytelling and laughs, i've been hellbent on not letting a little aloneness get in the way of easter spirit.
and nothing gets annabel and me into it like a good old easter egg hunt.
so yesterday in anticipation i bought a dozen eggs, painted them with some left over beige interior semigloss wall paint, rolled them in sparkles and other adornments, then boiled them, and froze them over night, while i cleaned up the pots, stove top and paint brushes with turpentine.

about an hour and a half ago i took the eggs and hid them throughout the backyard.
i went back inside and had a cup of joe as i anxiously waited to forget where i had placed them.
twenty minutes later, annabel and i set out to find them.
boy i am a good egg hider.
thirty minutes later we had found a grand total of eight; five for annabel, three for me.

exhausted from climbing trees and digging up the yard, we retired  to the kitchen to make egg salad together, eating our easter bounty off the best china placed on the floor.
and now we are just sitting around like slugs filled with the easter spirit.
it's a nice feeling.
and i just knew it would be.

cranelegs newsflash

late breaking news: donald trump, reacting to the recent earth day, is demanding we celebrate him on uranus day because he is such an unapologetic a-hole.

in an alternate universe

i overheard a young thirty something lady standing behind me in the grocery check-out line bark at her friend, you're kidding! the ridleys are foreclosing? geez, well if you think they have problems wait till you hear this. last night i overheard my sister-in-law call that beautiful coach bag i have, you know, that one you love—
the second lady interrupted, ya mean that big, pink, leather one?
the first lady said, yeah! that one!
the second lady said, i love that bag.
the first lady continued, tell me about it! well she called it "tj max cheese"! can you believe it?
the second lady yelled, shut up girl!
then the first lady lamented, i'll tell ya, if she weren't my sister-in-law, i'd put the stink eye on her something terrible!

they both fell silent for what i thought was a moment of much needed self-reflection.
i was wrong.

the first lady said, what a shame.
the second lady said, yeah, the poor ridleys.
the first lady pointed at the enquirer in the magazine rack and said, no, i'm talking about that pig brad pitt breaking angelina's heart by having a love child with their nanny's druggy twin sister! look at her face! She's a broken woman, that angelina is.
the second lady added, oh yeah, and she's starting to look warn out too! look at all those wrinkles.
then the first lady opined, is there no end to the madness?

that is when it occurred to me that i had inadvertently stepped into an alternate universe in which life crises worth fretting about are those which are born from the loins of high school cafeterias.

so i shut my eyes real tight and repeated softly, beam me up scotty! oh please! oh please! oh please beam me up scotty!
sadly, as of this writing, i remain unbeamed and locked in this incubator of idiocy.

Welcome Eye of the Newt

the "eyes" have it, as they say on the house chamber floor, and no one is going to ask for a count.
the eye of the newt is one funny blog written by former secretary of state colin powell's long lost half brother, newt.
an example of newt's creative juices if you will: the second book of judith.

drum roll please ...

eye of the newt is now added to friends of the pond!

congrats newty!

vampire dairies

okay so alix is watching something called the vampire dairies, i think.
okay so she tells me like it's the best thing on tv.
okay so like cspan III is like three times as good but i don't tell her that because i know what can happen when the house estrogen balance gets outta whack, which i've done in the past and believe you me it isn't pretty.
ok so like she says the vampire dairies, which i can only surmise means her so-called vampires drink the blood of virgin cows, are fascinating, but like i'm thinking she doesn't know vampires.
i know vampires and they're all like bela lugosi.
bela lugosi would suck these bovine sucking vampires dry if they were virgins, which based on all their sex shenanigans i'm guessing they're not anyway, is what i'm continuing to think.
but i guess she needs to have her little vampire fantasy.
so i let her have it on account of the estrogen balance thingy.
but like that doesn't change the fact that i know she's clueless when it comes to blood drinkers, which i guess sounds kinda weerd (because i never spell weerd right, so it always sounds like it but doesn't look like it).

i don't know.
these vampire dairies are lame nonetheless!
and i guess that sorta like really bothers me because like i said, i know vampires.
probably more than i should to be like mentally healthy.

come to think of it, you know what?
forget the whole thing.

do as i say

i tell people to do as i say not as i do because most of the time i don't know what the hell i'm doing.
just sayin'.

you know—that kind of person

here’s the kind of person i am.

i’m on a crowded train the other day, when the thick, brown scent of a perhaps 3 day old baked bean fart filled the car.
people all around me began to snicker and whisper and make faces.
and i was sure they all thought i did it.

you know—that kind of person.

the barbershop mirrors effect

i'm telling ya, writing a book about writing your first book is like looking into the mirrors at a barbershop and seeing yourself over and over and over again until you see no more.
and for a guy like me who'd rather see anything else but himself, this can be awfully tough on the eyes.

died before my death

the day i become so self-absorbed in human charades posing important as to not wonder at the sun lying down to sleep among the hill tops, to not marvel at the redtail hawk standing watch from the dead maple treetop flanking cranelegs pond, to not listen to the whispers of grand oaks in conversation with the soft summer breeze, to no longer embrace the difference between nature's wisdom and man's fabrication, i will have died before my death.

my sort of nonsense

i'm a notorious slow reader.
always have been.
i say the words in my head as i read and have never been able to do anything about it.
tried speed reading and the whole ball of wax but i just started saying the words faster and well ... i don't like that.
seems like a big rush when i like my stories told nice and slow and with emotion.

anyway i figure since my eyesight is going and a say the words anyway, i might just as well buy audio books, except my hearing is going faster than my eyesight.

you see the sort of nonsense i have to put up with?

where's 37

every so often, unannounced, i count to a hundred.
it's just to make sure everything is okay, because if there is one thing left i can count on, it's those numbers from 1 to 100.
well, i'm here to tell you, don't count on it.
last night at approximately 2:38 AM the number 37 went missing.
and it's not back.
to say i'm concerned is an understatement.
i plan to do another surprise count later this afternoon and if it's not back by then, i don't know what i'm gonna do to be honest.
except i know one thing i won't.
i won't call 911 again.
they didn't take kindly to my asking them to count to a hundred themselves to see what i'm talking about.


all i can say is that i hope this is just 37 acting out some sort of mid-life crisis and not sick, or worse, caught up in some sort of fox news president obama popularity polling cartel.

all is unfair in love and waistlines

keaton said, whoa, you are putting on a few pounds there big boy.
i said, you know, if i so much as looked like i was going to say that to you—
keaton said, what? that i put on a few pounds? oh yeah, i'd kill you!
i said, well the day you get your equality, this kind of doublestandard nonsense stops, and frankly i can't wait.
she said, is that so? oh well, i suspect the day my equality arrives there will be a number of things that you'll need to be corrected on rather immediately. so get ready michelin tire man!

i thought, bring it on little-miss-muffin ... top, except not really because i'm just a big fat lard who doesn't know when to shut his brain pie hole and she's perfect and there's no truth in anything i think and i don't deserve her!

(btw - i immediately priced that thought way above a penny in the event she offered a cent to hear it)

the manly-way bribe

keaton said, the dog just threw up on the carpet.
i yelled, what?
she said louder, the dog threw up on the carpet!
i said, sorry, didn’t quite hear that?
she said, i said don't expect me to entertain your manly-ways for a month.
i said, i'm getting paper towels and a bag as you speak, hon.
she said, now that's more like it.

and i thought, yeah, more like another manly-way bribe.

(from the files) saved by easter

[i have spent the better part of a few days recently trying to upgrade my parents pc situation with some old pc's i have sitting around. they were using a 12 year old pc powered by windows 98. pc's aren't like Scotch. they don't age particularly well. in my parents case, it was when solitaire failed to work that i got the calls and decided they needed an 8 year boost to their internet world. so i obliged. It wasn't pretty. it never is. i found this 2 year old post that explains quite nicely. in addition, it's getting close to easter so it just seemed appropriate to replay it. By the way, the website mentioned never got out of the planning stages.]

(from a recent call into the bob pc help line from my mom)

mom: i want to see your brother's new web—
me: it's a blog.
mom: he said it was a website.
me: he would. it's just a blog that looks like a website. i created it to give him an idea of what his new website might look like.
mom: is there some kind of difference?
me: not really.
mom: then who cares what it is?
me: okay, you're right. so what's up?
mom: well before i was interrupted for something that no one cares about, i was going to get to that.
me: sorry ma. get to what?
mom: the problem is i don't know how to get to it.
me: get to what?
mom: your brother's webblog site or whatever it is.
me: no problem.
mom: great. i have a pencil and pad right here. so what do i do?
me: why don't you get on the computer and we'll do it in real time.
mom: real time?
me: yeah at the same time. you enter in what i tell ya. it's better than writing stuff down.
mom: real time. okay. gotta go upstairs and sign on. it will take a moment. sure you have time.
me: yeah, i'm not going anywhere anytime soon.
mom: okay. hold on.
me: great.

(a minute passes)

mom: okay. shoot!
me: the url is—
mom: the what?
me: url. ya know the www dot com part.
mom: oh yeah. go ahead.
me: at the top of the screen type in h t t p—
mom: h t p p—
me: no! howard tom tom peter.
mom: what?
me: h howard. t tom. t tom p peter.
mom: h t t p! okay
me: colon forward slash forward slash.
mom: colon forward slash forward slash. next.
me: alone on the range. all one word.
mom: what kind of name is that? sounds like something you would come up with.
me: ma just key it in. we can talk about names later.
mom: on the range. got it. next.
me: dot, you know, period. blog spot, all one word.
mom: slow down! period, blogclot—
me: blogspot! not clot! slot! one word.
mom: well how are you to know these things with crazy names like this.
me: just type it in.
mom: done. that's it?
me: no. dot com.
mom: well that i know. dot com. that must be it. but where's the www?
me: this doesn't need www. it's not a website. it's a blog.
mom: well that doesn't sound right.
me: yeah i know. so let's go over it one more time. h t t p—
mom: t t! i have h t p.
me: that's why i said tom tom.
mom: i never heard of such a thing. t t! okay let me fix it. okay that's it? and hit search. there!
me: search?
mom: yeah, that's what i always do to go to your blog. wait! it says, no match found.
me: first you need to type it all in the top box with the go button at the end. you don't want to do a search.
mom: it always worked before?
me: ma, just type it in please and hit go.
mom: how am i expected to know all this?
me: your not. just type it in.
mom: all right done. and click on go! oh it's doing something! uh oh! i have some sort of screen that says, oops this link appears to be broken. what does that mean? what did you do.
me: i didn't do anything. read me the address you put in.
mom: h t t p colon forward slash foward slash home on the range one word—
me: it's alone on the range. not home.
mom: well that doesn't make any sense.
me: it's a website for single people cooking for one person. it's brilliant.
mom: i thought it was a blog.
me: whatever. it doesn't matter. the name is clever.
mom: we'll see about that. might be too clever for your own good.
me: just correct it and try again. i'll hold.

(i heard the distinct sound of muttering as she entered the change, alone on the range? who would ever use that name? i'll talk to steve about that when i see him.

mom: okay. hit enter, and ... yes! there it is. looks pretty nice. great, let me take a look at some of his videos and i'll get back to you. thanks honey for the help. bye!

click. dial tone.
me: bye!

four minutes later.
my cell phone rings.
it's the ringtone i've reserved for the folks.
beethoven's da ... da ... da ... dah!

me: hi ma! well? how do you like it?
mom: something's wrong.
me: what?
mom: i clicked on the next blog to see the next blog page and i got this weird spanish screen with all these models in string bikinis. your dad is taking a look to see if he can fix it, but i think he is just looking at all the pictures. and some are very provocative. not sure your father is up to it.
me: well, next blog takes you a random google blog. not the next—
mom: hold on a second!

i hear mom yelling, bob are you all right! you're awfully quiet up there.

mom: i better go. your father might be dead for all i know.
me: look mom. just unplug the pc and i'll show you the site on easter. it'll be a lot better by then.
mom: i'm probably going to have to unplug your father first though. okay honey. that's a good idea. we'll take a look on easter. i gotta go. bye.

click. dial tone.
me: bye ma.

easter might just be my favorite holiday right this moment.