Author: Thomas Walters

Here it is in today’s paper: “Ex-Uber Driver Pleads Guilty to Killing 6”.  You read that and you’re thinking – New York, LA, maybe Chicago.  Nope, Kalamazoo, Michigan.  I know, how is that possible?  The fine folks in Kalamazoo must be as shocked as I am to read about this. First, I didn’t know there were Uber drivers in Kalamazoo, and second, that Kalamazoo isn’t a place that comes to mind particularly as a hotbed of anxiety and angst or a pocket of mental health issues, although it really can happen anywhere.  Here’s the interesting part.  These victims weren’t passengers.  This guy was shooting people at various locations – parking lots of a car dealership and a Cracker Barrel. Something in the grits for which he needed to revenge? In between these apparently random shootings in outside locations, he was driving fares.  He must have felt that blood splattered all over the back seat of his car would be bad for business and possibly hurt his ratings. Can you imagine reading about his exploits in the paper or seeing it on the news later, and  realizing that he’d driven you home from the bus station?   Holy crap, Batman!  That could have been me.  And I was wearing my seatbelt, so I couldn’t move very fast if he pulled a gun.  About the best I could do was soil my underwear. Continue reading “Torn from the Pages II – Uber Drivers”

By now, my faithful readers will sense a theme running through many of my ramblings.  It is that everyday items – things we use routinely – are often out to get me.  I know this sounds implausible, but it is in fact true.  The incidents are just too many and too frequent to be explained in any other way.  Oh, I know some nay-sayers will attribute it to sheer coincidence or even personal clumsiness. Not so, I contend. We all think that inanimate objects don’t have feelings, desires, that they’re not feeling rejected when we put them in the basement or set them out at yard sales. Not true – they’re nursing grudges and plotting revenge.  They’re telepathing instructions to something else I’m about to use. Continue reading “Inanimate Objects Thwart Me”

Every so often, I feel a need to write about something a bit more serious than “how my computer thwarted me today.”  This is one of those moments.  I guess that the recent passing of Former President George H. W. Bush got me to thinking about his vision for a “kinder, gentler America”. Continue reading “The New Year”

There may be a number of lesser known, flying-under-the-radar psychological issues that have gone undetected and / for treated for far too long.  Primary among them is what I call After-Holiday Anxiety, or AHA.  There is, to my knowledge, no known cure because I’d surely have seen the medication advertised on the nightly news. Continue reading “After Holiday Anxiety”

My recent Ode to Christmas shopping demands a follow-up.  Ok, not really sure that it “demands” a successor, but I felt like writing it, so this will be a final penance for faithful readers before the holidays.  Baking Christmas Cookies.  We seldom if ever bake cookies during the regularly scheduled year.  Store-bought is just fine, thanks.  Susan likes chocolate-chip, which I like, but I sometimes deviate to ginger cookies or hermits.  At the holiday season, though, there’s a whole renaissance of cookie baking that somehow is just a part of our humanity.  Someday, scientists will identify the Winter Solstice Cooking Baking gene. Continue reading “The Great New England Christmas Cookie Bake-Off”

As the house fills up with new arrivals and takes on an industrial warehouse look obscuring the house decorations we put out in a nod to tradition. I don’t really like to reuse material that I’ve written before, but sometimes events just overcome the need for originality.  So you’ll know, I did add some new bits along the way to make it seem “fresh”. I figure that if J. S. Bach can steal his own best stuff for his Christmas Oratorio, causing us to have a “wait . . where have I heard that before” moment, I can keep that tradition alive. For that reason, and because in rereading this much still works, I’m sharing the joy once again. Continue reading “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”

Having bought a new printer recently, I’m at a new experience, attempting to print mailing envelopes.  My old printer did this fairly easily.  It smudged its way through. This one, not so much.  You may have inferred from previous writings that I’m not particularly comfortable in the world of technology, having butt-dialed home about 15 times in rapid succession one day from the grocery store without meaning to or even realizing it.  I was having coffee with some friends a few days ago, and one commented that he missed his old flip phone.  I smiled sympathetically.  I totally get it.  All new electronic devices should have a “moron” or “two steps above plant life” setting for people like me, and this setting should be activated by the sales staff before we walk away. Continue reading “Tech II – Accosted by Engineering”

It happens sometimes that topics just leap out at us and demand that we have to have some type of reasonable discourse.  The current climate of fear surrounding the issue of immigration is one of those, as some Americans choose to place blame and point the finger of their life frustrations on those coming to our country.  When fear and ignorance combine to overtake reason and logic, as they may have in the recent election, we are all the worse for it.  My late grandfather used to say, tongue-in-cheek, “My mind’s made up.  Don’t confuse me with facts.” Continue reading “When Fear Controls Us”

Ah, the season has officially begun.  Up to now, the catalogs came in a steady stream – maybe five or six a day from companies I’ve never heard of.  Today, however, is opening day of the catalog playoffs.  It’s kind of like the league playoffs in baseball, except more intense. Twenty-one came in today, all jammed somehow into a six-inch square mailbox.  I know, I’m not sure how that happens either.  Totally defies the laws of physics. All I know is that somewhere in the world glossy trees are dying needlessly to provide us with information we can’t begin to absorb.  Gone too soon. Continue reading “Cavalcade of Catalogs”