What (else) is flat as a pancake?

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It was during this Sunday’s early a.m., where I found my larder shy of several key pancake ingredients, feeling zero desire to mask-up for an impulse visit to my in-town, price gouging supermarket, YET, still hungering for the damned flapjacks! Oh, what to do?

Well, for starters, it didn’t take much effort to free-associate what else is flat as a pancake.

Hence, right after I finished cooking up / serving up my (daily) bowlful of oatmeal, I quickly rinsed the double boiler free of lingering goo, dried it and tossed in an experimental slice of cracked wheat bread.

By the time I had finished my cereal, this steamy, piping hot mock pancake was table ready. Upon plating it, pouring on the syrup and refilling my coffee cup, the moment of truth had arrived!

Not all that surprisingly, this substitute proved the best invention since (what else?) sliced bread; just as tasty as most other made-from-scratch pancakes. Then again, why would it not? Just read any loaf’s label. Obviously, bread and pancakes do boast many, in common ingredients.

“Department of Afterthought” commentary: Had I warmed the bread a tad longer, it could’ve even morphed into a crunchy mock waffle.

To transcend this morning’s “mmm” moment now comes my “hmm” summation…

While I’d never toss / recycle any of my cherished, handed down from generation-to-generation, pancake recipes (the cards still neatly filed in my late mother’s recipe box), I do know that, in a pandemic related pinch, an acceptable alternative can be found to sidestep nearly any non-problem; such as this one.

Beyond that, this morning’s experiment also proved to be a practical application of the proverb…

“Necessity is the mother of invention.”

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Wellspring of Knowledge

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Our devout theologians, team with secular scholars
Convene classes regardless of blue and white collars
Some deliver in whispers; others dispatch in hollers
Life’s wisdom eternal; never gauged in mere dollars

Preachers / teachers embued by resolve that’s unblinking
Champion humankind’s kind, cogent, consistent, thinking
To age-old Wellspring of Knowledge; they are interlinking
The life or death query, “How many folks will be drinking?”

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Blocked Heads

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If you call home sweet home, an enlightened nation
Keep in mind, free elections might not lead to elation
Not when candidates’ heads conceal constipation
To empower such doody, will cause consternation

To vote wisely, is akin to high colonic’s irrigation
It’ll unblock the backups; break up, too, these words “ation”
To vote otherwise, elects heads; flush with fecal matter
If they prove too tuff to flush; they’ll never scram / scatter

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A Contract With America Mulligan?

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Back in the 1990s, my homeland’s ideologue Republicans, moonlighting / gaslighting as InFerior Decorators, had fabricated a window dressing political platform and promptly dubbed it The Contract With America.

Just how inFerior / rickety was it?

Well, to paraphrase journalist Major Garrett, it was all akin to opportunistic Republicans challenging the gullible American electorate to a few rounds of metaphorical miniature golf. And, it wasn’t long after this dim, diminutive platform collapsed than the easily duped discovered it had been little more a Republican diversionary tactic akin to a sand trap filled with quicksand; where liberty, truth, justice and ethics go to die.

In other words, average Janes and Joes failed to realize they had been buying into rightwing leadership that was (and forever shall be?) akin to the leader board glutted with the names of unprofessional golfers; tired white men playas, who could do little more than reduce America’s Links to a golf course that’s been utterly obliterated; wrecked beyond repair by Grand Canyon deep divots; with nary the possibility of an ideological mulligan / do-over. Hell, such Republicans rarely, if ever, can get ANYTHING right; not even after a second stroke; let alone the third, fourth, fifth… well… you get the idea.

Of late, unprofessional golfer and XXX prez Donald J. Trump has been toying with the notion of concocting his own Contract With America mulligan. Seeing how he doth not possess even the slightest inkling of a cogent, good intentioned thought, zero doubt, his new contract / plot has already been ghostwritten by a Republican flunky or two, or three, or four, or five… well… you get the idea.

Now, owing to Trump being a certifiable narcissist and would-be fascist / organized crime don / thug / hoodlum, were he able to muster a moment of truth in advertising, he might even manage to..

Rebrand that bygone Contract WITH America as
Don Trump / Corleone’s Contract ON America.

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Adam-12’s Finest v. Bedlam’s Worst

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Preface: Yeah… long sigh… I fully realize that TV Land and the Real World are two different creatures; that yearning for the merger of idealism and realism rarely, if ever, winds up as a wish come true. Still, we can hope for better days, can’t we?

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From September 21, 1968 until May 20, 1975, veteran policeman, Officer Pete Malloy (actor Martin Milner), and his rookie partner, Officer Jim Reed (actor Kent McCord), availed themselves of their professional training (backed up by their community building spirit and general street smarts), to conscientiously, honorably and courageously protect and serve the Los Angeles community. Typically, they were dispatched to respond to distressed citizens’ reports of violent crimes and frantic requests for help; arrived in a timely manner courtesy of their assigned patrol car, a.k.a. Adam-12; a.k.a. this TV cop drama series’ name.

Season 2 Episode 14 (titled Log 14 — S.W.A.T.) originally aired via the NBC TV network on January 24, 1970 / early evening; encored via the MeTV network on May 26, 2021 / late afternoon (just yesterday); where / when the following incident went down…

A sniper named Johnny Kursko (actor Thomas Bellin) is terrorizing a neighborhood in an urban section of the city. He is on top of a building that once housed a movie theater that the sniper worked at. It is later found out that he is an escaped fugitive from New York and he is shooting up the neighborhood as a way to get back at the people in the neighborhood who he holds responsible for the theater’s closing. Reed, Malloy and Detective Sgt. Gus Brown get into their SWAT gear and go after Kursko and try to get him without any further bloodshed. [read more here] [here too]

Brian Washington

And I’d add that Kursko is certifiably hardcore unglued; even wounding an elderly woman and attempting to kill an innocent child and his adorable pet dog. Additionally, my unsung hero award goes to Ron Thompson (actor Adam Wade) who not only risks his own life to rescue the wounded by Kursko motorcycle cop, Benson (actor Richard Geary), but also winds up providing the cops invaluable biographical info about a casual acquaintance of his, none other than sniper Kursko. Honorable mention award goes to Malloy who, to help defuse this tense altercation, pulls double duty in the role of the laid-back, layman shrink.

It’s during this episode’s closing scene that this viewer experienced his “Oh Wow” moment: mainly due to the fact that, few, if any of today’s militant cops (a.k.a. bedlam’s worst) would ever respond to the questions of the unnamed reporter (actor Morgan Jones) in this same manner. Check out the dialogue transcript, courtesy of MeTV, my aged VCR and taped over VHS cassette.

• Pardon me Officer, may I have your name please?
• Reed, Jim Reed.
• You’re the policeman who made the capture, aren’t you?
• Yes sir, I was one of them.
• Did he resist?
• Yeah, he resisted.
• He’s injured a number of people and killed at least one.
Personally, I think I’d have shot him.
• That’s not what I get paid for.
• You figure he’s sick? Is that why you let him live?
• No sir.
• You should’ve shot him and got it over with.
Why didn’t you? Give me one good reason.
• Because it wasn’t necessary.

Screenplay writers Robert A. Cinader / Jack Webb / Stephen Downing

BECAUSE IT WASN’T NECESSARY!

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Wild ’n’ Wooly & Willy-Nilly Weather

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Once this a.m.’s brief, sudden deluge had ended, I could not help but notice the deeply pooled rainwater surrounding the storm drain; flooding the road that runs past my humble home.

Venturing outdoors for a closer look-see, lickety-split, I found my mind flashing back to Michigan’s June 25, 1968 flash flood; a highly localized (right down to my own zip code) event. Had that particular, peculiar storm lasted much longer, it could’ve easily converted the most hardcore couch potato into some latter day, resourceful Noah; highly motivated “the robed one” to crack open his ark making tool box.

Having also recalled all the bygone associated property damage (inclusive of my boyhood Lionel toy trains), the back in the here and now, older, wiser, civic minded me suddenly got morphed into a Department of Public Works volunteer; ISO a tool to pull the plug, as it were. Duly inspired, I located, hauled out and repurposed my wintertime, pavement ice scraper.

Within a couple minutes, tops, I had broken up this massive accumulation of organic debris; the odd mix of shed Maple Tree seedlings, twigs and a neighborhood’s worth of power mower grass clippings; not to mention some in-car or on-foot passerby’s lost, silver barreled ballpoint pen.

Granted, in the grand scheme, the quick action of one (perhaps) over the hill man probably hadn’t amounted to a hill of beans.

However, upon factoring in how climate change turbocharged, wild and wooly, willy-nilly weather systems are becoming everyday occurrences… well…

Who knows what miracle some civically minded individual might work, someday; somewhere down the road?

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The SlimeLords of OutHouse Earth

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As a lifelong, steadfast, science adherent, over the course of the past sixteen months, my preexisting respect for our world’s pandemic professionals could only intensify. To CliffsNotes what I’ve learned from them:

Whenever / wherever folks impulsively and prematurely let down their guard, the opportunistic coronavirus has rushed in to fully exploit that unfortunate, unforgivable lack of resolve.

For the corroborating, damning evidence, reasonable people need look no further than the alarming worldwide Covid-19 infection and fatality spikes (past and present); in particular, within the United States, India and Brazil.

In other words, what that godforsaken Corona-V and HIS asshole, inbred, variant varmints have taught me is that THEY… NOT HUMANS… are the SlimeLords of OutHouse Earth. Sorry to coin such a phrase, but from the microbial POV, that’s, precisely, how they assess the damned dump. Beyond that, whenever THEY decide time is ripe to collect the rent, we wee mortals can wind up coughing up (our lungs); worst case scenario, wind up paying in full (with our very lives).

Alas, of late, my pandemic expert heroes have begun to (impulsively? prematurely?) minimize their own masking up / social distancing protocols; my word choice, indeed, intentional. To further drive home my point, let’s take a few secs to free associate several synonyms of “minimize”: belittle, downplay, make light of, pooh-pooh, etc.

That’s not too harsh an appraisal, either, seeing how when “The Suits” follow suit / let down their guard, too, they’ll need to rely on the easily exploited “honor system”; one where their hardcore antimasker, antivaxxer “Karen” customers will shamelessly lie about being inoculated; for the express purpose of satisfying their psychotic urges to go maskless.

True, the vaccines are becoming a game changer; playing a significant role in ushering in our return to a more normal life.

However, everything these experts have taught us, tells me that it’s not, yet, time to be letting down our guard. The last thing we need is for yet another variant to rear its ugly head; to get its (literal) choke hold on humanity. What if such a mutation winds up bamboozling the available vaccines, oh, say, one month, one week or even one day from now?

On a more uplifting note, just yesterday, I did manage to breathe a sigh of relief into my pandemic mask when I discovered how my fellow grocery shoppers (store employees, too) were not, yet, buying into shedding their masks; even though the proprietor had impulsively and prematurely torn down his entryway’s “you must mask up to shop here” signage.

Look, there’s nothing I’d love more than to be proven dead wrong. But, how is erring on the side of caution wrong? How does masking up and staying socially distanced harm anyone?

It’s the alternative that could be dead wrong; could even involve the permanent microbial overthrow of society; all “courtesy” of Corona-V and “his” variants; a.k.a. The SlimeLords of OutHouse Earth.

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A Smile is Just a Smile?

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Reacting nearly in real time, scant moments ago, as I was emptying my snail mailbox, a public sidewalk passerby glanced in my direction; the spontaneity of her radiant smile and friendly wave making my day.

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George Floyd (One Year Later)

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All citizens, sentient and civil, mourn for George Floyd; of course
We know there’s no way in Hell, we could ever endorse
That white racist cop / horse’s ass; high on his high horse
Who said, “Whoa!” to due process; spurred undue deadly force;
Whose knee snuffed out life / justice; sans microgram of remorse

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For countless other such victims; we grieve, too, of course
Be our locale bustling metropolis or town branded “One Horse”
To depose cops, demented; is the Step One we endorse
Step Two, vet job seekers, well; to create principled force
For, unless cops can feel human, we’ll feel buyer’s remorse

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Wave or Cave? (1 Quick Limerick #106)

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Corona containment Qs to interject:
Are revamped rules sane, sage, safe and correct?
Our hello wave to truths solid?
Or jello cave to pols squalid?
Will covid resurrect or genuflect?

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