Ten Miscellaneous Pithy Observations

1. If I was super-rich, I'd start my own railroad. It would connect the following towns: Bunkie, LA; Shunk, PA; Shawshank, ME; and Shenk, OH. The purpose? So I could tell folks there was such a thing as the Bunkie-Shunk-Shawshank-Shenk Railroad.

2. I once tried to write a Pogues-style Irish punk tune. I never finished it, but I thought one line was promising: "A thousand drunken Micks/ With rotten yellow teeth/ Brawlin' in the streets of Skibbereen." I'm excused the ethnic slur because I'm a drunken, yellow-toothed purebred Mick meself.

3. Chow dogs (the fuzzy guys with blue tongues) were raised in China for both fighting ability and for... flavor! And, incidentally, they almost became extinct by the year 1900. Why? Because foreigners had imported pit bulls to China for "sporting" purposes, and within a few years the pit bulls had killed almost all available Chows in the ring... kinda like Dutch Elm disease wiping out all our elm trees.  

4. If I was President, I'd force people to choose ethnically appropriate first names for their children. That's because I'm fed up with  the prevalence of trendy WASPy names like "Cameron," "McKenna," and "Campbell." It's even worse when you end up with a "Campbell Hudzinski," "Morgan Protuchniak," or a "Mackenzie Bolducci." If you're Italian, name your kid "Guido" or "Luigi." Polish? Try "Stanislaus" or "Casimir." Irish? "Bridget" or "Patrick." Get the picture?

5. Fun fact: the Public School System of New York City, on a per-student basis, has 67 times as many administrators as does the Catholic School System of the Archdiocese of New York. 

6. My former Mother-In-Law once made a remark referring to a song about "Jerky People." Turned out she meant the song "Cherokee People" by Paul Revere and the Raiders, and thought the refrain was "Jerky people,/ Jerky tribe!"

7. When I began 8th Grade, we Higginses were poor enough to qualify for the Free Lunch program. I desperately sought to hide that from the other kids, especially loudmouths like Steve Yevchak (who was actually not a bad kid). To make things worse, we moved that October to a notorious low-income housing project in Binghamton (Ely Park).

8. The worst movie I have ever seen-- by far-- is "Jesus Christ Superstar." In fact, it's so bad that it's utterly magnificent; you've gotta see it. The worst song ever made is Elton John's version of "Candle in the Wind" memorializing Princess Di. I couldn't think of a horrible enough death for Elton John.

9. My father has always referred to Baptists as "Baptoids." I was in high school before I finally realized there was no such word.

10. My hometown, Binghamton, has become a hellhole, like most of upstate New York. It used to be a nice place to live, but now I'm terrified to drive down certain streets that I walked as a kid. Thank you for leaving us, IBM!