Enotes

Tell me, do some things seem smaller than what you remember, or did they just seem bigger because YOU were small? Probably a little bit of both. But you can strap me to a lie detector, make me swear on a stack of Bibles, and have me stand on the grave of my father. In all instances, I'll tell you that the Good Humor bar is smaller than it once was. This isn't another example of a bug-eyed kid whose recollection, as an adult, has become skewed over time. Grab me a rosary and stick it in my hands. Make me look my mother right in the peepers. Threaten to swipe my first (and only) born if I'm lying. The Good Humor bar is shrinking. This atrocity made itself present in our home last week. My lovely wife came home with two boxes of Good Humor bars -- Toasted Almond and Chocolate Eclair -- and it was enough to make me undress her with my stomach. First, I must enlighten the babes among my readers. The older folks, bear with me. This won't take long. The Good Humor ice cream tr...

So Oprah Winfrey is sharing the cover of her magazine. Finally. It's not enough that she has a TV show Mondays thru Fridays. Not enough that she's now become one of those one-name celebrities, who could just sign a check "Oprah" and every bank in the country would know it came from her. Not enough that she has a magazine that sports her initial. The Big O. There are three Big Os that I've known in my life. There was basketball great Oscar Robertson. There's that thing that the luckiest of women sometimes get to enjoy. And there's Oprah. For a lot of women, Oprah takes care of that other Big O, I think -- the one not involving Oscar Robertson. No, it hasn't been enough for Ms. Winfrey, all that. She has to stick herself on the cover of every danged issue of "O" Magazine. I've always thought that was weird. What kind of insatiable ego needs to be splashed on the cover of every issue of her own magazine? What kind of ego needs to HAVE their ...

The Post Office is about to go out of business. Well, not exactly, but they're hurtin', for certain. The postmaster general says the mail folks are hemorrhaging money, and layoffs are in the offing. Unless, get this, we can go down to five days delivery per week. Now, the punch line. There's actual debate going on as to what day gets lopped off the schedule. Altogether now: SATURDAY...DUH!!! I wouldn't miss mail on Saturdays, not one iota. To be truthful, if it wasn't for the fact that as a freelancer I depend on the mail to deliver my checks, I wouldn't miss the mail at all. Not much good has been coming from the letter carrier these days. But to even vascillate over which day to NOT deliver mail? That seems kinda kooky, to me. Why on Earth would you consider any day OTHER than Saturday? You mean you'd actually consider a day during the work/business week? Now that's just plain nuts. Checks, as I mentioned, come in the mail, for those of us not adorned ...

It's never too early to think about the next presidential election. So says me. But it's pretty much a fact anymore. Folks start running for president in their minds like right about now, then run for president among their closest confidantes about a year from now, and then run for president publicly a year after that, if not sooner. 2012 will be here before you know it. The first quarter of 2009 is almost done, to show you. Easter beckons and I'm still thinking that I just handed out Halloween candy a few weeks ago. So I reckon the Republicans better get someone cleaned up, pressed and dressed. Soon. Because if things don't change, Barack Obama will make the Nixon-McGovern thing look like a nailbiter. A trip around the GOP... Eric Cantor? The dweeb from Virginia? Please. Bobby Jindal, the boy governor from Louisiana? Not after he channeled Mister Rogers in his rebuttal to Obama's almost-State of the Union speech last month. Arnold Schwarzenegger? Go ahead and chang...

If I didn't have a wife, a daughter, and the need to earn a living, I believe I could survive with two things: a used bookstore, and a bathroom. And maybe a chair. But don't go searching for one on my account. I have a thing for used bookstores. Seriously. Some folks, when they arrive in a new town, seek out a cool bar or a trendy restaurant. Or a copy of USA Today . I go looking for the nearest used bookstore. Oh, I've done that -- so don't go calling me a liar. I've done it in St. Louis, New York, and Chicago. And I'd do it in Peoria and Fort Myers and Altoona, if I ever found myself in those burgs. It's daycare for me. If you ever need to ditch me while you go off with other, more exciting people -- like, say, for a week or two -- then simply drop me at the steps of the nearest used bookstore and have yourself a great time in my absence. But I'm warning you -- I'll fight you to the death when it's time for me to leave. I don't even know wh...

Was watching the idiot box the other day -- that would be the television for those born after 1980 -- and the actress Kate Hudson flashed on the screen. It was one of those moments when the thoughts broke out of their prison cell in my brain and tumbled out of my mouth. "Boy, she looks just like her mom," I said, referring to Goldie Hawn. No one else was in the room, so my observation went unabated. Then I thought -- well, yeah, who else would she look like? We do that all the time, you know. Doesn't even have to be anyone famous, either. We seem to be shocked when children have physical traits of one or both of their parents. "My, you look JUST LIKE your dad!" "She's a spitting image of her mom!" "She's got his eyes and her mouth." Gee, I hope so! Seems as if we should be more put out if kids DIDN'T look like their folks. That's when the eyebrows should be raised. But you'd be a candidate for Miss Manners' Ten Most Wa...

I'm not sure where I sit on the fence of gun control, but the next time you see one of them fire by itself, let me know. I'm all for folks being able to defend themselves, lawfully -- even if the notion of having a firearm in the house scares the bejeebers out of me. But the Constitution says we can possess them. Only 200 years later and some change did we add some things about needing to prove that you weren't insane, etc. before you were allowed to purchase one. Somehow a whole bunch of crazies, though, seem to have guns these days. A family gunned down by an estranged husband of one of the victims. A quartet of Oakland police officers, two of them SWAT, riddled with bullets by an ex-con with an assault weapon. Three of them dead, a fourth feared brain dead. Another family wiped out by its patriarch, despondent over finances. And that was just last week. What in the name of Chuck Heston is going on around here? Not that it would be more tolerable if these shooters were ar...