Blessed Mess

Every time our Marietta Times subscription comes up for renewal, I look deep into my soul for answers. There are so many times when I wonder why I pay $135 a year for this paper. Let us just say that we are not politically aligned with the local rag. One of the reasons I miss having a parrot: I used to take great delight in putting the Op-Ed page, with its featured columnists Jonah Goldberg and Michelle Malkin, under Charlie's perch. Bullseye.

Then there are the articles like the one to the left of this photo, detailing the escapades of a Marietta man who, let's see, drove his stepson's girlfriend home (because the stepson was in jail for driving without a license), and then "somehow ended up driving the girl home and spent the night." Doing bad things.

It all gets numbing, what makes the papers around here. It's like living near Pederast Central, to read this paper. Blecch.

And then there are the stories and pictures that make my heart leap. You'll excuse me my honestly acquired German heritage of Schadenfreude (taking pleasure in the misfortune of others) for a moment, I hope. Here is a semi loaded with used cooking oil, which looks chunky and nasty when the driver puts a wheel off the pavement edge and spills it on Glendale Road.

Gaag.

And here is what Jasmine Rogers, Times photographer, captured.

Well played, Ms. Rogers.  The Lord sometimes works in mysterious ways.

Things That Make Me Laugh

My hometown newspaper, which makes me laugh for all the wrong reasons. I have a file three inches thick of stuff like this.

iPads have spell check, right? Can they do anything about stupid?

An accidental protuberance. I got one of these on my wedding day, but it was on my chin. 

A pepper given to me by my friends Zane and Margaret, via my neighbor Beth.

It's not a big pepper.

but it is an impudent one.

Lest you think that this is an unusual specimen, think again. They're all like this.

They were brought to Zane, an ophthalmologist, by one of his elderly patients. 

Clearly an heirloom variety of the highest order. Saving the seeds. Definitely growing this one next year.