Somebody's about to take it all away, but we don't know who they are, and millions of women are getting pasta next week. It's all coming true, and you heard it here first... Only MILFs need apply. Mothers’ Day is coming up and I checked out the ads to see what’s trending this year. So, based on the promotions I’m seeing, you’re in luck if you’re a mom who is 32 or younger, ridiculously hot, and have a four-year-old blond child who can afford to buy you a diamond pendant. For the rest of the moms, it’s macaroni art at best. Finished already? I really don’t understand all the fuss about the Kentucky Derby. All those people prepping for months, showing up in fancy clothes, competing for the best cuisine, and then the main event is over in two minutes. Reminds me of my honeymoon. Stop that…who? I know a bunch of successful guys who have this fear that is almost never front and center, but often buzzing in the background: Somehow, somebody is going to take it away. It’s almost never a specific somebody, but there is a sense of unease about success, that it is unearned or arbitrary and that it can disappear much more quickly than it arrived. I suspect I know even more people who are not as successful and have the same insecurity. That’s why it resonates when they’re told there are evil forces plotting to take away everything they have. If my successful friends can host that fear, how much more so for people who are less financially/socially/culturally secure? Smarter than Alfred. When you really think about it, Einstein’s most famous formula is actually pretty stupid, or at least as basic as it gets. We can measure mass and we can measure the speed of light, so E is just whatever MCC is. That’s no smarter than my special formula: Happiness = Beer times pizza. Are they commute-worthy? Speaking of formulas, we need a new calculation for declining an invitation when the time spent in transit is greater than the time spent at the actual event. I’m thinking one-to-one: two hours of transit for a two-hour movie or play or baseball game or summer festival; four hours for a wedding, bar mitzvah or any dinner with a really good cocktail hour. We’ll call it the commuter quotient and every host must accept it as a completely legitimate reason for rejection. Pre-forgiving the bad debt. Two of the biggest tsunamis on my social feeds last month were from people arguing about taxpayer subsidies for a new stadium for the Chicago Bears and student loan forgiveness. Shockingly, and by “shocking,” I mean “right on cue,” many people in favor of throwing taxpayer dollars at billionaire club owners are violently opposed to writing off debts for graduates who will never know the luxury of two-ply tissue. Taxpayers have been screwed over and over by sports teams and large corporations that promise huge financial returns that never materialize from “taxpayer investments,” but it’s a lesson we’ll learn at about the same time Charlie Brown stops flailing at the football. Intentionally idle. Quite often, the hardest thing to do is nothing, to wait it out, to refrain from getting in the middle and adding new complications. Some problems have no solution, some situations simply require time for resolution, and sometimes, just maybe, all our help just makes things worse. Also, “forbearance” sounds much more selfless than “laziness.” Pointed critique. I came back from a trip recently and I noticed that a quarter of my photos included people pointing at something. Mostly, it was the guides on our visit and I wanted the pictures to be a bit more dramatic, so I waited until they were gesturing before I took the shot. Someday, an archaeologist is going to look at my pictures and think we walked around all day pointing at things. It’s a lot like the selfies that will convince them we were always looking up and smiling, even though we appear to have had only one arm. You really think somebody likes me! Secretly, I love it when they tell us to silence our cell phones at the start of the movie. It feels so good to be included among those who might actually receive a phone call one of these days. We'll be visiting college graduation next week and you won't want to miss it, so be sure to click here to subscribe.
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There was this guy who I liked a lot who gave me a major boost in life, and then he screwed me royally and sent me on a major downward spiral. I miss him a lot, and I resent him like crazy, without any contradiction in having both emotions at the same time. There’s a guy I like a lot, although we disagree on almost everything and he has a tendency to lecture me about my lapses in judgment. Actually, there are a bunch of guys like that. Some think I’m too liberal and some think I’m too conservative and all of them know I’d be better off if I recognized the truth that only they possess and follow their lead. Relationships are complicated that way. We all have somebody in our lives, most likely several somebodies, who give and take, build and destroy, advance and retard. People will ask why we still engage with them and we’ll shrug and say there’s more positive than negative. At the same time, people will ask why they still engage with us and they’ll shrug and say there’s more positive than negative. And we’ll both be right about that balance. We forgive their trespasses and they forgive ours, because that’s what it takes to maintain a relationship. We tell the critics they don’t really know the person, when in fact they do, just as we do, and we let it go. We’ll save our vitriol and condemnation for some stranger who uses the wrong word in a post, because that’s who we are now, but we’ll let it slide for the people who make us laugh or make us feel safe or, at least, share some of their fries. Nothing’s going to change, at least 99.99% of the time, because we’re all human and have our opinions and we’ve mostly given up on the idea of bringing the other person into the light. And we live with it, or else we would have no friends at all. Because, let’s face it, we can’t find people who agree with us about everything, even if we dive into the deepest silo. Still, it does happen from time to time that an opinion changes and a position shifts. It’s seldom a U-turn, but no less real. The other guy is suddenly saying things closer to your view of the world and, while they’ll deny it, they’re finally, finally listening to reason. Yes, it’s rare, but it’s oh, so rewarding. Maybe they’ve grown as a human being, maybe my incredible wisdom is sinking in, maybe I’ve started a ripple effect that will change the world. And maybe I’m kidding myself. You never know. In the meantime, maybe they’ll share some of their fries. Just in case one of these unnamed people decides to save the world and gives me 100% credit for their transformation, you’ll want to be a subscriber who hears about it right away. Just click here to make it so. Look, I’m really sad for all the ink-stained wretches who are losing their jobs at every newspaper and magazine in the universe and I’m even sad for some of the talking heads on, um, what’s that…oh, right, the nightly news. And, yes, I know it’s a danger to our democracy when everyone is using AI to simply copy and rewrite everyone else’s reports and the only actual reporter left in the world is some guy named Jimmy who lives in his mom’s basement in Peoria. Sad as I am, though, they brought it on themselves, and I’m not referring to any political or cultural bias, real or imagined, that permeates their reporting. Nope, they brought it on themselves by being really stupid. News coverage is supposed to be about something new, which should be really obvious to everyone working in the NEWS business. Maybe we should call it the No, Duh Business or the Captain Obvious Business, though, because I’m not learning anything new these days. Instead, here are some of the news stories I’ve been reading over the past several weeks:
That gap isn’t limited to politics. I’m reading too many sports stories that provide color and background and opinions and projections, but I’ll search in vain for the final score of the game. How hard would it be to change “the Bears’ loss,” to “the Bears’ 43-6 loss” or “the Bears’ 57-6 loss” or “the Bears’ 63-3 loss?” I know the Bears lost, as always, but it would be useful to know how badly. Fortunately, we don’t simply whine about problems at Dad Writes. Well, mostly we whine and also moan and kvetch, but we also come up with solutions to the world’s woes, and the failing media are no exception. Here’s how to turn things around, if it’s not too late already:
What industry will we save next? Click here to subscribe and just watch for the news. . IRS agents are howling with orgasmic glee as they anxiously await your tax filing tomorrow and you’ve waited until the last minute in hopes that someone would give you the secret deets to save, save, save on what you owe. Are you crazy? Last year ended, well, last year, and you can’t do anything now to fix all the ways you screwed up in 2023. You know that by now, though, because you’ve been studying all the lame-stream media guides and every one of them mocks you for all the things you were supposed to do, but didn’t, when it could actually make a difference:
While you're waiting for all those updates, why not take a minute to click here to subscribe? The guy at the next table is explaining that it was a Secret Service agent—not Lee Harvey Oswald or the marching band on the grassy knoll—who killed JFK, and I cannot help but ignore my dinner companions to eavesdrop with intent. The story goes that a Secret Service agent pulled his gun after hearing the first shot and the weapon went off accidentally, firing the bullet that killed Kennedy. I had never heard this one, but there was a book about it and the agent sued the author over it and, well, does it even matter how all the court cases ended? The tale has survived and now I’m getting the inside info from one table over. The guy telling the story is holding court, doing about 99% of the talking at his table of six, and I cannot tell if his fellow diners are enthralled by the new insights or resigned to one more night of rambling. Nobody interrupts or argues with him, but I cannot guess what that means. Maybe they agree, maybe they know he won’t listen to reason, maybe they’re hoping he’ll pick up the check. You never know. Over at my table, I’m wondering why this guy landed on this particular theory about the JFK assassination. He had a couple hundred theories to choose from, but this is the one he’s sharing now and he seems to have forsaken all others. I’d argue that he’s a sap, falling for one more conspiracy/coverup story, but who am I to call him out? I’d have to reveal that I’d been eavesdropping on his table and, even more embarrassing, I’d be confirming to my friends that their stories aren’t nearly as interesting as his. Which they aren’t, of course, but I don’t want to hurt their feelings. Even worse, he could be right. That’s the problem with everything we know, or think we know. Except for a few experiences like brain freeze or stepping on a Lego brick, most of what we believe is based on a story we heard or read. We tell ourselves we don’t trust the media or politicians or big business or conspiracy theorists or whatever bogeyman/woman/person/they we choose to name. We’re lying, though, and we’re only fooling ourselves when we claim to be too smart to be fooled. In truth, we’re a bunch of saps and we’re such a big bunch of saps that we don’t even recognize what a big bunch of saps we are, which is really sappy. Yours truly is a case in point. I like to think I’m discerning and insightful, able to separate fact from fiction and burros from burrows.* As brilliant and wonderful and exceptional as I am, though, I’ve absorbed a heaping helping of misinformation over the years. I’ll do it again today. Between now and bedtime, I’ll read all kinds of stuff at various websites, including Fox News and the New York Times and Facebook and X. At the end of the day, I’ll have absorbed a new set of data points that will be mostly true and partly garbage. I’ll be better informed and more deluded at the same time, which would normally lead me to a Schrodinger reference, but I’ve used up my allotment for the month. Most of the facts bouncing around in my head are real, I think, but keeping the ledger clean is almost a full-time job. Credible media are in decline while the propaganda industry is growing faster than AI hype, so I’m spending way too many hours double-checking things I’ve read. Lately, I’m applying three screens to my news consumption:
*When I was working at United Press International, our style book noted that a burro is an ass, while a burrow is a hole in the ground, and everyone on the staff was expected to know the difference. Get more brilliant tips like this by clicking here to subscribe. Not only do oldsters write in a secret code called cursive, we’re also coming up with hip new lingo and a cure for short-term memory loss. Making it less of a drag getting old this week…
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Who writes this stuff?Dadwrites oozes from the warped mind of Michael Rosenbaum, an award-winning author who spends most of his time these days as a start-up business mentor, book coach, photographer and, mostly, a grandfather. All views are his alone, largely due to the fact that he can’t find anyone who agrees with him. Archives
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