dkSez : : : : : : Don Kahle's blog

Fifth Friday footnotes, follow-ups and far-flung fripperies:

• Do you have “touchless” Halloween giveaway plans? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of neighborhood revelry?
• I have a new theory about the Ducks’ football strategy. Winning games is less important than winning ratings. If they always keep the fourth quarter interesting, TV networks will nudge the playoff selection committee to include them.
• Old sheets feel better than new ones.
• Corner medical clinics that advertise “walk-ins welcome” are discouraging those with lower limb ailments.
• I think dogs dream and cats don’t.
• I’m told grandparenting is what makes parenting worth the trouble.
• Is it better to believe that you raised your children well or that you raised them thoroughly? (It’s an honest question.)
• Before you store your warm-weather clothes, empty the pockets first. You’ll thank me later.
• You should walk through your neighborhood occasionally. You’ll notice different details. You’ll also be seen differently.
• I need a mask clasp on my jacket sleeve, like what our mothers used to keep us from losing our mittens in grade school. How many times have I left my house maskless by mistake?
• I can see why those taller Sprinter vans are popular, but what took manufacturers so long? We haven’t suddenly gotten taller or more annoyed with bumping our heads.
• Beauty shared is beauty squared.
• People pay attention when I’m pithy. They get a thinking feeling. (Now read it again but without a lisp.)
• Next time you drive to the store, try choosing a parking space that isn’t closest to the front door. Park beside a car that’s the same color, or under a light pole,  or beside a stray shopping cart — anything but the single criterion you’ve always used. Report back.
• Power is not the coin of this realm. Not security. Even money — literal coin — is not. Stories (gathered, told, repeated) matter most.
• How long has it been since you uttered to word “nope”?
• Is it treason to unlawfully stop a traitor?
• When the world is your oyster, where will you find enough lemon-dill butter to enjoy it?
• Here’s what’s great about following college sports. These are 20-year-olds, give or take! Success comes from an unpredictable mixture of skill and drive that they haven’t fully learned to regulate.
• When you hear or see the word “avid,” what word do you expect next?
• Is it too much to ask for someone to know my vulnerabilities and not exploit them?
• Can I claim plural pronouns for a bit? I’m regrouping.
• Shop at the Self-Evident Store, where shorts are always half off, all watches arrive on time, and every hat sold reduces our overhead.
• Quantity is no substitute for quality, unless there’s enough of it.
• A boy who finds a needle will never look at haystacks the same way.
• At any given moment, 90 percent of the world’s babbling comes from brooks and babies. Fun fact!
• Acknowledge your fears. Don’t obey them.
• What if we woke every morning knowing whose dreams we appeared in overnight?
• I like my neighbor’s all-purpose greeting: “What’s good?”

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and archives past columns at www.dksez.com.

Extras:

• I talk like people write and I write like people talk. It’s an odd existence.
• “The Problem with Jon Stewart” is brilliantly named.
• How long before people start painting curbs near their house yellow because they don’t like others’ parking habits?
• I learned this from one of my business ventures. Google has run away with the email business. I ask otherwise random customers for their eddress (not a word, but it should be) and at least three-quarters use gmail.
• As long as we have bigots among us, complaint-based code enforcement will be discriminatory. ACLU?
• Obama learned too late that “shovel-ready” projects were seldom that. Child income credits are immediate and direct.
• What would it take for Eugene to become the most welcoming town in America for Afghan refugees? The kindness initiative didn’t really take hold, but this would give it teeth.
• I may not be thinking this one all the way through, but why don’t they make a toothpaste flavored like chocolate birthday cake?
• Essential, a company that has produced (almost) nothing has been purchased by Nothing, a company that has only one (non-essential) product. 
• My entire childhood was spent replacing D (and sometimes C) batteries. Now my life revolves around AAs (and sometimes AAAs). You?
• Did you know the original Dick Van Dyke Show theme song has lyrics, written by Morey Amsterdam? True!
• Do you know what “elgins” are? Look it up if you don’t already know the long and skinny of it.
• We should have been suspicious when stores popped up selling just one thing that’s designed to last years. Phone stores shouldn’t exist.
• Not all elected officials are “politicians,” strictly speaking. But every reelected official is.
• What if the most democratizing force available to us has nothing (or very little) to do with voting, elections, or democracy?
• Scientists have learned that COVID-19 is not transmitted as easily by touch as they originally assumed, but the fear was already imprinted. So we still have cups for clean pens and dirty pens.
• A choice involves its chooser. A decision does not. Anyone else would have made the same decision. No two people make the same choices.
• How much revenue is Starbucks missing by not promoting bone broth or some other late-afternoon drink for those sensitive to caffeine and sugar?

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