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

Old habits die hard, except the ones that don’t die at all. For the last 15 years, I’ve been offering you Fifth Friday Footnotes, Follow-Ups, and Far-Flung Fripperies. Before that, it was a decade of Quips, Queries, and Querulous Quibbles. Here now, without apologies or improvements, Spare Sunday Scraps, Syllogisms, and Superfluous Sagacities:

• The Downtown Riverfront Festival was lovely. Too bad they didn’t just reclaim it as the Eugene Celebration.

• Checkout people are either friendly or fast. I wish they wore different colored hats.

• President Biden was born before the last four occupants of the Oval Office, dating back to 1993.

• I want to be useful, but not used up.

• My accountant had a wild plan, but I talked him off that ledger.

• How come we don’t use “how come” anymore to ask why?

• I’m lactose tolerant.

• Envy blocks happiness.

• Imagine the bad luck our country would have if the 4th of July ever landed on a Friday the 13th.

• At what point did anyone believe that Donald Trump was hinged?

• How do we keep our own comfort from disempowering our calls for change?

• Don’t you hate it when you aim for the indescribable and only achieve the remarkable?

• Regarding the recent SCOTUS ruling, a confusion: Is it “Roe VEE Wade” or “Roe VERSUS Wade”?

• It doesn’t matter whether you row or wade if the safe shore feels too far away.

• Twenty-three—year-old: “Do you know about TikTok?” Me: “I’m old, not dead.”

• Sadness and unhappiness are not the same.

• I can’t remember my last gambit.

• I don’t always want what I want to want.

• Which cooking utensil do you consistently use the most?

• What would it take for every Internet button labeled “SUBMIT” to be replaced with something less foreboding?

• How did mothers get their babies to spoon feed before there were airplanes?

• With every hook and line, get a sinker free!

• Early adopters aren’t allowed to keep their children forever.

• Anything that stays the same is slowly getting worse.

• Why is my podiatrist’s office on the second floor?

• Life begins at conception and ends at target practice.

• Eugene has more skybridges than escalators. That must mean something.

• Mean girls are average. Same with boys.

• Defense attorneys and copy editors both aim for shorter sentences.

• At a coffee shop entrance: “If unvaxxed, please mask.” Subtext: We’d rather not kill you. This seems about right.

• Our mothers loved us, but they overdid the “stranger danger” lesson.

• Most of us grew up hearing “waste not, want not” or “easy come, easy go.” Never both.

• Track stars obsess over measurements. No wonder so many are measured.

• If happiness equates with stability and sameness, I’ve probably disqualified myself.

• Will the metaverse come slowly or all at once? What good might come if a significant few of us refused in advance to participate?

• I really only want to make a difference. And I don’t mean that in the yearbooky sort of way. Using the last bit of shampoo in a bottle makes me feel accomplished.

• Self-immolation is bad but self-preservation can be worse because it’s unending.

• I had a fever dream that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos combined visions. An electric fleet delivers the Washington Post, Whole Foods milk, and your daily mail every morning before dawn.

• Most of what we call empathy is its opposite — unconscious projection.

• Most utopias are ruined for me by utopians.

• We replaced handshakes with elbow bumps around the same time we stopped sneezing into our hands. We should have changed either but not both.

• Why is POSTED the largest portion of most No Trespassing signs?

• Beauty is not created. It emerges.

• Who discovered the unnerving versatility of “We apologize for the inconvenience”?

• Liberals should fly American flags and welcome the confusion.

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

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