Advice from a Maryland billboard: Never trust an electrician who has no eyebrows.
Eric Hovde is running against U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc) for her seat this November. He’s a shmuck. I’ll spare you having to look at a photo of him, but, rest assured, he looks like a shmuck. He stuck his foot in his mouth but good recently. The bank he heads, Sunwest, was named as a co-defendant in a lawsuit accusing a senior living facility the bank co-owns of elder abuse, negligence, and wrongful death. Brilliantly, he boasted of having expertise in the nursing home industry and, when suggesting the 2020 election was rigged, he drew on that experience and stated that nursing home residents “have a five-, six-month life expectancy,” and that “almost nobody in a nursing home is at a point to vote.”
In Wisconsin, people 65 or older make up 18% of the population and have a high propensity to vote. Many were offended by his idiotic statements. Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who is popular in the state since he played for a time with the Milwaukee Bucks, issued a statement essentially echoing Owl Chatter’s view that Hovde’s a shmuck. We are expecting that in November all those nursing home seniors with their meager life expectancies who don’t vote consign him to the ash-heap of history where he belongs.
I hope these two Tiny Love Stories from the NYT take that sour taste out of your mouths. The first is by Susannah Clark Matt and is about her dad.
“I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a Coke today.” The last words my father said to me. I had just brought him a Coke, fulfilling a raspy request from his deathbed. At first, I thought his offer was gibberish spurting from his rapidly progressing neurodegenerative disease. When I told my mom, she immediately understood — he was riffing on Wimpy’s catchphrase from the “Popeye” cartoon. In those final days, the one-liners kept coming: Could I get him anything? A winning lottery ticket. Anyone he wanted to see? Bob Dylan. He didn’t make it to Tuesday, but his debt had been repaid.
This next one is by Sarah Shebek, one of the beautiful young women pictured below, who met in the unlikely setting of a — well, let’s let Sarah tell the story.
“Our love story sounds straightforward: Meet at a Bible study in rural Missouri, fall in love on a service trip and marry after college graduation. The plot twist? We’re both women. Before we met, Alison and I had exclusively dated men. Our relationship moved quickly from friendship to love, so many around us thought it was a passing fling. We faced a mountain of skepticism from religious family members, but it melted into understanding over time. Now, 15 years and a child later, we choose each other time and again. To us, that’s the definition of a happy ending.”
What a beautiful notion: “We choose each other time and again.”
This poem was the Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day yesterday. It’s called “America, America,” and is by Saadi Youssef. I don’t know what the hell he’s saying (duh), but I like how he says it.
God save America,
My home, sweet home!
We are not hostages, America,
and your soldiers are not God’s soldiers…
We are the poor ones, ours is the earth of the drowned gods,
the gods of bulls,
the gods of fires,
the gods of sorrows that intertwine clay and blood in a song…
We are the poor, ours is the god of the poor,
who emerges out of farmers’ ribs,
hungry
and bright,
and raises heads up high…
America, we are the dead.
Let your soldiers come.
Whoever kills a man, let him resurrect him.
We are the drowned ones, dear lady.
We are the drowned.
Let the water come.
Damascus, 20/8/1995
Last Saturday’s puzzle was hard but had some wonderful stuff in it. At 31A: “Someone better call the fire department, because you just got burned!” The answer was an expression that was new to me: BOOM! ROASTED. Apparently, it was used in an episode of The Office, and is out there in the world.
Right below it in the puzzle, the clue was “Sentimental feelings,” and the answer was WARM FUZZIES. Below that was CRISPY BACON, and then BELCH. Ha!
13A: “Where you’ll find women out to drink?” The key word there is “out” and the answer was LESBIAN BAR. But before you get too excited, right below it was “Platonic outing:” FRIEND DATE. D’oh!
Would you know that the answer for “Chew the doors, e.g.” was SPOONERISM?
JC66 posted this:
“You won’t believe this,” he says to the bartender. “I was attacked by a leopard!”
“Really?”
“Yes! A leopard! In England!” The hiker sits down and orders the strongest liquor they’ve got. “I tried to run, but it was if course much faster than me.”
The hiker gets his glass, empties it, and asks for another. “It sent me to the ground with a mighty push from its paws, but weirdly enough it then just gave me a really sad look and left.”
“Ah, you met Father Andrews,” the bartender says, matter-of-factly.
“What do you mean?” asks the tourist, confused.
“Father Andrews was our priest. A truly kind-hearted man, loved by all. His only goal in life was to serve his congregation as well as he could. So when he one day found a lamp with a genie, his very first wish was to be a loving shepherd to the community.”
“That’s nice “
“Absolutely, if only he hadn’t been so prone to spoonerisms.”
At 29D, the puzzle got a little political: “National dish of Ukraine” was BORSCHT. It generated a back-and-forth.
First: To use the clue “National Dish of Ukraine,” and then pick the Russian spelling, really threw and disappointed me. Yeah, BORSCHT is the more common spelling of the word. But, as someone who speaks Ukrainian, I initially entered BORSHCH. Nitpicky, I agree, but a better clue might have been “Slavic Beetroot Soup.”
Then, this response: “Actually, Borscht is the English name for it, not a transliteration of the Russian (which would be Borsch), so it it seems fair—and identifying it as Ukrainian is a subtle dig at the Russians, which I appreciate.”
Happy Passover, everybody! See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 