Merry month.

Ah, the merry, merry month of May! The hydrangeas are looking great!

The trees are unfurling their leaves!

The--- huh?

A Christmas wreath still up in May?

Now, as we all know, I never engage in Santa shaming on this site, except when I do. I saw a house in a nearby town all lit up with Christmas lights the first week of March; did I post about it here? No. Another home had its big snowman out on the porch a couple of weeks after that; did I write about it? Nyetski. But THIS...!

A couple of years ago I was stunned enough to see a Christmas tree in February that I had to puzzle out the possible reasons for its adhesiveness. Now I do the same with this wreath, which is even more mysterious (and late into the year). Could its continued presence be due to...

1) Laziness? No way. I've seen this dad at the yard work and he's scary determined. Man's planted huge trees by himself. A couple died so he ripped them out and did a better job next time. Not lazy.

2) Difficulty of removal? But how? There's a window right there; no giant ladder needed. Maybe tricky to get up but should be easy to remove.

3) Coverage of damage? There's what, a rip in the vinyl siding? But this house is maybe four years old. I don't think so.

4) Unnatural emotional attachment? To a giant Christmas wreath? But all the rest of the decorations went down promptly in January. Who gets emotional over a wreath?

5) Lack of storage space? It's not that huge. You could put it in a big yard bag. No room in the house? Leave it in the backyard. Sure, it'd still be outside, but people would know that you don't think it's December.

6) .....? Something else I haven't thought of? I dunno; what've you got?

Maybe I'll never know.

Of course, I could go up to the front door and ask them. But I'd never do that. No, I hate to be nosy.

Re-Guru-ted.

"Yes, sorry about the move, but I got to thinking, 'If I'm so wise, why am I freezing my hinder off on this mountain?"'

Inspired by a discussion of great cartoon tropes earlier this week at Lileks's site.

Explosive beverage!

I'm gonna come right out and admit that this scared me a little.

So what we have here is a bottle of water -- not too scary on its surface, unless you're an anti-plastics environmentalist -- called Hello Water, from an outfit called Hello Beverages. This makes a lot more sense than them calling themselves Hello Sand Mix. 

This particular bottle (Dance) was infused with mango and orange flavors; other flavors available are Cucumber Lime (Love), Mixed Berry (Smile), Pineapple Coconut (Live), and Lemon Lime (Laugh). No sugar. Just lots of verbs. So far, so good. 

It's the "fiber infused" label that startled me.

Yes, that's right; each bottle of Hello Water has 5 grams of dietary fiber. That's 20 percent of your recommended fiber intake for the day.

You'd expect it to have particulate matter, like bits of shredded wheat or kale, floating around, but I see nothing.

Where did they hide it? And what will it do to me?

Why "DANCE"? Why do companies want me to keep dancing around the frigging house? Just like the damn yogurt people. Stop it! I WILL NOT DANCE! And if I would, I would not dance because you added fiber! Oh, wait, unless the fiber causes some kind of weird St. Vitus' Dance symptoms! Maybe I'll wind up doing a buck-and-wing all the way to the bathroom. I MAY NOT HAVE ANY CHOICE IN THE DANCING 😱

Let's calm down and start at the top: Why fiber in water, of all places?

The FDA always says we Americans don't get enough fiber in our diets, and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics notes that it's especially important as we get older. And we're getting older. In less than two decades, older adults will outnumber children for the first time in American history. And what will all these oldsters need?

Fiber.

No surprise that General Mills introduced the Fiber One line of cereal products in 1985, when the first Baby Boomers turned 40.

But: Fiber water? Just how clogged up are we, America?

I tried it -- NOT BEFORE CHURCH. We only have two bathrooms at the main church, the one that the kids and ol' folks occupy constantly and the secret one in the sacristy that I'd only use in an emergency.

I wasn't taking chances. I drank it when I knew I'd be at home the rest of the day.

"Dance" tasted good enough. Mangoey, orangey, fine, like those no-calorie flavored seltzers but without the fizz. But where is the fiber? How does Hello Water have fiber with no actual fibers? You don't have to shake the bottle, so I guess it doesn't settle. It didn't feel chunky on the palette. 

Well, they say its fiber is derived from chicory root, but that doesn't answer my question. Is it microscopic microfiber fiber? Perhaps so; apparently the inulin from chicory root is a type of sugar and also a type of fiber. Mind = blown. So that's why it's a 10-calorie drink as well as one with fiber.

It did not cause explosive gas or the need to charge to the head. I was a little disappointed; not that I was clogged up, or wanted to do a practice run for colonoscopy prep, but I wanted some kind of reaction in the name of Science! And I thought something should have gotten going. The bottle has just half as much fiber as a 3/4 cup serving of Uncle Sam cereal, and almost as much as a half-cup serving of Grape-Nuts. So what happened to the earth-shattering kaboom?

Maybe it's because I'm just a regular guy.

Would it be useful in times of constipational distress? I would imagine so, even if its fiber is not the kind that really gets the motor running. Chugging a bottle of water always helps when things are not motile. And the flavor makes it less boring than regular water.

So is Hello Water a good product for you?

Could be. Depends on your situation. Are you good to go, or are you solid as a rock? My fellow citizens, you have to ask yourself -- are you going to the American, or are you going to the American't?

Workers.

Today is a day that the Universal Church celebrates one of its great saints, one very important to me, St. Joseph. His traditional feast day is March 19, of course, but today we celebrate St. Joseph the Worker, in honor of his role as supporter and protector of the Holy Family and to stick it to the Reds.

May Day is of course the day that the International Godless Commies chose for their big holiday, so the Church decided that A) the workers of the world ought to have a holiday but B) Commies are godless and cruel and so there ought to be a better choice for the workers on that same day. Or in other words, "to foster deep devotion to Saint Joseph among Catholics, and in response to the 'May Day' celebrations for workers sponsored by Communists, Pope Pius XII instituted the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker in 1955."

Back in 1955 the Church understood that these God-hating Year-Zero types were no friends of Jesus, however many smiley faces they plastered on their violent plans for world domination. I'm not so sure the Church is as rigorous in this understanding anymore.

I suppose this is a day to celebrate the worker, then, which Labor Day is not anymore. Labor Day is now the day to celebrate the barbecue and the closing of the beach house. So, let's celebrate today. Yay, workers!

So in honor of St. Joseph the Worker, here's ten Dad Jokes about working from around the Web for you:

🔨 I can’t believe I got fired from the calendar factory. All I did was take a day off.

🔨 Some people say the glass is half full. Some people say the glass is half empty. Engineers say the glass is twice as big as necessary.

🔨 To the guy who stole my copy of Microsoft Office: I will find you. You have my Word.

🔨 The Invisible Man got a great job offer but turned it down. He couldn't see himself doing it.

🔨 I got a job as the director of Old MacDonald's Farm. Yeah, I'm the CIEIO.

🔨 Our IT guy got mad because I downloaded all of Wikipedia. I said, "Wait, I can explain everything."

🔨 There was a terrible explosion at the French cheese factory. Nothing left but de brie.

🔨 My pal Fred just wrote a history of Krazy Glue. I can't put it down.

🔨 Want to hear a joke about construction? I'm still working on it.

🔨 They told me my son, the road crew manager, was a kleptomaniac. I refused to believe it. But when I got to his house, all the signs were there.


You know, maybe it's just as well that we have no record of anything St. Joseph ever said. No wonder he's considered the model father.

And how was your day?

Did you have a lousy Monday? I hope not. Mine was just okay. I was busier than a cramped-up blogger at a metaphor-writin' contest, but the Sisyphean tasks I'm on at the moment didn't show any significant progress. I wish I worked in Hollywood, where you don't have to work to get paid. In fact, they seem to pay you more.

But I shall complain no longer, for a story from 2017 was brought to my attention recently, about an officer in Minnesota who had a bad night on the beat. It seems that Brad Browning and another officer got into a scuffle with a knucklehead named Hietala who had outstanding warrants. Browning's fellow officer pulled out the ol' Taser, aimed... and shot Browning by mistake.

It got worse:

Hietala immediately fled, running through the neighborhood with Browning in pursuit. By the time Hietala hid between two garages in an alley, a Clay County sheriff’s deputy had arrived with a police dog. The dog was cut loose, but instead of biting Hietala, it bit Browning, the police report said.

It's not a good thing when your life turns into a Looney Tune. I wonder if they call him Brad E. Coyote now. Good thing for him that the Piano & Anvil Squad didn't show up to help with the collar.

My other new hero is Tsutomu Yamaguchi, an engineer for Mitsubishi. Perhaps you've heard of him. He accomplished an amazing feat -- by showing up for work twice.

The first time he was on a business trip, just about to leave the city and head home. It was August 6, 1945. He was in Hiroshima.

Yamaguchi was thrown through the air by the shock wave by the freaking atom bomb that fell on the city, and got burned and pretty roughed up, but all things considered, and compared to most of his countrymen in the city, he was in good shape. He spent the night in a shelter and managed to get to the train station the next day, having heard that some trains were running.

This guy, who'd just had the first atomic bomb used in war dropped on him, was going back to his home office to go to work. So remember that next time you call in with the sniffles.

Oh, and the home office? In Nagasaki.

Yes, Tsutomu Yamaguchi was the only human being confirmed by the Japanese government to have survived both atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Not only that, he lived to the age of 93. Hell, if two A-bombs can't stop you, you deserve to live a long time. I'm almost surprised anything could kill him.

So remind me of these guys the next time I complain about work. I'm on velvet here. No one seems to want to drop a nuke on me at the moment, nor sic the K-9s on me, nor friendly-fire a Taser at my behind.

But I'm watching out for the Piano & Anvil Squad. Don't trust those guys a bit.

Laid to rest.

The people in my neighborhood are crazy.

At least that's what I was thinking a few days back. Not because of my immediate neighbors, the Hellbound Cable Thief on one side, the Dysfunctionals on the other. Nor was it the fact that every single one of us is constitutionally incapable of following simple rules for recycling. (Whether you believe it's legit or not, if you're gonna bother to do it, at least try to do it right.)

No, I was thinking this because someone seemed to think this was just fine to leave out for our garbage men.

This photo of the mountain of home furnishings does not begin to do it justice. There was a second, bigger TV and a huge iron frame and an entire sofa, for example. TV sets are not considered appropriate for trash pickup; grills, sofas, and bureaus probably cause consternation as well. I couldn't believe someone would just put this enormous pile out as is.

I should have known there was more to the story.

A few weeks after the stuff was carted off -- and it was, although it took the trash men a couple of different collections -- the people in the house disappeared. The driveway, which had had a boat and a plateless car rusting away for years, was suddenly empty. Closer examination a couple of days later showed a notice on the front door that appeared to indicate the property had been secured for nonpayment of debt (or possibly taxes). In which case the town may have arranged to have the stuff hauled away by the company that does our garbage collection.

None of this should have come as a surprise to me. I'm sure it didn't to people who live closer and are even nosier and more likely to notice than no one in the place ever seemed to go to work.

The house is in very sad shape. It needs paint, but that's like saying the Titanic needed to be patched up a little. God knows what the inside looks like. Whoever takes the property over may just flatten it and build anew. Although they ought to know that it may be haunted.

Yep -- no lie; a man was murdered in that house. That's 100% true. One night when we'd been here a couple of years, the police came stopped by to ask if we'd seen anything. We hadn't, but the killer was caught, so rest easy, citizens.

It's a sordid tale for another time.

I suspect most or maybe all of the stuff that was dumped had belonged to the dead man. It looked old enough.

As for the person who moved in, a distant heir of the victim, I guess he never had the dough to do upkeep, let alone pay his taxes. Or perhaps the ability. One of the things left behind when the rest of the trash was hauled away, along with some broken glass and bits of cardboard, were a couple of Tramadol in the blister packs that expired in 2013. Probably got lost in the sofa. I found them while walking one of the dogs and flushed them down to Davy Jones's locker. Glad I got them and not one of the local kids.

What does this have to do with me, aside from providing me with the plot for my next book (The Haunted Garbage Pile)? Nothing, except I have a mattress to dispose of, and if the garbage truck will take that giant pile, I guess I can leave my mattress out. Nothing in the town's notice on trash collection that prohibits mattresses, just the usual dangerous stuff like refrigerators. And TV sets.

I got a new mattress to replace the old one in the guest room, where I love to take naps because the dogs can't find me. Following the advice of Lewes and others from the comments section of the site of the Great Lileks, I got a bed-in-a-box type mattress from Amazon (I was at the tail end of a free Amazon Prime trial, so what the hell). If you've never gotten a mattress this way, I recommend it. It's amazing. The mattress comes in a box that's way too small for a queen-size mattress, rolled up and pressed as flat as a respectable potholder. As soon as it is unrolled and unfolded and the plastic cover is cut, it begins to inflate. It's like a slow-motion version of an emergency inflatable raft going off. Laura Petrie would be fascinated.

I haven't tried out the mattress yet, as you have to let it sit in place for 48 hours to recover from the smush-down it got in the factory. But it looks pretty good.

Trash day is tomorrow, so the old mattress leaves (I hope) in the morning. Do not worry, trash collectors: my garbage is free of all tormented spirits. I'm the only tormented spirit that ever laid on that mattress.

Top 10 Surprises in Avengers: Endgame!

Spoiler nonalert!

1. Thor unveils an ancient Asgardian fighting technique known as the Hyperborean Wedgie.

2. Tony Stark? Gay as old Paree.

3. Kevin Zavian on Antiques Roadshow estimates the value of the stones on Infinity Gauntlet as "Maybe two thousand bucks; there's some damage and flaws, and the color is a little wonky. But the provenance is good."

4. Rocket Raccoon is appointed to lead an important mission, known as the Raid on the Garbage Cans on Lintel Street.

5. Groot returns as a sunflower. He feels pretty.

6. Captain America admits to using anabolic steroids; the FDA promises to investigate the claims on his infomercials for Cappy's Protein Shakes.

7. Black Widow and Captain Marvel are infuriated when they show up to the apocalypse in the same outfit.

8. The Avengers' custodial force unionizes while they're gone; picket lines have formed around the building.

9. There is a secret Seventh Stone that Thanos knows nothing about. This "Plot Stone," found in a gumball machine in Peoria, nullifies the power of the other stones, allowing Ant-Man to punch Thanos out.

10. Nick Fury wakes up in the apartment he shares with Dorothy Gale and Bob Hartley and stuns them with his amazing, weird dream.