Out for a JOG.

Another trash day, another chance to play JOG, or Judging Others' Garbage. And we have some good ones today! 

Uh-oh! A mirror! Notice that the owner carefully places it out on the curb. He does not want to be cut to bloody ribbons by shattered glass. But he's perfectly fine with letting the garbagemen take the chance. After all, they use one of those rear-loader trucks that periodically require shuffling garbage into the interior, which means there's got to be shattered glass involved at some point. Good luck, trashmen! 

I suppose I could mention that this also will subject the garbagemen to seven years of bad luck for breaking a mirror. Why seven years? Well, according to Barry Markovsky at the University of South Carolina, the Greeks and Romans had various superstitions related to a person's reflection, and when the Romans developed quality glass mirrors, they transferred the bad-luck juju to the breaking of the reflective surface. It should have meant bad luck for life, but the Romans also "believed that the body renewed itself every seven years," so there was a statute of limitations. Which is interesting, because in fact all the atoms in the human body are replaced in seven years (most in the first year), and yet the human consciousness continues seamlessly, which makes it seem like the Romans were onto something. 

Man, Bumble's had it. I've seen him around for years, but he's toast. Him and his empty box of Christmas cheer. And you know why? Because if you look closely, you'll see that Hermy did not remove the teeth of this Bumble. That's right -- because he was not rendered harmless, Yukon Cornelius had to kill this Bumble. Blew his arm right off. It's too sad. I can't go on. 

Quoting from the town's announcement vis-a-vis furniture: "Bulk/Large Item pick-up begins the 1st Thursday in April; it will end the last Friday in December 2023." Yeah, but this is just one little chair, right? They can squeeze that in. Sure, they can. Or at least, after you've polished off that case of Stella you probably would think so. 

So there I go again, Judgey McGarbageface, judging everyone's poor refuse behavior. What are you putting out on YOUR curb? 

Lucky strikes.

There's an old saying in sports, especially baseball, that it's better to be lucky than good. That may seem odd, since you can't even play the game unless you develop some consistency with the needed skills. The point, however, is that even the best skills will fail sometimes, but good luck by definition never does. Although unlike skills, good luck will abandon you without warning.

But what is luck, anyway?

In the Silver Age Justice League of America comic, the League was menaced by a scientist named Amos Fortune, who discovered that humans had a "luck gland" -- yeah, I know, I know -- and that manipulating this very rational, very scientific biological feature could give him unbeatable good luck and the League terrible luck. 

Comics have had a number of other characters whose abilities are luck-based, or to make it more sciencey sounding, they had the ability to influence probabilities. Originally Marvel's Scarlet Witch was not a magician, but rather a mutant with the ability to influence probabilities. Domino is another mutant with luck powers, but since she keeps getting killed, I'm not sure how lucky she actually is. 

Definitely the most interesting use of a fictional lucky character I know was Teela Brown, the luckiest known person in the galaxy, brought along on a very dangerous mission to the Ringworld (in Larry Niven's classic science fiction novel) simply because of her massive good fortune. That was it. She had absolutely no other qualification to be on that mission. It's as if they stuck a lottery winner on Apollo 11, just in case. It's impressive to see the way her suspected good fortune plays out (or does it?) in the course of the story. 

In a rational sense, luck is nothing more than numerical chance coming together in a particular time and place. It feels like a blessing, and one that can be influenced by totems or chants, but it's just the way things shake out. Little about probability feels normal. If probability says I'll get heads 50 coin flips out of 100, and I flip 50 heads in a row, there's still just a 50% chance of tails on the next flip. Tails isn't "due." It doesn't work that way, although it feels like it ought to. 

All the same, is that coin normal? I'd check. 

While the Christian is expected to believe in Providence, and that those of a mathematical bent should study probability, he is not supposed to believe in lucky objects or gods of luck. That's paganism, and it's usually invoked in places like the poker table, and it's right out. Sacramentals (crosses, medals, etc.) are intended as a means of keeping us focused on Him from whom all good things come. They are not lucky charms, even if worn with frosted oat cereal. (It should be noted that there are curses and blessings in disguise in this life, and one needs to exercise the virtues of prudence, temperance, and justice to handle the good and bad that come one's way.)

But if there is really such a thing as luck, I think the best kind has to be dumb luck. Dumb luck is so completely out of the blue, so totally unmerited by the recipient, that he can take no pride in receiving it. A man who has been fortunate in business can thump his chest about his smartness and dedication, but a man who finds a Rembrandt in the attic of an abandoned building cannot. He may pat himself on the back for acting promptly to secure his rights to the property, but he certainly can't puff himself up as being a genius for his investment skills. 

Dumb luck is as rare as red diamonds, and should always be appreciated with humility, even if it's just a trick of probability. Now, is that a two-headed penny, or what?

Straight as a two-dollar bill.

Got my hands on one of these old beauties while collecting money for a cause last week. You certainly don't see a lot of $2 bills in circulation anymore. 

The United States originally issued two-dollar bills along with the other paper currency after the Legal Tender Act in 1862, and continued to do so until 1966. They always featured Thomas Jefferson, so were sometimes called Toms. The bill never seemed to be as popular as ones, fives, and tens, though, and were thus not printed in as high quantities. In the time the $2 was first printed, it went from being a good deal of money (two days' pay for an unskilled laborer) to a lot less (two hours' pay for unskilled farm work), but neither time nor inflation raised the profile of ol' Tom.  

In 1976 the bill was revived, but the ten-year hiatus had not made it more popular, and it went out of print in 1981. Now they're as seldom seen as the Ike or Susan B. Anthony dollar coins. The Sacagawea coin went out of mint in 2008, so you still see some of them around, but not a lot. I seldom see the newer presidential dollar coins and none of the new "innovation" series, so I think the casinos are hoarding them. 

We just don't like dollar coins in America. I think all coins have an association with cheapness here. The Canadians loved their dollar coin so much they gave it a cute nickname (the Loonie, from the loon on the back). The same goes for their two-dollar coin, which also has a nickname (the Toonie). So even the money in Canada is looney toons. (rim shot)

But coins always got looked down on in the US. I'm not sure when the expression "folding money" (rather than the jingling kind) came into the lingo, as cash worthy of interest, but the oldest reference I know of came from a wartime Fats Waller song, "Cash for Your Trash." The listener is enticed to bring her household trash (old pots and pans and such) to the scrap drive for war use, and receive some money for it, and then canoodle with ol' Fats:

In between we'll do some lovin'

Wide handsome turtle dovin'

Will you listen to me honey

Get plenty of the foldin' money

Yeah, don't settle for that nickel-and-dime stuff; get some actual bills!

As for the two-dollar bill itself, I'd often heard that it was unlucky, but didn't know why. According to Mary Piles, CNB St. Louis Bank Historian (who knew that job existed?), the bad luck tag came from the two being called a deuce, which is also a nickname for the devil. But that's not all! She adds:

One of the reasons the $2 bill was never widely circulated is thought to be due to its negative reputation.

• An urban legend claims that at one time, election rigging was common and the reward for a favorable vote was $2. There was a belief that politicians would purchase votes for $2 therefore, having a $2 bill could be seen as evidence that you had sold your vote. While most likely an urban legend, the myth still gave the bill a sinister reputation.
• In the early 1920s, Prostitution was $2.00 a trick, leading some to refer to the bill as a “whore note.”
• The gambling tracks have a $2.00 window, and if you won, many times you were paid in $2.00 bills. If you were caught with $2’s in your wallet it could lead people to assume you were a gambler.
• The $2 bill was often thought to be bad luck, as “deuce” was a name for the devil. Recipients would tear off one corner, believing it would negate the bad luck of the bill. This caused many of the bills to be taken out of circulation as mutilated currency.

I worked as a teller for a while when I was in school, and I used to buy up $2 bills from other tellers when we cashed out on Friday. That way when I went out drinking with my buddies I would have weird money to draw attention to myself. And I can tell you for a fact that, whether the $2 was lucky or unlucky, I never was. And no, that was not so long ago that (even were I so inclined) I could hire a lady of the evening (ahem) for two bucks. 

There is just one song I know of that mentions a two-dollar bill, by the way (I'd be interested if you know of others). That's Hank Williams's "Hey, Good Lookin'" from 1951. I suspect Hank liked the way it sounded, like money but not a lot of money -- the federal minimum wage in 1951 was 75 cents:

I got a hot rod Ford and a two-dollar bill

And I know a spot right over the hill

There's soda pop and the dancin's free

So if you wanna have fun, come along with me

Less than two years later, Hank was dead, dying on New Year's Day 1953. Was it the mention of the unlucky two that did him in? One has to wonder. 

21 years of bad luck.

My wife got a new vanity, which means she has a much nicer place to apply her makeup and such. So the mirror over the old bureau was sentenced to the trash collectors.

It's one of those trifold mirrors, so you can be discouraged by your reflection in three different angles. 

You know the type.

I've mentioned before that our garbagemen will take anything -- anything but a solid-iron basketball hoop bracket, that is. It's the only thing I have seen them refuse. So I duly schlepped the mirror(s) out to the curb for pickup. 

But then the old paganistic superstitious side of me piped up and said, "They're gonna bust that mirror. Are you consigning them to seven years of bad luck? No, wait, twenty-one years? Or will it just redound to you, since you're the one making them do it?"  

So then I wondered how we got into the superstition about broken mirrors and the very specific sentence of seven years' bad luck for the crime. 

According to an article by the University of South Carolina's Barry Markovsky, Romans first made mirrors from polished metals and "believed their gods observed souls through these devices. To damage a mirror was considered so disrespectful that people thought it compelled the gods to rain bad luck on anyone so careless." As for the seven years, Romans "believed that the body renewed itself every seven years," so once your body had been replaced entirely from the time of the breakage, you would be a new person and unbound by your disrespectful act. 

Were the Romans nutty about this? Maybe they were just off by a few years. You may have heard the estimate that 98 percent of our body's atoms are replaced every year, and if you want to go down the quantum rabbit hole on this, be my guest. I ain't got time for that now. 

I can only say that I don't believe the Roman gods are watching me through the mirror, so I eschew the notion that I'm going to have bad luck until 2043 if those three mirrors break. In fact, I'd wager that if I do have bad luck until then, it’s just my own bad karma, that's all. 

Made it!

Thank God, we survived February this year with nothing horrible happening. Seemed like a close call a few times. We had more ice around than Saskatchewan, but I only took one fall, and it was facing uphill. 

Trust me when I tell you novenas were being said. We had gotten to feel like we could not get through February without illness, death, or injury, so this was a win. I greatly sympathize with all those for whom February has been crueler this year -- I know how you feel. 

That's about all I have to say, except, in tribute to frequent commenter PL Woodstock, I wrote the following:

The great actor Frederic March was known to drop into Maguire's Saloon now and then. One evening a few patrons noticed him enter, looking quite tired after a long day on the set. 

"The usual, Mr. March?" asked Maguire, behind the stick. 

"No, Mags, I need something to give me some pick-me-up," said March. "Goldwyn's got a party later and I have almost no energy at all."

"I got you, sir. Hang on." 

Maguire quickly mixed up his Electric City Special, named for his hometown of Schenectady -- cold black coffee with two shots of rye and a twist of lemon, on the rocks. "Just drink this down quick."

March did, and sat straight up on his stool. "Wow, that was terrific!" he said, but the drink went right to his head. He slumped onto the bar, out cold. 

"Didn't work, huh, Mags?" said Gig Young from down the bar. 

"Oh, you know March," said Maguire. "In like an ion, out like a lamp."

🥁

Live and let dice.

Some people will know exactly what these are:

And they will probably have a guess why there is no twenty- or eight-sided dice in the set -- because those are probably still in the dice sets belonging to my old friends, decades after the fact.

These four dice were in my first set of dungeon dice, the basic set needed for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. To determine the results of actions in the game, a participant must have a four-sided die, a six, an eight, a ten, a twelve, and a twenty. (It's best to have two tens in case you have to roll a number between 1 and 100; one die is designated the tens and the other the ones. Or you could roll the same ten-sider twice.) I got these from a local toy store, which probably didn't know what the hell the kids were up to now but the older ones wanted these, plus the books for the games and lead figures to paint. The dice came with a red crayon, which was used to rub color into the numbers of the dice. Later in my career I went to the beloved Compleat Strategist on E. 33rd Street, which is still there and still carries a breathtaking array of games and gaming equipment.

There is an etiquette to dice in role-playing games. Messing with a man's personal set of dice is like messing with his car or his gun. Players get very attached to their dice, especially if they were used to make an epic lucky run in a well-remembered game. Then the player will revere the set of dice even if they let him down for weeks and get his or her favorite character killed. They were there for me in the Vault of the Unbegotten, by Crom! Gamers are probably more superstitious about dice than craps players are.

You might borrow a fellow player's dice if yours are on a cold streak, of course, and if you suddenly get a critical hit that turns the party's fortunes around in a desperate battle, you might even want to steal them. Enemies, they say, steal your money; friends steal your books. And your dice.

Once I finally understood what role-playing games are and how they worked, they became my favorite kind of games. I did not and don't much care for board games. In my house, playing a game meant either losing, which was no fun, or winning, and being beaten up for being "smug." (Smugness, I have found, is an easy characteristic to project on anyone who has just beaten you.) Role-playing games were cooperative, meaning the players were usually united in a quest, and no one else in my house was interested in them, which was another plus.

Of course, if you decided to go all Leeroy Jenkins at a delicate spot in the adventure and get the party wiped out, you might be threatened with bodily harm in real life.

I have a lot of affection for those summer afternoons spent rolling dice in parents' basements and rec rooms. I also have a bunch of other dice from other sets in a dice bag -- actually a repurposed velvet jewelry sack -- but the blue set above is always special; my first set. I haven't even played a D&D campaign in eons, but I still use them as randomizers when I can't decide which task on my list of tasks to do first.

Sometimes I tell people I'm a recovering geek, but I'm not sure I ever have recovered. The nerdiness went underground in my twenties but would pop out here and there. Maybe one day I'll start a campaign in the old folks' home. "Okay, players, this one's called 'The Secret Potion of the Senacots, or Questamucil.'"

2020, on the hoof.

Was that a toy in the backyard? I can usually account for all of the dogs' playthings, because I'm the one who throws them and most of the time they remain there, being ignored by the dogs, who want to sniff and gnaw weeds instead. So yesterday morning when I spotted a long, white object off in the distance, I couldn't place it. I had Nipper with me, so while he was distracted by a weed or two, I went to check it out.

It was not a toy. It was the foreleg of a fawn, ripped off, the bloody thigh bone protruding from the knee. I gasped like a little girl.

And I'm really glad Nipper didn't key on it first.

I'm not particularly squeamish, especially about an animal I would and have eaten. Like a lot of people who are being honest, I'm mostly in favor of protections for animals in the genus Cutiepie. Like the little ducklings.

I love ducks -- on my plate -- but I have to admit ducklings are adorbs. My wife and I were sitting on the porch a few weeks back when a small army of ducklings, five in all, waddled and bonked their way toward us from the pond across the street, heads swinging right and left. Seemed like they'd gotten separated from their mother. I imagined us raising them like a family of ducks in a sixties Disney movie, but I knew it was best to get them back to their mother if possible. So I went toward them, and they literally turned tail and ran, or rather waddled and zigzagged back to the pond area.

I never had the heart to tell my wife that a couple of nights later, out with Nipper, I heard ferocious screeching and yowling across the street. I've heard lots of intramural bird fights over there, but this was different. This was the damnable circle of life in action. I figure we'll not see those ducklings again.

I was surprised though about this fawn, though. We get a good amount of foxes around here, and a few raccoons, but this was coyote or bear work. I hadn't seen any of them around, but a couple of the neighbors' trash cans had gotten the business last week, knocked over and ripped apart. I can only suppose that my can was left alone because of the large quantity of dog poop in it.

I had to get the fawn leg away from the dog, so I picked it up by the little hoof -- barely bigger than a quarter in diameter -- and chucked it in a trash bag that was waiting for the garbage truck. If it had been the leg of a full-size deer, it would have been harder to get rid of, but it would have made me less sad. Fawns and ducklings are cute, and dumb, and I just hate to see one get murdered so young. Life is hard on the little ones.

Well, be glad I didn't have my phone with me, or I might have taken a photo of the remains for a Very Special Movie Event of Bacon's Beat, reviving my mouse detective Bacon, investigator of all the roadkill I've seen around here.

That evening, by the way, I went into the back again with Nipper, and sure enough a dark coyote was making his escape through the tall grass as we entered. Come back for the foreleg, I guess. I'll be watching for him.

Oh, well. Sorry, little fawn. Just another damn creepy thing to happen in our annus horribilis, 2020. At least the coyote got to eat something he ought to eat, rather than leftover pizza crusts and tuna casserole.

Head end.

So this is the concluding chapter of the Concussion Saga, and I don't have too much more to say. Recovery was slow, a little better every day, unless I did too much one day, and then I would feel a little worse the next day. After a couple of weeks I was almost normal. I no longer was getting dizzy spells, not even walking up the stairs -- for some reason the dizziness would hit me going up or down stairs, which is the worst possible place in the house to get dizzy. I was able to resume my usual duties. I am still trying to get more rest than I used to, though, and that hasn't been easy as I've had a lot of work to catch up on.

Concussions, they say, can cause depression. I can see that. For me, I don't think it was the injury to the brain per se, but just the lack of ability to do things. The Saturday afternoon following my fall I was sitting in the house doing nothing -- I could not work in the cellar, the next stage of the Grand Reorganization Project; I could not work on the computer, nor play on it; I could not watch TV. I could not drive anywhere. I couldn't listen to music on earbuds. I couldn't even read. The dogs wanted to do things and I couldn't. I'd even napped out at that point. It's the kind of thing we fear about old age, the inability to do anything useful or pleasurable. Just sit with folded hands and be miserable.

Mostly, though, I am grateful that I didn't get hurt worse. A fellow I know told me his diminutive wife got a bad concussion when her car was hit and the airbag deployed. I met a guy at church who has to walk there because he got a severe concussion and his driver's license was medically suspended for a year. A friend of mine was in a terrible car crash years ago and suffered traumatic brain injury, the kind where you have to learn to walk and talk again, and these simple activities still require a lot of effort from him. So yes, there's always someone worse off than me, and lots of them.

But I am still plagued by minor disappointments from the whole affair. For example, if I had to get a bonk on the coconut, couldn't I have gotten a big cartoon lump to show for it?

And why not some dramatic amnesia? Not that I want to really forget anything; maybe just for a week. Then I could get a cable movie made about me. The Man Who Forgot His Sandwich (And Everything Else).

Even better, I could have temporarily gotten a new and better personality. Like when Gomez Addams got hit on the head and turned into a normal guy, horrified by his morbid family. A second hit would cure him, but with everyone in the family trying to help, John Astin probably got thumped a dozen times in that episode. A similar thing happened to Fred Flintstone, when a blow to the head made him an opera-loving sophisticate. We could use a little sophistication around this joint.

Failing that, maybe I could have started a dance craze. Don't tell me we don't have dance crazes anymore -- look at the Backpack Kid's Floss dance! In the Flintstones episode "Shinrock-a-Go-Go," Fred invents the Flintstone Frantic after a bowling ball lands on his foot. But at the end of the story he accidentally invents the Flintstone Flop when he falls on his head.

Of course, I could become a supervillain. Indeed, noted Egyptologist William Omaha McElroy became the notorious King Tut after taking a brick to the head at a peace rally.

Pharaoh-worthy sneer

Perhaps I could have become a villain themed with something I know a lot about. Syndicated Sitcom Man! Baron von Junkfood!

So that's my thoughts on this whole stupid injury, and I'm glad it's behind me. I'm being very careful out there, though, as winter still has us in its icy grip and there's more nasty weather on the way.

🏥🚑

My wife asked me during this sad affair if I thought getting older makes us feel more fragile. I said yes, but not necessarily because we're weaker or more breakable. After all, kids are generally the most likely victims of concussions. No, I said, it's that once something happens to us, we never think we're immune to it anymore. "I've never had a concussion -- therefore, I'm concussion-proof!" The same goes for car accidents, broken bones, cancer, fires, floods, burglaries, layoffs, assaults, maybe divorces; if it hasn't happened before, then maybe it can't! 

And as we get older, and things from the "can't happen" column move into the "did happen" column, we start to wonder a little more what other items in the "can't happen" column will be shuffling over.

Curse continues?

Looks like I didn’t get rid of that $2 bill quickly enough—fell on the ice yesterday and conked my head. Dizzy and likely concussed but otherwise unbroken. Will update.

Cursed as a $2 bill?

I was passing the ol' basket at church the other day when I saw someone had slipped a two-dollar bill. I immediately bought it with a couple of singles. I haven't had one of these in decades. 

In my college years I had a job for a while that involved handling bills, and on Fridays I would get my paycheck cashed and buy any $2 bills, silver dollars, and other odd denominations that I or the others had in the drawers from that day's take. When I went out with my friends after work I would use them to surprise bartenders. That's what I considered funny in those days.

These are still legal tender, of course; the Treasury Department says the last one was printed in 2003. The one I got was a pristine 1978 issue, Tommy Jefferson on the front, the signing of the Declaration of Independence on the back. I don't know who put it in the basket, but I suspect someone held on to it for a long time, expecting it to appreciate in value, only to discover that it's now worth $2.

So it's a nice bill and I was glad to get it. Except for, you know, THE CURSE.

I'd heard from my mom that the two was considered bad luck back in the day, and considering how things would go for me on Friday nights when I was in college, there's reason to think it was true. Snopes did a nice summary of the supposed reasons for the curse (generally not family friendly reading), and debunks them pretty well. I always figured the problem was that people would confuse them with ones and overpay, or with twenties and get gypped. Snopes tried to find the origin of the legend, but it's hard to track these things down. Anyway, it's all nonsense.

OR IS IT?

It was Thursday when I came home with the bill, and came home to find things had gone to heck. Naughty dogs, grouchy clients, a drive to Pennsylvania necessitated on Friday, and a big job due on Wednesday that suddenly looked impossible -- felt like the walls were closing in quickly. Darn you, $2 bill!

I didn't take the bill with me to Pennsylvania. It was too cold to deal with flat tires or busted axles. Saturday morning I spent it. Phew!

Actually, I realize the whole thing was silly. I'm generally not superstitious, believe it or not. And the ironic thing is, Jefferson was probably the least superstitious president in history, a Deist at best who refused to believe in the miracles of the Bible. I'm not conflating faith with superstition, but a man like T.J. would have.

Maybe that's why they put him on the bill -- to vanquish the curse! 😵

Full moon and empty pockets.

How could I have lost?

My wealth plan had very clear steps, which I followed closely, and yet somehow I was not successful. 

1) Wait until lottery goes over a billion dollars.

2) Play winning numbers.

3) Cash out billion.

Very clear, very orderly, just like those books that promise 10 Steps to Real Estate Wealth, and yet I failed. 

The only thing I can think of is that the full moon screwed me over. 

But the full moon is actually tonight, the closest such to Halloween this year. That's why it's so spoooooky.

You know, when I was a kid I remember seeing so much Halloween art that featured a full moon that I somehow got the idea that the moon was always full on Halloween, perhaps on the last day of every month.

And, gigantic.

But of course that is not the case. Maybe that's why we don't see witches flying around on brooms. Too many dark nights. Crashes. You never see a witch with a parachute, or even a helmet. So a full moon would be lucky for witches, but bad luck for non-witches.

Although the news says that there was one winner of the Mega Millions, in South Carolina. They tell me that they get the same moon down there that we do. So unless that person is a witch, the moon didn't make him or her unlucky. Maybe you just need the right moon.

Hey, wait a second... the actual full moon is tonight... Powerball tonight is up to $620 million...  💡

Start the car! We're headin' for the convenience store!

Supermoon or Superjerk?

Yesterday we had the Supermoon, as you may have heard, "the brightest moon in almost 70 years," when the moon was full and at its closest point to Earth simultaneously. We won't see one like this again until November 25, 2034.

Hooray! Supermoon!

BUT!

As the Old Farmer's Almanac notes, there's a lot of luck lore connected to the moon--including this one:

"It is unlucky to have a full Moon on Sunday."

CRAP!

So a SUPER full moon on Sunday must be SUPER bad luck,

It would explain my weird day yesterday. There appeared to be some unusual misfortune. Not just arguable bad luck, like the wicked Cowboys beating the Steelers in a squeaker; after all, I am willing to admit that Cowboys fans, believe it or not, are just as human as normal people, and the same moon was shining on them.

No, I'm talking about the guy who swung a left turn out in front of me on a two-lane 55 mph road while a tailgater was forcing me to keep up to the limit. This was to be a crash, no question, and if he had someone in his passenger seat that person was not going to be saved by an airbag. Somehow I had the presence of mind to shoot onto the shoulder, where I could safely grind to a halt on the gravel and detritus there. The tailgater continued on his merry way behind the guy who'd almost nailed me.

It was a little alarming, but I was unharmed, so, no harm no foul. I ran my mission of mercy and came back home. Later I went out again, and when I had to brake at a stop sign I heard that lovely flap flap flap of a tire that has said Farewell, Cruel World. And my helpful idiot light flashed and dinged Lo Tire.

By the time I got to a parking lot and opened the door, I could hear the tire going HISSSS like in a cartoon. The rear driver's side tire had picked up a little passenger:

That is a freaking metal SPOON. I'm certain it was for some strange, devilish reason along the highway, because to jam that pointy end into my tire would have taken enormous force, like coming to a rapid stop from 55 mph.

This is why James Bond's Aston Martin stops pursuers by shooting spoons out of its rear.

I got where I was going, but before I went home I put on the spare. When I got home, I turned on a light and the bulb blew, then the big dog started to throw up in the hall.

JUST CUT IT OUT, SUPERMOON.

All of this got me thinking about clever story I read ages ago in Asimov's, "Blued Moon" by Connie Willis. I hope she will forgive me for giving away the story's conceit, but here it is (spoiler alert!): when pollution (IIRC) causes an atmospheric change that makes the moon appear blue, all kinds of rare events begin happening to everyone on Earth---everything that happens once in a blue moon.

Could the Supermoon have caused things to happen to me that were superlame?

Maybe. OR maybe Supermoon protected me! After all, the blown lightbulb may have prevented a short; the dog may have puked up something that would have made him sicker if he'd digested it. Of course, the idiot who almost caused a horrible accident did not succeed in doing so by dint of my braking ability, so even if I have to suck up the cost of a new tire, it's a lot better than having to start up car payments again.

So perhaps the events were weird, but any change in luck granted by Moonie may have been good, not bad. I think I'll choose to look at it that way.

Thanks, Supermoon. See you in 18 years,

Tire-d.

So they're building this big new medical building in town, which makes us look Dynamic and Full of Industry, except when I think about it all it means is A) everyone's getting old; and B) this kind of growth is essentially a transfer of money from the government to the giant corporation that provides the healthcare, even more so when Obamacare craters and we have nationalized healthcare.

And it's probably how I got a flat tire.

I keep getting these, and it's not like I'm driving off-road or going up on the marbles while taking the turns too fast. I've had three in the last year. One was just because the tires had about 40,000 hard miles on them and the tread was looking more pancake than waffle. The other two seemed to be crap I picked up from driving down the debris-filled road by the enormous construction site.

Had to drop the car off yesterday morning (boot on the axle, tire in the hatch) as the mechanics were all busy helping cars that had gotten sick over the weekend. At first it looked like the long, thin gash along the tread meant that the tire couldn't be patched, but then the owner of the place got it to work. If it's still properly inflated when I go to drive the car this morning, then it's all jake. Otherwise, straight to the tire store where I bought the damn thing in the spring.

These are the kinds of things that have been going on for weeks--endless frustrating and costly problems that never get resolved. In fact, the car, with spare on it, just sat at the house for a week because I spent so much time home waiting for the mysterious vanishing contractor (more on that another time) that I never had a chance to do anything about the tire. Had to use the wife's car all week.

But that's not the only reason my personal Wheel of Fortune is feeling a little flat.

We've also had dogs being sick as dogs. The little guy was horrid but straightforward---a week of antibiotics almost made it go away; still took a few more days to get normal. The big guy had an illness of unidentified origin, two vet trips in two days, but it may have been just that he was getting too much thyroid medication. Hundreds of dollars and lost hours later, we're still not sure.

My bit to help pay for all this has been dreary, tiresome assignments, the kind of work you dream of turning down when you're a freelancer. No, no, I utterly refuse to work on that book, because it is repulsive and a force for evil and the writing sucks too. When you're a freelancer in my field, that's about all you can dream of, because no matter how good you are, the pay doesn't change. The work is undervalued. "Just get some idiot out of college to do it," is the cry from people who ought to know better.

No surprise that every night I have work-related dreams, dreams in which I'm looking for an office where I do something that I hope no one realizes I do not know how to do. I seem to be walking across the landscapes of strange cities a lot, and I'm often inappropriately dressed (though usually not nekkid). I wake up tired.

Maybe I'm just getting old. Google reminds us that today is the 434th anniversary of the inauguration of the Gregorian calendar. Boy, doesn't it just seem like yesterday?

55555

Hit a milestone in the car the other day:

Yes, indeedy---fifty-five thousand five hundred and fifty-five miles. On the second set of tires, but the first transmission.

I wondered if I was supposed to run out and play 55555 on some game of chance. Was 5 my lucky number? Could it be my lucky number until it hit 55556? Was there a lotto retailer within a mile? Maybe I should get out and walk!

The fact is, I don't know how the daily number games work, and I don't know how lucky numbers are supposed to work. Like all kids I had a number I considered lucky; like all kids, it was my birthday. (Yes, children, my lucky number was A.D. 1369.) But my birth date has most certainly never been especially lucky for me. But what other criterion can I use for a lucky number? Should I use YOUR birthday? But you're already using it.

I remember one time when I was a kid I slipped out of the house with one quarter in my pocket. A church down the street was having a carnival, and we were not going, so I ran away from home. (Two blocks, but still.) When I got there I saw one of those carnival wheel guys. I put my quarter on number 4, which is not my birthday. I don't know why I chose 4. Maybe someone had taken my usual number. Anyway, my one and only quarter was on the winning number, and I came home with a cheap kite.

I probably crashed that kite within seconds of trying to fly it, but I never forgot that I won it with my only quarter, and I won it on number 4. (I have forgotten how I explained to my parents that I suddenly had a kite; we were not kite people, really.)

The thing is, number 4 hasn't showered me with good fortune, either.

I've wondered over the years whether my lucky number is a negative number, or even an imaginary number. ("I'll take the square root of negative one, and LET IT RIDE!") There was a piece in the Washington Post the other day (HT: Dave Barry) that says the longest prime number so far has been discovered, and it's 22 million digits long; maybe that's my lucky number.

Oh, the hell with it.

I guess I've given up on lucky numbers. I just never found one that seemed to have any consistent oomph for me. So farewell, birthday; farewell, 4; so long, 55555.

In fact, I am going to give up superstition altogether. Knock on wood.