The musings of a madman...

       As you may or not recall, I apparently have a son... I mean that as in only "technically," because legally, I only have a two daughters -- we don't use "step" in this house except in matters of extreme necessity. Rather than drag this tale through an infuriating side quest, I will send you [ here ] and ask that you return when you're ready to proceed. ... welcome back...      So yeah, son... We approached the period since he came to my house as more of a friendship than family, as our blood relation is honestly nothing more than a previously-veiled matter of inconvenient consanguinity. I say that to say we exchange text messages at random times of day, I send and receive memes and answer queries for advice -- again, as I might any of my friends. He has commendably and thankfully avoided employing terms that would have him refer to me as his father, even if he is growing to see me as a father figure. ... until I got a phone call after work... M...

       Y'know, sometimes it is hard for me to conceptualize people continuing to exist when I am done with them, or as it were when they're done with me...      In the summertime, work-work is slower and USUALLY lawn care is too because it doesn't normally rain in June like it just did. That said, I was "normal" at the bill-paying job and running ragged on the side hustle staying caught up in between storms.      On a particularly rainy day last week, my phone kept ringing. I should say that I've gotten an exorbitant number of spam and out-of-state calls from areas I have no business, usually shilling some kind of high interest loan I have no desire for. That said, I am adept at quickly dismissing them without interrupting whatever I'm doing on YouTube at a given moment.      On this day, though, I kept getting a particularly persistent call from a High Point number. The only person I have any business with who has a H...

The date was January 29, 1993… Wait, hold on a second.  Y’all remember Family Matters, right? The show was a spinoff of Perfect Strangers, apparently the black lady who worked with them at the newspaper had a hilarious family with a more hilarious neighbor and showrunners decided that their show and their random negrous shenanigans would be more interesting in the long run than Larry Appleton and Balki Bartokomous.      The whole show got aped by the popularity of the aforementioned neighbor and “Family Matters” fell victim to the phenomena of black people referring to shows by the name of the most popular character on the show as the title instead of actually mentioning the show itself by its actual title. [ Phlip note : yes, this was a real thing, I shit you not] Anyway… As at least one of the two of you may recall, the show began with three children; Eddie, Laura and Judy Winslow.  In the 4 th season, it is rumored that the real-...