


Jim Flanigan Looks at the World
Turning the Mundane into Fundane Since 2015
I don’t make enough (translation: any) money from writing and blogging (translation: self-publishing word salads) because of my frugal readers & followers (translation: deadbeats), so I actually have a day job running my own business as I have for 14 years (translation: too long) now. I have a close (translation: ethically suspect) relationship with a number of customers and vendors (translation: potential criminal co-conspirators) that often leads me to agree to handle some challenging (translation: stupid) tasks. One such task is to curate and mange (translation: mostly ignore) the YouTube channel of one vendor. I was surprised to get a notification of this comment in regard to a video for a therapeutic massage machine.

I wasn’t sure if Lhtutuutfirh was covfefe level gibberish (translation: most of what Trump says), or if this was a customer asking to place a million dollar order. To the Google Translate machine!
Continue reading “Lost in Translation”I love the “doctors” the anti-vaxxers/maskers roll out. Here’s one of those “doctors” with some unique views on Covid nasal swabs.
Thanks, Dr. Wolf! Now where is it that Dr. Wolf practices medicine? Oops, she doesn’t. It’s not that she’s so good at medicine that she no longer needs to practice. It’s that she’s NOT a medical doctor, but has a doctorate of philosophy. So, when you see these anti-vax/mask/swab “doctors” dispensing bad advice, just understand that they could be a doctor of thinkology like Dr. Wolf, and have zero experience in medicine.
As for DNA harvesting, even my kids don’t want my DNA, so why in hell would the Chinese want to harvest my DNA? They can have all they want. Why would I care? Are they going to clone me? Great! Give my clone an opportunity to be a better me the second time around in Beijing.
The lesson that we should learn is to beware when you encounter a Wolf in doctor’s clothing. I mean, even this lying, anti-vax/mask Covidiot has an honorary doctorate.
Continue reading “Take My DNA, Please!”No, the title is not referring to Donald Trump’s creepy obsession with Ivanka.

Come on, who says that about their own child? I know I wouldn’t say that about any of my 3 daughters … except for the super-hot one!
All kidding aside (bad idea for a humor blog), I always wondered why Trump never attempted dating a Kennedy (and more importantly, all the Kennedy money) during the times he was between marriages. Now I think I know.
I was as perplexed as most everyone else as to why people gathered in Dallas at Dealey Plaza the other day waiting for JFK Jr to return. There were hundreds there from all over the country. Take a look.
Continue reading “It’s a Family Affair”You may remember the title of this blog post as being a regular feature in the old Reader’s Digest magazine. My mother used to buy the magazine when I was a kid, and I recall reading heartwarming and funny stories about living in the USA. There have been some changes to life in the USA over the past few decades. Here’s a story about football, divorce, a pole dancer, the Jerry Springer show, and the pole dancer’s therapy monkey that attacked a child on Halloween. <deep breath> Before I ask you to click to read more, here’s a pic of the therapy monkey sipping juice to entice you to click and read on.
Yes, the dancer’s performing name is Pole Assassin.
Continue reading “Life in These United States”As an elected local government official, it irks me that every year around Halloween, unauthorized graveyards spring up in people’s yards like this one close to my church.

Then we have to enforce the local laws to get people to take them down. At least I assume that’s how it works. Because I’m a local government official who has been elected, that means I don’t do any of the actual work.
As a public service, allow me to remind you that if you have any dead bodies piling up, it’s best to dump the cadavers in the woods or in a body of water like the rest of us do. Please don’t bury them in the yard of a private residence. That could prove to be a grave mistake. Underground utility lines can often be encountered and damaged unless the grave is very shallow. Can you dig what I’m saying? Or, as an even better option, turn the bodies in to local law enforcement. I know around here, we have a “no questions asked” policy.
Hope you had a good Halloween.
A question has confounded me for the last 5 years. Can people really be dumb enough to support Donald Trump? I think I have my answer, thanks to a hamburger, which seems appropriate when speaking of Trump. Or, perhaps I should say hamberder. In case you have forgotten, click this link for a reminder of hamberder heaven.
Ah, memories. Anyway, the burger of which I speak is on the menu of a chain in the US called A&W, a franchise more famous for their root beer, which is undeniably awesome. There aren’t many A&W locations in Chicagoland, but there happens to be one about 15 minutes due south of my house. I rarely pass by without getting a root beer float.
It was the story of an A&W 1/3 pound burger meant to compete with the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder in the 1980s that gave me the answer to the Trump dilemma. I wasn’t familiar with the story until I saw this new A&W commercial.
Continue reading “Would You Like Math With Your Burger?”I got dressed in the dark over the weekend, and I noticed that I was wearing mismatched socks. I know that’s sort of a fashion trend for kids these days. My 13 year old daughter left for school this morning with different color socks, but for an old man like me, it’s kind of a big fashion faux pas deal. I remember being at a trade show and realizing in horror that I was wearing one sock reminiscent of a Richard Nixon brown suit paired with one in a Ronald Reagan brown suit hue. I pulled my pants down low to cover my mismatched socks and spent the day going around the trade show like this.

Nobody should have to see that. And when an old man does that, mistakes can happen.

But this past weekend, I decided to be bold and wild. I decided to wear my mismatched socks, even going to church in them. And when in a church discussion group, I crossed my legs so all could gaze upon my trendy mismatched socks. The result?
Continue reading “The Match Game”I had a morning coffee meeting with a local Republican government official this week. It was a beautiful morning, clear and crisp, so I decided to bike there. There was only one big problem … my masks are in my car. I was halfway there when I realized that I was maskless, and Illinois has an indoor mask mandate. Uh-oh. I began to consider what my Plan B and Plan C would be.
I decided Plan B would be for me to signal to my meeting buddy to come outside, order for me, and we’ll sit outside. Except, I couldn’t recall exactly what he looked like. That could be a problem. I knew he was an older white male. Shocker for a Republican.
Anyway, I felt like I needed a Plan C. It turned out to be this …
Continue reading “Republicans Saved Me From Embarrassment”I was cool with the tracking microchips in the COVID vaccine, just in case I wander off and get lost. But the aluminum aliens in the vaccine reported in a recent blog post proved too much for me. I thought it was maybe a random crazy story, which of course I blogged about as fact, but there’s even more reporting on it here.
In addition to running TruNews, which appears to be banned from most social media for some reason, Rick Wiles is an evangelical pastor! They’re not allowed to lie, right? Sure, he wants $100 million to build an end-times media empire, but who can blame him? I’d build an end-times media empire, too, if someone wanted to give me $100 million.
Anyhoo, something had to go. I know aluminum is non-magnetic, so I thought I’d focus on the microchip rather than the aluminum alien. I had seen videos of people becoming magnetized from the vaccine, so I figured that the microchips were probably the source of the magnetism. In order to find the magnetic microchip, I put spinach on my vaccinated arm. Why spinach? Duh, spinach is high in iron, and iron is magnetic. I shook my arm, and I decided the microchip was probably located in my arm where a leaf stayed (magnetically, I assume) stuck to my arm. All sounds logical, right?
My next step was to find a doctor who was an open thinker like me and willing to remove my microchip.

The operation was a success, and this is what my arm is sporting today.
Continue reading “Working the Bugs Out”I’m very late reporting on my weight loss trials and travails for September. I shouldn’t be late with these weight loss posts as they are my most popular posts on this blog. I think it’s because despite differences in politics, religion, etc., we all share the same struggle with weight control, except for those naturally skinny people with self control who never have to exercise. Oh, I hate them so much. Anyway, here we go, better late than never.
When I last posted about weight, I was 3 lbs below my goal weight at the end of August. Success, right? Well, not exactly. September turned cool, my swimming stopped, and my body started to get ready for a winter hibernation by eating everything in sight. I immediately re-reached my goal weight from the opposite direction and shot up above it by several pounds. That’s just how my body works. It doesn’t matter that my steps were strong again in September.

Geez, wouldn’t you think I would make a little extra effort to average 10K steps? Anyway, my body’s metabolism just slows down in cooler weather, maybe to get ready for my winter hibernation? I would be willing to give hibernation a try as I like long naps. Fortunately, the weather warmed again and some of the weight came off. Right at the end of September, my weight had come down to below my goal weight again, but seemed to be heading up. I waited to see what would happen. Well, here’s what happened.
Continue reading “Riding the Weight Loss Rollercoaster”This appears to be big breaking news on the World Wide Interweb.

I have so many questions, including these:
Continue reading “Monsters Inside Us”Well, I warned you that I was considering adding ads to this trainwreck of a blog, and I finally did it yesterday. I was excited to see what advertisers would be bidding big money to get an ad on my blog. Here was the first I saw.

Oh, sure, how interesting. You know, I was considering getting myself a new CDP, whatever the hell that is. So, I had to click the ad to find out. Here’s what I found.
Continue reading “Mad for Ads”