Jim Flanigan Looks at the World
Turning the Mundane into Fundane Since 2015
As is typical of a teenager, my 15 year old daughter left a mess and headed to bed after she finished baking just enough chocolate chip cookies that she needed to take to school. I think she learned how to bake from watching The Muppets.
As I looked for a starting point to clean up, I saw she left batter. Well, baking cookies can’t be all that difficult, right? I may as well give it a go. This was representative of the result.
Continue reading “Baking is Hard”
Yesterday, I spotted the first robin of the season by our pond. I’m hoping it is a prescient robin with inside info that we are going to get a nice early spring. I mean, we’ve already had a bit of false spring just recently. The other alternative is that it is a robin that flunked out of its Migration 101 class and will be found frozen solid next to me as I attempt to shovel a meter of snow from an upcoming blizzard. I did see the robin trying to get a drink of water out of the frozen pond, so I’m not too optimistic.
Today marks the end of Mardi Gras in New Orleans with Fat Tuesday. No more throwing beads with intent to damage sunglasses.
And no more boobs being unleashed upon the world.
How did I know it was Fat Tuesday? Easy. It’s a Tuesday in winter, and I stepped on a scale.
Exactly. I need to do something about my winter weight. The alternative is to join the Fat Tuesday festivities with my growing moobs. I think I’m up to a B cup.
In a word – YES! I’ve come a long way as a writer in the 8+ years since I started practicing writing on this blog. I’ve won a couple awards, been published, and think I’ve improved as a writer. Regular readers of this blog may disagree with good reason.
So, it should come as no surprise that I now use my editor/cousin/godmother/writing mentor less and less. I think I write better now. Who needs an editor? Plus, I feel guilt. I have never paid her a dime for her services. The problem is that even when I send something to her just to read and specifically ask her not to edit, she can’t resist editing. And she’s an excellent, although brutal, editor. She does not pull punches with me. Her editing is outstanding, and I value her general opinion of my writing even more. But still, I don’t want to take advantage of her skills. Sure, I send her a box of orthopedic socks at Christmas, but is that really enough? Probably not. Maybe I should consider a membership for her in the Jelly of the Month Club.
I blogged about a FREE micro-fiction contest. Hey, you writers out there. Yeah, you. Write, dammit. Bookmark that website and enter their next contest. What have you got to lose? I entered. And did I need a professional edit after 3 stories of just 100 words each. Well, 2 stories I wrote were kind of dopey, so I didn’t care about them so much. The third story I kind of liked. I thought it had some legs. I couldn’t screw up 100 words, could I? Here it is. You be the judge.
Continue reading “Is an Editor Necessary?”
The last two days in Chicagoland have been amazing with partly sunny skies and temps over 54F/12C each day out by us. Yeah, they had wild thunderstorms two nights ago in Chicago, but I live 40 miles west where we got but a sprinkle. It’s been great.
But we are a fatalistic lot here in the Midwest. We believe that we will pay for enjoying a false spring in early February. We have history and facts on our side. The year my oldest daughter was born on the 5th of February saw a mild winter … until after she was born. Then is snowed and snowed through March.
However, while the false spring was around, I did what millions of others in greater Chicagoland did and headed outside … in shorts. Two days ago, I amazingly took my second bike ride in February on a normally unnavigable trail so early in the year. It is usually slop until May. But two days ago, it was relatively free of snow and muck. I was having a great time, although my out-of-biking-shape legs protested mightily. I had the trail to myself, and I was comfortable in shorts and a sweatshirt in early February. Glorious. And then, I received some payback for enjoying myself so early in the year. This happened …
Continue reading “False Spring Payback”
I told you about the humorous poetry contest I was entering. I hope you sent in something, anything. Maybe just some random words that you scribbled down on a napkin to avoid talking to your dinner partner while waiting for your order of Tom Yum Goong to be served at that Thai restaurant on the other side of town. Hey, the contest was free. You had nothing to lose.
And now the contest deadline has passed, so I may as well share foist upon you my entry. I didn’t know what to write about or how to write it. My OCD leanings tend to make me want to rhyme. But I know “modern poetry” is a free-for-all. Rhyming is passé. So, I wrote a poem about that, even dragging revered poet E.E. Cummings into my hodgepodge of words meant to pass for a poem.
I reluctantly present to you “The Challenge of Writing Poetry After Parochial School.” You can press the + sign below to make the print larger if you really want to read it.
Continue reading “The Return of Jim’s Poetry Corner”
Well, mostly true. I changed my wife’s name from Shannon to Gladys to protect her anonymity. And I changed some of the details of the story in a desperate attempt to enhance the humorous effect. But the pics were not altered in any way. Oh, wait, that’s also not true. I cropped them. Anyway, here we go with a semi-true story featuring altered pics that happened last weekend.
I didn’t wake up that day to settle any arguments over the existence of a Deity or the propensity of that Deity to personally intervene in our everyday banal existences. I got up to take my wife to the local urgent care facility. She was experiencing some serious back and leg pain post-COVID. I could have fixed her up with the same opiods that the so-called “doctor” prescribed, but somehow that medical degree carried more weight with my wife than my doctorate in street savvy.
She was still in pain when I left her. “Babe, I know you’re hurting, but I gotta run,” I explained. “I’ve got a luncheon to get to. Give me a sign that you’ll be alright.”
She tried to give me a V for victory sign, but was too weak to raise her forefinger to complete the V sign. But I knew what she meant. I doffed my cap, blew her a kiss (I didn’t want to get too close to catch her back pain disease), and headed to the garage. But before I left, I gave her a parting message. “Oh, and I’m taking your car. Mine’s way low on gas.” She responded by frantically waving her hand with partial V sign at me.
“Shit,” I exclaimed as I started my wife’s car. Her car was low on gas, too. She showed a quarter tank of gas and a 70 mile range. I was staring at a 90 mile round trip. My mind flashed to Ellwood Blues.
Except, something was out of whack.
Continue reading “The Mileage Miracle – A True Story”
I visited my son’s new apartment in Chicago over the weekend where he lives with his fiancé. I spotted this book on their shelves and learned that it is my son’s fiancé’s book.
I now have the urge to take out a large life insurance policy on my son. Am I a bad guy?
It certainly seemed like spring arrived yesterday in greater Chicagoland. The temperature hit 50F/10C with sunny skies, so along with millions of other locals, I headed outside … in shorts. First thing I did was one of my favorite outdoor activities …
Continue reading “Mite Be Groundhog Day”
I continued to stick to my New Year’s resolution of trying something new or unusual each week. Last week, I got my first colonoscopy. That was not my medical dilemma though. I was a bit overdue for a colonoscopy, and it turned out to not be the horrible experience I expected. I had a nice pleasant buzz on for about 30 minutes after coming out from under anesthesia.
They didn’t find any obvious cancer, but they did remove two hopefully benign polyps that were just so darn cute. They looked like little colon nipples.
I can’t wait to get them back and proudly display them in a jar on our fireplace mantle. I even picked out names for the two polyps. What do you think of these names?
Continue reading “My Medical Dilemma”
On today’s @93XRT’s Saturday Morning Flashback show, I was whisked back to 1992 for an absolute gem of a one-hit wonder from Paul Westerberg of The Replacements. Not that The Replacements were one-hit wonders. Great band that actually broke up on stage in Chicago.in 1991 while performing. Anyway, Paul Westerberg has had a successful solo career post-Replacements. But this song … THIS SONG … is pure pop magic and really Westerberg’s only legitimate solo hit. Enjoy the listen and memories, and then I have a very important question to ask about the song.
Really a fun tune, but I think he got the title just a little bit wrong. Shouldn’t this song be titled, “Dyslexic Haert?” And is there a cure?
Yeah, we had 20+ over to our house for Christmas Eve. The house looked quite festive for our guests, nicely decorated thanks to my wife. Except for this alleged Christmas Cactus that is finally in full bloom in late January.
We had no control over this lazy ass plant that is running a month late.
Beautiful? Yes. Christmas cactus? Pffft, no. Whatever happened to truth in advertising? I suspect this means I’ll be writing another letter to the Federal Trade Commission.
I hope I kept the receipt.
And yes, that’s a lot of snow outside in the pic.
I sent congratulations via Twitter to a favorite rock star from my childhood. I was a bit surprised when I saw this.
If I told my kids about it, I imagine it would go something like this …
Continue reading “Guess Who?”
The past week was rough. First, we had Snowmageddon a week ago. I paid the price physically. Those 3 days of heavy snow and subsequent back-breaking snow removal were followed by 3 days of Coldmageddon. I paid the price mentally on those cold days. The 3 days of Coldmageddon were not the coldest Chicagoland has ever seen, but they were brutal, down to -16F/-26.7C overnight. Highs during the day were subzero F and around -18C. Cold enough that the train track fires had to be lit to keep the switches working.
And then we had a bit more snow and a bit more cold to finish out the week. We’re coming out of it now, and I look forward to days above freezing this next week.
I checked on fellow Chicagolanders to see how they were mentally coping with Coldmageddon. Here’s a Chicagoan who hit the beach.
I do love to swim, but that seemed a bit extreme to me. I couldn’t even bring myself to go to the pool. I settled for doing this each day …
Continue reading “I survived 2 Mageddons”
Why? Well, the word on the street, and in space, is that it smells bad.
Click HERE for the full article, but this should come as no surprise to anyone. It obviously smells bad because of Uranus.
I’m not saying we’ve had a lot of snow over the last couple of days, but this is what my snowbrush looks like after clearing my car today.
Not to worry. I found a new/old snowbrush on our garage floor, where many of our possessions go to die or be found and used after being abandoned for years.
But then there’s this snow-related problem I can’t, or I should correctly say that I’m not allowed to, resolve.
Continue reading “There’s Snow Place Like Home”
Do you ever think about one of the novels you have written coming alive on the silver screen with Hollywood elites like Pauly Shore and Lindsay Lohan as the stars and Roseanne Barr in a cameo role as a dumpster fire? What’s that? You haven’t written your novel yet. Well, why the hell not? Write it now. I can vouch for Chicagoland being covered in a thick blanket of snow that won’t be gone until July. There’s nothing else to do but stay inside and write. If you don’t have a novel, maybe you have a novella, short story, or random shapes and pseudo-gibberish scribbled on a napkin. Hollywood is out of ideas these days. As soon as the shooting stops on a film, a remake begins immediately. Your writing is needed.
Well, here’s a screenwriting challenge you may wish to consider.
Continue reading “Writing for an Oscar”
I am waaaaaay overdue for a colonoscopy. You could say I’m a bit behind.
I even have a dear friend who had colon cancer. You would think that’s enough incentive to get checked. Oh, sure, I pooped in a box and mailed it in. Then I found out that there are places that will actually check it for signs of colon cancer, so I changed where I had been mailing my poop. All clear for cancer. But that was a few years ago, and that test is supposedly not as effective as a colonoscopy.
Researchers have been working on a blood sample test as a replacement for a colonoscopy. I have some good news and bad news to share.
The good news is that I have been accepted into a clinical trial for the colorectal cancer blood sample screening test. Yay! They even will pay me a little cash every time they draw blood. Double yay!
But there is some bad news with an ironic twist. After they take my blood sample, then I have to get a standard colonoscopy that I was hoping to avoid. Irony is going to be a pain in my butt after all.
I fulfilled my Sunday obligation and a New Year’s resolution for week #2 of 2024 by going to church on Sunday. While going to church is not something new or unusual per my New Year’s resolution, going to an Episcopal Church is. We had no idea what to expect other than it is located directly across the street from the Lutheran church we had recently abandoned because of the congregation’s homophobic harrassment of one of the one pastors who is openly gay. That pastor left the church and the area, but not before she pointed fingers on her way out. The church we left before that one had a homophobic pastor. Did we make progress going from a church with a homophobic pastor to one with a homophobic congregation?
The Flanigans don’t tolerate any mistreatment of others because of their race, creed, color, or sexual orientation. We do tolerate harmless jokes about the MAGA crowd, but that’s about it.
Q: Why did the MAGA crowd deny that German Christmas fruit bread is delicious?
A: Because Trump told them the bread is Stollen.
I literally just made up that joke, and I think that is painfully obvious. I’ll be workshopping that one for the next 11 months to get it ready for next Christmas.
Anyway, we checked on gaychurch.org (really!), and found an accepting Espiscopal church right across the street from our old church. The congregation was definitely welcoming, but seeing this as we slid into the pew was almost a deal-breaker for me.
Continue reading “A Divine Resolution”
Jim Flanigan Looks at the World 