The Winter Equinox yesterday was a really short day. How short was it you ask?
It was so short that the 10PM news came on at 7:30.
Jim Flanigan Looks at the World
Turning the Mundane into Fundane Since 2015
The Winter Equinox yesterday was a really short day. How short was it you ask?
It was so short that the 10PM news came on at 7:30.
Never tell a woman that she burps as good as she looks.
My wife does not use Twitter. My wife does not like Donald Trump. She seemed to me to be the perfect person to try my first Trump Twitter Test.
I refuse to follow Donald Trump on Twitter or anywhere else, but I do check in on him from time to time. I do follow a Donald Trump parody account that amuses me to no end.
So the test I prepared was to present my wife a parody Trump tweet and a real Trump tweet to see if she could identify parody vs. real. Would you like to play, too?
I have prepared the 2 tweets so they present very similarly. Ready? Here’s #1.

Here’s #2.
I posted his holiday meme over 3 years ago. I created the meme myself. I find it really funny. Many do not. Many were offended by it. The odds are that it will offend you. I even got death threats, although they were all from my wife. Am I a bad guy for liking it?
I was concerned that my ice skates are broken. My skates wouldn’t work properly when I tried them at this neighborhood ice rink by my house.

I didn’t notice the “CLOSED” sign at the bottom of the sign. No wonder my ice skates didn’t work!
I’m confused, which everyone who has ever read this blog already knows. I think Donald Trump is correct when he complains about ‘Fake News.’ I am starting to believe it exists.
Take this video from Judge Jeanine Pirro from Fox News on Michael Flynn. You may want to skip to the very end where Pirro suggests that Judge Sullivan could throw out Flynn’s guilty plea.
Did you watch the whole video? Did you throw up in your mouth just a bit in parts like I did? Understandable. This “judge throws out Flynn’s guilty plea due to FBI wrongdoing” narrative had been pushed by Fox News and White House talking heads for a while. Instead, Judge Emmet Sullivan, a Reagan appointee, excoriated Flynn in a blistering diatribe to the point of dropping the treason bomb as a possible additional charge. Oops.
And what about the Clinton Foundation?
We have a beautiful dog.

She’s got some issues. One issue is that she scratches and bites herself … A LOT! It could be from mites, allergies (Mite Be Allergic), the environment, hormones, etc. In other words, our vet has no idea. She actually has some bald spots now. I feel for her as I do, too. My wife is making me very uncomfortable with all her talk about how bad the bald spots on the dog look. It is hitting too close to home. Sure, I don’t scratch and bite my hair out, but still, I’m a bit touchy.
And then I saw White House Nazi Stephen Miller on Face The Nation this past Sunday morning. He is a known baldy, but he looked very different this time. Take a look. Before is on the left and Face The Nation Stephen Miller is on the right.
I spotted this house decorated for Christmas close to my daughter’s apartment at college.

It kind of looks like migrant Christmas displays behind the fence at an ICE facility. I drove my daughter past for even more views.


If you are reading this blog post while wearing a ball gag and handcuffs, I am sorry to tell you that you have been misled by the title. I am talking about fantasy football domination in my family league like this …

Can I get a booyah for a shutout?

Thank you. I don’t know which one of my Trump-loving relatives runs that Bye team (and what a terrible name for a fantasy football team with no logo whatsoever), but that team sucks. They scored nothing against me last week. Total fantasy domination.
But that was last week, and I only have a couple more weeks left in the season to tweak the Trump-lovers in my family fantasy football league with clever team names and logos like last week’s Collusionistas.

I wanted to hammer (and sickle) the Russian connection more, so here is my new team logo …
I had never stayed at a Microtel hotel before. I had always been leery of the ‘micro’ part. Was it a very small hotel, or was it a hotel that catered to very small people? I wasn’t sure, but I booked a night at a Microtel in Springfield, IL due to the very small nightly cost.
I was ready for anything, even this.

It looked nicely normal as I walked into the lobby to check in. The indoor pool is always of interest to me, and it was right off the lobby, so I took a peek at the pool. Uh-oh. This sign poolside explained a lot.

I bought this clearance flatbread because that’s just what I do if I see food on clearance.

But flatbread, that basically means pizza, so this was a pear and blue cheese pizza. Think about that for a minute. How many times have you ordered pizza like, “Give me a large cheese and pear pizza to go. Oh, and make the cheese blue?”
It gets worse. Take a closer look.

The weather is cold. There are patches of snow and ice on the ground. More snow is on the way. The coldest part of winter is still to come in January. However, I am so happy to see our neighborhood already planning for next summer. Looks like our neighbors across the street are putting in a pool and changing cabana.

I fear my brain is turning to mush. There was a time when I used to go see artsy, foreign films that required interpretation and encouraged spirited conversation. For example, one movie I saw that stands out in my memory was The Tin Drum, an Oscar-winning film from Germany. Here’s what Rotten Tomatoes thinks of The Tin Drum.

Okay, so maybe not great, and what I mainly remember it for was that there were little people in the movie. I’m not sure if they were midgets or dwarfs, but they were definitely little. And I loved Das Boot, another German film that was simply fabulous.

But neither film makes my list of movies I would take to a remote, deserted island. I always think that’s such a dumb concept since there is no power to run a DVD player on a remote , deserted island. But when I play along, I find more and more ‘dumb’ movies peppering my list of ‘must have on island’ films.
For example …