Very nice, very nice indeed

If your name is Rich Whitney and you're running for something, you might want to proofread the ballot entry.

You're a Nazi! No, YOU are!

I don't want to get far into this, mostly because it involves L. Brooks Patterson comparing someone to Joseph Goebbels. Read as much of it as you have stomach for; the suburban GOP can't seem to get along among themselves, let alone with anyone else, but Patterson does get it at least partly right when he says: "...Tell a lie, tell it big, and tell it often, and people will begin to believe it..."

He ought to know ...

Did you know?

That there's another North Korean son, Kim Jong Nam, but that he's not in the running for the succession because he's a playboy? Wears blue Ferragamo loafers, say the media. What he says about the whole Kim Jong Un baton pass is, "I have no regrets about it. I wasn't interested in it and I don't care..."

Sounds like my own long-standing attitude toward the mayoralty of Cleveland (which is constantly being offered to me, since my small army of faithful retainers, huscarles, and winged hussars would be useful in staving off attacks from the Canadians.) Doesn't look much like me, though, especially without the eye patch.

I hate it ...

... when people gratuitiously give me something to worry about, and I try not to do that to others, myself (like hell you do.) But I guess I'll pass along a worry to my aging colleagues that sure as hell never occurred to me until it smacked me in the eye: random, non-traumatic, you're=just=getting=old retinal detachment. Did you know that your retina could just decide to become detached and aloof? Without anyone punching you or pushing you downstairs or anything like that? I didn't until it did.

The cure, more or less, is an outpatient surgical procedure, involving lasers and other high tech stuff, and it is extremely routine -- it apparently restores "most" sight in the affected eye, "most" of the time. But the recovery process is hugely inconvenient, involving spending days with your head in one of several specific positions for hours at a time.

So -- here's what to worry about: floaters, flashes, dimming, a dark "object" beginning to move into your field of vision. If you note any of that, call your eye doc, ASAP. If it's caught within a day or so, the surgery is simpler and the recovery less annoying. If it goes 48 hours, you're in for the whole schmeer. What puts you at risk? Just being, as I am, older than dirt, apparently. According to the docs, no drug interactions, nothing related to the myeloma, just random behavior of our bodies, of the sort that continues to bias me against the notion of intelligent design.