Short attention span rambling

It would be fair to say that focus is not my strong suit ... OK it would be an understatement to say that focus is not my strong suit. My wife calls me “shiny object boy” because once or twice over the last 26 years, I may have been distracted during an otherwise very meaningful discussion of our relationship.

It may have happened more than once or twice but, to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t really paying attention so I can’t say for sure. The point is that ... umm ... oh yeah, the point is I am easily distracted.

Even writing a 750-word column can sometimes stretch the limits of my concentration; This feels like one of those times. Instead of doing a poor job trying to maintain a coherent thought for the entire column, I’ve just written down the random thoughts that ran through my mind today.

For example, Ben Franklin was kind of an eccentric rock star of his time. He was a free thinker who came up with the idea to use cubbyholes to sort mail, brilliant, right? On the other hand, he reportedly flew a kite in a thunderstorm. Given that, I can’t help but wonder why I lost an hour of sleep last week because he thought Daylight Savings Time was a good idea.

A penny saved is, indeed, a penny earned and Ben was a very cool guy but that doesn’t mean that changing our clocks at 2 a.m. on random Sunday mornings twice a year makes any sense. Leave me alone and let me sleep.

What the hell was McDonald’s thinking with the Fish McBite? I really can’t remember ever thinking, “Man, I could really go for a deep fried fish-ball.” The whole idea McBites — so to speak.

Somebody really ought to clue in Kim Jong; the only thing the world is less likely to fear than a 30 year-old dictator is a 30 year-old dictator who hangs out with Dennis Rodman. I can only assume that Flavor Flav was unavailable to discuss foreign policy.

To all my online friends out there; yes, I can name a city in any state, a child’s name, a breed of dogs or anything you can think of without an “e” in it so please stop asking me to!

With the price of gas hovering around $4 a gallon and the top five American oil companies clearing well over $100 billion in profits last year, why do those same companies enjoy over $4 billion a year in tax breaks? Maybe the $65 million they spent lobbying Congress or the $16 million/year they contribute to Congressional campaigns has something to do with it. I’m just saying.

Why do I know who Andy Dick is? Why does anybody know who Andy Dick is?

Why is it that we have the technology to analyze the chemical composition of a scoop of dirt picked up by a remote controlled vehicle on Mars, but I still have to take off my shoes to board an airplane? Really, I want to know!

There isn’t going to be a zombie apocalypse; there I said it, it’s not going to happen so get over it!

I’ll be 56 years old in a couple of weeks and I still don’t understand women and I’m very suspicious of any man who claims to. I’m convinced that Dr. Phil sold snake oil in a previous life. A huge Texan who talks to women about their feelings cannot be trusted. You can take that to the bank.

I heard that the medal they came up with for drone pilots was ranked above the Bronze Star; that makes sense. Most Air Force guys already have a Bronze Star when they graduate boot camp so they had to do something for these brave video game warriors, right?

During Desert Storm every pilot in my squadron flew more than a hundred night combat missions, then landed their Tomcat on a carrier; two of them got Silver Stars (after an air-to-air kill) and two got Bronze Stars ... but I’m sure flying drones is very stressful.

Look! A Castle rerun just came on…lost my train of thought. Does that mean something…wait what? Dang it, was Sandra asking about our relationship again; better stop writing and pretend to care ... I mean listen ... not pretend to listen, I mean ... forget it.

Hey, a squirrel!

Rick Seley is an award-winning columnist.