Retreat! I Mean Fall Back!

November 2025

It was a beautiful November Sunday, watching my favorite team, the Detroit Lions, lose while I was doing chores around the house. One of the only good things about Sunday football, any network TV for that matter, is that there are so many commercials that it allows me to get up and do other things.  Unless you want to sit there and memorize the jingles or the tag lines for today’s pharmaceutical, fast food, or insurance companies and their offerings.  Knowing how much it costs to advertise, this clearly shows who is making money out there. I appreciated them giving me the time to clean my kitchen. Now today, I am free to ponder current events.  Happenings in the world that I usually ignore, but there are a few this time that, for some reason, have caught my attention. 

Well, at least the World Series is over.  The end of another marathon baseball season.  All professional sports seasons just seem to get longer and longer.  I’m sure advertising has nothing to do with that. But when MLB, NFL, NHL, and the NBA seasons all overlap with the beginning of men’s college basketball season, something is wrong.  And I am sure I missed a sport or two.  Don’t athletes need a break?  Don’t spectators?  I guess I am the only one that feels this way.   But watching baseball in November will never seem right.  Or Hockey in June.  But that’s how it is nowadays.

In other news, the Government has been shut down for more than a month and no one notices. Unless you work for the government, of course. Then it’s gotta really suck. In the business world if a company shuts down at least you get to quit working. Getting what often might seem like, a welcome little break. But not the government. At least for “Essential” roles.  Which turns out to be a great deal of them.  People with those jobs continue to plow through, hoping to someday get back pay.  Probably drinking hot dog water and eating stale buns for dinner by now.  A lot of workers get furloughed and then back pay for not working. That doesn’t seem quite fair to the ones that are required to keep working, does it?  

Still, we have enough people in government to start testing nuclear weapons again.  And that’s always a good idea. I guess we have found out that others are testing, so we start thinking, “Well darn it, we better do that too”.  Given our nuclear arsenal is the largest on the planet by far, I guess we should keep practicing how to use them. Or make even more deadly versions.  I was hoping the world could move on from such weapons, given their use would probably shut down more than our government.  It would certainly shorten a few professional sports seasons and put a damper on advertising.

Comets seem to be having fun ripping through our solar system lately and lighting up the internet with far-fetched theories and speculation. 3I/Atlas is a unique object, that is for sure. If you haven’t heard about this, you should look into it.  Fascinating, to say the least.  But the way people with too little information or brains talk about it on the internet could make you believe anything you want, if you are so disposed too.  Once again, showing the disinformation power of social media.  Whatever the case, if it is an alien ship it’s pretty low tech. Regardless, I hope it’s the Vulcans. We could use some examples of logic in today’s illogical world. 

Then, of course, the really big news is the time change.  Yes, we fell back over the weekend.  So, the debate continues on whether Benjamin Franklin was a nutcase for recommending this, or we are, for sustaining it.  It doesn’t really matter to me, time change or not, in Michigan we are entering the tunnel.  It’s dark when we get up in the morning, when we eat breakfast and to top it all off, it’s usually cloudy and grey all day. Then, just to make it that much more fun, it gets dark in the late afternoon before dinner.  And this lasts for about 3 months. Often causing me, and other seasonally distressed people like me, to surrender.  Or retreat to Florida.

But what the heck, here we are.  Living in a modern world where we seem to know way too much, and too much of what we know, we’re not sure is real or true.  Or if it even matters. But I’ll tell you, “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there”, and “You’re in good hands with All-State”. And thankfully, “Nationwide is on our side”. At McDonald’s people are “Lovin’ it”, and they are “Having it their way” at Burger King.  Probably all remembering that they can “Eat fresh” at Subway or lamenting that they should have chosen Jersey Mike’s, because it’s “A Sub Above”. And if all that fast food and stress over insurance options gets you fat and stressed, there is always “Oh’ Oh’ Oh’ Ozempic”, or “The Power of Wegovy” to knock back that blood sugar level or help you shed a few pounds.  Hey, I said I didn’t watch the damn things, I didn’t say I wasn’t listening to them.  Over and over and over and over… again and again and again!  Hey, that sounds like a potential jingle for Viagra! Who can I call?