Andy Young: Stream of Consciousness

By Andy Young

Columnist

Someone told me recently that I was difficult to chat with, claiming I can’t stay focused on one subject long enough to have an intelligent conversation. I don’t know what she was talking about.

Baseball’s designated hitter rule is stupid. Claiming “pitchers can’t hit” is even more foolish. In youth baseball right up through high school the pitcher is generally one of the best batters on his team, if not THE best. But no one can hit without regular opportunities to do so, and that’s what happens to the pitcher when they start letting a DH (an abbreviation for a Latin term that roughly translates to “bad fielder”) take his place.

The chipmunk population has exploded this summer! Maybe my neighbor who feeds them is part of the reason, but still, you’d think they’d want to live in her yard, since that’s where the food is. But no; the second-biggest Chipmunk Condo in the neighborhood lies beneath my front steps. The largest one is under the front steps of the guy who lives across the street from the chipmunk nourisher. He’s got no more use for the furry scourges than I do.

I love bran muffins.

Yellow ultra-fine-point Sharpies are useless! The ink is virtually invisible. Writing a letter in yellow Sharpie would be like refereeing a basketball game with a dog whistle.

I’ve never been to the Ozarks, but I’d like to get there someday. I’ve also never been to North Korea. I’m okay with that, though.

I don’t think anyone under the age of 60 has bought a radio in the last decade.

I have never finished the Sudoku puzzle in the daily newspaper on a Friday. The Monday thru Thursday (and Saturday) ones are cake, and I can usually do the Sunday one. But Fridays are impossible. Maybe there’s a fiendish Sudoku Master somewhere who’s bent on achieving world domination by bewildering all his potential opposition with unsolvable logic conundrums.

Why does anyone care about the Kardashians, or similar celebrities who are famous for being famous?

Playing professional or college football during a pandemic is even dumber than playing it when there isn’t a pandemic. Greed, pure and simple, is why NFL team owners and collegiate athletic officials want games this fall, even if they’re played in empty stadiums.

Since social distancing began, I’ve been biking a lot more. So far I’ve pedaled a distance that would require more than two tanks of gas to travel via automobile. That’s $50 or so extra dollars in my pocket, plus a tiny amount of pollution I haven’t created.

But I’ve seen a lot of discarded cans and bottles on the side of the road.

Is anyone in favor of indiscriminately strewing trash out car windows, or in the woods? Littering is selfish, lazy and environmentally destructive. Being pro-littering is like being pro-cancer, pro-bullying, or pro-coronavirus. Making the deposit on bottles and cans a quarter (up from a nickel) per container might not solve the problem of littering, but I bet it wouldn’t make it worse.

I just discovered that if you watch the Three Stooges for more than thirty consecutive seconds, they stop being funny.

Of all the things Americans value, a television is probably the least essential.

By the time my children get to be my age, there probably won’t be newspapers anymore. Well, at least they’ll never be frustrated by the Friday Sudoku.

Someone told me recently that I was difficult to chat with, claiming I can’t stay focused on one subject long enough to have an intelligent conversation. I don’t know what she was talking about. <