Out of My Head Peter Gallay
My name is Nick Reilly. I'm a detective with the homicide squad. Four years ago my wife died under suspicious circumstances. Naturally, I was a suspect, since the husband is always the first one they think of. Fortunately I was also the detective on the case, so I was able to clear myself. Sure, there was a lot of evidence against me — fingerprints, DNA, a signed confession. But since I lived with her, that explained the prints and the DNA. And the confession was inadmissable because my lawyer proved that I had coerced myself. A few days into the investigation I was summoned to the captain's office. As I entered, he looked up from the report he was reading and saw me. "Oh, Reilly," he said. "No, sir. Not O'Reilly. Just Reilly." "Reilly," he said. I nodded. "Reilly." "I've been looking over your record, Reilly." "Really?" "I see you transferred here from North Carolina." "Raleigh." "Do you ever miss it?" "Rarely." "Your wife's recent death must have hurt like a open wound." "Rawly." "I see here that she didn't die immediately. In fact, for a moment there it looked like she started to —" "Rally." "At any rate, I'm glad to see you were exonerated. You could have been screwed." "Royally." The amenities out of the way, we got down to the case. "Any progress?" "Yes sir, we've got a suspect. He's a professional burglar who's been active in the area. It's possible the woman suprised him during a burglary and he killed her." "But the coroner said she died of a slow acting poison." "I've thought of that. My theory is he anticipated her surprising him, so he snuck into the house early that morning and put the poison in her coffee." "Do you have any evidence?" "We searched his house and found a shirt in the laundry with what looks like coffee stains. We sent it to the lab. If it turns out to be Folger's, I think we've got him." "Sounds a little farfetched to me." "Not at all, sir. A lot of people drink Folger's." Just then his assitant came in and handed him a report. "There's been a break in the case, sir." The captain looked at the report. "Interesting. Turns out it was mistaken identity." "The wrong victim?" "No, the wrong coffee cup. They found an entry in her diary. 'I'm finally going to be rid of the jerk. He'll drink his morning Folger's and by night I'll be free.' Looks like you were the intended victim." "I think I know what happened," I said. "As we sat down to have our coffee, I switched the cups." "How did you know she was going to poison you?" "I didn't. I've been switching our cups for thirty years. Can't be too careful." The assistant said, "Will that be all, sir?" "Yes, you can go, Molly." "It's Rollie," she corrected. "Rollie?" "Rollie Rowley." "Rollie Rowley? Really?" I laughed. Not at what he said, but how he said it. Wryly.
For the past sixty years there's been a relentless campaign in this country fueled by prejudice and employing indoctrination of children, government intrusion and out-and-out hate-speech. I'm referring to the vilification of tobacco. Much is made these days of racism, gay-bashing, antisemitism and other cultural nitpicking. But think about it. Your TV set is teeming with black actors, gay men and women, Jews of all stripes (no Auschwitz pun intended). But where's the Marlboro man? Banned. Gone. As extinct as the great auk, the wooly mammoth, and Steller's sea cow. Back in the pre-nanny-state days, when the air was filled with the joyful strains of "Winston tastes good…" and "Be happy go Lucky...," responsible grown-ups were free to perform their own risk-reward calculus in choosing a life style. But then came the do-gooder leftists whose only joy in life is eliminating everybody else's. Hey, Progressives! You bleat endlessly about controlling our own bodies. How about I'll stay out of your uterus and you stay out of my lungs. But there's more to the story than the lamentable demise of Camels and Chesterfields. Even more despised than cigarette smokers are those who savor the noble cigar. Time was that a cigar was a symbol of wealth, privilege and success. Now the cigar smoker is a pariah in polite company. I think of the great cigar smokers: J.P. Morgan, Groucho Marx, my Zayde Willie. And the GOAT, Sir Winston Churchill. Can you imagine the devastation to world history if on the day he moved into Number 10, Churchill was told he couldn't smoke there? He'd have been be gone in fifty seconds, handed the prime ministership back to Chamberlain, and the Nazis would have conquered the world. (Just remember, Hitler was a non-smoker!) And finally we come to the least-hated citizens of Nicotine Nation, the pipe smoker. The roll-call of pipe smokers is a list of our most venerated forebears. Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Norman Rockwell. Hugh Hefner. (Maybe not Hefner.) Or maybe it's just your average Joe, home from work, pipe and slippers waiting. A man's pipe is a soothing and comforting companion, always at the ready. Like a Golden Retriever without the mess. There are no Type-A pipe smokers. But it's all on the verge of oblivion. The anti-tobaxxers have all but won their crusade against civilized gratification. But we don't have to give in. We will fight! We shall overcome their bigotry. Be it the condemnation of the public at large or the vociferous badgering of our own families. I have a dream... that one day our children will not be judged by the hollers of their kin, but by the content of their humidor. I have a dream today. Anybody got a light?
Meghan bristled when her hubby Made her curtsy to his bubby.
Ruffles!
Flourishes!
All of that pomp
Greets the arrival of king of the swamp.
The inmates salute their
Commander in chief.
This president's anthem is
Hail to the Thief!
Trump paid someone to take his cognitive assessment test.
Brand new. Never used. Cheap.
Since '48 the conflict's raged And neither side can be assuaged. If this goes on there might be war, It's happened once or twice before. The only hope is to combine them, Change the borders, redefine them. Never mind the Constitution, Clearly there's just one solution. Trump and Xi, you must create Chimerica! A single state.
A great way to exercise your confirmation bias. Numerous examples that Donald Trump is incompetent, venal, infantile, weak, ignorant... [see your thesaurus for more]. But we already knew that.
What's new are details of the family patriarch, Fred Trump, whose malignant personality spawned a generation of thoroughly contemptible people.
The one exception may be the author's father, the oldest sibling, a poor soul whose mistreatment by Fred and the rest of the clan caused him great pain and probably contributed to his early death. And by extension, that abuse was also visited on the author, her mother and her brother.
The book is in essence an act of revenge -- richly deserved -- against a tribe whose name belongs in the pantheon of other infamous families: the Corleones, the Mansons, and now the Trumps.
Acknowledging that its name could be offensive to native Alaskans, the makers of the iconic ice cream treat announced they will be changing its name. Henceforth, their product will be called Aunt Jemima bars.
There once was a Senator Paul, A man with incredible gall. One day he got grouchy, Insulted Doc Fauci, As jerks go Rand Paul’s the end-all.
The president, famously germaphobic, periodically cleanses his brain with disinfectant to prevent any threat to his stable geniosity. This explains everything.
Two guys walk into a bank. The teller gets suspicious because they're not wearing masks.
The above essay was written by the president last Tuesday.
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