Come Heller high water … the July 13th edition

Come Heller high water…

• If you see people mindlessly walking, biking, skateboarding or driving into other people, cars, parking meters, mailboxes, buildings, mountains, streams, hotdog carts etc., don’t worry. It’s not the zombie apocalypse, it’s just a Pokemon Go scavenger hunt phone game everyone under the age of 40 is playing. It’ll wear off soon but in the meantime protect yourself and just assume that the person coming your way has no idea you exist and will act annoyed if he or she bumps into you. Also, if you hear someone shout “Pikachu!” don’t say “gesundheit.” Pikachu is one of the characters they’re hunting with their phones.
• I’ve never seen anything catch on so quickly, even the flu or Donald Trump. It seems to have started Saturday. All of a sudden there were people out walking the neighborhood that I’d never seen before. You can tell they’re new to this going outdoors thing because they squint in the sunlight and their skin is making that sizzling bacon sound.
• Donald Trump heard about the game and said, “See, there’s another reason we need a wall.” When told it was just a game, he said, “It’s no game to me. Those Pokemon are all murderers and rapists, from what I hear.”
• Of course the media – which wastes no opportunity to make you think the sky is falling lest they not live up to their credo: be afraid at all times of all things – couldn’t wait to jump on the Pokemon craze with stories about thugs using the app to lure victims and police getting 911 calls about people – gasp – wandering the streets. Leave it to my former profession to immediately suck the fun out of something. Local TV, in particular, loves this story because (they won’t tell you this of course) they’re in a sweeps month and grossly exaggerated scare stories get you to watch. Higher ratings during sweeps periods prop up their ad rates. Now you know why you see more of that kind of reporting in February, November, May and July. Film at 11.
• And, hey, all you grumps tsk-tsking about what a monumental waste of time this Pokemon thing is and how anyone playing it should go do something productive: So you’ve never done anything pointlessly amusing? Ever? Man, Quaker much?
• Starbucks is raising prices again. They also unveiled a new slogan: “Because paying $5 for 20 cents of coffee with five cents of sugar and cream just wasn’t enough.”
• Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton yesterday. Allow me to condense and translate what he said: “I’d endorse a ficus plant if it could beat Trump.” If Hillary wins, Sanders is in line for a cabinet position as Secretary of Telling Kids to Get Off the Nation’s Lawn.
• I think remarkable achievements should be noted, so I’ll share this blurb from MLive: “The (Michigan) House is slated to spend 80 days in session in 2016, and the Senate is slated to spend 83 days in session. That’s a combined 163 days — lower than the combined 205-day average lawmakers have posted over the past 19 years, according to legislative records available online.” I don’t view this as a bad thing, though. I view it as an extremely good thing. When they’re not in session, they can do us no harm.
• By the way, you are not suddenly a felon if you share your Netflix password with your kids or anyone else. That was just a social media rumor that got out of control. The court ruling that led to the frenzy, according to Slate, is “probably not as clear-cut (or as dramatic) as ‘all password sharing is illegal all the time.’”
• Self-indulgent note: All three of my books are now for sale on the website for just 12 bucks each. Support the “Andy Has Two Kids in College Fund” by buying yourself a copy of each.
• “Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.” – Dalai Lama.

Image credit: Eduardo Woo