Random Thoughts May 2026

Ted Reads Random Thoughts

8:45

I was in Nashville a while back and took a familiar drive out into the countryside. Since I was last there, HUGE, gargantuan mansions have been built. I found myself hoping that the people’s happiness level was as big as their house.

Help here please:

Hand Over Fist….?

Holy Mother of Pearl….?

Kicked the bucket…?

“He’s so angry with me that he’d have my guts for garters.”

I know what they mean, but how did they come into existence?

I could look it up, but I think I would rather sit with the weirdness of us human beings.

Personally, the words that terrify me (more on terrifying words later in the political section, gifted to us by Ronald Reagan) is when my partner says, “I want to talk to you.”  I’ve suggested that those six words, coming from an intimate of mine, are the scariest in existence. If she wants to totally put me over the top, all she needs to add is “about money.” 

We have learned that if she says “I want to talk to you about something, and it doesn’t have anything to do with you, us, or our money,” I’m all ears and one of the best listeners in the world.

I’ve heard it said that heartbreak is an emotional hiccup. One moves through that as one might stop the hiccups.

A friend who tends to think like me, was wondering why Jaybirds are considered the epitome of nakedness. Why not cardinals? Or Pigeons? Or chickens about to be roasted?

He was also wondering how did we decide that doorknobs were dumb? Seems to me that they  know EXACTLY everything they need to know.

And “stubborn as a mule.”  Maybe a mule doesn’t trust what the human being is asking it to do and is right.  (Thanks Mr. B.)

I was wondering what a “Duper” was. As in “Super Duper.”

And I was also curious what following “a train of thoughts” might look like. I am imagining it like chasing a big old steam train with wooden passenger cars (not box cars) on one of those railroad pump cars.

An advertisement caught my attention.  The company was called “Newcomer”. It offered a couple of services. Cremation was one of them. I grew up in a little town, where my friend Danny’s parents owned a funeral home. The name of that establishment was the Doom Memorial Home. It made the old “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” books, when a couple of demolition workers were killed when they were taking it apart.

I was talking with a friend about the fact that I was taking a new medication that has changed my life. She asked if there were any side effects. I found myself blurting out, “No, but I am experiencing the side effects of ageing.”

So, here is part of my “Theory of Everything”  My theory proposes that each one of us humans are standing side by side looking at the same rainbow off in the distance.  The rainbow represents life. But because we are not EXACTLY in the same spot as the person standing in that line, we all are actually seeing a different rainbow. The further we are from other people, the more different our perspective, but we are still looking at the same rainbow.

I find comfort in knowing that spirituality and religion are not necessarily connected. Religion tends to TELL me (pre-packaged) what to believe about some of the big questions. (Where did I come from? What am I doing here? What happens after I die?).

Spirituality suggests we search the universe to find our own answers.

Sometimes religion helps us find our own answers. Sometimes it is threatened by such behaviors.

Seems my dreams fall into three categories. Rehearsals for what’s about to happen or recollections about what has already happened or “this is the truth about…..” without the impediment of consciousness.

I recently realized why my expectation, hope, and desire for decency, justice, and equality is more a fantasy than a reality.  I now see that those qualities are more likely to exist on a horizontal plane rather than on a vertical one, meaning that they mostly exist amongst those people who share my ethnic, gender, economics, power, and privilege planes, rather than come from the top down. That helps me understand the lack thereof from people who have more.

Why are those things that come into our lives pretty early in our training in money called piggy banks? Who chose that animal and when? Why not use a cow, as in “fatten the calf?”  Why do we use animals this way?  

And clams? As in “Happy as a clam.”  Seems as though they could be used to inform people what bi-polar means.  Because if one is not happy or scared, and quits talking, then they “clam up?” 

And someone being the “Cat’s Meow?”  I know what it means but the fact that I know what it means seems weird to me.

POLITICAL COMMENTARY BELOW

A federal judge recently commanded the University of Pennsylvania to turn over a list of Jewish students to the US government. The government claims it is so they can “protect” the people on that list. The government has asked the same of other major universities.  I know, the investigation started a few years ago.  But those investigators didn’t need to force a list.

Some of us who know history are hearing echoes that those who don’t, don’t.  They have no idea why we would.  

Ronald Reagan famously said that the most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”