I kinda like Ike.

Do you think of Dwight David Eisenhower as a particularly poetic person? Until now me neither but this is kind of great:

“When I was a boy growing up in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing and as we sat there on the warmth of a summer afternoon we talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I told him I wanted to be a major league baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he'd like to be president of the United States. Neither of us got our wish.”

Born to lead

Here’s a thought experiment. Put a hairbrush in a shoebox. Put the lid on the shoebox. Then start asking people what they think is in the shoebox. Maybe they’ll say, “An apple.” That would be incorrect, though. Somebody else might guess shoes, which isn’t a bad guess, or a stapler, which, why not? A bar of soap? A Hummel figurine wrapped in tissue paper? A dead Guinea pig? Eventually and inevitably  someone will ask, “Is it a hairbrush?” And, yes, it’s a hairbrush! Wow! This extraordinary person knew about – predicted – the hairbrush in the shoebox! They must be a genius.

Shrove is the past tense of Shrive

King Cake is just whatever you feel like baking smothered in sugary frosting and encrusted with granulated sugar tinted in colors which are not typically the colors of actual food. King Cake is everywhere around this time of year and you find yourself eating it constantly leading inevitably to Fat Tuesday. To me the best time to enjoy Carnival Season in New Orleans is Wednesday Gras when you can stand on the curb without the inconvenience of congested streets or the unpleasantness of being stuck in an inebriated crowd and you are less likely to be struck by flying beads.

What are the odds?

I have just read that the chances of being struck by lightning over one human lifetime are about 15,300 to one which makes this a thing about which you for all practical purposes need not worry at all. Don’t give it another thought. Your chance of winning the Powerball is close to 20,000 times worse than that; you’d be better off taking out lightning insurance on your friends and family. The odds of surviving a lightning strike are about 90%, so there’s every chance you could rake in a fat payout and still enjoy that favorite cousin or bowling partner.