Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. — Joseph Addison
Hi, everybody! Here’s a picture of me taking a nap on my porch.
I know what you’re thinking: “Lightning, did you refinance to take advantage of the low interest rates?”
HAHA . . . I OWN THIS PLACE FREE AND CLEAR! IT’S PAID OFF!
— Lightning 
My idea of a good picture is one that’s in focus and of a famous person.
My whole life, I’ve tried to be for Michelle and my girls what my father wasn’t for my mother and me. I want to break that cycle — where a father’s not at home, where a father’s not helping to raise that son and daughter. I want to be a better father, a better husband, a better man. . . .
Growing up, I made quite a few [bad choices] myself. Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. I had a tendency to make excuses for me not doing the right thing.
We’ve got no time for excuses.
In today’s hyper-connected, hyper-competitive world, with millions of young people from China and India and Brazil, many of whom started with a whole lot less than all of you did, all of them entering the global workforce alongside you, nobody is going to give you anything you haven’t earned. Nobody cares how tough your upbringing was. Nobody cares if you suffered some discrimination.
Moreover, you have to remember that whatever you’ve gone through, it pales in comparison to the hardships previous generations endured — and if they overcame them, you can overcome them, too.
Morehouse College is a historically black, all-male college in Atlanta.
“He’s a joker, he’s a smoker, he’s a midnight toker,” Obama added.
When I get coffee from the break room, I try to cycle through the creamers — French Vanilla, Hazelnut and the regular Half & Half.
Today I got coffee and I couldn’t remember where I left off in the cycle. I’m in a quandary . . .
so·te·ri·ol·o·gy \suh-teer-ee-ol-uh-jee\, noun:
- spiritual salvation, esp. by divine agency.
- the branch of theology dealing with this.
[Editor's Note: Obviously I disagree with this egregious opinion, but I'm committed to hosting a wide range of viewpoints. -- PE]
You have mothers, you have wives who are also mothers, you have daughters who are also mothers . . . attention has to be divided and no one is satisfied with her share of the pie. As a son, husband and/or father, you can’t win, it’s just a question of how badly you’re going to lose.
Women are bitching on the run-up to Mothers Day, they’re bitching on Mothers Day, and they’re laying down ground rules regarding what they will and will not put up with on next year’s Mothers Day.
It’s a big foofaraw and nobody’s happy.
Conversely, on Fathers Day, everyone’s as happy as a lark, despite the fact that Fathers Day is commemorated, in my family at least, by absolutely nothing.
Hi Mom! It’s me, Lightning! Happy Mothers Day!
Sometimes I wonder if you’re still alive. I know you could be, even though I’m almost 70 years old myself.
Here’s a recent picture of me . . .
I’m taking a lot of naps now that I’m older. Although come to think of it, I took a lot of naps when I was younger too!
I can’t move my legs very well now — my back legs, mostly. They don’t hurt, but I can’t feel them very much and I can’t tell where they are. It’s funny that I used to be the fastest pug and now I’m the slowest.
I remember you told me that dogs teach people about two things:
If you don’t hear from me next Mothers Day, it’s not because I forgot. If I go to heaven first, I’ll wait for you and we’ll all be together again!
Love,
Lightning
Stop one heart from breaking. Ease one life the aching or cool one pain. Or help one fainting robin unto his nest again.
What’s the billing code for that?
Lassa Witch Doctors
Alternative medicine is not a real thing. You don’t have a choice between medicine and alternative medicine. You have a choice between medicine and Things That Have Not Been Proven to Work.
Alternative medicine that works is called “medicine.”
Some people tell me that regular doctors don’t know about alternative medicine because they don’t teach it in medical schools.
They don’t teach it in medical schools? If I didn’t know anything about my job beyond what I learned in school 25 years ago, I’d be in bad shape. I’d be unemployable.
If there are any doctors out there who’ve never learned anything outside of medical school, those are not the doctors you want to be going to.
Did you hear about these three women in Cleveland who were kidnapped and held in a house for 10 years?
They were rescued on Monday of this week when one of the women screamed through a small opening in the front door, “I need help! I need help! I have been kidnapped for 10 years.” Two men in the neighborhood heard her screaming, kicked the door in and the women were able to escape.
(Why it took 10 years to think up the Scream for Help strategy, I don’t know. I wish the reporter had asked about that.)
A childhood friend of one of the women said, “I’m so thankful, God is good. I’ve been praying. Never forgot about her, ever.”
So let’s see . . . 10 years of prayer = no results. Screaming for help = instant results.
I know some wiseass is going to say that prayer did bring results because God sent someone to kick the door in, but did he have to wait 10 years to do it? It’s a good thing the guys who heard the screams didn’t take 10 years to mull over their next move . . .
Hi everybody! It’s me, Lightning!
I hate to admit it but I’m getting old. My mind is still sharp and I’m still handsome but I can’t move my legs very well anymore. I feel like pretty soon I won’t be able to move them at all and when that happens . . .
My owner promised to take care of me all the way so I’m not scared. He tells me he loves me. He never used to tell me that but I knew anyway.
He asked his wife the other day if it’s okay to say “Love you” to a dog. “It feels a little silly,” he said, “but maybe he understands it.”
I think he knows that our time together is almost over . . .
I never actually noticed it before, but the gas station where I buy sodas every morning has a sign out front showing the current jackpots for Powerball and Mega Millions.
Both of the jackpots were three digits this morning (nine digits if you add six zeros for the millions) — one a little more than 200 and one a little less. Maybe that’s why I noticed them today, because there were so many digits. Or maybe it’s my destiny to win the lottery and the hand of fate turned my eyeballs to the jackpots.
“I noticed the numbers out front,” I said to the clerk. “Give me a ticket for Powerball and Mega Millions.”
“That’s a lot of millions,” he said.
“It sure is. I’ll still stop by in the morning for sodas though.”
The taste of self-inflicted suffering, of an evening trashed in spite, brought curious satisfactions. Other people stopped being real enough to carry blame for how you felt. Only you and your refusal remained. And like self-pity, or like the blood that filled your mouth when a tooth was pulled — the salty ferric juices that you swallowed and allowed yourself to savor — refusal had a flavor for which a taste could be acquired. . . .
And if you sat at the dinner table long enough, whether in punishment or in refusal or simply in boredom, you never stopped sitting there. Some part of you sat there all your life.
It was hot here this week — in the 90s — so when my owner got home and gave me fresh water I was really thirsty!
— Lightning
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. — George Bernard Shaw
