In late 2022, the National Institutes of Health reported

"Optimism is linked to a longer lifespan in women from diverse racial and ethnic groups, and to better emotional health in older men, according to two NIA-funded studies."

In late 2023, NeuroscienceNews.com reported:

"Research, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, from the University of Bath shows that excessive optimism is actually associated with lower cognitive skills such as verbal fluency, fluid reasoning, numerical reasoning, and memory."

Thus proving once again that, yes, bliss really is ignorance.

You don't have to be a moron to be an optimist, but it helps.

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Dr Cory Anderson recently earned his doctorate studying with Osterholm, focusing on pathways of CWD transmission. “We’re dealing with a disease that is invariably fatal, incurable and highly contagious. Baked into the worry is that we don’t have an effective easy way to eradicate it, neither from the animals it infects nor the environment it contaminates.”

Once an environment is infected, the pathogen is extremely hard to eradicate. It can persist for years in dirt or on surfaces, and scientists report it is resistant to disinfectants, formaldehyde, radiation and incineration at 600C (1,100F).

Great. The deer have turned to biological weapons and suicide missions. Is there no atrocity they won't commit? I saw we nuke them all now before it's too late for all of us.

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"Since October, 100 emergency calls have come in, Conroy said, with 81 of those involving vehicles crashing into an animal or a dead deer in the roadway. There were seven incidents of deer caught on a fence, eight responses to calls on injured deer and one incident of two deer fighting, the chief said."

Obviously, that begs the question: who, exactly, were those two deer fighting?

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I'm proud to report that Wriphe.com has picked up a new reader! According to her email (subject line: "I like your blog!"), Hannah has followed me over from Boosterrific.com and has let me know that she has now read every single Wriphe.com post going back to the beginning in 2003. She might be more dedicated to this site than I am.

Obviously, after reading that much drivel, Hannah has questions. Fortunately, most of her questions are about my favorite subject: me.

Let the self aggrandizement begin!

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

Back in the day — this was before Facebook and smartphones existed, mind you — I was in art school in Athens, GA, and wanted an easy way to keep in touch with friends and family who lived across the country. I do not enjoy A) talking on the telephone or B) repeating myself. So I built a place where anyone who cared to know could come to get critical updates about whatever it was I was doing at the time. I can't say as it worked, really, as only a couple of my friends (and my mother) have ever visited regularly. I still have to answer "what have you been up to?" too often for my personal tastes.

How do you decide what to post about?

At the core, the point of everything that I do is to keep myself entertained. I am very selfish that way.

I come from the land of Lewis Grizzard. (Google him.) Grizzard made a strong impression on a lot of people; many thought he was a real bastard, but my favorite restaurant still has a menu item named after his favorite dish: brunswick stew on a pulled pork barbecue sandwich served with onion rings, I never met him personally, but my encounters with his writings during my formative years led me to believe that one of the best possible occupations was "humorist newspaper columnist." So I generally approach content at Wriphe.com as my own soapbox and diary with a goal of making it an enjoyable read in the (poorly imitated) vein of curmudgeonly satirists like Grizzard or Dave Barry or television's Stephen Colbert or Andy Rooney. (Google him too.) Quoth the Poppins: "A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down."

When it comes to creating individual posts, I start by saying to myself, "Oh, shit! I haven't posted anything at Wriphe.com in the past two days!" I picked an every-other-day schedule because it's just often enough to keep me motivated and just long enough to let me regenerate ideas. I ask myself, "Is there anything on my mind?" Sometimes there is, and I type that. And sometimes there isn't, and I stall (or punt).

And some days people ask me a bunch of questions and I answer them.

How long does it take you to craft a blog post?

I wish I was half as clever as I like to think I am. On average, probably about thirty minutes. Honestly, it's probably longer and I just don't want to admit that publicly. Sometimes it takes a very long time, especially for the five paragraph "college admission" essays in which I want to be sure I've gotten all of my punchlines just right. Grammar matters, but so does rhythm and timing. (The core of comedy is subversion of expectations. And banana peels.)

Hannah had more questions than that, but that's a good start. I have to have something to post later, after all. These posts aren't going to blog themselves.

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I'm an enthusiastic subscriber to The Week magazine, in part because it fills the void left by my newspaper subscription going digital. (Maybe I just need something to do with my hands while I read.)

Each week, The Week showcases an assortment of recently released books, and this past week their top recommendation went to Eve:

As it happens, there's a copy of Eve sitting on the table in my den right now. That's because Cat Bohannon is the daughter of my childhood piano teacher who moved back to New York state but still calls my mom to brag about her kids' accomplishments. (Hi, Rosemary!)

I haven't seen or spoken to Cat in many, many years, probably not since the last time I touched a piano keyboard. But it's still a kind of vicarious thrill to know that someone I once chased around a willow tree is a Big Deal now.

By the way, Rosemary is justified in her bragging. Cat's older brother is science journalist John, who has his own Wikipedia page (but I'll always think of him as the guy who teased me with prank phone calls in elementary school).

Meanwhile, I'm sitting in a basement reading old news and typing blog posts. Maybe I should have spent more time practicing the piano. Sorry, Mom.

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Mark Evanier, who has written a few comic books in his day, recently posted on his website, newsfromme.com, a YouTube of a Japanese take on Neal Hefti's familiar Batman television theme. Since I don't have time today to come up with anything better, I'm reposting it here.

youtu.be/N947b4GF4Ag?si=1rdgeztzi3zbBBTg

Enjoy!

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The 18th Annual Wriphe.com Batman and Football Month got off to an inauspicious start last night when my cable provider Spectrum unexpectedly dropped ESPN from its lineup without warning just as Florida was preparing to kick off the season against Utah.

Apparently Disney wants Spectrum to pay a boatload for the privilege of sharing the same content you can get directly through a subscription to Disney+, and negotiations have stalemated as Spectrum rightly fears trying to pass that charge along to their subscribers like me, who are already paying $110 a month for a package that somehow no longer includes ESPN or ESPN2 or the SEC Network (or Disney or FX or nearly a score of others I can't say as I watch much).

I assume this tactic is intended to make me call Spectrum and demand they raise my rates to get ESPN back. Given that Disney and the other Hollywood producers don't seem very interested in paying writers or actors to create other content — today marks day 122 of the WGA strike and day 49 of the SAG strike — they rightly recognize that live sports is currently (and perhaps for perpetuity in the age of AI) their most valuable commodity.

While I respect Disney's right to try to negotiate for Spectrum's 15 million subscribers, I'm not particularly happy about becoming a pawn in these hardline tactics or the timing of all of this coming at the dawn of football season, especially since for the foreseeable future, it looks like I'll have to leave my house if I want to watch Monday Night Football or a wide selection of college games. It sure seems like Hollywood doesn't really care who they inconvenience in their quest for the biggest possible buck, and that just plain sucks. I won't forget this. As my father always says, pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered.

And Gators... Gators lose 11-24, according to my local evening news. So it's not all bad. The University of Florida football team losing is a good start to any season.

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It seems that every news outlet today is reporting that Flamingo (a time management app) reported that the most common Sick Day in America (according to their data) is August 24.

First of all, congratulations to Flamingo for getting their product's name in everyone's mouth. I see what you did there. I didn't previously know what a "paid time off" app was, and I do now. Good job, guys. Someone was working hard on August 24th.

Secondly, I believe it. (Judging from the amount of coverage this "news" got, so do most other people.) Late August is too blisteringly hot, humid, and uncomfortable to work outside, and school just got back in, introducing everyone to strains of disease that had been developing in secluded households over the summer. It's a perfect storm!

Personally, I'm still doing work today, even though I don't want to. Frankly, I'm a bit depressed, which may be a result of working too hard and getting too little sleep for the past few days/weeks. I could probably use a day off.

If only there was an app that could help me schedule something....

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In its entirety, the text message from my aunt reads

Hey, Have you been ducked?

Of all the things I could have possibly guessed she meant, one thing that definitely did not occur to me was this:

source: npr.org

Apparently, placing a rubber duck on someone else's Jeep as a "compliment" has become a thing in 2023. Great. One more thing to dread.

The primary reason I leave my house as rarely as possible is because I don't enjoy interacting with other people. I don't mind that they exist, you understand, because I appreciate that many of those people make the amenities that make my life more comfortable. But I don't want to have to talk them. And I certainly don't want them to put anything on my vehicle.

That feels... invasive.

So if you want to trade petroleum-based products with other likeminded duckers, be my guest. But please leave me and my Jeep out of your water sports, people.

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Expert advice:

Take wildlife crossing signs seriously; moderating your speed gives you more time to react. Stay alert and don't get distracted. If it looks like you're about to hit a deer,
don't swerve.

Chad Stewart, "Deer Collisions," AARP Bulletin, June 2023, Volume 64, Number 5, Page 11 (emphasis in original)

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