Cory Booker's $33

Here's how you do it next week, Cory:

Ten pounds of rice and beans at a buck a pound. Seven cans of vegetable/meat soup at a buck each. A gallon of milk for four dollars. A one-dollar head of cabbage. Seven apples at fifty cents each.

Bingo. You didn't starve, and you have seven dollars and fifty cents left over for Twinkies, Rollos, and Perrier. If you were a decent human being, however, you would reserve part of that surplus for a thank-you note to the poor freeken  schmuck who paid for it.

Thus endeth our morbid text

Two straight posts on death or near-death?  C'mon, Jim, the TMR worldview  isn't that dependent on inspiration by Edgar Allen Poe. Joy is still to be found, and for some of us, pretty ladies help ease the burden of existence.

Even if you find them in movies like (let the morbidity continue)  Anatomy of a Murder.

Ha! You lechers thought I was going to put up a shot of  Lee Remick's skin falling out of very little, didn't ya? I decided on Our Miss Brooks instead. Me and Hollywood loved her as a semi-frumpy comic and a supremely competent character actress, but she also had her come-hither moments.  

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What's that? The voices of the lowest of the low ring out in anger? O.K., but I warn that Rick Santorum is quite displeased with you.

Cold Sweats in the Night

I don't know if it is every father's nightmare, but it's mine. I am out shooting  with my children or grandchildren. Something goes wrong, and I  shoot one of them.  No consolation is possible, not from friends, not from the total of the world's priests, preachers, philosophers, and grief counsellors. And it probably wouldn't have helped for a DNR cop to announce to the world what a lucky SOB I am.

It happened a couple of hours south of me Saturday. 

The 18-year-old son is badly hurt but expected to survive what is reported as a partial load of pheasant shot in the back of his head.  Conservation cops don't know what happened but speculate the father "may’ve lost his footing going through cover and in the act of tripping, the gun misfired or fired ...".

Misfired? Come on, Officer. The result of a "misfire" on a pheasant hunt is a frustrating "click," nothing worse.

The same game cop then moves to a safety homily, displaying all the human sensitivity of Genseric turned loose among the daughters of Rome:

" ...the shooting likely would have been fatal if the pair had been deer hunting and he had been hit by a deer slug."

Thank you, officer. Us stupid civilians would never have thought of that, and who gives a damn about adding a little bit to a father's feelings of horrified guilt.

A James Dean - ish happenstance

The older gentleman, 68, has died, and I have no intent of making light of that, but there is a point of interest.  According to local radio:

"The ... Sheriff’s Office says (he) was driving a 1936 Ford eastbound on 190th Street when the vehicle left the road and several times, ejecting (him). (The probable "rolled" was dropped.)

A '36? Like this?

Or more on this order?

To a child of the  '50s.these things were the cat's meow, and we -- a few of us, not including me due to insolvency -- stuffed them with the damnedest monster engines imaginable. No one in my circle ever actually saw it, but there were reports that someone in our area had crammed a LaSalle V-12 into  chopped and channeled tail- dragger version.  If true, he was king of the drive-in picture show.

Anyway, I'm sorry it killed you, Sir. But some in your generation would have saluted the cool  and classic  manner of your demise.