Sunday, December 11, 2016

Know what? I’ve got a new brand box of Special K with shriveled strawberries.

Happy Saturday from Texas to you and yours! I thought you might like to know that I didn’t wake up until noon today ... and oy, it was wonderful! I’m really amazed how chronic pain goes away when you get enough sleep. I almost don’t need Norco ... except I took two, anyway, because DRUGS ARE GOOD. And as long as I’m on the subject — you know, kvetching — I guess I’d also like to report that an old neuropathy issue has come back to haunt me.

After a three-year absence I’M HAVING TROUBLE SWALLOWING AGAIN. It doesn’t happen all the time (thank God) and it’s not always too terrible, but when it’s bad I’m miserable. The thing is, my throat stops working altogether and whatever’s stuck there stays there. It happened a couple of nights ago when Sam and I were eating dinner. My first bite of food got jammed and it took maybe half an hour to get it down. By then my dinner was ice cold and I was getting rattled that I’d wind up in a diabetic coma due to having injected 22 units of mealtime insulin 45 minutes earlier ... and I hadn’t eaten anything yet!

P.S. — I didn’t drop dead and Sam reheated my plate. Thank you for your concern.



Sam and I are painfully aware that we’re going to need new computers one of these days. We’ve got twin iMacs, both of them almost eight years old, which means they’re technological antiques. Fortunately both computers are still working well and we’re not experiencing any weird shit except for an occasional issue trying to upload the latest version of Adobe Flash Player. I’m pretty sure that my iMac will be the first to go because I use it constantly, although it’s not the cost of a new computer that concerns me (the price hasn’t really changed in eight years) ... it’s the cost to upgrade my favorite applications in case they won’t work with Apple’s latest OS.
I use Adobe Creative Suite 5.5, an obsolete package of amazing applications — InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator — which you apparently can no longer “install” on your computer. You have to access the latest version of all three programs now via Adobe’s fancy-schmancy Creative Cloud. As far as I can tell there’s no way to buy the software outright any more. You have to subscribe instead to Creative Cloud and use the software online.

There are plenty of positives and negatives to this, but mostly it’s just TOO FUCKING EXPENSIVE.

Rather than paying Adobe $49.95 a month, which is OUTRAGEOUS, I’d rather spend $1,000 on their damn software and own it. In case that’s not possible, however, I should probably do some advance research to find out if I can continue to use Creative Suite 5.5 on a brand new iMac so I won’t wind up with a brain hemorrhage worrying about this. Stay tuned for additional information but please feel free to continue your normal routine in the meantime.



It’s 1:45 Sunday morning now, Sam is asleep and I’m getting ready for my bedtime meds ... a nightly event involving a fistful of miscellaneous pills and an insulin injection. I also want a few Cheetos, a can of Diet Cherry 7-Up and enough energy to continue typing for at least another hour due to a recent burst of unexpected creativity. Therefore you’ll be stuck with me for a while so deal with it.



Sabra Hummus just experienced a really nasty recall. Listeria monocytogenes have been discovered at Sabra’s manufacturing facility, resulting in A TOTAL RECALL OF EVERY SABRA PRODUCT ON STORE SHELVES. This is really huge, guys, and it’s not known if the company will ever recover from this.

Listeria is a seriously rotten food-borne pathogen that can cause a wide range of health problems, including: 1) mild intestinal distress; 2) meningitis, particularly in senior citizens; 3) miscarriages and stillbirths in pregnant women; and 4) DEATH. Oy! And more than 90% of those infected each year wind up in the hospital. So please throw out any Sabra hummus wedged in the back of your fridge IMMEDIATELY and find something else to schmear on your pita bread. Thank you.


Here’s some shocking news ... I DON’T HAVE ANY FREE FONTS FOR YOU TODAY. I tried, believe me. I scanned every one of my favorite font websites but couldn’t come up with even one stinking freebie. Maybe I’m getting pickier in my old age or just felt uninspired, but there you have it. I’m sorry. In the meantime, for your possible interest I’ve added a new feature to the right sidebar of the Howdygram ... a list of my favorite free font websites so you can browse to your heart’s content.

Fear not, friends. I’ll continue to showcase the best of them in future posts along with critical typographic commentary and convenient download links. (You’re welcome.)



It’s 5 a.m. and I think I’d better get some sleep so I can wake up at a decent hour and eat cereal. I’ve got a new brand box of Special K with shriveled strawberries and an ice cold  carton of almond milk.

Thank you for reading this.

No comments: