An Equifax hack settlement promises a $125 payout. The truth is more complicated.

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congratulations. you are part of a twenty billion dollar settlement against a big honking corporation that did something wrong sometime in the past and has decided to now make amends by employing dozens of high priced lawyers to confuse and bamboozle you into thinking you're actually going to get something for nothing.

you will not be getting anything, but you will be spending quality time with adversarial persons interested in wasting your time and nullifying your importance as an individual. use this time with them wisely, because the way things are going you won't be spending much time with anybody anymore -- the polity of the entire country is shattered into such partisan shards that family members fight over who gets the wishbone from the baked ham on Sundays.

if you have any questions please call our toll free number, to be put on hold and then transferred to a temp who reads from a script and won't answer any of your questions unless it's in his or her script. the temps get paid minimum wage, with no benefits, so they really don't care a fig for you and your concerns. but they are someone to talk to when it's raining out and your cat won't purr.

Postcard to the President

Take my wife joke, please! A campaign trail cliche finally bombs

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this is not a piece about marriage. it is a piece about rain. how it can come gently or roughly, depending on so many conditions and circumstances that no human agency can really predict it with much accuracy. everyone experiences rain or the effects of rain. without rain there wouldn't be anybody around. very few people are against rain, but most people would agree that it can be inconvenient from time to time -- and from time to time it can actually be deadly, as in a cloudburst that fills an arroyo so fast it kills people hiking in it. you can't have rainbows without rain, but you can certainly have rain without any rainbows. some people go their entire lifetime in the rain without ever seeing a rainbow. those people are to be pitied. 
we most of us take rain for granted -- it's always been around and will always be around in the future. but global scientists are beginning to wonder if there could be an end to rain as we know it. there may come a time when the clouds refuse to form and water boycotts the evaporation process -- when blue skies turn to brass and the earth puckers up into a dusty rictus. then we'll see who has the last umbrella. 

‘The Squad’ Rankles but Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez Make Peace for Now

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(dedicated to Sheryl Gay Stolberg)

"you need structure" the doctor said. "try making an enemy this week in order to discover what self esteem is all about." it sounded screwy to me, but he was the doctor and I sure needed something to get me out of my self-pitying hole. I could barely get out of bed in the morning and at night I wanted to hide under the kitchen sink.

so when I went to the market there was this cashier there, Evi from the Philippines. she always wore latex gloves when making change for me for the laundry. I decided to make her my enemy. "my money must be pretty dirty, huh?" I asked her one morning, when she looked pretty cranky. "What's that?" she asked, looking worried. "you can't bear to touch anything I've touched, right?" I pressed her. "Oh, the gloves . . . " she shook her head. "I got bad dermatitis on my hands -- gotta wear gloves all day or I get blisters that crack and bleed." "You need a new job" I told her frankly, forgetting about making her my adversary. "You can go down to Deseret Industries for counseling and help in getting trained for something else." now she got really mad at me. "Mind your own business, you fat pig!" she yelled at me. so she was my enemy, but I wasn't hers yet. I left the store without getting any laundry change and tried the 7-11, but they don't give change there.

I think my doctor is off his nut. I'm gonna get a new one, if Medicaid will let me.

‘It snuck up on us’: A ‘city-killer’ asteroid just missed Earth and scientists almost didn’t detect it in time

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I went over to Crazy Henry's place to commiserate with him. his pet monkey had been run over by a beer truck. I found him contemplating a loose pile of rocks and trash on the asphalt in front of his apartment. he was eating Hostess Donettes from the bag. "is that the monkey's grave?" I asked him. "no" he replied. "I buried him next to my mother out in Saint Anthony Cemetery." "well then why are you looking at this mess of trash?" I asked him. "I am going to create a meteor out of it." we both looked at the pile for a while. I didn't feel like ragging him about it, since he had just lost something that had been part of him, in fact defined him, for many years past. I thought I was being respectful, but really I was just tired of his foolishness and knew if I kept on prodding he'd get me involved in his pointless activities. but Crazy Henry was never intimidated by silence. he just kept on talking as if I'd asked him to explain it all.

"See, I'm gonna meld all this stuff together with super glue, then shoot it out of a huge cannon, like Jules Verne wrote about, and when it falls back to earth it'll become a meteor. I'll charge scientists who want to come study it a huge fee so they'll have to get grant money for it. I'll clean up!" he was smiling, nearly chuckling, and his mood was infectious. 

"You'll need Big Bertha" I told him.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Biggest cannon in the world; they used it in World War One" I told him.

"Can I get it online?" he asked eagerly.

"Why not?" I said expansively. But then I turned around and went back home; I felt Crazy Henry was making me his new pet monkey.

Democrats struggle to figure out next move against Trump after Mueller hearing falls flat

I couldn't figure out my next move, as I sat on the edge of a pool of quicksand. the muddy quicksand felt cool and refreshing on my bare feet as I wiggled my toes in it. I remembered reading somewhere that quicksand is full of mineral nutrients that soften skin and retard odor causing bacteria. then there was the sign on the other side of the pool that read GUARANTEED SAFE BY GOOD HOUSEKEEPING. 
but both my parents had perished in a quicksand pit on the upper Orinoco River when I was a child. they were ornithologists, looking for rare birds.  and I knew from my studies at Florida State University that alligators often inhabited quicksand pools. 
so I was in a quandary. should I go in or should I stay out? I had taken a great deal of trouble getting to this spot; spent a lot of money and slugged it out with competitors who also wanted to sit where I was now sitting. I decided to just keep sitting there, waiting for a sign. diamonds falling from the sky. flowers floating through the air. men with ears on their feet. that kind of thing. 
that was a long time ago; I'm still waiting.  

The poetry, prose and physics of baseball

the baseball maker of Storm Lake works in a shabby shop on Erie Street. he only makes one baseball each year. the baseball that the president of the United States throws out on opening day. after the president throws the ball out onto the field, the umpire takes care of it until he can reach Cooperstown, where he places it in the museum in a tin box with IN GOD WE TRUST stamped onto the lid. those baseballs will save the country one day when rottenness has eaten away at our faith in home runs and apple pie.
the baseball maker of Storm Lake is very humble and quiet. most people in town have no idea what he does, or how he does it. he mows his lawn and takes his trash to the curb in such an unassuming manner that no one really suspects that he can infuse a leather covered horsehair ball with magic. he never brags about it. he likes to watch the Golf Channel. he never married, so he is troubled about how to pass on his trade and craft secrets. he has a nephew, his sister's son -- but the boy wants to play soccer, not slowly stitch together the world. it looks like when the baseball maker of Storm Lake passes on, he will be supplanted by the softball maker of Oshkosh. 

In ‘The Lager Queen of Minnesota,’ two long-estranged sisters are brought together by beer

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Professor Barbara teaches creative writing at the university. at least when she remembers to show up she does. I took her class years ago, before I was married, and half the time she forgot she had class because she was very involved in a DR Congo educational grant proposal that would put schools all over the country that she would be in charge of. she still is involved with Congo projects. come to think of it, she probably should retire from the university. I've been retired for years now. but she really doesn't seem to age. her red hair is just getting brighter, not fading at all. her skin is as smooth as vellum.

I wrote a novel while taking her class, but I lost the manuscript years ago. I think the title was How to Play Pinochle at the Pine Tavern. this was back in typewriter days. and after I finished typing it up I realized I hadn't paginated it -- there were no page numbers. so I numbered each page by hand, in blue ink. I submitted it to Professor Barbara as my Final, and got a B for my trouble. but she went to the Congo before I got my manuscript back and by the time she came back I had moved to Thailand. 

it might have become a bestseller. I might have never been on food stamps. and why does Professor Barbara not age? 

I saw her at the rec center just last week and she is ripe, not old. I am afraid to ask her about the past. she might shatter. 

Border Patrol chief was a member of racist Facebook group — and says she didn’t notice

I didn't notice the crack until it was too big to patch. I was busy with muscular activities that took all my time. I had assistants who were supposed to look out for just such things; they let me down. big time. plus my schedule is such that I only allow myself 17 minutes of sleep each night, and only five minutes to drink smoothies five times a day. otherwise I am completely caught up in my duties, to such an extent that I haven't seen my spouse and children in over ten years -- I'm not even sure where they are anymore.
but it's all good, really. I'm serving my country by keeping it safe from bindlestiffs and noodgers. not to mention half-hearted foozlers. still, I'm sorry for the crack. I take full responsibility for it, and will make it right. soon, very soon. I plan on taking action to alert all other regions of this crack and to alert the president to the fact that a crack has developed and at this point cannot be patched or mended. then leave it up to him to decide how to handle the situation on a national basis. locally, I'm having my crew round up all the usual crevices in the area for routine questioning and possible relocation to a nook and cranny reeducation camp. 

Mueller’s Labored Performance Was a Departure From His Once-Fabled Stamina (NYT)

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the ennui anarchists have struck again. this time right in our nation's capital! they snuck up on congress and infiltrated a witness so boring and meandering that the entire body was in danger of falling into a coma.  only the vigilance of the pages kept the congressmen and women from keeling over in a dead faint, possibly cracking their heads open on those hard oak lecterns of theirs. 
after the legislators were taken to stimulating safety, where they could play video games and eat wasabi sushi rolls, the ennui squad moved in for the kill. first they hosed him down with glycerin, then covered him with baking soda. but he still kept droning on, dropping his notes on the floor and fumbling with the microphone. so the squad had to get tough. they shut off the electricity, hoping the lack of air conditioning would get to the ennui anarchist. but he just took off all his clothes and began using pie charts. at this point the President ordered a nuclear strike, telling reporters he had no other choice.
the radiation is expected to dissipate in twenty years or so -- until then congress will be meeting at the Walmart on lexington and vine.