Boris Johnson plays a clown. He’s really just a power-hungry nihilist. (WaPo)

I joined the circus when I was 17. bad home life. ran away. that kind of thing. I didn't know what I was doing as a clown for several years, until I earned the trust of the older veteran clowns. initially I was called a First of May, or a greaseball. but over the years, as I stuck around and applied myself -- whipping up the shaving cream soap for the pie fights, blowing up the balloons for the balloon chase, and making squibs for the blow-off -- the older clowns knew I was committed to a life of clowning, and they began to open up. they taught me how to take a slap and break a pratfall; how to sculpt foam rubber with an electric carving knife into buzzards and skunks and three tier wedding cakes, and then paint them with poster paint. they showed me their secret hidey holes in the prop boxes where they could take a quiet nap between shows. 
they were, for the most part, hardworking and sober men who took their comedy seriously. they were married, had families, sent their salaries home each week, tried to eat more lettuce and cottage cheese, and always kept an 'agent suit' in the bottom of their trunk in case a Hollywood agent ever showed up. the 'agent suit' was gold lame with silver braid and thousands of hand sewn spangles on it, and had zircons that lit up via batteries sewn into the pocket. they were very expensive to make and to maintain -- it's what the old clowns invested in instead of a 401(k)
most of them are dead now. Not a one of them ever made it to the White House or 10 Downing Street. 

A red state is plastering ‘In God We Trust’ on the walls of public schools. It’s mandatory.

the old bill poster sat in his rocking chair, sucking on a corncob pipe. "used to be" he said "we could put up circus posters and advertisements for corn plasters on the side of any barn in the land. nobody gave a hoot." he sighed and scratched the stubble on his wrinkled chin. "shoot, them farmers were glad to have us come by and brighten up the walls of their barns -- it was a good way to cover up the peeling paint and splintered wood." the old bill poster's head nodded forward as he fell asleep for a moment, snoring softly. he awoke with a start, and finding me still waiting patiently by his side he continued on with his thoughts.
"nowadays the dad-blasted government is posting their own stuff all over creation! they put it in schools and on billboards and along highway fences and I hear tell they's even going to get soldiers to stencil big letters along that there wall down on the border." the old bill poster put down his corncob pipe and spat into the yard. "no work left for the likes of me." the old bill poster slowly got up from his rocking chair and hollered into the house through the screen door "Hey Banksy, c'mon! Let's go shoot some pool down at the beer joint!" they left in an old pickup truck while I stayed behind to delouse the chickens.  

The other green stuff in your bagged lettuce: Frogs, snakes and lizards

The first review by scientists of wild animals found by customers in prepackaged produce makes clear that frogs are the trouble, and bagged lettuce and spinach are, by and large, their preferred medium.

Washington Post 

I ordered a salad today

and out of it flew a blue jay,

and then came a frog,

a pot belly hog,

and last slithered out a moray.

‘Would Dad Approve?’ Neil Armstrong’s Heirs Divide Over a Lucrative Legacy

I hereby bequeath onions to everyone I know and love. onions to my children, to peel and saute in butter for their pilafs. onions to my surviving siblings, to throw at each other in impotent rage. onions to any spouses I've picked up along the way and forgot to mention in my memoirs -- each one to get two twelve pound sacks along with a garland of garlic. to UNICEF I give scallions in the amount of sixteen pounds. and to the doctor that eases me into my grave I leave a used bottle of McCormick's dehydrated onions. you'll find it behind the Colman's Mustard tin on the shelf above the stove.

As homelessness crisis grows, the Trump administration has made few new efforts

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I saw that fair haired man again, coming out of a fancy restaurant. he accosted me as if we were intimate friends of long standing:

"Hiya, Tim old boy! Howz it goin'?"

I tried to give him the brush off by walking past without remark, but he grabbed my arm, and started talking:

"know what? there ain't no such thing as a homeless person. did ya know that, huh? Here, I'll show you!"

he strode off into an alleyway, and I had to follow him -- he had stuck his hand in my coat pocket and removed my wallet. when he found a poor old soul sitting next to a dumpster he pulled out a crisp brown paper bag, wrote HOME on it with a pencil, and put it over the man's head.

"there!" he chortled. "now he's in his home." next he found an old man and woman huddled inside a large cardboard box. he gave them each a Tote brand umbrella, pulling them out of his coat like Harpo Marx. "now you've got a roof over your head" he told them cheerfully.

"can I have my wallet back, please?" I asked him. 

"it's a matter of trust" he told me. "do you trust me?"

"no" I said. 

"good. we'll negotiate a deal where I keep your wallet for you and you won't go to jail for throwing rocks at war veterans."

his logic terrified me and enthralled me, so I continued to follow him as he gave homeless people chewing gum and plastic combs. I suddenly realized he was a misunderstood saint. a patriot who loved his country like he loved his fair hair. and I began to weep.

if only his noble efforts were recognized by the media! 

at the end of the day I was hungry, thirsty, dirty, and without any money. the fair haired man gave me a packet of kleenex and a box of paper clips as he skipped merrily down the lane singing 'here we go gathering nuts in May.'

I love that guy. 

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

NO PICTURE AVAILABLE

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.