Whimsy

The advent of autumn in two days, and return of wool suits entirely too soon, reminds me that when it comes to men’s styles, I may well be fashion-backward.

Since I know how to ask people if they’re enjoying their meals when their mouths are full—and can also ignore people trying to get my attention— I’m thinking this might be a good time for me to get a job as a restaurant waiter.

If today is a day off for you, please accept my congratulations. I plan to spend the day pretending I enjoy beer’s acrid taste and men’s-room aroma. Also, like so many of you, I plan to char defenseless fauna on my Weber grill.

A number of you (three being a legitimate number) have asked if I plan to write about Bitcoin. The no-longer-dewy-fresh crypto-currency may very well be the harbinger of a new era in money or the financial equivalent of the low-rise jeans trend—which proved a major disappointment for fashion designers and retailers. (As I continue to be, on a daily basis. But I digress.)

Welcome to September! Until the past few years, this month’s arrival always had these comforting signifiers:

My sister and I never met. She died of encephalitic polio in the early 1940s. I wasn’t born yet. She was a year and-a-half old.

Some researchers recently theorized that our body parts are BFFs. “Maybe, they speculated, muscles and fat chatted together amiably after a workout.”

While we’re seemingly quite different — your being Catholic, my being Jewish, your being recognized as a world leader, my being a hero to my 19-year-old cat, Osborn the Magnificent — we do share one major trait: tummy troubles.

Breakfast, as we have learned, is the most important meal of the day. Or at least, the most self-important.

Two professors have proposed that towns and cities threatened by cataclysmic ecological events pick up their entire villages, or just parts of them, and move them to somewhere safer.