Archives May 2025

More and more folks, when bored, turn to the internet. As a matter of fact, my iPhone has started sending me shocked notifications of how many hours a day I am spending there. My own phone has become judgmental.

Most days, after I spend way too much time trying to get to genius level on the NYT Spelling Bee game (I won’t quit until I get to genius level, which some days results in my staying in pjs until way after lunch) (” Way after” meaning all day).

Other days, on a whim, I look at my Google feed, which contains at least five “listicles” per visit. You know those:

• Seven little known hacks for using Q Tips
• The 20 best gadgets under $20
• Experts compare grocery store spaghetti sauces

You know these. Do you get sick and tired of them? I do. It’s as if Google is now exhausted and has started phoning it in.

I don’t want a hack. I am fine with using Q Tips for what everybody else in the world usually uses Q Tips. And my God. I have no interest in doing anything with a dryer sheet but throwing one in with my wet clothes so that they don’t stick together when twirling around in there.

I think the listicle people stretch these things too far. For instance, who in the world appreciates the suggestion that you should “clean your cabinets daily?” Honestly? Not one person.

And this “hack” suggests that you clean your shower curtain in the washing machine. We all know that. It is not a hack, it’s common sense. Of course, there might be a dim person who sees that and puts their plastic shower curtain in the washer. That person has no business looking for “hacks” in the first place.

Since when is it a “hack” to cut up old tee shirts for dust rags? Come ON.

There are some listicles that give me anxiety. The one that lists the Top Ten Dirtiest Major Metro Areas. I nervously clicked on that one, heaved a sigh of relief when Dayton wasn’t listed. But Cincinnati was. Yikes.

But this is what blew my mind: There is actually a listicle of Top Ten Types of Listicles. A listicle of listicles.

Anyway. Did you know that you can use Q Tips to start a fire? Or, alternately, to clean a gun?

There you go.

Every night after dinner, we watch a tv series. We like mystery procedurals, but we have noticed lately that if there are, say, 8 episodes, the people making the show like viewers to be confused.

The first episode is total chaos. We don’t know who anybody is, how they are connected, and what is happening. That guy, why did he throw a gun out the window? Is the swarthy guy a good guy or a bad guy? Who is that woman? Why do they all smoke? Who is the dead man? Yeah, it looks like he committed suicide, but we know now that he didn’t.

By the third episode, hopefully things are starting to make sense. Like that woman. We learn she is the sister of the swarthy guy, but we still don’t know–are they both good? Is one of them good, but the other is bad? Who had a motive to murder?

Then, by the fourth episode, we get it. We know who the bad guys are, and we know they all had motive. So now the hero can just proceed to solve things. There are shocks, twists and turns, but we go right along and really are surprised at the end that the person we least suspected did it.

Not so with Monsieur Spade. I like Clive Owen, and he is inscrutable and does a very good American accent. But what the hell? There is a mystery child, an orphan girl, a swimming pool, three suspicious men, and none of the plot is apparent. We figured that it was the usual–things would come together. They didn’t.

The series was SO confusing that they had to bring in–out of the blue, I might add, Alfre Woodard. She got out of a car in the last five minutes of the show to gather together all of the cast to EXPLAIN what had happened in the other episodes.

She “explained” what had happened, but not who in the hell she was, or why she was there. As she dismissed each cast member, she told them to leave the room. As if that made sense. Finally, she was left with Clive Owen, who seemed as if he already knew everything, anyway.

But we didn’t. We turned to each other and I asked, “Wait. What happened? Who was the kid? Why was he silent during the whole thing? Why did everybody want him?”

My husband, stunned that the show was over, clicked back. “There must be another episode.” There wasn’t. “I don’t understand any of it.”

“Neither do I. Why was there a crazy monk? Why did all the nuns get killed? (Oh, yeah, there were nuns). Who was the girl’s mother? Who was the girl, and why was she so important? She had nothing to do with anything that took place, did she?”

“I have no idea.” My husband, whom I rely upon to explain everything from tariffs to tv shows, was as stumped as I was. He ran his fingers through his nonexistent hair and said, “Are we just dimwits? Do you think everybody else who watched this knew what was going on?”

I thought back to when I watched The Usual Suspects on tv. It made no sense at ALL. So much so that I rewound the film (back in the old Blockbuster days) and watched it again. Who was Kaiser Souzai? I was lost, and that was four hours I would never get back.

I got pretty defensive. “We are not dimwits! We get some of the Jeopardy answers! I know what ganache is. You can read music. We have college educations! No. I think the people making it realized how confusing it was, and it was too late for a do over, and so somebody called Alfre Woodard’s agent and offered her a big sum to come to the set for a day to explain everything in the final minutes of the last episode.”

He nodded. “It didn’t work.”