Eleven bullet points that will blow your mind

Emptying my brain this week…
   

• So the other day I was finally able to watch the video of the speech I delivered several months ago at the University of Minnesota, Crookston, when the Times was recognized with the Torch and Shield Award. I don’t get a big thrill out of seeing myself on video or even hearing an audio recording of my voice; in fact, it’s kind of excruciating. But that’s not my concern today. What I’d like to know is when exactly I got so bald. Is this some kind of cruel joke? A secret? When was somebody planning on alerting me to this unfortunate development?
   

• I drove by one of those positive-vibe billboards along the highway the other day. You know, there’s one that simply says “Smile.” in big black, block letters. I drove by the other one, which reads, “Be Grateful.” Good billboards.
   

• I watched LPGA golfer Paula Creamer win the U.S. Open on TV a couple weeks ago. She hits the new Taylor Made Penta golf ball, she wears pink clothes all the time and she’s really pretty, too. So I went out last week and bought a sleeve of Taylor Made Penta balls, too. You don’t have to tell me how cool I am.
   

• Summer’s more than half over, so it’s time for me to start thinking about what song I’m going to crank on the first day of school to get the boys out of bed and fired up for a new school year. The other day, I heard the song and promptly downloaded it from iTunes. It’s “Meds and Feds” by M.I.A. If that doesn’t make the kids jump out of bed and start playing air guitar and air drums while trying to decide which new clothes they’re going to wear on the big first day, then it’ll be time for Plan B: Neil Sedaka.
  

• So everyone keeps hammering it home to us that distracted driving is bad, but, specifically, texting while driving is about as bad as it gets. It probably is, but where’s the proof, some might wonder. Well, it’s really something to behold when you actually witness it, as in, two times over the past week, a driver actually crossing the center line and coming right at me on a two-lane highway. I started to swerve and laid on the horn, and their head popped up. They were texting, no doubt about it, and for several seconds, they had no idea where their vehicle was heading.
   

• You certainly can’t knock the works of Einstein, Newton, Edison and their ilk, and that whole creating-fire thing...you can’t tell me that wasn’t a huge development for the beings who occupy the earth. But, come on, has there been a better invention than the DVR and, specifically, its 10-second rewind button? To hear Dick Bremer over and over yell when Joe Mauer’s batting, “High drive! DEEP left field!” and then have the left-fielder catch the fly ball 10 feet in front of the warning track? It never gets old.
   

• We’re struggling to keep the weeds from overtaking our garden, but we’re getting some tomatoes and zucchini, and we’re eating raspberries daily. My wife, though, is most jacked up about the Kohlrabi she planted for the first time this year. We ate some raw last night. YUM!!!!!!!
   

• I got around to watching the film sensation “Paranormal Activity” the other evening. At one point our youngest son came in from outside and planted himself on the couch. Twenty seconds later, he says, “What’s moving the sheet on their bed? Is there a ghost in their bedroom?” Before he even got to his second question, I’d flipped the channel to the baseball game on ESPN. I’m a smart dad.
   

• On a related note, I think some Hollywood film genius should cast the girl from “Paranormal Activity” with the girl from “The Blair Witch Project” and call it, “Two chicks who get what they have coming to them.” Box…office…gold.
   

• Straight from the that’s-why-they-play-the-game file, how about that Noah Insurance bantam baseball team? They win two games the entire summer, enter the playoffs as the lowest seed, then go off and smoke the top seed, 6-0, then throttle the second seed, 11-1, to take the championship. My kid’s on the team, if you haven’t guessed already, so, naturally, I’m extremely humbled.
   

• To the motorists operating the three vehicles I passed on Highway 102 on the way back from Fertile last Saturday morning: Don’t worry, I was not screaming in intense pain, I was just singing with tremendous enthusiasm that 1970s AM radio hit, “Wildfire” by Michael Murphey. You know...”She ran callin’ Wi-iiildfi-iiire...” A song about a pony...only on the XM Radio ’70s channel.