While visiting the Grass Roots book store, not only did I buy some great books, including a 188-year-old bible, but I met two people with whom I began talking.

After a few minutes, Bill said, “You’ve lived quite the life.”

Zoe had walked away by then.

I don’t think either one of them believed my stories.

That is okay, as no one understands that every moment alive is an adventure to be set down into words and shared as a story. For example, while printing, a problem developed with the magenta roller.

It began to leave a red streak across the upper portion of the newsprint, and no matter what I did to correct it, it got worse. Finally, I left it alone and finished the job with the discoloration still present.

When asked, “Why is it red?”

I answered, “Because we’re preparing for Easter, and that is our representation of the blood of Christ.”

Each time I got a good laugh from the person asking the question. Thus, I turned my frustration with the printing machine into an adventure and story.

It is how my imagination works and why I feel the desperate need to write as I do.

With Biden’s poor approval ratings, and high inflation a top concern for voters, Republicans will take control of the Senate. The GOP also has the advantage because the midterm elections are lower-turnout events and the GOP base is more fired up after the 2020 elections.

While the Senate is subject to less dramatic shifts, the party out of power during a president’s first midterm has won a net gain of two seats on average since 1950.

On the House side, Democrats now have the highest number of retirements from elected life since 1992. Add the known fact that the party in power in the White House usually loses seats in Congress in midterm elections, and the GOP will pick up enough seats to reclaim the House.

Enough about national politics. Let’s get to Nevada.

Biden won took Nevada by slightly more than two percent in 2020. Catherine Cortez-Masto won it by a similar margin in 2016 with the benefit of a presidential-year turnout. She has the money advantage over all Republican challengers, and Democrats have a strong base in Las Vegas and Clark County.

But with the passing of former Sen. Harry Reid, there is an open question of how that base will hold up.

When looking at the House races for the Silver State, the lone GOP incumbent Mark Amodei will be retired from office.

Amodei sits left of center from the Republican middle in his voting. From Sep 2011 to Apr 2022, Amodei missed 299 of 6,167 roll call votes, which is 4.8 percent, higher than the median of 2.1 percent.

He voted to renew provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA,) permitting the federal government to collect business records and other information during national security investigations without a warrant.

The FISA law allows a federal judge to approve such collections without notifying the target or hearing opposing arguments. The bill expands the circumstances that require FISA judges to hear from a government-appointed critic of such requests and increases the number of FISA courts.

Amodei voted for Biden’s 2,741 pages $1.5 trillion omnibus spending package with an attached $13.6 billion for aid to Ukraine. He failed to stand with the GOP against Biden’s COVID-19 federal emergency package and the vaccine mandates while doubling down on the Green New Deal.

I’ll say no more.

One morning at about six, my bedside clock/radio rudely awakened me. I had it set to one of my favorite radio stations, KFMI, which at that time broadcasted out Arcata, Calif.

I was doing a part-time gig at its AM sister station, KATA.

When the radio came to life, the punk rock band The Clash was banging one out. ♫ Sharif don’t like it 𝄞 Rockin’ the Casbah ♫ Rock the Casbah 𝄞 Sharif don’t like it ♫ Rockin’ the Casbah 𝄞 Rock the Casbah…

Immediately, I came straight up out of a dead sleep, fumbled for 10 or 15 seconds as I turned off the racket, and hit the shower. After a musical interlude like that, I was fully awake.

As I stood under the spray nozzle, I thought back to my time at KPOD in Crescent City, Calif., when the program director Greg “Big G, Little O” O’Neil called and balled me out for playing “Nothing but a Hound Dog” by Elvis Presley at 5:30 a.m. I chucked the rest of the morning, realizing O’Neil would have fired my ass if I had been scratching out “Rock the Casbah” at that hour.

Yes, we were still in the world of turntables.

This day certainly got away from me as I spent all of my time before the computer screen and keyboard, banging out news articles for the papers. I’ve been so focused that four, and maybe a fifth time, I warmed up the same cup of coffee.

It sits there still, a full cup, on the counter, by the coffee maker, undrunk. I’ll knock it back in the morning after one more nuking unless my wife finds it necessary to dump it out.

Thank goodness it wasn’t a distilled spirit, as that would be considered alcohol abuse in my world.

My Cousin Elmo says, “Never fight a dinosaur, you’ll jus’ get Jurasskicked.”

Pranking has been a long-standing tradition on the Comstock. Sagebrush writers Dan De Quille and Mark Twain perfected the art of pulling someone’s leg, writing what are called ‘quaints.”

But a prank that runs for six weeks? I had never been the victim of such a long-running leg pull in all my living life.

Here’s the lowdown. Pun intended.

While working on creating a podcast reflecting on Nevada’s history, I wrangled my friend Tinker Moss into voicing them and then sending the recording to me for editing and publication. The first one I got blew my mind as his voice, inflection, and tone were superb.

It was great knowing I had made a sound decision. Pun intended.

Forward to the sixth week, that’s when I learned the truth. Tink was not doing the voicing.

He was using an artificial intelligence program. The AI sounded so close to his natural speaking voice that I never questioned it.

It was a prank on a grand scale. Tink laughed and laughed, and I laughed and laughed until neither one could hardly breathe.

Then — I fired him. Now I have to voice them.

It was a few minutes ahead of noon when I stepped out of the printing office onto our boardwalk to be confronted by a disgruntled neighbor.

He was all hissed off, complaining how I woke him up. I gave him the respect he demanded by stopping in my tracks and paying close attention to his body language.

When he finished posturing, it became a stand-off, him looking at me and me looking at him.

He soon took himself across the street, disappearing into the brush, and I proceeded to grab my lunch from my truck, just in time to hear the noontime whistle. I remained on alert the rest of the afternoon, expecting him to return.

He didn’t. Had he come back, I might have put him to work.

In all honesty, I had no idea that rattlesnakes woke from hibernation so early in Spring.

https://anchor.fm/silvertailings

It may only be an urban legend that a US servicemember working with a powerful military antenna array in Alaska turned to dust after walking in front of an active radar dish and his Zippo lighter was all that survived the ordeal.

Real or not, thank goodness, the lesson I learned yesterday, that the wand that comes with Swiffer wipes is there for a reason, was not half as deadly. It was so painful that I nearly named this piece “Man Nearly Killed by Swiffer Duster.”

No sense in exaggerating.

Seeing dust in and about the equipment, I began cleaning. That is what I was doing when I got one of the worst static discharges in my life.

It came in the form of a brilliant yellow-white flash, followed by a loud crackle and a jolt of painful electricity. It left me weak, trembling, and needing to sit down.

Surprisingly, I did not launch into a tirade of vituperations that would have melted the paint from the studio walls.

Worse yet, it shut down the two computers and the three screens in the office. While I had the passwords and such to restart them, one would not reboot.

Fortune smiled as our station engineer Daniel stopped by drop off some paperwork. Like most engineers, he quickly found the trouble — the keyboard — zapped to the point it froze.

A simple re-reboot of the system and the keyboard came back to life, and the computer lit up. Crisis averted.

I’ve also heard that dust particles contain cremated remains and that the urban legend is true. Either way, I ain’t dusting no more.

In the 1990 movie “Quigley Down Under,” there is a scene where Matthew Quigley, played by Tom Selleck, and “Crazy” Cora, played by Laura San Giacomo, get dumped from a buckboard wagon and left for dead.

“I wish people would quit hitting me on the head,” Quigley says.

“Don’t worry,” says Cora. “On a new job, it’s quite common for things not to go well at first.”

That’s how I felt on Mon., Apr. 4, 2022, the first day at my new part-time radio job at KUEZ. Don’t get me wrong, I love having this position after being out of the broadcast game since 2013, but I cannot think of a more difficult start to a post.

First, Elizabeth Rose, who had planned to spend this week showing me the ins and outs of the station operations, fell ill and was hospitalized. Thankfully, she is recovering and will be back to it soon enough.

Before going much further, during my job interview, I remember telling the station manager/owner that I had “a tendency to overstep my bounds,” acting without permission. It is not encouraged.

But by 10 a.m., I needed help.

So, I asked a former employee I had never formally met if he could assist me. It’s a helluva way to introduce myself.

Anyway, Dave Mencarelli said yes, came to the studio, worked his magic, and got things done. He had been gone just long enough from the station that he had to call someone for an assist.

Now to find a way to put my anxieties back in their Genie lamp and fast treatment for a stress-induced canker sore.