Five things friday

The calendar says it's Friday... which is going to have to suffice, because my mind simply does not know. Thank God there are still a few things we can trust in. Unlike...

• Let's start today off with a Chef Boyardee story (remember them?). Italian immigrant Ettore "Hector" Boiardi launched the pasta sauce with his brothers in 1928 after running a popular restaurant in Cleveland. The brand played a key role in introducing Italian food to the US. However it was bought out by Chicago-based Conagra in 2000. Apparently they are now unloading the line for $600M to a private equity firm (not to be confused with Satan). Interesting (and grossly) enough, I have a personal Chef Boyardee story of my own. When the lovely Lady and I were living in East Peoria, IL in the early 1980s we used to love making Chef Boyardee pizzas. One night as we were enjoying one, we were soon distracted by a ruckus in our hamster cage. Turned out one of the adults was eating a bunch of the babies! I'm not sure we've had a Chef Boyardee pizza since then!! And who knew that would foreshadow how private equity firms would eat up our very way of life...
• On a not entirely unrelated note... I read last week how between 1995 and 2022 the THC content in cannabis increased 307%. According to this report, frequent cannabis users are now 11x more likely to develop a psychotic disorder than the general population. Geezaroo... so by all means we should be legalizing it, right? Um, as a former cannabis user, I say NO!  What are we, crazy? (um, yes, it seems more and more that we are).
• Speaking of crazy... hows about the ever-increasing craze (and crazies) of sports betting! Did you notice the TV commercials during the March Madness NCAA basketball tournament reminding people to not contact players personally (or some such thing)? Why is gambling a thing again? You can thank the Supreme Court, who overturned the Bradly Act in 2018 thereby legalizing state-by-state online gambling. State legislatures and professional sports quickly embraced sports betting in an effort to.... yeah, make billions and billions more dollars.
• It's tempting to turn full-bore 'old man' and simply decry everything and everyone in this 2025 landscape as evil and off course and tell people to get off my lawn... Instead, I'm trying to give deep consideration to... How the hell did we get here? How the hell do we address this stuff? What hope do we have? It is, honestly, a daunting task for me. I welcome any and all assistance...
• “When I look at myself, I don’t see how I can be saved. When I look at Christ, I don’t see how I can be lost.” - Martin Luther

 Well, there ya have it. I don't think the 'five things' were intended to go that way today, but go that way they did. So let it be written. Although... I suppose we could ... resist. Who's with me?