Thank You, Inventors

Sometimes I like to bike in the heat,
But when I am done, the a/c is sweet.
It always feels great to work up a sweat,
But then cooling off - seems better yet.

40th Anniversary of Caddyshack

It takes a real work horse,
Not a mere loafer,
To blow up a golf course
Hunting a gopher.

Cycling

What is it like
To ride a fast bike?
On balance, it feels
As if you’d grown wheels.

Anecdata

I’m going into beta
With saying “anecdata”.
So - is it my invention?
Or did I just purloin it?
A neighbor I could mention,
Swears she heard me coin it,
And anecdatally,
That’s good enough for me!

Diet Paradox

If I take up intermittent fasting
On the theory I might take off weight,
Can I also do intermittent feasting?
Because that sounds first-rate!

Encrypted

Some believe your brain retains
Every password in your history.
But nonetheless your brain refrains
From telling you. It’s a mystery.

Thesaurus Rex

I was too lazy
To think of a synonym for stir-crazy,
But became an over-achiever,
When I remembered cabin-fever.

Challenging Times

It’s hard out there for porch pirates today!
Despite more deliveries than ever,
People at home bring stuff in right away,
Frustrating the pirates’ endeavor.

Three Incidents

An odd story in 3 incidents:

1) A foreign friend, who once had Amazon ship a package to my house, had their Amazon account hacked.

2) The other day, an Amazon package arrived at my house addressed to this friend. Because we were home, we brought it in immediately and puzzled over it. We didn’t know about incident 1.

3) Later that day a stranger came running up to our porch, and then left in a hurry, empty-handed. Our house is being painted and the painters puzzled over this. Our guess is that he was a porch pirate trying to get the package from incident 2.

So, this seems like a globe-spanning scam. I don’t really understand the logistics. But they were foiled this time.

The items in the package are not super valuable. Conceivably they are worth a couple of hundred dollars. It seems like a lot of trouble to try to obtain these things.

As you can see, I lack
Proper insight into this hack.
Also - does Amazon want these items back?

Boom

Fireworks in private hands
Hereabouts are mostly banned,
And this year, because of the virus,
There are few public displays to inspire us,
But somehow the neighborhood din
Is the loudest it’s ever been.

Blowback

The experts and politicians and press terrify people and tell them to stay indoors and not socialize. It disproportionately affects the young and the poor, partly because they don't have jobs they can work remotely, partly because they don't have a savings cushion, and partly because they are young people who, by nature, desperately want to socialize. They get worked up about a horrible incident which gets everyone's emotions amped up to 11, and they charge outside in massive, exultantly angry devil-may-care protests - with the blessings of the establishment who recognize an unstoppable force when they see it.

They sow the wind
But express surprise
When the whirlwind rises
Before their eyes.

Vocab Rehab

When I was young, it was not yet systemic
For everyday people to say pandemic.
Epidemic, back then, somehow sufficed
For worldwide plagues that did not play nice.