Here’s a pet peeve: when I forget what day it is. Since I work every day of the week and most evenings and no longer have anyone living with me in this huge house, I frequently lose track. Today was an example.

Steven Mintz, “the Ethics Sage,” has a post on his blog listing his “pet peeves.” Boy, he isn’t annoyed by nearly as many things as I am, and all most none of them are particularly momentous. Here’s his list:

10. Leaving the toilet seat up [a shout out to women].

9. Turning without signaling. [what’s the turn signal for?].

8. Walking up a flight of stairs while using one’s cell phones; being oblivious to others [this can cause them to run into us].

7. Talking during movies or using one’s cell phones. [even though there is a message from the theater not to do so].

6. Looking at one’s cell phone while someone is talking [inconsiderate].

5. Cutting people off while driving [stupid; you can cause a serious accident],

4.  Failing to share the arm rest on an airplane [thoughtless]. Taking one’s shoes (and socks!) off in an airplane [yuck].

3. Taking one’s shoe’s (and socks!) off in an airplane.

2. Being interrupted by another person while talking [rude! rude! behavior].

1. Using the catchphrase “with all due respect” [a subtle disrespect].

He writes in part, “I’ve been thinking a lot about them lately because I have experienced that increasingly people are inconsiderate; they don’t seem to be cognizant that even the little things can annoy others. I decided to write a blog on this subject because of my commitment to ethical behavior in our personal as well as professional lives. Being considerate of others is an ethical value because it shows caring and concern for the well-being of others. It moves us away from the constant pursuit of self-interest regardless of how it affects others.”

I can top that list with ease, including his #1: My least favorite catch phrase is a tie between “Everything happens for a reason” and “There are no coincidences.”

Another pet peeve is not getting many contribution to the open forums, but I can hardly complain when I open one 8 hours late.

Terrorism? A zombie in the White House? More chaos from Republicans in Congress? A Presidential honor for…Liz Cheney? Stupid headlines like “Harris Heads To D.C. To Swear in Senators Who Won’t Evven Say Her Name Right” and “Why Murdering a CEO Won’t Fix Healthcare Costs…“?

And why is someone pissing on 2025 already? There are a lot of events and issues you can debate here so I can write about other things…

I guess you can figure out what my mood is like this morning…

Pass along some Christmas season cheer by providing brilliant, trenchant and timely ethics analysis. I’ll be here, reading and poisoning eggnog…

Last week’s forum was a dud, but it was a holiday week, so I have hopes that this one will be more lively. I’m counting on you, since the previous post was written with great difficulty after my head exploded from reading that Barack Obama told an audience that using the criminal justice system against political foes was “crossing a line.”

I’m still wiping blood, bits of skull and brain off my computer screen and keyboard…

Sorry, this is up late for many reasons, but primarily because 1) I am blotto and exhausted after an emotional week, as well as dreading the next stage of Holiday Horrors, 2) I forgot it was Friday. I really did. Pathetic.

Let’s see what kind of new ethics topic you can come up with. If you’re really in a black mood, you might want to watch the tongue-in-cheek “Halloween”-inspired horror film “Thanksgiving,” in which a mysterious slasher disguised as a pilgrim creatively knocks off the people he (or she?) holds responsible for a Black Friday riot at a local retail store that resulted in the trampling deaths of several shoppers. Do I need to tell you what the maniac’s ultimate murder in a movie with that title is?

By the time you comment here (on what ever ethics matters move you), James Woods is like to have been nominated as Secretary of Transportation, and Hulk Hogan as Secretary of Commerce. Interesting times….

Jerry Lee Lewis was amazing, wasn’t he?

No matter what happens Tuesday, this is going to be a really bad month. I cannot imagine a scenario where it won’t be.

I wish I could say that I felt confident about my Presidential election prognosticating skills, but my record in recent years has been no better than that of a coin-flipper: I thought Romney would defeat Obama, who had shown himself to be a weak and feckless POTUS (and Mitt would have, if hee were not such a weenie); I was pretty certain we were going to be stuck with Hillary in 2016 too. I assumed that Biden would win in 2020 between Democratic cheating and the pandemic destruction of, well, just about everything, but I also expected Trump to end up as Herbert Hoover: the closeness of the election surprised me.

Pollsters, at this point, should just admit they have no idea what they are doing and give up. My faith in the American public and American political culture tells me that Trump should win, and would win handily if so many impressionable people hadn’t been brainwashed into believing he is Dracula while so many women are apparently more interested in killing unborn babies at will than the Bill of Rights and trivia like that. I still believe, or want to believe, that a Presidential campaign offering someone as obviously incompetent and dishonest as Kamala Harris cannot possibly prevail offering nothing but hatred and fear of the opposing candidate, especially after the debacle of Biden’s term. But maybe Abe Lincoln was wrong after all. If so, we are in very, very serious trouble.

In other more upbeat news, a poll of baseball fans in The Athletic showed that my view in this post is that of the majority as well:

Enough from me: now you’re on. I’ll be checking in periodically to spam the unauthorized comments of Denver Dave, A Friend, and any other banned commenters, so don’t take the bait if they show up.