…so says Mel Brooks after the passing of comedian Harvey Korman, who died yesterday at the age of 81. Remembered most fondly for his work alongside sidekick Tim Conway on the Carol Burnett show and in Mel Brooks’ film “Blazing Saddles”, my favorite role of his was in another of Brooks’ films - the hilarious Alfred Hitchcock-spoof “High Anxiety”, still my favorite Mel Brooks film of all time.

Which reminds me of that classic scene in “High Anxiety” where Brooks does a bit as a schlocky lounge singer, singing the tune “High Anxiety”. The lyrics are a howl:

High Anxiety - whenever you’re near,
High Anxiety - it’s you that I fear.
My heart’s afraid to fly, it’s crashed before.
But then you take my hand, and my heart starts to soar
Once more. . . Key change!

High Anxiety - it’s always the same.
Oooh… ‘Xiety- it’s you that I blame.
It’s very clear to me, I’ve got to give in!
High Anxiety - you win!

I sure would have loved to had sung that song in one of our Masonic Lodge variety shows!

But I digress.

Rest in peace, Harvey Korman - you made this world a happier place, and Brooks is right - the world will be a more serious place without you.

“Welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has replaced the BMW as the status symbol of choice.”

So begins every Dave Ramsey Show on the Fox Business Network. And I am so totally into Dave right now, it ain’t funny. Not only because his message (all debt - especially credit cards, student loans, and auto loans - is bad and must be paid off as quickly as possible and avoided at all cost after that) is so appealing to someone who has lived under a mountain of debt all his adult life, but because in this day and age it is such an important message more people need to take to heart.

I’m of the belief that the American economy and our American way is life is in the first stages of a major correction unlike anything since The Great Depression - a correction that is going to change the way we live forever. Sure, most people are focusing right now on the cost of gasoline and the decline in the housing market, but there are more significant changes taking place at the same time, such as:

1. The graying of the baby boomers, many of whom haven’t a clue as to how they’ll be able to afford retirement;

2. Our increasing average life spans, meaning you can have baby boomers spending 20-30 years - or more - in their retirements;

3. The offshoring of American jobs overseas - I can tell you a few stories about that!

4. An American economy increasingly dependent upon services and Americans having plenty of spending money to go around;

5. Governments at the state and national level placing increasing burdens on Americans in the form of taxes, fees, and unnecessary regulations, all of which serve to take more money out of peoples wallets and away from a services-based economy already starting to see reduced spending by American consumers;

6. The fracturing of the family unit and the decline of our moral framework and those institutions that once protected that framework.

Look, it doesn’t take an economist to figure out that there a lot of people who are, whether by choice or not, living from paycheck to paycheck under the assumption that paycheck will always be there. And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out, therefore, that the American economy is basically a house of cards not exactly built on the surest of foundations. In my mind, it’s not a question of if that house of cards is going to collapse but when.

So, for me, what Ramsey is saying makes a whole lot of sense, and it’s something we should have been doing a long time ago. But just as there’s no crying in baseball, there’s no use being a member of the woulda/coulda/shoulda club - all we can do is go after our debt with (as Ramsey is wont to say) gazelle-like intensity. Plan for tomorrow by budgeting for today, that’s our new strategy. And if all goes according to plan, we could be credit card debt-free by the end of October, and then it’s on to our other debt - a 403-B loan and our home mortgage.

Dave Ramsey - a modern-day prophet with a message more Americans need to hear for their own well-being and peace of mind. I’m with you Dave. All. The. Way.

What does one write when you have nothing of importance to say? Sure, I could write about Hillary Clinton and the fact that more than a few people have finally woken up to the realization that there is nothing genuine or even human about her, that everything the Clintons think, do, and say, in the end, is all about them and their own political ambitions. I could write about the Red Sox, but frankly I’m tired of watching them sleepwalk through this current road trip. And don’t get me started on Tim Wakefield - sure he pitched a decent game tonight, but the games he pitches are such droll affairs I often find myself turning the channel seeking something more intellectually challenging or entertaining.

Ahhh, what to do? The underlying problem is that work right now is taking up so much of my weekdays and weeknights that it is difficult to find time to work, relax, hang with the rabbits, and still find time to blog in ways that both entertains and interests.

But that’s the challenge.

One of the more inane things I’ve done from a horticultural perspective here in Arizona was to plan a variety of cactus in pots best reserved for flowering plants. The patio never gets enough sun, the soil dries out very quickly and in the hot summer, you have to water the soil so the cactuses don’t burn, but then watering the soil makes them grow faster, then you have to worry about replanting them at some point. It was kinda stupid on my part - something I realized about 15 minutes after I finsihed potting them.

Never mind the fact that planting cactus is not the most relaxing or pain-free thing you’ll ever do in your life, but I digress.

At any rate, I had this little MacDougal Nipple Cactus that I planted in one of the pots. And it obviously needed more sun than it was getting, but I was a little late to the game in noticing it so that, by the time I dug it out of the pot and planted it out front, its leaves (yes, it’s a variety of cactus that has both leaves and spikes) had all but disappeared. Nevertheless, I planted it, gave it a good soaking, and hoped for the best.

That was in mid-April.

A week later, all of its leaves had fallen off and it sat there all kinda naked and sad, its white stem and white needles looking parched amidst the brown rocks and soil around it. I watered it a couple more times, but nothing seemed to be happening and I gave it up as yet another lesson to be learned about landscaping and cactus planting.

Early last week, during a stretch of 105+ degree days, Tracey gave it a good soaking, and then we got an unusual soaking rain last Friday. Just this past Saturday, I took a look and the cactus had still shown no change, so I made a mental note that one of these days I’d dig it up and toss it out.

Imagine my surprise, then, to look at the cactus today and find it covered from head to toe with beautiful little green leaves! Not just one or two or a branch full of leaves, but the cactus was covered with them - fresh green buds happily illumined by the late afternoon sun. Sometime between Saturday and today, the plant had obviously decided it was time to giddyup and giddyup it did. Now I can’t wait to see how this plant grows and thrives in a location it obiously loves.

Just a lovely little miracle of God’s marvelous creation to celebrate, I guess!

OK, OK I know - it’s been a while. What can I say? The problem is that any time I take off from work creates more work for me, if you know what I mean. And I’m just now getting my head above the inbox. I’d love to post my experience with AirTran and the U.S air travel experience this past week, but it wearies me so all I can say is, you don’t get two free round-trip tickets and people groveling at your feet for no reason. Maybe some time I’ll tell you my experience - maybe when it’s not still so fresh in my mind.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend. Summer is here!

Check this CD out.

The only disadvantage I have seen in replacing my DISH Network satellite setup with DirecTV is in the music channels. Working from home, I prefer music to the TV as background noise, and our second, non-HD TV in the gues bedroom is pretty much only used for playing music on the DirecTV channels.

Side note: It’s not just me who prefers music to the TV, our rabbit Cosmo does as well - in fact, when given the run of the house during the day, if there’s no music playing he will gravitate to the front dining room; if there is music on, you’ll find him in the guest bedroom. Kinda funny, I think.

But I digress.

Unlike most people, I’m supposing, I find the Sirius music channels offered on DirecTV to be somewhat lacking compared to what was offered on DISH Network. On DISH, I especially enjoyed the “Tropical Breezes” channel (which mixed Caribbean steel music with Jimmy Buffett songs), the Hawaiian music channel, and the New Orleans channel, which mixed traditional blues with some ragtime and stride piano. All were great.

The one channel I have found myself enjoying on DirecTV, however, is called Escape. The best way to describe what the Escape channel plays is “muzak” - you now, the old fashioned kind music you used to find in the early FM radio days before the rather (to my ears, anyways) dull and formula-heavy stations offering “New Age” and “Smooth Jazz” (listen to any Kenny G song and you’ll know what I mean) became the new background music of the 21st century.

Second side note: actually, there’s no such thing as true background music anymore. Go into any supermarket and you’re likely to find anything from Alanis Morisette to Led Zeppelin to Bobby Darin or Bob Dylan playing - something I find incredibly annoying, as if there’s a song you absolutely hate there’s no escaping if you have a shopping cart full of groceries and you’re third in line at the checkout counter.

But I digress.

The kind of music featured on Escape is the old-style kind of muzak one used to find in elevators and supermarkets played by “beautiful music” FM stations (in Boston it was the old WJIB) - you know, orchestra and soft-vocal arrangements of songs anywhere from the ’40s to the early ’70s. On these kind of stations you’d find string-heavy arrangements of anything from movie music to popular music to instrumental hits, and, unlike most teens at the time, it was my chosen station to set my clock radio to.

And I found the music great - Bert Kaempfert’s “Wonderland By Night”, Pete Fountain’s “Stranger On The Shore”, “Flamingo” played by anyone; that kind of stuff. Oh sure, you’d get the occasional annoying Anne Murray song, but you’d also get Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole, the Ray Conniff Singers, Mitch Miller, or Frank Sinatra tossed in among string arrangements of every Beatles tune imaginable. Hokey, I suppose, but I really liked it.

And that’s what the DirecTV Escape music channel is all about. A little heavier on the soft hits of the 1970s than the old WJIB might have been, but the same kind of stuff. Relaxing, nothing to make you think much (which is good because it allows me to focus on work), but good background noise. And Cosmo likes it a lot.

Oh there are quibbles - after all, how can you play the original version of, say, John Denver’s “Calypso” and play an instrumental version of Olivia Newton-John’s marvelous “I Honestly Love You” (a GREAT tune and one of her very best, BTW)? But I do get to hear the occasional Heb Alpert tune (which is always great) and some fine standards thrown in.

Call The Great White Shank’s taste in this kind of music sappy if you will, but it recalls the music of my youth and happy times - family cookouts in the back yard, Saturdays when my parents would clean the house, and times far less stressful, hectic, edgy, and complicated than they are now.