February 3rd, 2025 Mark O'Brien
I love reading spam emails for the same reason I love watching bad movies. They always make me wonder: Who wrote them? Did they actually make sense to whomever wrote them? Did the people who wrote them have any questions about them? Who released them? Did they actually make sense to the people who released […]
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January 27th, 2025 Mark O'Brien
If you read Part One of this series, you recall my having learned Melitta Coffee filters were invented by a German woman, Melitta Bentz. Since then, Anne has been to the store to buy more coffee Melitta coffee filters. And now I’ve learned they come in two colors — white and brown. Since I was […]
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January 20th, 2025 Mark O'Brien
I don’t know why, but ever since the Holidays, I’ve been spammed with ads for Coolina knives. They show up on my phone. They show up on my computer and my iPad. They even started showing up in my dreams, which is the only place I can prepare food without cutting my fingers off. And […]
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January 13th, 2025 Mark O'Brien
In the first part of what I didn’t know at the time would become a series, I cited a conversation on the Friendship Bench, led by everyone’s friend, Phil “Don’t Call Me Hank” Williams, in which he asked a provocative question: What are your expectations for going into a relationship and how will you approach […]
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November 19th, 2024 Mark O'Brien
Recently, my friend and fellow BizCatalyst 360˚ columnist, John Dunia, wrote a post called, “FREEDUMB”, in which he pondered the definition of freedom and its various interpretations and applications in the United States. John and I know we stand on different sides of the political aisle. We also know we respect and care for each […]
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November 18th, 2024 Mark O'Brien
During a visit to my primary care physician on Election Day, he told me my lab tests had revealed acute, chronic Bonkus of the Konkus. “How long have I had that?” I asked. “Probably your whole life,” he said. “But it’s probably flaring up because of the election.” “Am I in trouble?” I asked. With […]
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November 4th, 2024 Mark O'Brien
For those of you who’ve never suffered from insomnia, I’m here to tell you it’s a dangerous thing. If you have insomnia, you run the risk of experiencing fatigue, impaired cognition, mood disturbances, chronic diseases, weakened immune systems, accidents and injuries, reduced productivity, relationship problems, and increased risk of mortality. Worst of all, if you […]
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October 28th, 2024 Mark O'Brien
Unless you’ve lived in Outer Mongolia for a while (quite a while) or have already moved down into your survival bunker ahead of the 2024 U.S. Presidential election season that now stretches from Labor Day to Easter to allow sufficient ballot-box stuffing and counting the votes of dead people, you may have heard of Pickleball. […]
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October 21st, 2024 Mark O'Brien
Because I’m something of a newshound, I came across a press release on the Reuters site the other day, the headline of which was this: “Campbell Soup dropping ‘soup’ in name to become ‘The Campbell’s Company‘”. The drift of the release was this: Campbell Soup is dropping “soup” from its name to become “The Campbell’s […]
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October 14th, 2024 Mark O'Brien
On September 19th, I led a conversation on the Friendship Bench about humor. Among other things, we discovered humor — particularly joke-telling, the nature of the jokes being told, and the people to whom they’re told — should be a matter of respect. (Thank you, Phil Williams.) Yet I remain curious: How far should respect […]
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