Grumpy Old Dan Smith

Remember the good old days when you went into a store with a pocket full of bit coins and bought something? Pretty simple…here’s my money, give me my stuff and maybe I’ll see you soon. Today you don’t just buy stuff, you subscribe to it. We subscribe to the stuff we watch on TV, maybe a newspaper or a magazine or a particular service like lawn care. But now the subscription model is showing up in unlikely places. In the […]

Sex A study found that the pandemic caused a decrease in our sexual desire, pleasure, and frequency. It makes sense, sort of. Let’s look a bit deeper. Right before the pandemic nearly a quarter of Americans said they had no sex at all in the past year. None. Even young people, who owe it to their species to get busy, are more and more likely to be sexually inactive. Scholars, and you know who you are, suggest many reasons for […]

Here’s what make me grumpy: emails—or more precisely emails that sound like your mother yelling at you. Since we can’t raise our voice in print, we are tempted to use things like italics, bold print, underlining and my favorite: multiple exclamation points to underscore what we’re trying to communicate. Here’s what this styling says to me: You must think I’m stupid and unless you put it in all caps, italicized and bolded I have better chance being the next Space […]

Refrigerators Here’s what makes me grumpy: my refrigerator. It’s not so much the machine itself…it’s the relationship. We see each other frequently as I punch yet another hole in my belt. I understand why we need these things—hauling ice from the river wasn’t working out.  Any cultural anthropologist can tell you a lot about yourself just by looking in your Fridge. Are you organized, where every vegetable has a place? Or are you a train wreck like me where every […]

Daylight Savings Time No one really believes you can save daylight and if you could what are saving daylight for? Bug hunting? That’s why a guy from New Zealand proposed a two-hour time shift back in 1895. He wanted more time after work to pursue his passion after work. Did the bugs notice the time change. I sort of doubt it. Twice a year my world gets upset when we mess with our clocks. I’m not alone. Daylight saving time […]

Streaming This is WLHA’s self-appointed editorial director Grumpy Old Dan Smith and here’s what makes me grumpy: Streaming. Streaming technology started when some smart people discovered a way to send stuff between two places without wires. It became what we call radio, then television, then streaming text and today streaming delivers tv shows, movies, music, games and, yes, radio like WLHA the Big 64. People cut their cables, took down their satellite dishes and today subscribe to places like YouTube, […]

How that planet still has kings and queens and princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, sultans and emperors in the 21st century is lost on this plebian. There are 44 countries that still claim royalty but only a handful that have any real ruling power. None the less, we just seem to love our royals. We seem to love them more the more they misbehave. I know this because I watch the Crown. Here in America, we call our royalty […]

I’m self-appointed WLHA editorial director Grumpy Old Dan Smith and here’s what makes me grumpy: To do Lists. To do lists may work for others but they just make me depressed. Maybe I should call mine Things I-probably-should-have-done-but didn’t list. I just found an old to do list and as I look at it, I’m depressed that I didn’t do one thing on the list: I didn’t lose weight. I didn’t go to the gym. And I didn’t read War […]

I’m self-appointed WLHA editorial director Grumpy Old Dan Smith and here’s what makes me grumpy: Happiness. What if I told you that being grumpy help you make more money, have a healthy marriage and live longer? Believe me. A lot of people way smarter than I am study this stuff: the stuff about happy versus grumpy people. I feel pressure to be happy from everyone from my mother to my radio. While happy may seem like a good thing many […]

Unfortunately, the snow thrower started and so I had to be a good neighbor and throw the snow on the sidewalk onto the lawn. With more snow in the forecast maybe I’ll figure out which way to point this beast.