Horrible People

He is in the cereal aisle, holding his phone flat in front of his face like a waiter presenting a dish, and he is having a conversation at full volume. Not a private conversation that got loud — a public performance. We are all on this call now. The call includes a woman named Deb, and Deb is also on speaker, and Deb has opinions about the HOA.

Every parking lot has one. The lot is packed, cars are circling like sharks, hope is fading — and there it is. One car, parked diagonally, sprawled across two spaces like it just fainted there and nobody had the heart to move it.

Let us consider the possibilities with an open mind. Maybe the driver is protecting a very expensive car. Maybe they just had it detailed. Maybe the car has a medical condition that requires extra room. Or maybe, and hear me out, they parked like a dropped garden hose and simply walked away, whistling, into the grocery store of life.

Airplane boarding is a masterpiece of unnecessary chaos. An airline has a plane with numbered seats, assigned to named passengers, and somehow the process of putting those passengers into those seats becomes a contact sport with luggage.

The Justice Department's National Fraud Enforcement Division just wrapped a 28-day surge against Social Security fraud, and the case files read like a true-crime podcast. Between August 21 and September 18, 2026, prosecutors across 11 federal districts charged 17 defendants allegedly responsible for more than 1.34 million dollars in intended losses to Social Security's retirement, disability, and Supplemental Security Income programs.