Gargling is the best way to see if your throat leaks.

If I had a fuel gauge on my forehead it would read empty. For the life of me I can't figure out why Sunday mornings take so much out of me. Sure, I'm working hard, but it's not like I ran a marathon. Makes no sense.

We had a good morning...I think. I got some $30 speakers from Best Buy that plug into my laptop and that made the music louder and better. I did a better job of keeping the sermon tight. And one of our visitors from a previous week was back. I had a good time and I hope the others benefited from out time together in his presence.

My muscles have Alzheimer's. I went to the driving range again this afternoon and it's coming back. But hitting a golf ball involves muscle memory - the ability to make the same swing over and over again. Same take-away, back swing, swing and follow through. Do it right once, as indicated by the flight of the ball, and then just do those same elements the same way again. Muscle memory. Get to the point where your brain remembers what it told the muscles to do and just repeat that.
Or not.
Hit a solid 5-iron that goes straight and with at least decent distance and the next swing is a low-flying slice that would have been at least one fairway over.
Good grief.

TIME magazine has a one-page interview feature each week that is interactive. Go to their website and see whose going to be featured in the coming weeks and you can submit questions for that person to answer. TIME chooses from the best (?) of those questions, gets the individual's response.
This week's issue featured an interview with Sean Combs, or whatever name he's using these days. Linsey Jones of Geneva, IL asked, "Do you feel the culture of vanity in rap and hip-hop has given young people a skewed reality of what is important in life?"
The lately P-Diddy responded, "A weak-minded person who was going to do something negative or be vain was going to do that whether it was the music or somebody else that affected him."
The hypocrisy of that response struck me.
All artists in any medium believe their art is powerful and can move people. That's part of what motivates them to create; they want to influence people. Evidence of that is found in activist art - anti-war songs, Farm Aid, movies like Dead Man Walking.... Every artist wants to hear that someone was affected by their work.
Unless they were affected in ways that encouraged them to act in inappropriate - or worse, criminal behavior. Then, suddenly, they were weak-minded individuals going to do that anyway.
The real problem is not that Puff Daddy blows that kind of smoke but that too many people buy into it. They consume and allow their kids to consume movies, shows and music that encourage violence, profanity and misogyny imagining that the art doesn't have any effect on them.
We are all affected by everything that we take in. Garbage in, garbage out.
Sean Combs knows better. He's hoping you don't.