At about 3:15 p.m. today (Thursday), I was about to reward myself for cutting my son’s grass and my grass (so my place looks nice in the next series of Facebook image posting by everyone’s favorite martyr) by breaking out the convertible and using it to go get a frozen drink at Burger King.

But I screwed up, committed the unpardonable sin of driving on Dahlia Street. Ironically, there came Charlie Brown in the opposite direction, driving the truck that was uninspected as of Monday this week. Charlie acknowledged me with a one-finger salute, but while holding his hand arm beneath the window opening, in a manner one might use if they were trying to shield a passenger from seeing the act.

I replied in kind and continued. But Charlie didn’t stop at his house and ventured onward. Thinking Charlie might be on another photo-taking session, I turned around and followed. Sure enough, he turned into the alley behind my home, slowed near my garage but kept going. He did stop several houses up the alley and I stopped about four car lengths behind out of necessity. It is too narrow to pass — at least to pass safely.

This must have enraged Charlie Brown, because he threw his truck into reverse and backed up at a high rate of speed. I sat there and braced for impact, feeling sad that my Mustang might have to pay the price for my indiscretion, that being driving on a public street Charlie apparently has claimed for his own, much like a paper alley.

But Charlie, showing reason has not totally escaped him, stopped before crunching my car. He drove to the end of the alley and turned right, but stopped again on Queen, short of his street. I came to the end of the alley, stopped, waved and went on my way in the other direction.

Along the way, I’d gotten a call on my cell phone, so I was relaying play-by-play should it prove helpful somewhere down the line.

I then continued to Burger King and ordered a frozen cherry drink. Not my day, I guess. I was told cherry was “on defrost,” but I could have a Coke. I ordered the Coke, paid the guy his $1.06; even made sure the change had not dropped from his hand since I had heard a clink. No, he had the six cents just fine.

Next, I continued on my planned drive, out to Fender Lane, then to Somerset Pike, Goucher Street and back home.

Now, I sit before the computer getting on the record in the anticipation that Charlie Brown will rush to his social media outlet to pillory me for violating his street.

Oh, and by the way, Charlie, good to hear you apologized to the postal people.

I made time Wednesday to stop by the Southmont Borough building to pick up a copy of ordinance 545, which did get reworded in executive session after Monday’s regular meeting.

It will be advertised for public consumption and the process will continue.

Meanwhile, I received various communications today, either by cell phone or email, that Charlie Brown continues to wallow in a pool of self pity. Hope he doesn’t drown.

Charlie was driving very slowly through the alley behind my house yesterday in a truck that as of Monday seemed to lack valid inspection or emissions stickers. I saw him as I was in the process of getting together my wife and granddaughter No. 3 to go out for dinner, since we’d treated Granddaughter No. 2 the night before.

We made it a point to drive by Charlie’s house on our way out to eat, just to pay respects. I was at the wheel of my Mustang convertible, which is duly licensed, insured, inspected and obviously able to be driven.

It turns out, as I learned via screen captures emailed to me Wednesday, Charlie was taking pictures of my house and garage, then posting them on social media, seemingly implying I am violating some current or proposed ordinances.

Of course he doesn’t say that. He’s Mr. Innuendo when he isn’t Mr. Self Pity. He’s also Mr. I’m Not Very Good In Face-To-Face Conversations. Twice with me he’s either declined the opportunity to berate me in person, or in the latter instance stated two falsehoods in a few minutes, indicating he’d been cutting grass since birth and then that he hadn’t known who I was at a prior Southmont Borough Council meeting, yet he’d advised his father not to sit next to me, Sam Ross Jr., before that very same meeting began.

I am particularly amused that he refers to my blog as self-published, like that’s a crime. It is, indeed, self-published, put out by me and I make zero money for it as it has no advertising, membership fees, etc. I did, however, write professionally for others and made a few bucks doing that full-time for 35 years give or take.

I also did some freelance work through the years, for publications ranging from Steelers Game Day programs, various football bowl game programs, MSNBC (the Jerome Bettis Thanksgiving Day head-tails coin flip flap in Detroit) and, most recently, the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat.

No less a person than Charlie Brown has told me I’m a good writer. High praise, indeed.

Speaking of professions, Charlie states often that he’s a truck driver, as in that is his job. He did it again at the Monday meeting. Since he’s all for disclosure, what was the last day, month, or year that Charlie worked as a paid truck driver for a company? What is the name of his current company of employment?

Kindly post that on social media that someone might enlighten me.

I only ask because a prominent plank in Charlie’s pity-me platform is him being poor and picked on because of that. According to talent.com, the median truck driving salary in the U.S. is $62,400 a year. It’s a little higher in Pennsylvania, at $66,431.

If you are a working truck driver and still poor, where’s all the money going, Charlie?

It is the triumph of hope over experience, making the effort to attend monthly meetings of Southmont Borough Council and expecting progress to be any better than glacial regarding issues such as the Dahlia Street doings.

And yet I made it a point to attend Monday’s meeting, which had hidden deep on its agenda a proposed ordinance to discourage me-against-the-world protesters from clogging a street with out-of-state registered trailers, some replete with piles of junk, a car whose best days were decades back, and any other manner of unsightly things that might be expected to punish the neighbors for refusing to acknowledge and affirm any claims of the protester.

Said victim – know him as Charlie Brown since he’s fond of lamenting ad nauseam about being picked on – keeps losing in court on the matter of his family’s right to claim a so-called paper alley, one on the plans, but not improved to date. These paper alleys must be treated as regular alleys in terms of not blocking them.

It’s a simple legal point, which has been upheld in courts multiple times in this particular case, but Charlie Brown cannot/will not accept this.

Just Monday – before, during and presumably after the meeting – he was almost begging to be sent to jail on the matter.

Also, before the meeting, I made it a point to sit just two seats from Charlie Brown. He wanted to chat beforehand. We did.

Charlie’s major problem is only a passing acquaintance with facts. Example 1: He constantly claims he’s been mowing grass on that paper alley for 46 years and so has a right to it. He did it again in talking with me. I asked him his age (according to online documents on the Pennsylvania unified judicial web portal his birth date– or that of a man with the same name – is 6/3/77). Charlie did admit to being not old enough to have been cutting grass for 46 years after I told him he must have come out of the womb with a lawnmower. He said he exaggerated, but has been cutting the grass since age 10.

Example 2: I told Charlie we could discuss this matter of clogging Dahlia Street and punishing a neighbor who had not even been involved in the whole paper alley deal, but he was not going to change my mind and I likely could not change his. And I noted that Charlie had questioned my bravery on social media; me supposedly being afraid to face him man-to-man. I noted I had come to a previous meeting for just that purpose and had given him his chance to say what he had to say then. I had a witness to all this. He had deferred then. When I brought it up again Monday, Charlie said he hadn’t known who I was back then. But he’d steered his father away from sitting near me before that meeting began, noting I was the Sam Ross Jr., the enemy. When I raised this factual contradiction Monday, Charlie had to concede that he had known me at that time.

Two gross liberties taken with the facts in just a few minutes. You be the judge.

Now, let us move on to the council meeting. The Southmont meeting format is to allow upfront five minutes of commentary from residents who sign up on a sheet. Charlie made sure he was the last to sign so that he might have the final word.

During his time – he was the only speaker to have the buzzer sound denoting his time had expired – Charlie Brown lamented decades of his family being persecuted in Southmont. He did make it a point to praise one West Hills police officer in attendance for being nice and just issuing warnings to him, not citations.

But the rest of us, from council members, to neighbors, to innocent spectators, are bad people. One, a pastor, was called an “f-ing Christian” by Charlie Brown as she left the building. This should have been overheard by a newspaper reporter, by the way. I breathlessly await his report on the meeting.

One of the neighbors who has had to put up with Charlie’s street protest for 18 months or so, made it a point in her address to council to alert the police on hand that Charlie drives a truck that lacks a state inspection, which according to all I know is decidedly illegal. In fact, Charlie, or a person with his name, has been cited in Westmoreland County for just that and there is a trial scheduled for September, again according to the justice portal.

Did the police check Charlie Brown’s truck, which was driven by him to the meeting and parked behind my vehicle? I saw him drive up, leave, circle the area repeatedly and finally park again. They don’t seem to have been interested in this.

When I spoke to council, I emphasized my respect for the First Amendment and right to protest, but there are limits when it adversely affects others. On that front, Charlie Brown inexplicably seems to get kid gloves treatment despite being well over such limits.

An ordinance supposedly had been drawn up to deal with Charlie Brown and those like him, who would put rules of good citizenship in the closet, but it never got to a vote.

I’d encourage people everywhere to go to council meetings, township supervisors meetings, any of the organizations that govern their areas. You will be surprised to see how messy the sausage making is.

Southmont decided the ordinance, perhaps weeks in the making, had too many holes and would need to be redrawn before being voted upon and advertised to the public. There was hope a quick redraft could be done by the end of an excecutive session that was held in private after the public meeting was adjourned.

Perhaps we will learn more Tuesday. Maybe — even likely – we will not. But there’s always next month’s meeting.

Southmont Borough Council did what it does best Monday – dither and pass the buck on the Dahlia Street dilemma.

But maybe things will get done in the executive session that was held after the public was shown the door.

We may even have a report on it all in the local newspaper, eventually. Charlie Brown was giving a reporter an earful after the meeting. Charlie hadn’t done so well debating things with me before the meeting.

My detailed take on things must wait on a trip out to dine. Granddaughter No. 2 is spending the night and wants to go out to eat. Grandma agrees.

Priorities.

It’s another day, and another report of a relative, friend or acquaintance being warehoused in the Conemaugh emergency department for days.

This time it was an aunt who, according to the report relayed to me, spent parts of two to three days in the ER before finally being sent home. Diagnosis: Ulcer

I was told that a distant cousin, since deceased, had an example of this prolonged ER limbo during a lengthy exercise in fumbling the diagnosis. First, it was cancer. Then it probably wasn’t cancer but your guess is as good as mine as to what it is. That became, we don’t know for sure, but let’s treat it like lung cancer. Finally, it was cancer and he had little time remaining. This last time, they got it right, unfortunately.

Along the way, an attempt to produce a sample of the growing mass in his body for biopsy purposes was made by someone at some provider and sent to two out-of-town facilities, but the sample size supposedly was too small.

Too small! This was, by definition, a mass of tissue the man didn’t need or want, so why take too small a sample of it!

I’ve had personal experiences with the ER, involving my mother, my brother and others that did not inspire confidence. Neither did the whole hospital experience in general, for me and others I know .

A notable exception, a blessed occurrence, was recently when my four-year-old granddaughter was left unattended on high-rise monkey bars at a summer day camp, predictably fell, and broke her right arm just above the wrist.

Her parents — my son and his wife — were out of town, so my wife, who had gone to the camp to pick up the granddaughters, instead ended up racing the ambulance to the hospital, taking along the other granddaughter camper, who is five.

I met them at the ER and the care was prompt and excellent. We were kept up to date on any progress and the patient was constantly being checked. A woman met with us to provide a snack for the other granddaughter and emotional support in general. The ER doctors were effective and possessors of good bed-side manner, the latter not necessarily a given these days.

But, even during this positive example of ER care, I saw the downside regarding others. It was decided I should go outside the treatment area with the older granddaughter so she would not need to witness personnel trying to yank the broken bone back into place. That failed, by the way, and pins were inserted days later.

While in the waiting area, we saw an abundance of people just sitting there, often in wheelchairs, with IVs in their arms, masks of various types on their faces, and seemingly not ready to leave any time soon.

We theorized my granddaughter had received priority in treatment due to her young age and the traumatic nature of the injury.

She was given many stuffed toys to redirect her attention from her injury, and was promised a popsicle when she was discharged. She’s a tough kid and, despite her injury, she asked if her sister could have a popsicle, too! That sister, by the way, was destined for the promise of popsicles and ice cream the next week, a scheduled removal of tonsils and adenoids, but at another hospital.

Back to the matter of Conemaugh. I have another cousin, a cancer survivor, who had some poor experiences at Conemaugh ER some years back, including being sent home with wrenching back pain, which it turned out was due to sepsis. He had many touch-and-go days after returning to the ER and receiving a correct diagnosis. When those bleak days seemed to be improving, a nurse had the temerity to indulge in an orgy of self-congratulation, saying to me they’d finally been able to help him turn the metaphorical corner.

Said I: Too bad you slammed him face-first into the wall before that.

Generally speaking, the Conemaugh hospital is dirty. That’s true of the ER. It’s true of the ICU, in which my mother spent her final days. It’s true of the patient rooms I’ve seen in recent years while visiting, or being there myself. If there is garbage on the floor on day one, it will be there on day two, day three, etc.

I’ve seen medical waste and tubes of blood left sitting about. I’ve seen equipment, such as IV machines or various monitors, with thin layers of dust on it. You can’t help but wonder about how sterile the conditions are.

Explanations for the room shortage and problems getting patients into one seem to comport with anecdotal reports of whole areas of rooms sitting empty and unattended by staff. One rumor making the rounds is various parts of the hospital are closed due to a lack of staffing. Maybe it’s something else, I’m not sure.

And yet there is a construction project on the side away from Franklin Street that seems to have been going on for three or four years. I’m not talking about the parking garage.

Why build and expand if you can’t staff existing capacity?

Back to the sanitary conditions: What happened to the housekeeping staff, which used to be top-notch?

Maybe some of the area’s legion of panhandling grant seekers could take a break from pumping downtown revitalization and tourism to pry loose some money to do an in-depth study of why Conemaugh operates the way it does. Now that could be a valid use of my tax dollars.

Hey, aspiring Johnstown entrepreneurs, it’s time to stop opening up more small food joints, coffee huts or overpriced specialty merchandise/service outlets – some of you serial offenders on this front – then lamenting the failure of said business due to lack of demand, competition or the fates.

The answer is as clear as Myopia 2025’s agenda. Buy into the reality of what Johnstown has to offer.

At least one San Francisco resident has gotten that sort of message: When all you have is lemons, make lemonade.

That once picturesque, cosmopolitan California city, which has devolved into a hellhole of drug use, rampant crime and homeless types using the streets as public toilets, has one clever soul looking to capitalize on it all by holding Downtown Doom Loop Walking Tours.

There are reports that the maiden tour, scheduled for Aug. 26, already is sold out. This 90-minute, 1.5-mile tour will hit all the high (low?) points such as abandoned tech office buildings, closed stores, open-air drug markets and the regal headquarters of the “non-profit industrial complex.” Any of this sound familiar, Johnstown?

Speaking of sounding familiar, I proposed a similar tack for Johnstown entrepreneurs on this very blog months back. That April 27, 2023, offering, headlined “Swallowing The Johnstown Tourism Blue Pill” advised sellers of the tourism sizzle as Johnstown’s economic salvation to move beyond hikers and kayakers to embrace what we have an abundance of, that being violence, drugs and decay.

I proposed Moxham Ninja tours nightly to give tourists the chance to hear shots fired in-person.

Tours of abandoned houses and larger structures, scavenger hunts for crime souvenirs, rappelling down our concrete riverwalls in an attempt to utilize those waterways as tourist attractions, all were among additional tourism ideas mentioned and summarily ignored by the community.

I find it sad that no locals have seized the reality tourism opportunity, the sort that one San Franciscan has recognized and acted upon.

Then again, growing up in Johnstown, we often were described as being 10 years or so behind the times. On occasion that was a good thing, with crime spikes and neighborhood degeneration slow to hit us.

But now, baby, it’s all here, helped by a strong influx of out-of-town bad actors and behind-the-scenes plans to turn that river of incoming into yet another flood, which would be the fourth mammoth deluge to hit the city in our history and quite possibly the one that finally obliterates our way of life.

While we wait, there is a buck or two to be made off tourists eager to get an up-close-and-personal look at civic malfunction. What capitalist will see this niche and act to fill it?

I’ve gotten a few emails recently alluding to the fatal Hawaii wildfire and the string of strange coincidences associated with it.

And I am reminded of the bromide favored by agents in intelligence and counterintelligence (spies) that there is no such thing as a coincidence. Translation: If two supposedly random occurrences seem inexplicably to share common elements, there is a reason for that if you look far enough beneath the surface. It’s often not merely randomness after all.

This all began with an email alerting me that the Maui police chief has been reported to be the very same guy who was the incident commander for that 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, when the crazed gunman fired into a nearby concert from his casino hotel room, killing 60 and wounding at least 413.

I’m not sure what this means, if anything. But it does provide cause for pause that the same man is involved in dealing with an historic mass shooting and now, a few years later and thousands of miles away, an historically deadly wildfire, whose victim total stands at 110 as I write and could climb further.

Perhaps we ought to keep tabs on this guy’s movements for the good of society, sort of like an early warning system that he’s cursed and could be coming soon to a town near you.

There have been reports of warnings for years that the specific area in Hawaii was at great risk for wildfires due to the crisscrossing of electric wires over areas of a particularly flammable invasive species of wild grass. That, and a history of strong winds drying said grasses and/or downing power lines, was an accident waiting to happen.

There are more strange aspects to the fires. According to reports, sirens for some reason were not sounded to warn residents. Worse, there were erroneous county reports issued early on that the fires were 100 percent contained.

It gets even more incredible. Water pumps seemed to run dry as attempts were made to combat the flames. Power was said not to have been cut in timely fashion to address the problem of high winds downing lines and igniting that grass.

Already, Hawaii’s governor is out with plans to acquire the burned lands and, among other possibilities, make it into a green space memorial to the victims.

And, incredibly, another email informed me that a book, “Fire And Fury: (blah, blah, blah)” already is up for purchase on Amazon. Based on the title and short summary, the book is an unapologetic effort to leverage the tragedy to push for more climate crazy agendas to be rammed through without debate, sort of like COVID vaccines.

It’s available both for Kindle users and in a paperback book version. That’s an incredibly quick turnaround for a book, unless a large portion of it were written in advance, just waiting to plug in specific details of some natural event.

To sum up. I don’t know what this all means. I do know, to quote the Alice character of Wonderland fame, it all grows curiouser and curiouser.

Considering his pathetic track record in office and questionable physical and mental states, you’d think Joe Biden would be unable to limbo even lower. And you would be wrong.

The “Come on, man!” continues to plumb even greater depths.

Many found it insensitive, inappropriate and downright moronic when Biden had a “no comment” for the media when asked about the wildfire tragedy in Hawaii. Biden was at the beach, by the way, a haunt he frequents much more than, say, the White House.

We haven’t had a public figure miss this much work time since Johnny Carson made it a running joke about how often he was vacationing from his “Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

While disappointed viewers back then could flip the channel to other options, we’re stuck with this figurehead president – and his behind-the-scenes puppeteers — at a time when we need much more.

One of the string pullers seems to have exposed herself on social media. That would be Karine “Gay Paree” Jean-Pierre, the White House press spokesman largely because she is a lesbian woman of color.

Jean-Pierre tweeted out under her account on Tuesday: “When I ran for President, I made a promise that I would leave no part of the country behind.”

Funny, most cannot recall voting for Jean-Pierre, or her being elected president, or her making any such promise.

Now, if she were ghost-posting a tweet for her boss, but forgot to log into his account first, that might help explain it all. The tweet, we have read, since has been deleted. But it was too late. Screenshots abound.

As typically is the case with the Biden regime, no explanation has been forthcoming.

This is just as there have been no plausible explanations to refute allegations of influence peddling, weaponization of the justice system in pursuit of Donald Trump, mishandled classified documents, having a miscreant for a son, and displaying a penchant for invading the space of women and children.

Seemingly doubling down on his “no comment” brain fart, Biden and friends now are offering Hawaii fire victims $700 emergency payments, which are being viewed widely as laughable. These are a pair of slaps to the face for Hawaii, which predictably votes for Democrats, having failed to do so just twice since the 1960 presidential election.

Meanwhile, we can’t ship enough arms and money to the questionable Ukraine government, despite our federal budget deficit that already has hit $1.61 trillion, with two months remaining in the fiscal year. The U.S. has run budget deficits of more than $1 trillion just four times in history, each of them in years following the 2008 financial crisis.

The budget deficit could be on pace to challenge $2 trillion, the sort of thing that should not be the case if the nation’s economy was enjoying the boom Biden and his lackeys claim. Then again, their credibility is as low as Biden’s approval rating.

Biden has consistently showed himself to be unable to execute his duties at a competent level, due to character flaws, or mental and physical problems stemming from the aging process.

His handlers are working overtime to keep his all-too-obvious shortcomings from daily exposure, but they are failing.

From falling off his bike, falling up the steps to his aircraft (repeatedly), freezing midthought in public addresses, or just failing to show the compassion he had promised from his bunker during the presidential campaign, Biden is not fit for his job.

But we’re stuck with him, up to the time Democrats decide he’s too great a liability and bring out the metaphorical knives for him – a process some would argue already has begun.

Breaking news: Former President Donald Trump has been indicted in Florida on 998 charges of illegally removing those irritating tags on mattresses and pillows.

Several Trump associates also face charges for conspiracy to remove the tags.

In announcing the indictments, special prosecutor Ima Hack, the 712^th of her kind to be appointed to look into Trump misdeeds, said there was no choice but to prosecute Trump due to the undeniable fact that the tags explicitly say removing them is illegal and the egomaniacal Trump must be shown that no one is above the law.

Hack, responding to media inquiries, emphasized this is a blatant crime, not the petty examples being bandied about by Republicans concerning the Bidens; things like influence peddling, tax cheating, drug use, illegal gun possession, mishandling classified documents and speaking falsehoods to the public, Congress and judicial figures in general.

Make no mistake, removing these tags is an existential threat to our democratic system of government, Hack emphasized. If the public (sheep) cannot be expected to follow blindly such dictates, social order as we know it will break down and, (gasp), people might begin to make decisions on their own.

If this genie of blind submission escapes the lamp, the hoi polloi might again insist on fair and accurate elections, up to and including removing all the loopholes that enable the ginning up of just enough ballots to win key states in national elections, or key seats in Congressional races.

If scofflaws such as Trump, who not only blatantly removes mattress and pillow tags, but also has the temerity to deny election results, can be allowed to walk around as a free man, our nation is doomed.

Hack repeatedly stressed that Trump’s background as an election denier makes him open to any and all charges that might be rooted out by a never-ending stream of special prosecutors. These investigators, she noted, should not be confused with the puppets Democrats appoint to investigate their alleged wrongs.

Those special prosecutors are there only to provide political cover and to serve as procedural roadblocks to those who are making legitimate inquires about apparent wrongdoing.

As for election denying, Hack bristled when one media member opined that perhaps Democratic luminaries such as Al Gore (2000) and Hillary Clinton (2016) soon will find themselves facing Trump-like scrutiny.

After all, Gore had to be dragged kicking and screaming to conceding his election to George W. Bush, and since has whined long and loud – between inhaling donuts and predicting the environmental end of Earth – about his loss not being a loss at all.

Similarly, Hillary Clinton still was making public appearances in 2019 saying Trump had “stolen” the election from her.

Given what is happening to Trump, is it just a bit surprising that no one is looking into Gore’s climate hypocrisy and his cashing in on it?

Might Hillary, as an avowed election denier, be open to further inquiry into her and Bill’s foundation, her mishandling of classified information, and cashing in on Biden-like name branding?

Hack dismissed such speculation as petty political misdirection. She stated such allegations cannot be confused with the righteousness of the left and its patron saint, Lavrentiy Beria, former head of Joseph Stalin’s secret police, who boasted of his ability to convict the innocent: “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”

Hack and leftists have massaged that to “Show me the Republican and I’ll show you the crime.”

Alas, Beria eventually found himself on the other end of these politically motivated inquiries, and was executed for treason after Nikita Khrushchev seized power over the Soviet Union in a 1953 coup.

The world is awash in spin, distortions and outright lies from formerly trustworthy sources like, say, media and government.

It produces a sense of strident discord between what we observe firsthand, and what the narrative makers insist is the truth. In effect, we are told that we cannot believe our lyin’ eyes.

I mention this because, even as I scribble this blog post, the wife is out shopping.

She will return home within a few hours and regale me with tales about how everything – or almost everything – she has bought now costs more than it did days, weeks, or months ago.

But, wait, didn’t our government overlords just announce today that price inflation is slowing to a mere crawl at 3.2 percent above July 2022, and up a mere two-tenths of a percent from June 2023’s numbers?

Why, yes, they did.

Based on past experience, I strongly suspect the wife’s higher figures for today’s purchases will indicate more than a trifling three percent increase, give or take.

Allow me to explain how this could be so.

I learned long ago that any resemblances between official inflation figures and my personal experience were no more then coincidental.

The folks who calculate inflation used to be limited by a basket of goods and services and if those things increased in price, inflation was reported.

Along the way, they’ve added substitution principle to the calculation. If steak is up in price, they substitute lower cost chicken or hamburger, presuming most consumers will do that and it makes it all more real world.

More cunning is the application of something called hedonic adjustments. Yes, it’s based on the same Greek word meaning related to pleasure, which gives us hedonists.

In hedonic inflation calculating – or masking – relative value is used to help wipe out the effect of cost increases on inflation numbers. For example, you buy a new computer with a faster processing speed. Even though it costs more, that increase will be formulaically reduced for inflation purposes because of presumed increases in pleasure and efficiency.

These keepers of the inflation flame will scoff at your personal experiences with vastly increased prices and ridicule them as merely anecdotal. You don’t have hedonics. You’re a mere heathen.

Another slight of hand the inflation people use, when it suits their narrative, is to emphasize core inflation. The overall inflation number often is referred to as “headline” inflation, an attempt to equate the number with the gaudy, sensational headlines one might see on the rag publications sold at checkout stations.

Core inflation excludes “volatile food and energy prices” and so often is lower than headline inflation. Apparently, there is no utility in factoring in the price of rising luxury items such as food or gasoline.

Alas, for July that typical slight of hand didn’t work. The “headline” rate was 3.2 percent, while “core” was 4.7 percent. Whoops. Better get food and energy back in the mix. Pronto.

Funny, I didn’t hear a single media or government type stress today how that core inflation number was the truth. No, they went all giddy about the headline number, both year-over-year and month-over-month.

This legerdemain continues to be practiced for one basic reason: It works.

Too many sheeple blindly accept the statistical distortions as they rush to participate in what cynics refer to as the Barbie, Beyonce and Taylor Swift economy, a triumph of splash and gratification over value and utility.

But, make no mistake, things are costing more and the government numbers don’t fully capture those increases.