Mr.Al's Blog

The most overhyped candy of the year has to be Dubai chocolate. When Paul Ponytail, manager at the Circle K convenience store I go to, told Mr. Al don’t waste your money on a Dubai chocolate bar… get a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup instead, it was sound advice. But the whole Dubai chocolate phenomenon continued to haunt me. A drug dealer, who was trying to get me hooked on the stuff, gave me a little taste. He figured once I got hooked, I’d be buying the

A Very Interesting Flight I live in the woods in The Great Northwest. I love it there. But come summer the mosquitoes can be a bit much, especially when they swarm. I go through a lot of DEET maximum strength insect repellent. The insect repellant irritates my skin like heck. So bad sometimes that big patches of hair fall off my back. But it sure beats West Nile virus, Lyme disease or some other dreaded condition that makes you bleed fr

I live in Las Vegas, the desert capital of capitalism. As such, I believe Las Vegas cannot survive without a socialist mayor. You know like they have in New York City and Seattle. Socialist mayors. They’re the latest rage. Spread the wealth like cream cheese on a bagel. I’m all for it. Think Zohran Mamdani. He wants you, the little guy, to take a big bite out of the Big Apple. Then there’s Seattle’s Katie Wilson, who describes herself as a Democratic Socialist. Wo

Flaquita Torres is supposed to be in Mr. Peeber’s 7th grade science class. Instead, she’s in the wrong place, lamenting how her boyfriend, Ray Ray Johnson has been suspended for the rest of the year for fighting. I’m just an old man who works as a hall monitor at an at-risk middle school. The words coming out of Flaquita’s mouth are in English, but I have no idea what they mean. “I miss my Shayla,” Flaquita says. “I thought Ray Ray was your boyfriend. I’m confused. Do you

Waterfalls are beautiful. My favorite is Multnomah Falls in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge. I think most folks love waterfalls. They are a wonder of nature. And so are the waterfalls at the desert middle school where I work doing campus security. How did they get that kind of aquatic feature on campus? It’s not like they had the budget to build one. Right now, I’m standing in the middle of what they call the quad. We have an open-air campus. The student