My two sons are alarmed by a little red flag at the bottom of my iPhone that reads: 82,168.
Wait, it just changed: 82,169.
This represents the number of unread emails in my in-boxes. The boys seem to think this is some sort of harbinger of doomsday. They apparently think my phone is like a bomb that will eventually explode from all the built-up pressure inside.
"Stand back. Don't touch Daddy's phone. It might GO OFF!"
I've tried to explain to them that I don't ignore my email. In fact, I check it three or four times an hour. It's just that when you've been in the news business with the same email for decades, you invariably wind up on every digital mailing list in America.
I constantly scan my email for important messages from co-workers, readers and sources. And I rarely miss a note that I need to see. But reading and sweeping out all the junk email I get every day would literally take hours and would be a silly misappropriation of company time.
Sometimes, to prove this to myself, I crack open a few of my unopened emails just to peek.
Here are some golden nuggets from the past 1o days:
* Just in time for Father's Day, a company is marketing something called a "Man Bowl" which, as far I as I can tell, is a doggie dish with "Man" printed in industrial-font lettering on the side. The company calls it "canine crockery" for the "guy with a beast of an appetite." There's an attached photo of a guy variously eating Frosted Flakes and spaghetti from his "Man Bowl."
Bow-wow!
* Moen has a new shower head docking system that uses magnets to hold the parts together -- apparently so you can snap it back on when you are blinded by soap in your eyes. This comes under the category of "things we didn't know we needed."
It also comes with a "kink free" hose -- which is an underrated quality for both shower fixtures and people.
* Also, I learn from my email that you can rent a private island in the Maldives for the low, low price of $12,400 per couple per night. The island comes with its own private cook, a marine biologist to take you snorkeling and "a selection of unlimited beverages" -- which, if I'm not mistaken, is technically an oxymoron.
* Speaking of vacations, WalletHub released a survey ranking the top cities in America to have a "staycation." Perhaps unremarkably, No. 1 is Orlando, Fla. That's a little like saying: If you live at Disney World anyway you might want to ride something.
The No. 2 is a bit of a puzzle: Atlanta. No offense to our Southern neighbor, but it seems to me that most of the people there prefer to flee to Chattanooga every chance they get.
* Attached to the "staycation" news release are a host a host of interesting facts.
One that stuck in my brain is this: "Norfolk, Va., has 22 times more tennis courts per 100,000 residents than Gilbert, Ariz." This sounds like the first sentence of a word problem.
* Finally, there is a press release from Bed, Bath & Beyond noting that the home store is launching a new line off "fresh" new bedding based on the "lifestyle, songs and stories" of the country band Lady Antebellum. The only Lady Antebellum song I know is "Need You Now," which is about a drunk woman who calls her boyfriend at 1:15 a.m.
Just saying.
Meanwhile ....
82,170 ... 82,171 ... 82,172
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645. Follow him on Twitter @TFPCOLUMNIST. Subscribe to his Facebook updates at www.facebook.com/mkennedycolumnist.