I’m Tgreen and this is Happy Friday, the weekly blog post that’s longer and more satisfying than anything Anthony Weiner texted you last month.

And speaking of which, this week Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin announced that she was separating from her husband, Anthony Weiner, after the New York Post reported new sexting allegations against him. She said the couple will share custody of their son, but all of Weiner’s dick pics will remain in his custody. His and the approximately 300 women with whom he’s currently sharing them.

According to Arizona officials, Russian hackers breached a computer used by county election officials. The state officials were tipped off to the breach when the newest polls showed that Ivan McCainovich had a commanding lead in this week’s primary.

Former Alaska governor and perennial punchline Sarah Palin fell last week and suffered a head injury. Unfortunately for her, the fall was not hard enough to induce a state of amnesia so she’ll be forced to continue to remember everything she’s ever said in every interview she’s given over the last eight years.

The scientific community was rocked this week when reports of a potential radio signal coming from space was leaked to the media. The SETI community immediately called for all radio telescopes to be pointed toward HD 164595 to see if there’s anything more to the message besides the single word “Khaaaaaaaaaaan!”

An EU ruling said this week that Ireland must collect up to $14.6 billion in unpaid taxes from Apple. And in other tech news, Apple announced a September 7 unveiling of its new phones and computers and expects to be able to pay off this debt by lunchtime.

A SpaceX rocket was destroyed this week after it blew up on the launchpad during a prelaunch check. The rocket was carrying a satellite owned by Facebook, which means that the latest Facebook project, something they call a “Death Star,” is going to be a little behind schedule.

This news does means that Mark Zuckerberg is all of a sudden reconsidering his aversion to a Facebook “Dislike” button.

Florida Senator and former Presidential candidate Marco Rubio won the primary this week in his quest for reelection. When asked, Rubio said he couldn’t promise that he will serve his full 6-year term if he wins this November. And that’s fair, because a lot can happen in six years and no one can say what might change in the future. In fact, the only thing Rubio could promise is that he’ll definitely lose one more run for the White House before he retires. Maybe two. He’s young enough.

Brock Turner, the 22-year-old student who was convicted of sexual assault but sentenced to only six months, was set free this week after serving only three months of his sentence. Turner’s lenient treatment sparked outrage across the country, and this short time just served to make matters worse. The only silver lining in this whole story is that the justice system will have another chance to get it right after Turner’s second rape. And we all know there’s gonna be one. And maybe he can dedicate that one to Judge Aaron Persky, who let him off so easy the first time around.

This week Donald Trump went to Mexico to meet with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nino. Trump was scheduled to stay overnight, but he said none of the food there was half as good as the taco salad in Trump Tower, so he had to go home.

After the meeting Trump said he didn’t talk with Pena Nino about how Mexico is supposed to be paying for the wall he wants to build. Apparently he was too busy keeping an eye out for any of the Mexican rapists and murderers Mexico hadn’t already sent into this country to start that conversation.

This week ABC announced the cast of the new season of Dancing With the Stars, and one of this year’s contestants is former Presidential candidate Rick Perry. Perry must think that if being on a reality show worked for Trump, it would work for him too. And ABC must just really need those three viewers that Perry’s likely to bring in.

Dancing With the Stars wasn’t Perry’s first choice, actually. Initially he wanted to be on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? But he wasn’t.

This week an Indian Minister recommended that foreign women not wear skirts when visiting the country. Which, oddly enough, is pretty close to a rule Hillary plans to have for any women visiting the White House while Bill’s around.

Singapore released thousands of mosquitos carrying bacteria to combat dengue fever. “The biggest drawback,” said an infectious disease expert, “is we don’t really know what’s going to happen.” And then the opening credits rolled for this latest SyFy original movie we’re all living in.

A US court ruled that grocery chain Trader Joe’s could proceed with a lawsuit against a Canadian store called Pirate Joe’s, which resold Trader Joe’s merchandise. But in Pirate Joe’s defense, the business plan is right up there in the name, and they should at least get some credit for that.

I mean, it’s not like Burger King has the balls to change its name to Tonight’s Stomach Cramps, right?

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nino was found this week to have plagiarized his undergraduate thesis. Which solves the mystery of what he and Melania Trump could talk about when Donald had to step out of the room.

A family in Turkey got food poisoning at a dinner they organized to celebrate their recovery from food poisoning.They blame both instances on the pure dreaminess of the Dollar Menu.

A new study found that ramen noodles have replaced cigarettes as the most popular form of currency in US prisons. And just like that, your creepy college roommate is a prison millionaire.

A dog named Duke was elected mayor of a town in Minnesota for the third time this week. This despite the circulation of numerous photos of the mayor licking himself in public. And in a related story, Anthony Weiner announced he’s moving to Minnesota.

Scientists announced this week that they’ve recently discovered the oldest fossils ever found. The fossils, an advertisement for Larry King Live, are sure to open up a new view of humanity’s history on Earth.

The discovery of a 10-foot snakeskin in Westbrook, Maine, had local authorities worried that there was a large python in their midst – especially after a large snake was spotted eating a beaver by a lake this summer. However, a Texas scientist analyzed the snakeskin and discovered that it’s most likely not from a python but from an anaconda. So sleep easy, Westbrook. You don’t have a killer python in town. It’s just a killer anaconda. At which point Stephen King was like, “Wait, wait, wait, let me get this all down. A killer what?”

In sports news, Dallas Cowboys QB Tony Romo fractured a bone in his back and will be out for 6–10 weeks. And worst of all for Romo, after this announcement oddsmakers gave the Cowboys a 10% better chance of making it to the Super Bowl this season.

The biggest headline in all this is that Tony Romo actually does have a backbone. Who knew?

And finally, according to a recent Fox News poll, more than half of US voters say the country is less safe than before 9/11. And in a completely unrelated story, Fox News just celebrated 15 years as the most popular cable news network in the country.

And that’s enough News Roundup for this week.

This weekend is Labor Day weekend, the unofficial end of the summer for most people. I’m not sure how it works everywhere, but the end of summer is surprisingly easy to spot here in NYC, as you’ll see when you take a look at…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Signs That Summer in NYC is over:

10. Coffee some jackass spills on you in the subway has fresh pumpkin scent

9. Mayor DiBlasio starts trying to pass off Penn Station homeless people as Halloween scarecrows

8. New York Jets get serious about coming up with an excuse for this year’s missed opportunities

7. Chance you’re going to see a back page headline about hockey increases by .06%

6. Only women left wandering the streets barely clothed are probably crazy

5. Annoying coworker stops boring you with stories about his beach house, starts boring you with stories about his fantasy football team

4. Line at Shake Shack is three blocks long (sorry, that’s one of Tgreen’s Top Ten Things That Are True No Matter What Season It Is)

3. Subway rats start prepping for steady diet of candy corn and circus peanuts

2. New York Mets initiate latest plan to avoid winning a World Series Title

1. Mayor DiBlasio stops taking bribes for good parking spots at Coney Island, starts taking bribes for good seats at the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular

And that’s all we have time for this week. Be sure to come back next time. Unless you have something better to do. Literally anything better at all. Until then, enjoy that last weekend of preseason football like you’re never gonna see half these players again, because you’re not unless you happen to show up at Lowe’s during their second shift, see if you can guess which minority group Trump’s gonna piss off next, run out and buy a tube of that new KFC sunscreen before it sells out or gets recalled, whichever comes first, check your spam folder to see if maybe you too ever received a classified email from Hillary Clinton, start cruising the local McDonalds to see if they’re bringing back the McRib this year, don’t pick Tom Brady for your week 1 fantasy team, and, as always, have a Happy Friday!

T “a little voice Inside my head said, ‘Don’t look back. You can never look back’” green

The summer of ’87. Not my happiest summer ever. That summer I’d finished my first year of college, but because I was in a program that would allow me to alternate one semester of school with one semester of work in my field of study (aerospace engineering, if you can believe it), I had to complete 3 semesters of school in a row to get enough credits under my belt to qualify. So, summer of ’87, after two of the most intense academic semesters I’d endured to that point, I had to do a third. Not the smartest thing I could have done, but I was 19 and what did I know?

I think I took 4 classes that summer. Two engineering classes in the back half of the summer, and Calculus 3 and a humanities class in the front half. I don’t remember what the humanities class was, but it was probably the easiest of the four classes. It would almost have to be.

I have a couple of clear memories of that summer. I read a lot of articles about the 20th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the 10th anniversary of Elvis’ death. I inhaled several pounds of dust working my job in the ancient stacks of my school’s library. I damn near wore out the cassettes of Steve Earle’s Exit 0, Dwight Yoakam’s Hillbilly Deluxe and Rosanne Cash’s King’s Record Shop. Exit 0 in particular got tons of play that summer. If I started playing it when I got on the B41 at night, it would finish up as I walked up to my front door. I also wasted some time chasing after a girl in one of my engineering classes, but I was one broke, burned out, miserable bastard that summer, so not surprisingly my main companion during those months was my Walkman.

And there’s one other thing I remember from that summer. My humanities class, whatever it was called, assigned Catch-22 as one of the books to read. I’d heard of, and probably used, the phrase “Catch-22” at that point, but had no idea what the book was about. Turns out it’s a book about World War II, among other things. Also turns out this book would become one of the best books I’ve ever read.

Catch-22 doesn’t follow a linear timeline. It jumps around quite a bit, and you have to pay attention but that doesn’t mean it’s really hard to follow. One of my library bosses took the same class a year later and hated the book because it wasn’t linear, which I found amusing since that was one of the things I liked best about it. And I’m pretty sure that at least one person on the writing staff for the first 3 seasons of M*A*S*H (the only seasons worth watching, by the way) was a fan, because I remember reading several scenes that were mighty familiar and were only missing Hawkeye and Radar to be practically an episode transcript.

Ultimately, I liked the book enough to drag out my battered old copy every couple of years, until it was lost sometime during the great Tgreen’s Farewell Tour of 2003 (and the less said about that, the better). I thought about replacing it, but always decided that if I was going to read it again, I’d want to read the copy that had taken all those trips on the B41, survived multiple lunches and dinners scarfed down out front of the school building, and then joined me on the commutes to at least 2 jobs upon graduation. No new copy of the book was going to be an acceptable replacement.

A couple of weeks ago I was digging around my storage space looking for a photo album that continues to elude me when I suddenly found myself face to face with my 1987 vintage copy of Catch-22, looking about the same as I remembered it. Pretty soon it’ll be joining me on yet another commute, and I’ll probably use this space to bore you with the details as I take a crack at this book for the first time in at least a decade.

Could be worse, though. I could use this space to share more memories of the summer of ’87. Trust me, you’re way better off reading about me reading Catch-22.