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Blog of Jim Flynn
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AuthorJim Flynn is a humorist, writer and novelist. He is available for speaking engagements. To contact email: [email protected] Archives
May 2026
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 The internet never forgets. It just waits. Quietly. Patiently. Like when my wife brings up that thing I said in 1978. 
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She Has Green Eyes. Run.4/10/2026  Let me tell you something I’ve learned after years of reading thrillers, writing thrillers, and occasionally wondering why my own life lacks anyone actively trying to kill me. (as of this writing) If a woman in fiction has green eyes, you’re in trouble. Not mild trouble. Not “this might complicate things” trouble. I’m talking about the kind of trouble where Hollywood Bureau detectives have you under hot lights, and your fingerprints were found at the scene. On your pistol. Even though you were in Pittsburgh at the time of the murder. Nobody saw you in Pittsburgh. Because she has green eyes. In the real world, green eyes show up in about 2% of the population. In fiction, that number jumps to roughly 100%, which is impressive given the math. But writers—myself included, I confess—keep going back to the well. Why? Because green eyes are doing a job. A big job. Examples: Scarlett O'Hara, Gone With The Wind. Lizbeth Salander, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Amy Dunne, Gone Girl, Clarice Starling, The Silence of the Lambs, and Claire Frasier, Outlander, who not only has the eyes, but time travels by touching a rock. Even Agatha Christie used the green eyed woman shortcut. Several times. And Catherine Trammel, played by Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, had green eyes. And just like that, the reader goes: Ah. Got it. She’s dangerous. Green eyes in fiction are not just a physical trait. They are a warning label. They say: This woman is smarter than everyone in the room. She knows something you don’t. She may kiss you or kill you. Possibly both, depending on pacing. And five years ago Gabrielle McHugh was written with green eyes. I didn't do it consciously. She's featured in The Seventh Man, which I'm working on. Green eyes works for female characters. For men, I go with the advice of Raymond Chandler: When in doubt, have a man with a gun in his hand come through the door. Then-if a woman with green eyes comes through the door five minutes later with a gun in her hand, you're really in trouble. .
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The Nissan Naugatuck?3/30/2026  The blog is going from once a week to once in a while. I'll explain later. Meanwhile, it hit me how trucks and SUVs are named after rough and ready places, mostly out West in the mountains, so we can image ourselves as rugged individualists while stuck at a stop light headed for Home Depot. But I think the car companies have used up all the cool places. Santa Fe, Tahoe, Denali, Outback, Sierra, Silverado, Telluride, Yukon, Durango, Santa Cruz, Ridgeline, Kona, Tundra, Wind River. Okay, you caught me, I made up the last one. How did they miss Wind River? There's even a Toyota Tacoma. I drive one. Last time I was in Tacoma, Washington it reeked from the many paper mills, so much so that the smell was cleverly nicknamed "The Tacoma Aroma." That was forty years ago, and I hear the mills are gone, place has been cleaned up and gentrified, a repurposed Northwest version of Brooklyn. Bonus question: Wouldn't The Tacoma Aroma be a great name for the minor league baseball team? But I think it's time for some representation of us rust belt Northeasterners. We buy most of those Subarus. Forget mountains. We've got abandoned factories and potholes deep enough to fly fish in. How about the Nissan Naugatuck? The Ford F-150 Pougheepsie Edition? The Chevy Bridgeport? The Subaru Chicopee? And for driving rocky beaches? The Dodge Plymouth. You've got to be rugged to survive these places. I'm willing to sell my consulting services to the auto industry. Now. About the blog. I've got to focus on finishing my JR Johnson novels. I have a trilogy that came to me, and I'm going to spend time on that. Will do a blog post when I have something to say. Meanwhile, if you haven't seen Press The Button, please take a look: www.amazon.com/dp/B0GR9HLFDK 
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Printer vs. Baseball Bat3/21/2026  Based on this morning. I have owned many printers in my life. Inkjet. Laser. Wireless. “All-in-one.” Which, by the way, is marketing code for none of the functions work particularly well, but they all fail in different and exciting ways. And I can say this with complete confidence: I have never owned a printer I didn’t eventually want to beat to death with a baseball bat like they did in Office Space. You print a test page. It works. You feel a little thrill. You think, This one’s different. Then you try to print something important. Something time-sensitive. A boarding pass. Tax documents. And suddenly, the printer becomes a philosopher. “Paper jam.” There is no paper jam. You open every compartment like you’re performing surgery on a toaster. Nothing. You close it. Then it escalates. “Low ink.” You just bought the cartridge. It cost more than the printer. You replace it anyway. “Cartridge not recognized.” You unplug it. You plug it back in. Nothing works. And here’s the real genius: printers fail only when you need them. The moment you need one page—just one—the printer senses it. It is a Smart Printer. Smart enough to sabotage you. The start of SkyNet taking over. You see yourself in a field. Slow motion. You’re holding a baseball bat. The printer is on the ground. You take a swing. Admit it. You've been there. Which brings me to my proposal. Forget software updates. Forget “smart features.” Just include the bat. Right in the box. “Congratulations on your purchase. Inside you’ll find your printer, power cord, starter ink cartridge, and a regulation Louisville Slugger.” Maybe even a little instruction manual: Step 1: Attempt to print. Step 2: Experience confusion. Step 3: Experience rage. Step 4: Proceed directly to the bat. The customer support hotline is answered by a former minor league baseball player. He advises you on your stance. Wouldn't that be great? Because if printer companies were honest—the packaging wouldn’t show a smiling family printing vacation photos. It would be a photo of the characters Samir and Michael from Office Space smashing the printer in a field. And honestly? I’d trust that brand more. If you haven't seen Press The Button, you might want to check it out on Amazon: www.amazon.com/dp/B0GR9HLFDK 
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Sherlock Holmes Would Be Proud3/14/2026  That’s an actual headline from the Hartford Courant. Let me guess. Lead poisoning? And people say journalism is dying. Back when Jay Leno hosted The Tonight Show, he used to do a segment built around headlines like this. Now that he’s retired, I feel a civic duty to step in once in a while. Which brings me to the novel I’m working on—a new JR Johnson thriller. This one is a little different from the previous books. Here’s the teaser: JR Johnson was hired to move a $150 billion covert government fund. To survive, he has to move a few bodies instead. Turns out he’s good at it. Spoiler alert: there are several unfortunate cases of lead poisoning. The book is still in progress. It will be done when it's done. Writers call this a “schedule.” The title is: The Seventh Man Shaun, the artist I work with, has already started kicking around cover ideas. This is always the most dangerous part of writing a novel. Nothing motivates a writer like seeing a cover for a book he hasn’t finished yet. Meanwhile my recently launched humor book Press The Button is doing fine. It’s nothing like the JR thrillers. That’s because I’m versatile. Or possibly confused. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s available on Amazon. I’m suggesting people consider it as an alternative gift instead of a birthday card. Most birthday cards cost six dollars, say nothing interesting, and end up in the trash. My book costs about the same… …but at least it comes with jokes. Click the link to see Press The Button on Amazon. www.amazon.com/dp/B0GR9HLFDK 
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 One day you wake up and realize something disturbing. Every company in America now wants a monthly subscription. Music. Movies. Cloud storage. Coffee delivery. Your car. At this point I’m expecting my toaster to send me a message: “Your bread access has expired. Please upgrade to Premium Toast.” And then I realized… The smartest subscription business ever invented is that emergency button people wear around their necks. Think about it. They don’t sell the button. They sell the monthly panic plan. Some guy in a boardroom pitched this idea and immediately retired to a swimming pool. Which is how I ended up writing a short comedy book called Press The Button. It’s about aging, technology, ridiculous inventions, and the strange modern world where every device wants a password and every company wants to bill you forever. And my experiences writing about that stuff. The book started as an audiobook and now exists as a small paperback you can read in one sitting. Because attention spans today are roughly the length of a microwave beep. If you'd like to check it out: www.amazon.com/dp/B0GR9HLFDK And if something goes wrong… Press The Button.  Photo of a satisfied reader.
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Coming Attractions2/28/2026  Something Is About to Happen
In about a week, the paperback and eBook versions of Press The Button will quietly enter the world. I say “quietly” because I’m not renting a blimp. But they’re coming. If you’ve been following along, you know this started as an audiobook experiment. A small, compact, slightly unhinged idea about modern life, attention spans, buttons we should press, and why some business models are basically emotional blackmail with a subscription. Now it’s in print. You can hold it. You can underline it. The audio version will take a while longer. You can give the book as a gift to someone who already has too many mugs. And it makes a fantastic birthday card replacement. It's PG-13 Rated. Would I love it if people bought it? Of course. Would I survive if you didn’t? Yes. But buy it, you're going to laugh. Meanwhile, In A Darker Room …While Press The Button is stretching and getting ready for daylight, I’ve been deep inside the next JR Johnson novel. And when I say “deep,” I mean I occasionally look up and don’t remember what day it is. JR is back. Toni Anne is back. Gabrielle is back. Barbara Jean is back Wishbone is back. The stakes are high enough that even I’m a little uncomfortable. This one is leaner. Sharper. Less me trying to be Tom Clancy and more me trying to be… well… dangerous. That’s where most of my energy is going right now. Comedy is fun. But JR is where the knives are. Mark Your Calendar (Or Don’t, I’ll Remind You) The formal announcement for Press The Button will go out on March 7th. That’s when I’ll do the full, proper, civilized rollout instead of this casual “by the way, here’s a book” whisper campaign. Then on March 7th, we press the button. Here's the back cover text: PRESS THE BUTTON WORDS OF PRAISE FROM FAMOUS AUTHORS.* “The greatest humour since Hamlet.” W. Shakespeare, Dramatist “Finally another funny guy from Connecticut.” M. Twain, Writer “我不会说英语” (I don’t speak English) Confucius, Philosopher “He makes fun of Stoics.” M. Aurelius, Roman Emperor, Stoic. * Not independently verified. ************************************** Questions or comments: [email protected]
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Pickleball and The End of Human Decency2/21/2026  A few years ago, here's what I knew about Pickleball: 1) Everybody I knew who played Pickleball got hurt, a 100% casualty rate. Many required orthopedic surgery. 2) Every retired lawyer in Florida had filed a legal brief opposing the sport. I found it all amusing. After all, isn’t it just tennis for people who can’t run? How bad could the sound of a paddle hitting a plastic ball be? PLOCK, PLOCK, PLOCK. That was my introduction to the sound of live Pickleball. I was playing golf, and a couple tennis courts next to the 18th fairway had been converted to Pickleball...that noise does carry. “PLOCK” does not capture the rage producing sound of a pickleball being struck by a paddle. Many have tried to describe the sound, for example, “ a large Tupperware container being struck by a stick.” One actual legal brief states Pickleball sounds are: “Acoustic assault. An unreasonable interference with a right common to the general public...” To put it in perspective, three PLOCKS in a row are irritating. Twenty-five consecutive PLOCKS are enough to make Gandhi renounce non-violence. Imagine how much fun it is to own a condo right next to the Pickleball court. Pickleball players take criticism from outsiders with the objectivity of, say, a parent watching their kid play Little League baseball. The battle lines are drawn. It's like the cattle ranchers vs. the sheep herders in an old Western. All this animosity has created shouting matches, pushing and shoving, fistfights. But it’s not just condo owners fighting with Pickleball players, but also Pickleball-on-Pickleball mayhem. I know I’m supposed to say there’s no justification for violence, but I gotta be honest...there are very few things as entertaining as watching old people fight. And who said I was a responsible person? Imagine my delight when I saw a headline that 20 geriatric Pickleball players had been arrested for brawling. Turned out, there were 20 people involved, but only two arrests. Disappointing, but one of the arrests was of a man for punching an opposing woman player following a lengthy expletive filled tirade, after accusing her of illegally hitting the ball. The incident did happen in Florida, our Casket of Civilization. Included in the online article were mugshots of the two unrepentant perpetrators. Florida police may develop special radio codes for Pickleball problems: There's a 10-82 in progress, could mean there are 10 eighty-two year olds fighting on a Pickleball court. The injury rate? Fits right in with my conspiracy theory that Pickleball was invented by orthopedic surgeons as a response to baby boomers aging out of skiing and tennis. Some conspiracy theories are true. It is discussed in the soon to be released book/audiobook: Press The Button. ********************************** Questions or comments to: [email protected] 
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 Did that headline grab your attention? I try to avoid politics. Not my lane. But I have been amused by all the oxygen being taken up by the reaction to Bad Bunny's Super Bowl Halftime Show. On one side you've got the right wing media hyperventilating like this was the worst thing since... the formation of the Earth. On the other, male white haired left-wing commentators are pretending that they liked Bad Bunny. Spoiler alert: They didn't. They have to say they liked the show, or become the next victims of cancel culture...forever outcast. My opinion: I despise all the Super Bowl halftime shows. I want to see the game. Even though I'm generally sitting there for at least part of the intermission extravaganza, I don't pay attention. Super Bowl XXXVIII? I was sitting on my sofa for the infamous Wardrobe Malfunction and didn't notice it. I must have been stirring the guacamole. The Super Bowl halftime shows have evolved. In the beginning it was Up With People, a group so wholesome and bland they made vanilla ice cream look like Tabasco sauce. Then the NFL started trotting out low energy over-the-hill rockers. By the time they had The Rolling Stones, I think Keith Richards was using a CPAP machine during the performance. Now the show has contemporary pop stuff. The league that fines players for excessive celebration features halftime dancing that would be considered in poor taste at a Vegas strip club. All the shows have always had this in common: the more the NFL tries to act hip, the lamer they look. It's like when Nixon grew sideburns. I'd be happy if they just eliminated the halftime show. But since this isn't going to happen, and in my upcoming book/audiobook Press The Button I discuss: How Many Kilometers Are in a Gallon?, highlighting America's rejection of how the rest of the world measures things, it gave me an idea for next year: Kid Rock and Bad Bunny in a 28 Minute Musical Salute to the Metric System. Lady Gaga could be featured as an atomic clock. She probably already has the costume. It would unite America. People from across the political spectrum would come together and demand drastic changes. Maybe the year after would feature acrobats jumping unicycles over the goal posts, monkeys in cowboy hats riding tiny motor scooters, dogs leaping through hula hoops. Be honest...wouldn't you like that better? And it could be a lot shorter. Short enough so you'd remember there was a football game to be concluded. I offer my creative services to the NFL. For a modest fee. Bonus Fact: The length of a meter is determined by how far light travels in a tiny fraction of a second, as measured by the vibration of Cesium-133 atoms. Maybe Lady Gaga could explain this in a duet with Bill Nye The Science Guy. Breaking News: 20 Geriatric Pickleball Players in Florida were arrested for brawling as I write this. Guess the topic for next week's blog! Questions or comments: [email protected] ************************ Coming soon: - 
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 MRI Land America’s most irritating sounds: 1) MRI machine 2) Pickleball 3) Skateboarding For years skateboarding was number one, but has been recently overtaken, which must be a big disappointment to teenage creeps everywhere. Some of you have never had an MRI. I can tell. You look innocent… and maybe, still employed. An MRI is not a medical test. It’s a psychological experiment. It has taken over the top spot because it is irritating...and terrifying. They put headphones on you… and say, “Just relax.” Then slide you into a metal tube like a defective torpedo. Relax?? I’m in a coffin with surround sound. And that got me thinking about the former champion of irritating sound… The most irritating sound in America used to be teenage skateboarders grinding metal trucks down concrete steps. That SKRRAAAAPE–WHACK noise. It is vital to be able to subject adults to the noise. Well, according to scientific research I completely invented, MRI noises, and the sounds of pickleball have officially overtaken skateboarding as the most irritating sounds in the nation. Pickleball is annoying — fine. Same rage producing plastic thud over and over. But an MRI? Hundreds of different sounds. Starts like a washing machine arguing with a UFO. And just when you think, “Okay… I’m getting used to this…” It goes silent… way too long. You’re isolated...in this tube... You start thinking: “Did they go to lunch and forget I'm in here?” “Was there a nuclear war?” “Am I the last guy… in a tube?” Then—BLAST! They sound an electronic alarm, based on the klaxon the Exxon Valdez activated when they realized too late they were running aground. But louder. You’re lying there thinking, “I hope they find something… because I never want to do this again. Tell me I glow in the dark. Something.” Even though skateboarding is now third on the list of irritation, That hasn’t stopped the kids. They don’t skateboard for the joy of movement. They skateboard for the sound. Cities built them beautiful skate parks. Cities didn’t get it. The skateboards are just a medium. The real joy is irritating grown-ups. You can’t do that at a park, so... The skateboarders headed right back downtown to a bank with marble steps because nothing says “Rebel Without a Clue” like risking your life to annoy people who already hate their jobs. Anyhow...I’ve had some experience in MRIs...but they’re expensive...and medical professionals, having no sense of humor, discourage people from showing up unannounced to try the MRI for recreational purposes. So to give everybody access to the MRI experience... I have a solution. I’m opening a theme park. MRI Land. For a fraction of the cost of a real MRI -- and none of the medical benefit -- you get shoved into a metal tube and blasted with MRI noises for an hour. No diagnostic equipment. No results. But when you come out? Waiting in line at the DMV will feel like a vacation. There’s a minimum age requirement at MRI Land. We don’t want the skateboard dudes in there -- they might actually enjoy it. To get in, you must present either: an AARP card, a list of your current medications, or proof of a recent colonoscopy. MRI Land. “We make the rest of your life seem great.” I'm thinking t-shirts and hats. **************************** Questions or comments: [email protected] Coming soon:  |
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