Robocalls irritating you? Have a cushinon

It’s odds and ends day. We’ll touch on robocalls and a knotty question for everybody’s favorite indicted Texas attorney general. And cushinons.

Yes, “cushinons,” which are coming soon to an Austin neighborhood. Stay tuned to find out if a cushinon is an amusing French pastry, a tasty Asian appetizer or a nettlesome skin eruption that can be topically treated by ointment or salve.

First, an update: My fellow Texans, we’ve dropped to No. 2 in a particular category. I recently reported that we topped the nation in incoming robocalls last year with an astounding 3.4 billion, according to the National Consumer Law Center, which wants lawmakers and regulators to crack down on those annoying — some legal, some not — interruptions of life.

In conjunction with a U.S. Senate committee hearing Wednesday on the topic, the center reported that the 344,732,100 robocalls to Texas numbers in March put us second to California by about 2.7 million calls. But all is not lost.

“Despite losing the dubious honor of the most robocalled state in the nation, Texas appears on track to exceed 2017’s record total of more than 3.4 billion robocalls received,” the group noted.

My favorite thing from the Senate committee hearing was Adrian Abramovich’s testimony.

“I am not the kingpin of robocalling that is alleged,” the Floridian told the committee, according to a Reuters report.

According to the Federal Communications Commission, if he’s not the kingpin, he’s at least somewhere in robocalling royal family. The FCC last year fined him $120 million (!) for making more than 96 million (!!) robocalls during just