Blog #460                                January 1, 2026   

 

Did you all have a nice Christmas?  I hope so, and no matter what our religious persuasions might be, I’m certain that each of us was visited by our favorite Christmas icon, that bearded fat-man we call on every Christmas to bring us the things we want -- General Tso.  I hope your gifts were loving and your chicken spicy. 

 

Another year has gone, and it was a strange one indeed!  Have you ever seen anything like 2025?  Hurricanes, fires, mass shootings, sexual scandals, politics, politics, politics!   It seems like the most prevalent form of hatred now is political.  We thrill when something bad happens to “their” side.  We mope when something bad happens to “our” side.  We’ve stopped talking to family members and friends because they didn’t vote the right way.  I think it is very sad.  Don’t we have something better to do?  Well, I have something better to do.  I have to clean up a whole bunch of things I’ve been wanting to tell you.  First of all, hi there and welcome to the 2026 version of Limerick Oyster.  I hope you’re feeling well.  Let’s talk about shoes.

 

Some time ago, my wife and I went to a play.  At the end, as the standing ovation waned, she said to me, “I’m missing a shoe.”  I bent down and looked under my seat.  There was a shoe, and I picked it up and handed it to her.  “That’s not my shoe.”  What?  Am I at a play or a sale at Nordstrom’s?  She quickly found hers and I was left holding a red shoe.   What was I going to do with a red shoe?  Soon, of course, the shoe was claimed by a churlish woman who I’m certain suffered from athlete’s foot, toe fungus, plantar fasciitis and warts.  And probably gout.  I gave the red shoe to the woman with a pleasant reminder that, “There’s no place like home.”  Then I drove home as fast as I could and scrubbed my hands in turpentine.  Why does it seem so disgusting to touch someone else’s shoes?

 

Or take pills prescribed for a dog?  I was having some arthritis a while back and my daughter Jennifer said she had some arthritis pills she got for her dogs.   The canines didn’t like the pills, so she offered them to me.  Of course I refused such silliness, but I went to the internet anyway to see what these doggy-pills were all about.  It’s really amazing how many canine illnesses there are.  You knew there was a list coming, didn’t you?  I love lists.  Here are some doggy diseases:

 

·        Ulcerative Collie-itis

·        Barkinson’s

·        Dysenterrier

·        Restless Tail Syndrome

·        Itchy Pomeranian

·        Rin Tin Tinnitus

·        Mastiff Neck

·        Aarfritis

·        Irritable Bow-Wow Syndrome

 

I like dogs.  I like to talk to them and have them around.  But I don’t want one.  I watch many of my neighbors walking their dogs, and I just am not up for that any more.  Besides, I have Shakespeare and I have my wife.  She’s like a high-strung little poodle with curly black hair and skinny legs. 

 

Message from Shakespeare:  It warms the very sickness in my heart (Hamlet).  There he goes again, that old fool, saying he likes dogs.  Dogs are big and loud and sloppy and have to go outside.  Cats are soft and quiet and smart.  And, by the way, cats have diseases too.  I think I have purr-sitis and cat-aracts and kit-zophrenia.  Purr.

 

You know that a bunch of cows is called a herd and a bunch of wolves is a pack.  But there are a few offbeat names for groups of other animals: a crash of rhinos, a dazzle of zebras, a journey of giraffes, a pride of lions, a parliament of owls.  All of these are real, and I would like to propose one more – a Cacophony of Women.  Well, have you ever heard Carol and four or five of her friends all talking at the same time?

 

I often pick on my wife here, but it’s really the husband-wife conflict that I am exposing, not her.  The truth is we have a great relationship.  She does what she wants and I do what I want.  For instance, a few years ago three of my friends and I planned a golfing trip to San Antonio.  All by ourselves.  This was our trip, our time, just us men!

 

The guys all developed a plan

To go where a man is a man

Where we can be free

To be all we can be

As long as our wives say we can.

 

They said we could.  Actually, my wife is wonderful and  very easy to deal with.  I just have to make sure never to allow her to become miserable.  When my wife mentions the word “miserable”, something had better change!  And that means now!  Like the Holiday Party we went to recently.  After about an hour, I could see that she wanted to leave more than a CNN reporter wants to leave a Trump rally.  You can always tell when she wants to leave.  She starts to make comments like, “Do you think your car door opener will work from here?”  Or, “Do you remember where you parked?”  It works every time.

 

Let’s do our Weekly Word.  It’s churlish, which means irritable and rude.

 

I hope you had a nice New Year’s Eve.  We went to a movie and dinner.  I’ll give you the movie review next week.  We didn’t stay up until midnight.  Not any more.  Youth is when you are allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Middle age is when you are forced to and old age is when you don’t want to.  You can say that another way.  Youth is when you watch the ball drop in St. Louis and then go out and party.  Middle age is when you watch the ball drop in New York so you can go to sleep at 11:00.  Old age is when you watch the ball drop in Paris so you can turn in right after dinner.

 

Charles F. Raymond said, Another year! Use it kindly; you will not have it long, and almost ere you are aware, it will be past.  I hope the new year treats you kindly.  Stay well, count your blessings, and don’t be churlish.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

Blog #459                      December 25, 2025

 

Merry Christmas to all my loyal friends and readers!  And Feliz Navidad!  If you celebrate the birth of Christ, my Christmas Carol and I wish you a wonderful, safe holiday.  If you don’t celebrate Christmas, you can still enjoy the lights and the music and the spirit.  It’s 73^o here in St. Louis, and the only white things you can see on this Christmas are the sheets of paper that the Jeffrey Epstein files are written on.  I’ll get back to that.

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  At Christmas I no more desire a rose than wish a snow in May (Love’s Labour’s Lost).  Purry Christmas.  Deck the halls with bowls of cat-food – meow, meow, meow and purr, purr, purr.

 

Did Santa and his ten reindeer land on your roof last night and drop presents down your chimney?  Ten reindeer, I hear you query?  Yes, ten.  There were Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donder and Blitzen.  And, of course, Rudolph and Olive.  Olive?  Yes, Olive was the other reindeer, the one that was mean to Rudolph.  Olive, the other reindeer, used to laugh and call him names.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling festive and well.  I promise this blog will contain no Epstein Files. XXXXXXXXXXX.  There, I’ve redacted something for you.  Does that make you feel better?  I don’t get it.  The only issue in the last ten years that our Congressional representatives have agreed upon in a bi-partisan landslide is that they want to see more dirty pictures.  I guess salacity crosses party lines.  Why are we paying them?

 

And yes, salacity is our Weekly Word.  It means the expression of undue or inappropriate interest in sexual matters.  Let’s move on to something more wholesome, like grandchildren.  Do you ever sit around with your grandchildren and tell them how life was when you were a kid?  Things like:

 

·        In my day our telephones were attached to the wall?

·        I remember when there were only three television channels.

·        Back then, our flag only had 48 stars.  Alaska and Hawaii weren’t states yet.

·        And it only cost four cents to mail a letter.

I wonder what our grandchildren, 40 years from now, will be telling their grandchildren.

 

·        When I was young, we had little copper things called pennies.

·        Back then, our flag only had 50 stars.  Canada and Venezuela weren’t states yet.

·        And people actually drove their own cars.

·        And people actually sent other people pieces of paper, called letters, which were delivered by something called the U.S. Mail.

·        Go ahead and play now, kids.  They just released another six million Jeffrey Epstein photos.

What with all the scandals involving powerful men caught in sexual misbehaviors of one form or another, my wife asked me if, in the many years I had been in business and had many women working under me (that’s a bad phrase, isn’t it?), whether I had been involved in any harassment.  “Well, in all honesty,” I told her, “there was one little incident in High School.  You see, the high-school girls were playing softball and I just couldn’t take my eyes off the shortstop.” 

 

I thrilled to her figure and grace

And loved every view of her face

So I tried to make sport

With the girl who played short

But I couldn’t get past second base.

 

It all worked out fine in the end -- I married her.

 

It’s time for the Award shows.  The American Music Awards is Sunday.  And then Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, Tony, Golden Globe, People’s Choice, Critic’s Choice, SAG.  It seems that every week there’s an extravaganza where gatherings of rich people give themselves awards.  Have you ever really looked at the audience at these award shows?  I certainly hope Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are watching, because if they want to tax the rich, this is the place to be.  There’s violence and antisemitism in the streets, poverty in every large American city, war in the Ukraine. But what do we see at these award shows?  A bunch of Barbie dolls strutting around in their Versace’s and Jimmy Choos, signing $20 million contracts for their next movies.  And a bunch of fat, male directors looking for aspiring starlets to jump on their casting couch.   And when they accept their awards for being rich and skinny, or their awards for being ruthless and powerful, they always take the opportunity to tell us how to live our boring and normal lives.  They wouldn’t know what a normal life was if they ran over one with their Maserati.   Where is the Occupy Oscars crowd?  Where is the outrage?  Is there anybody disgusted besides me?

 

And the funny thing is -- we really don’t care who wins the awards.  We only care about “who” they’re wearing.  It seems to me that all these starlets are either too skinny or too large, and they’re either wearing Bulimia Blass or Oscar de la Tenta.  Which brings up the following question: why do fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing?

 

I celebrated a birthday yesterday.  You see, it was sixteen years ago yesterday that they brought me back to life with that most delicate and clever of medical tricks – massive electric shock.  I truly thought it was all over for me then, but I’m still here and the pacemaker-defibrillator does not seem to have had any residual effects.  Except, of course, that when I cough, the garage door goes up.  But the fun part is that if I’m driving and want to honk the horn, all I have to do is rub a balloon on my hair.  And, of course, there are certain things I have to avoid, like vacuuming, cross-country skiing and getting run over by a reindeer.  I can just picture myself, up in Heaven with a twelve-point rack up my you-know-what.  No electric shock is going to bring me back from that!  And I can just imagine what God would say – MICHAEL, I TRIED TO KILL YOU SIXTEEN YEARS AGO AND THAT DIDN’T WORK.  THIS TIME I SENT RUDOLPH.

 

Alright, you have better things to do, so I’ll let you go now.  Have a Merry Christmas and a wonderful week.  Be sure to stay well and count your blessings.  See you next Thursday

 

Olive                                        Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #458                                December 18, 2025

 

I have not seen a Marmatod in fourteen-hundred years.

A Marmatod is like an ox with feathers in its ears,

But somehow still it hears.

 

Well, it’s not really like an ox because it has four eyes,

A dozen antlers, sixteen legs, two flippers and it flies.

At least it really tries.

 

I think that I remember what a Marmatod has got,

But it’s been fourteen-hundred years and that is quite a lot,

So maybe I forgot.

 

That is probably my favorite poem.  It’s whimsical and silly and all the things that I’m not, at least on the surface.  On the surface I’m logical and organized and practical and reserved and dull.  But underneath, somewhere, is a Marmatod, writing poetry and trying to get the feathers out of his ears and looking for someone to play with.

 

Hi there.  Wanna play?  I hope you’re feeling well and enjoying the Christmas music.  Yes, radio stations everywhere are playing Christmas songs non-stop.  We all love Christmas songs, but sometimes I just get overloaded with them.  I mean, how much Burl Ives can one person take?   I think we need some Christmas songs for old people.  You knew that was coming, didn’t you?  How about Grandma Got Run Over by a Wheelchair or All I Want for Christman Is Some New False Teeth.

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  Give thanks for what you are today (Twelfth Night).    I like Christmas music too.  I’m Dreaming of a Cat Christmas.  Santa Paws Is Coming to Town.  Litter Drummer Boy.  Pops bought me a present, some little thing that shakes and rolls around on the floor.  I don’t like it.  My best present is just to have my Pops to take care of me.  Purr.

 

I hope you all are enjoying the December holiday atmosphere?   Are you out shopping?  My wife loves to shop.  I mean she loves to shop, and when she’s really on a roll, you couldn’t pry her away from the stores with Shaquille O’Neal’s shoehorn.  Now, Carol does everything fast.  She plays cards fast, cooks fast, cleans fast, walks fast.  We even have a special nickname for her -- The Princess of Lickety Split.  I think I have it figured out why she does everything fast.  It’s to make more time for her favorite thing. 

 

She’s moving at light speed non-stop

Her pace – well it makes my jaw drop

I found out at last

Why she does things so fast:

It leaves her with more time to shop.

 

It’s nearing the end of the year, and I have a whole gallimaufry of unused thoughts that I need to express before their use-by dates – things like toilets, llamas, famous Jews and cabbages and kings.  But first, I have to tell you what our Weekly Word, gallimaufry, means.  A gallimaufry is an unorganized collection of various things, like a hodge-podge.  I bet you didn’t know that one.

 

Let’s start with the public toilets, by which I mean toilets in restaurants or Walmart or the airport.  FIRST: What happened to flushing?  Is that one of those jobs that “Americans won’t do”?  Was it such a complicated process that we had to turn it over to an intricate and expensive droid?  I want to flush when I’m finished, not when R2P2 has decided I am far enough away?  SECOND:  I want some soap and water.  What happened to faucets?  They’re gone.  Instead, I have to wave my hands under a spout and wait for water to come out.  It doesn’t work the first time – or the second.  Sometimes, I have to conduct the entire 1812 Overture before a brief gush of water comes out.  THIRD:  What happened to towels?  I want a towel, not hot air.  I get enough hot air listening to talk radio.  And besides, the only thing that hot air does is turn the cold water on my hands into hot water on my hands.  What could be more simple than to have a bathroom with a toilet, a sink, some soap and some paper towels?  But instead, we have a fully-automated factory that whisks you in, flushes you out, soaps you off and blows you out.  I hate public toilets.

 

As you know, my oldest daughter has chickens, and she is always concerned about hawks and foxes and other predators.  Recently, some so-called bird expert told her to get a llama, and that would keep the predators away.  A llama!  You see, those animal-specialist types live in their own dream world where crickets sing to puppets and white rabbits wear pocket watches and llamas grow on trees.  Where exactly do you go for a llama, Llamas R Us?  Nacho Llamas?  I remember years ago when a Great Horned Owl showed up on my porch, and I called one of these animal guys and asked what I should feed the creature.  He asked, “Do you have any dead mice?”  Sure, I said, I keep a box in the freezer in case Monty Hall drops by.

 

I read a lot of history, and from my readings I have painstakingly compiled a list of historical figures who, though you didn’t know it, most certainly were Jewish.  You can tell just by the things they said.  For instance:

 

We knew King Arthur was Jewish when he said, “I want a round table.”

We knew the Wicked Witch of the West was Jewish when she said, “I’m not going out in the rain and getting wet.”

We knew Joan of Arc was Jewish when she said, “I’m cold.  Can we turn the heat up?”

We knew Attila was Jewish when he said, “Yes, Hun.  Whatever you say, Hun.”

We knew Venus de Milo was Jewish when she said, “Damn, I broke a nail.”

We knew Helen of Troy was Jewish when she said, “Menelaus, take me to Paris.”

We knew Goldilocks was Jewish when she said, “This bed’s too hard.  I want a new room.”

We knew Little Red Riding Hood was Jewish when she said, “We’re going out with the Wolfs again tonight.”

 

Well, have I wasted enough of your time?  I know that was silly, but it’s the holiday season and I knew you would tolerate a little of my goofiness.  And what about the cabbages and kings?  Maybe next week.  Goodbye for now.  Stay well and count your blessings.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

Blog #457                                December 11, 2025

 

I was just at Whole Foods and noticed something called Dead Sea Mineral Soap.  I don’t mean to burst any of your soap bubbles, but it is as a result of those minerals that nothing can live in the Dead Sea.  Hence the name DEAD.  I want soap with minerals from the Alive and Thriving Sea.  Why should I want to rub myself with stuff that causes instantaneous death to any marine creature it touches?  But that’s just me. 

 

Good morning.  It’s Thursday.  I wonder who got fired this morning for sexual harassment.  Have you heard the new Christmas song?

   

♫ So long ye merry gentlemen – P. Diddy and Matt Lauer

♫ Jeff Epstein too and Charley Rose, we caught you in the shower.

♫ Now men in every walk of life had better watch themselves.

♫ Cause we caught Santa playing with two elves – Comfort and Joy

♫ Yes we caught Old Santa playing with two elves.

 

I’ve come up with a scale on which to grade these creeps.  When the number of accusers exceeds the number of letters in “PERVERT”, then the guy should no longer be classified as Homo Sapiens.  Ah, I can just imagine one of you saying, “How about Homo Erectus?”  Now that’s really a filthy, low-class, disgusting thing to say.  I’m so glad I came up with it before you did.  Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and getting ready for all the December holidays – Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s Eve, Maxing My Credit Card Day.

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  Come, woo me, woo me, for now I am in a holiday humor (The Tempest).  What about all the cat holidays?  There’s Hanu-kat, Pet-erans Day, St. Cat-tricks Day. Purr-im and even Black Cat History Month.  Meow.

 

Last week, as I sat in my daughter’s kitchen in North Carolina, I heard Lance entering the room.  Lance is the pillow-sized automatic vacuum creature that starts up whenever it wants to and roams around the house sucking up dirt and old men.  I told Siri to kill it, but she told me she was non-violent, which reminded me of one of my favorite movies (Forbidden Planet, 1956).  It describes a society whose technology became so advanced that it reached a level where every person could just wish for something and the Central Computer would make it happen.  Want a Mocha Frappuccino?  Boom, it’s there.  Swimming pool in your back yard?  Bam, you got it.  Whatever wish you had would instantly become reality.  But as soon as that new “ap” came on line, everyone unknowingly and subconsciously wished for the death of someone they hated or envied, and the entire populace was wiped out in a single night.  Is that where we are heading?  The technology is racing ahead too fast – certainly too fast for me.  Why can’t they just stop for a while and let us rest?

 

Apple, we all appreciate what you have done.  You have made our lives happier and easier with your iPhones.  But now that I’m happy, lose my number!  Just give me a smart phone.  It doesn’t have to be Einstein-smart; Betty White-smart is good enough.  I just want to text, take pictures and make calls.  That’s all, period!  And no more updates – ever.  Let me learn how to do the three things I want and then go away.  I’m not a teenager.  Just give me a simple phone for me and my generation.  And call it the iMold (I’m old).  And just once, when I try to remember my password, can’t you just say “Close Enough”.

 

I have many friends who use the old line that goes, “I read the paper every morning and if my name is not in the obituaries, it’s a good day.”  I don’t bother reading the obituaries.  I figure if I’m dead, somebody’s going to tell me.  And besides, reading the obits depresses me.  It makes me realize how many people I didn’t know.  If I should ever choose to take on the Sisyphean effort of shaking hands with a stranger every second, 24 hours a day, it would take me 254 years to shake hands with every person on Earth.  And I still wouldn’t find anybody else who has read Moby Dick seven times.  I saw somewhere that of the eight billion people on the Earth, only 150 million are older than me.  But this number can only go down, every hour, every day.

 

It’s scary how clearly I see

The truth about mortality:

Every night someone dies

So each day when I rise

There’s less people older than me.

 

That’s a sobering thought, isn’t it?  Oops, now it’s 149,999,999.  I’m depressed.  I need to rest.  And read the obituaries.  I know life sucks sometimes, but, as my Dad always said, “I count my blessings.  My cup runneth over.”  So let’s count our blessings and try to find a smile once in a while.  Let’s see, how can I make you smile today?

 

Weekly Word:  Yes, it’s Sisyphean, which describes a task that takes tremendous effort but gets no results. 

 

Do you have a Spellchecker?  Of course you do.  That’s the program that corrects the spelling and punctuation on your computer or iMold.  I have a Spellchecker on my Microsoft Word program.  That’s the program I use to write this thing.  I call it Speedy the Spellchecker, and Speedy tries to correct all my spelling and punctuation miscues.  I say “tries to” because I do not accept most of his corrections.  I want it the way I want it, and I normally do not bow to the commands of some impersonal collection of zeroes and ones known as a computer program.  For instance, in the paragraph above, I used the word runneth.  Speedy, having apparently never read the Bible, had a conniption and told me I couldn’t do it.  Well, Speedy, kisseth my asseth!  I’m going to use it anyway.  If Shakespeare had had a Spellchecker, Juliet would have been forced to say Romeo, Romeo, where the hell are you?  And when Shylock said, “If you prick us do we not bleed,” well, I can’t even tell you what Speedy did with that one.

 

There, I bet I made you smile. I’ll try to make you smile some more next week, so stayeth well, counteth your blessings and cometh back.

 

Michael                                    Sendeth comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com 

 

 

 

Blog #456                                December 4, 2025

 

Did you have a nice Thanksgiving?  We certainly did.  Thanksgiving is the only day when you actually want people to give you the bird.  Now it’s time for dessert.  Have you noticed that most of the sweet things in life start with C.  For instance: Cookies, Cake and Cupcakes; Candy, Chocolate and Caramel; Cocoa, Custard, Cream and Carob.  And, of course, my main sweet – Carol.  “It is an extra dividend,” Clark Gable said, “when you like the girl you’ve fallen in love with.”

 

Gee, last week he quoted Dr. Seuss and now it’s Clark Gable!  What’s the wordy bastard going to come up with next?  Settle down now, have another cookie.

 

What I’m going to talk to you about now is the most important part of the holiday – shopping!  I hate crowds and am too timid to shop on Black Friday, and I’m too technologically backward to shop on Cyber Monday.  Forget Black Friday and Cyber Monday!  We need Senior Saturday where no-one under 65 is allowed in the store, and where we can amble leisurely through the aisles picking up Senior Saturday Specials on reading glasses, space heaters, melatonin, Ensure, low-salt potato chips, laxatives and CoQ-10, or just to have a desultory stroll through the aisles to pick up some steps.

 

Our Weekly Word is desultory, which means lacking a plan, purpose, or enthusiasm.  I have no such condition.  I always have a plan – to make my wife happy and to keep you entertained.  Hi there and welcome back, my friends.  I hope you are feeling well.  Did you go to a movie over the holiday?  I like movies.  I like to be entertained.  What I don’t like is to be depressed.  Make me laugh, make me smile, frighten me, make me think, make me guess, make me cry – but don’t depress me.  I can’t watch any more children being loaded into Nazi freight trains.  If I want to be depressed, I’ll just stay home and watch the news.  And don’t charge me a car-payment for a bag of popcorn.  People, can you not go two hours without a popcorn and soda that cost $14?  I know you can. 

 

And now they have movie seats that recline.  Very comfortable!  Too comfortable, if you ask me.  I go to a movie to be entertained (I may have said that already), not to sleep.  I go to the Opera to sleep.  Just give me a comfy seat, a pillow and a bunch of Italians hollering their meatballs off, and I’ll be happy as a witch in a broom factory.

 

We were in North Carolina for Thanksgiving and, one day, my daughter was treating a couple of her chickens for depression. The technical term, I think, is “Down in the Dumplings.”  She had a reference textbook on chicken psychology.  The book was entitled Freud Chicken.  I have more chicken jokes than Harvey Weinstein has victims. 

 

We flew home Monday night.  It was a wonderful few days, but, considering the horrible weather all over the country, we were considerably nervous about getting home.  But I refused to reschedule to the next day because I knew my little three-legged buddy missed me.  And I missed him too.  Actually, right now, as I write, I don’t know where Shakespeare is.  I’ll go look.  Don’t go away; I’ll be right back.  Found him—he’s sound asleep on the top shelf of my closet.  Yes, I do have a small closet generously allocated to me by my Princess and the top shelf has a few sweaters that are apparently irresistibly comfortable to a cat.

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  I miss the old you (Othello).  Yes, I miss that old fart when he goes away, especially if he takes his old sweaters I like to sleep on.  I’m glad he’s home.  Don’t tell him that.  Purr.

 

Anyway, our plane left Raleigh-Durham on time and arrived precisely on time – 10:00 pm on a snowy, blustery night in St. Louis.  We got our luggage and called Uber.  The app informed me that the Uber ride home would cost $110 plus tip and the nearest Uber would pick us up in 40 minutes.  What?  I decided to take a cab.  We walked to the cab stand and waited for about ten minutes.  There were not very many taxi or Uber drivers challenging the snowstorm.  We drove home slowly, but without incident, and the total fare was $62 without tip.  The next time you have a choice, try the taxi.

 

I’ve come to a decision.  I know that’s frightening, but bear with me.  We need to shift a couple of holidays.  Thanksgiving should not be in November.  First of all, it’s flu season and these big family gatherings are full of coughing and sneezing and spreading of disease.  Second, the weather sucks.  Why would you schedule the largest mass exodus of the American population in late November when it could be (and was) snowing all over the place and delaying and endangering everybody?   Thanksgiving should be in the Summer when it’s warm and everyone is feeling well.  We can swap with Independence Day which should be in the Winter when it gets dark at 5:00.  Then, we could start the fireworks early and get to bed early instead of waiting until 9:00 for it to get dark.

 

Now listen up folks and remember

That Christmas is still in December

But Thanksgiving soon

Will be moving to June

And the 4^th of July to November.

 

It’s December now, and we all must be thinking about Christmas.  Glittering trees and rotund Santa’s, candles and carols and mistletoe.  But not in Washington, D.C.  Congress has just banned nativity scenes in the capital because they couldn’t find three wise men. 

 

And December means it’s getting colder.  It’s getting so cold, in fact, that today I saw a politician with his hands in his own pocket.  So, pack up your golf shorts and canasta cards and head for Naples or Scottsdale.  Carol and I are staying here, but don’t worry – wherever you are, every Thursday, I will find you.  That is, until I run out of things to say or until you run out of patience with me.  It’s likely you’ll run out of patience first, but not before next week.  Be there, stay well and count your blessings.

 

Michael                                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

Blog #455                      November 27, 2025

 

Happy Thanksgiving Day to every one of you.  Thanksgiving is a unique and introspective day where we give voice to all the blessings we have.  We are truly thankful for our family and friends; I don’t need to tell you that.  And as for those that we have lost and sorely miss, they are blessings as well. “Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”  That’s a quote, believe it or not, from Dr. Seuss, my favorite poet, and it should remind us to be grateful for the memories that mean so much to us.  We are also thankful for our own lives.  Yes, we may have health issues -- aches, pains or more serious challenges – but look at it this way, we’re doing the best we can, we’re still here and we are way better off than the turkey.  And, yes, there are people who are richer, younger, better-looking.  But we have love and warmth and a wonderful meal to share. 

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  Well then, if ever I thank any man, I'll thank you (As You Like It).  I was just an abandoned and crippled orphan when Pops found me at the shelter.  If today is what you call Thanksgiving, then I give my thanks to him for giving me warmth and love and a purr-fect home.  Purr.

 

The Thanksgiving meal is my favorite – turkey, dressing, gravy, apple pie. The best!  Every year at the Thanksgiving meal, Carol makes us all recite the things we are thankful for, and I have tried to do that in the paragraph above.  I have read the paragraph many times and I can only feel it inadequate to express my emotion each year on this holiday.  Forgive my inadequacy and accept my sincere best wishes for you all.  So let’s have fun and carve up that bird!

And speaking of carving, I just read that Germany has officially declared circumcision an act of “bodily harm” and has banned the procedure.  The article goes on to say that Germany’s 4,000,000 Muslims and 100,000 Jews are protesting the decision.  100,000 Jews?  That’s all Germany has?  I wonder why.  Maybe it’s because the Germans murdered all their Jews.  So now Germany joins San Francisco in banning circumcision.  I have no axe to grind here (wow, that’s an ugly metaphor under the circumstances) but it seems that 6,000 years of circumcision haven’t hurt the Jews much.

 

It’s fascinating how much our species thrills in ecstasy over the possibility of life on Mars or Saturn, while at the same time destroying life on Earth with abandon.  We pollute the environments of our own plants and animals, cut down their forests, poison their rivers and lakes, eat them or just shoot them for fun.  We would spend a trillion dollars to preserve a Martian amoeba and comparatively nothing to save the magnificent life of this planet.  We have destroyed everything we touch, except the sun, moon and the starry skies which God in His wisdom has hung beyond our reach.  At least until now.

 

Welcome back, you magnificent life forms.  Glad you could make it.  I hope you all are well and not bored.  Sometimes I fear that my rambling thoughts can be boring, even though some of our nation’s other magnificent life forms seem to prefer it that way.  You see, now with winter approaching, I have been receiving a large number of requests for subscriptions.  They’re mostly from bears actually.

 

My Limerick Oyster creation

Is wanted all over the nation

But mostly by bears

‘Cause each of them swears

The blog will bring on hibernation.

 

But don’t fall asleep yet.  I have more to talk about. Like movies.  Movie Review:  Carol and I went to a movie this week.  The theater had a special on Tuesdays --$6.00 per ticket plus free popcorn.  We went to the 11:30 showing of Nuremberg starring Russell Crowe and Rami Malek.  We bought the tickets ($13 with tax), got our popcorn (free and delicious), and I asked for a soda.  “That’ll be $8.10,” said the virago behind the counter.  $8.10 for a one dollar soda?  That’s preposterous, but I paid anyway.  Popcorn goes best with a Diet Coke.  When I and my cup arrived, however, at the drink dispenser, we were met with the pernicious sign that read We Serve Pepsi Products.  Pepsi?  $8.10 for a Pepsi?  If they had given me $8.10, I wouldn’t drink a Pepsi.  I found a Root Beer tap, and settled for that.

 

Everyone I know has seen the movie and thought it was wonderful.  I thought it was ok.  Russell Crowe, who played Hermann Göring, was absolutely sensational and captivating, but the rest of the cast was unimpressive.  The story was good, but some of the messaging was objectionable in my view.  Anyway, it was ok and it was fun and the popcorn was good.

 

Weekly Word:  A virago is a domineering, violent or bad-tempered woman.

 

You know, with writing a limerick every week and some occasional songs or poems, I have to be acutely aware of what rhymes with what.  So I was lying in bed the other night, unable to fall asleep, and I began to think how many different ways there were to spell a word that rhymes with “boo”.  This is what I came up with while lying in bed:

 

EW                       as in   anew, few, new, renew, outgrew, mildew, withdrew

EWE                    as in   ewe

IEU                      as in   lieu

IEW                      as in   view, preview

IOUX                   as in   Sioux

O                          as in   do, undo

OE                        as in   gumshoe

OO                       as in   zoo, hullabaloo, igloo, kangaroo

OU                       as in   you

OUGH                  as in   through

OUP                     as in   coup

U                          as in   Xanadu

UE                        as in   blue

UEUE                  as in   queue

US                        as in   jus

 

As a bonus, if you look at all the “as in” words, you will see there are 26 of them, each one beginning with a different letter of the alphabet.  Well, I have nothing else to do.

 

And now, on this Thanksgiving Day, I’m going to give you something to be truly thankful for – I’m going to stop.  So go back to your cooking and your family, your football and your Macy’s Parade.  Stay well and count your blessings.  This is the day for it.  Have a great one.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com