Blog #433                                June 26, 2025

 

The Zoo was packed with a few thousand people.  They were all shapes and sizes.  They were black and white and Asian and everything else.  There were women in halters and shorts, women in hijabs, girls in Catholic school uniforms.  Young couples abounded, some holding hands, some pushing strollers.  They were of every combination: black and white, purple and orange, tall and short, striped and polka-dot.  And not one of them wanted to blow anything up or shoot anybody.  No-one cared about the color or religion or sexual orientation of the people next to them.  Everyone was polite and excited and hungry.  And all the kids behaved themselves. They made faces at the lemurs, followed the strutting geese like rats following the Pied Piper and ate everything they could wheedle out of their parents.  And for a few hours everyone forgot about their job or the bully at school or their mother-in-law or the bills they couldn’t pay.  Everyone enjoyed the weather and the animals and even the old man with the green sash who gave them directions. When I’m at the Zoo I cannot resist an upwelling of love and faith in humanity.  Then I leave, turn on the car radio, listen to the news and realize how wrong I was.  It’s a shame we can’t all go to the Zoo.  The animals would love it if we do.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  It is officially Summer, which began on the longest day of the year, last Saturday.  Or was it Friday?  Or maybe Sunday?  Actually, the official start of Summer in the Northern Hemisphere was at 9:42 p.m. last Friday, Central Daylight Time.  Does anybody give a rat’s tush, other than a small coterie of egghead busybodies. who are, by the way, the same people who told us that hiding under your desk at school would protect you from a nuclear bomb and that Pluto was no longer a planet?  Thank you, guys.

 

I am writing at my desk and just bent over to pet Shakespeare, who is lying comfortably next to my chair.  As I did so, I happened to look under my desk.  If John Milton were writing Paradise Lost today, I’m certain that his choice for the location of Hell would be the space underneath my desk.  There are enough wires down there to reach Mars and enough plugs to populate Howie Mandel’s head.  There are eight “things” plugged in.  There’s a router and a modem and a computer and a printer and a lamp and my iPod and two other things that could be nuclear warheads for all I know.  I am so technically hapless that I could screw up a nail file.  If it has a wire, I’m guaranteed to put it in the wrong place.  It amazes me that I have children!  I’ll bet it looks just like that under your desk. 

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  O comfort-killing Night, image of hell! (The Rape of Lucrece).  I wasn’t sitting by his chair because I’m the loving, wonderful creature he thinks I am.  I was there because, when he finally gets up, I will jump onto the seat where it’s all warmed up.  Don’t tell him.  Purr.

 

Coterie is a good Weekly Word.  It means a small group of people with shared interests and tastes.  Like all of us, I guess.

 

My wife was just talking to a friend who wanted to come over and pick up a book.  Carol said, “Just call when you get to the front and I’ll send Michael up with the book.”   Send Michael up with the book?  What am I, the Chinese butler in Auntie Mame?  I’ll send Hop Sing up with the book.  Oh, Hop Sing doesn’t care where we eat.  Oh, I’ll have Hop Sing pick up the movie tickets early.  Oh, Hop Sing, can you drop me off at the door; it’s raining.  Now don’t get all Ken Jennings on me because the Chinese butler in Auntie Mame was actually Ito.  I know that, but I like the name Hop Sing better.  Hop Sing was the cook on Ponderosa, and, speaking of Ponderosa, can you name all three Cartwright brothers?

 

For our anniversary a couple of weeks ago, Carol and I celebrated at my daughter Abby’s house.  Abby’s a great cook, and she prepared a wonderful meal which perfectly epitomized the spirit of our fifty-eight year partnership.  She made everything my wife liked.  Abby called her mother, asked what she should cook for the celebratory meal, and Carol rattled off all her favorites.  “Don’t worry about Hop Sing; he doesn’t care what he eats.”  That’s ok; I know my place.  For our next anniversary, we have agreed to get matching tattoos.  Mine will say “I Love Carol”.  So will hers.

 

We have finally found something as large as Donald Trump’s ego.  It’s called the Big Beautiful Bomb.  The Middle East story has characters just like a fairy tale, doesn’t it?  There’s poor little Cinderella (Israel) who has been beaten and bullied for years by the Mean Stepmother (Iran) and the Ugly Stepsisters (Hamas and Hezbollah).  Then along comes Donald Trump, the Fairy Godmother, who drops a Big Beautiful Bomb on the Wicked Stepmother and everyone lives happily ever after.

 

The Jews do not fear the Imam

‘Cause we have the 23^rd Psalm

By drones we’ve been peppered

But the Lord is our Shepherd

And Trump has the world’s biggest bomb.

 

Or

 

In Israel we all are calm

We know we won’t lose to Islam

We won’t run and hide

‘Cause Trump’s on our side

And he’s got the world’s biggest bomb.

 

Or

 

The Jews will not lose to Islam

‘Cause we have a Fairy God-Mom

Who’s big as an ox

With wavy, orange locks

And carries the world’s biggest bomb.

 

Except it’s not a fairy tale, is it?  It’s all very frightening.  Besides, the image of Donald Trump as a Fairy Godmother is a bit disturbing.  Let’s all pray for peace.

 

I’m sorry for the three limericks.  I couldn’t decide which one was my favorite.  What’s yours?

 

I guess it’s time to go now.  The three Cartwright brothers on Ponderosa were Adam, Hoss and Little Joe.  Have a nice week, stay well, stay cool and count your blessings.

 

Hop Sing                                 Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

Blog #432                                         June 19, 2025

 

My wife’s having a birthday soon.  Birthdays at our age are fun, but lurking behind the merriment is the realization that we are now one year closer to all the stuff we don’t want to be closer to.  Grandkids are different; they want to get older. 

 

Kid:  Yay! Another year closer to getting my driver’s license. 

Grandparent:  Oy! Another year closer to losing my driver’s license.

Kid:  Yay! Another year closer to moving into a home of my own.

Grandparent:  Oy! Another year closer to moving into a home.

Kid:  Yay! I’m getting taller. 

Grandparent: Oy! I’m getting shorter.

Kid:  Yay! I’m growing up so fast.

Grandparent:  Oy! He’s growing up so fast.

 

But I have the perfect recipe for living long.  Let me start by relating a recent news story that highlighted the fact that two Death Row inmates were executed on the same day.  Two different states, two different methods of execution.  One had committed his murder 31 years ago; the other 37 years ago.  And there’s the answer.  In this country, killing someone and earning a death sentence guarantees you at least thirty more years of peaceful life.  What a world!

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  Do you have a dog?  My daughter Jennifer in North Carolina has three dogs.  I remember taking her oldest, Micah, out on a leash.  A dog’s morning walk is akin to your reading the morning newspaper.  If only Micah could talk: “Ok, Pops, a doe crossed over here this morning with her fawn.  Boy they smell good.  And look, it’s trash day.  Sassy’s humans had meatballs last night for dinner.  I bet they didn’t give Sassy any.  And ooh, ooh, look over here, Pops.  A squirrel was here not more than a few minutes ago.  Can you smell it?  No, I guess you can’t.  What a primitive species you humans are!   I can see better than you, hear better than you, certainly smell better.  And I can run faster too.  Look, there’s Rocco.  Hi, Rocco.  Nice day to be walking your human, isn’t it?  Yah, this one’s just babysitting.  He’s old.  Oh, thanks.  Your butt smells nice too.”

 

Those humans shake hands, which is nuts.

That’s just not an option for mutts.

We’ve no hands, you know

So when we say hello

We do it by sniffing our butts.

 

How could you possibly have imagined when you awoke this morning that you would be reading such a thing?  Well, that’s what you get for hanging with me.  Glad you’re here. 

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  I have a proclivity for behinds of great mass (The Tempest).  Why is he always talking about stupid dogs?  Cats are too high class to sniff another creature’s behind.  And cats don’t tie their masters up to a leash and drag them around outside.  Why would anyone want a dog?  Cats are purr-fect.  Purr.

 

The following story is absolutely true.  At a McDonald’s recently, I came upon an employee lingering around the outside, welcoming patrons, directing traffic and generally being joyful and upbeat.  Her name was Bonnie.  We exchanged the following colloquy:  Bonnie started with

 

Hello, Darling, and how are you today?

I’m fine, Bonnie.  How are you?

I’m good, Sweetie.  And very thankful to the Man upstairs.

But Bonnie, I said, what if it’s really a Woman upstairs?

Then God help us all.

 

Ok, I have just insulted all my women readers.  Let’s move on to the men.  At the Zoo the other day, I saw two men looking over a map while their companions (wives? girlfriends? parole officers?) watched.  I walked up and offered my services.  No, the men said, we have it figured out.  I turned toward the distaff half and said, “Men never accept directions.  Come see me when they’re lost.”  C’mon, men, you know I’m right.  We never accept directions. “Siri be damned, I know how to get there.”  Really?  You don’t know where your reading glasses are.  You barely know where the bathroom is.  And how many times have you lost your car in the parking lot?  We, as husbands, have learned how to say yes to everything.  Yes. Dear.  Yes, Honey.  Whatever you want, Cupcake.  Except, “Let’s ask directions.”  We would sooner be spayed than ask directions.  I’m a man!  I know what I’m doing!  And what do we do when we finally and inevitably get lost?  We start yelling at our wives, as if they had anything to do with our galactic idiocy.  I’d better stop; my wife is calling.  Yes, Dear.

 

Carol does not sleep well.  I do not have that problem and I feel very sorry for her.  I have a sleeping pill that I take every night and it works.  I have suggested that she try going to the Opera, but instead she keeps trying new cocktails and stratagems, all suggested by her Voodoo friends who are quick to give her a list of things to try, none of which has ever worked for them.  “I take organic cherry juice and I never sleep.  You should try it.”  Each night she lays out a pill to take when she wakes up at 2:00 a.m.  It cannot, to my simple and well-rested mind, be a good strategy to plan to get up in the middle of the night in order to take a sleeping pill.  So yesterday, the head gypsy, whom I call Mama Doc, told her about white noise, random sounds that she could find on her iPhone.  Having selected three different ones and unable to decide which was best, she played all three simultaneously: screeching psychotic birds, torrential tropical monsoons and another that was just loud.  Amid the cawing, dripping and screaming – she could not sleep, and neither could I.  The next day I called Mama Doc to ask her if this cacophony of Muzak actually helped her sleep.  “Hell no,” she confessed, “but it keeps my husband up all night.  Why should he sleep if I can’t?”

 

I need a nap.  You probably do too, so I’ll let you go.  But first, our Weekly Word.  Colloquy means a conversation or dialogue, and since we’ve had such a nice one today, I expect you back next week right on time.  Until then, stay well and count your blessings.  See you next week.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

  

 

 

Blog #431                                June 12, 2025

 

You’re Special!  That’s what the little pamphlet that was hidden in my library book said.  It went on with some religious stuff, and that’s ok, but it was just nice to be told that I was special.  So, listen up – you also are special.  You take the time each week to read my silly ramblings and that makes you special to me.  So, hi there, and welcome back.  I hope you’re doing well.

 

Yesterday was my anniversary.  Carol’s too.  Fifty-eight years of, as they say, wedded bliss.  I actually don’t think Carol and I have much in common at all besides our mutual social and educational background.  I like animals; she likes clothes.  I like the outdoors; she’s an indoor girl.  I like quiet; she likes television.  I like collecting; she likes clothes.  But in one crucial respect we agree.  We have the same goal in life -- to keep her happy.  It works for us.

 

Seriously, sometimes our differences actually work to our advantage.  I flourish in a quiet atmosphere, Carol needs constant noise – the television, some music playing, phone calls with her friends.  It is fortunate, therefore, that our place is big enough for me to escape to a quiet room away from her cacophonous milieu.  Our ability to be apart all these years has kept us together all these years.

 

I pick on my wife a lot in my blogs, but this week I promise I’m not going to pick on her.  Carol is a beautiful and special partner who has given me a spectacular family and a glorious 58 years.  She is the sunshine of my life! So, Honey, in honor of our anniversary, I won’t pick on you this week.

 

There, that was easier than buying a bunch of flowers, wasn’t it?  Seriously, Carol and I have had a wonderful marriage, although sometimes I feel like we have failed to share things equitably.  For instance, we have, between us, two holes-in-one.  She has them both.  And we have, between us, 112 wrinkles.  I have them all.

 

Do you remember last fall when I had that long-lasting, annoying cough for two months?  Well, my wife has it now.  So she tries not to talk.  No, I won’t make some gratuitous joke about that.  I sympathize with her frustration.  So I got out the bell – the little ringy-dingy thing that she has given me every time I have had to recover from some surgery.  Now she has it next to her, and she can ring whenever she needs me.

 

My Honey cannot talk or sing

So I gave her a bell she can ring

One ring of the bell

And I run just like hell

She calls me her Big Ding-a-Ling

 

Speaking of ringy-dingy.  Who used to say “One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy”?

 

Do you recycle?  I mean I love the planet and I hate to waste, but today you need an engineering degree to know how to recycle.  My sweet daughter Stephanie in California has four containers in the kitchen (well, it’s California!).  I can’t remember what each one is for, but when we visit, I always bring an empty suitcase just to put my trash in.  I can’t risk putting a compost item into a landfill bucket.  Heaven knows what havoc that would create in the state economy, so I just bring it all home. 

 

My Jennifer in North Carolina has an even more complicated system.  She has chickens, so you have to decide between compost (she makes her own), trash, recycle and chickens.  One afternoon she decided to give last night’s leftover eggplant parmesan to the chickens.  Who feeds their chickens eggplant parmesan?  But before she carried it down to the coop, she saw me and asked if I wanted some.  I declined, but told her I was grateful that I was mentioned in the same category as the poultry.  I guess that puts me just above compost.  Hey, as long as I know where I stand.  And yes, the chickens will eat leftover chicken.  I think there’s some biblical injunction against that (“You shall not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk”), but the last time we showed a Bible to the chickens, they ate it.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  And of the cannibals that eat each other (Othello).  The chickens eat chicken?  Well, what did you expect from a bird.  A cat wouldn’t eat a cat.  That’s cat-ibalism.  And I don’t get eggplant parmesan either.  Yuck!  And also purr.

 

A friend of mine had a little episode the other day.  He wound up at the hospital where the doctor told him . . .  Well, let’s start by saying what the doctor should have told him.  The doctor should have said, “Your heart started beating too fast; could have been caused by a lot of things.  We’ll keep an eye on it.”  Plain, non-threatening English.  What the doctor actually said was, “You have Paroxysmal Atrial Tachycardia.”  I’ve picked on you doctors before and now I’m going to do it again.  Remember your oath?  “Do no harm” it says.  First of all, scaring the crap out of your patient is harmful.  Second, using a bunch of indigestible words that only doctors can understand is insulting.  Don’t tell me my temperature is 39 and don’t tell me I have mumbo-jumbo-itis.  Speak English!  I think if doctors didn’t have to learn all that gobbledygook, they could graduate medical school in eighteen months.

 

The first time I visited Dr. Blood, he told me I had Monoclonal B-Cell Lymphocytosis.  I turned to him and calmly replied, “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”  Aha!  Now we both understood each other that neither one of us understood each other, and we proceeded to speak English.  Try it sometime.  Your doctor will get the message.  By the way, the monoclonal stuff is just some heebie-jeebie thing in my blood that nobody has to worry about.  Is heebie-jeebie a medical term?  I bet it is.

 

And speaking of mumbo jumbo, it’s time for the Weekly Word.  Gratuitous means unwarranted, lacking good reason.

 

What else?  Oh, one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy?  That was Lily Tomlin as Ernestine, the phone operator.  So turn off the oven, Mama, ‘cause we’re done here.  Stay well and count your blessings.  See you in a week

 

Big Ding-a-Ling                       Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

LIMERICK    OYSTER

Blog #430                                         June 5, 2025

 

I remember when arcade video games came out.  We got an Atari in 1975 or so, and I remember two games I liked – Pong and Breakout.  That was a long time ago.  Now, kids are obsessed with all the games on Nintendo or a million different phone aps.  My granddaughter, Charley, dragged me down in her basement the other day to show me her Wii.  “Look Poppy,” she said, and showed me a new game character she had created.  It was called Poppy and wore a yellow shirt (my favorite color) and had gray hair.  It also had an excessive collection of wrinkles.  I turned to Charley and asked if all those wrinkles were necessary.  She examined my face closely, smiled and said, “Yes.”  That’s ok, a grandfather is someone with silver in his hair and gold in his heart.  I watched her play a game with the new character.  There he was, wrinkles and all, limping around the course and taking all the wrong exits.  Go, Poppy! 

 

I’ve figured out why I love working at the Zoo.  It’s the only place I’m not lost.  Most everywhere else, on the highways, local roads, just walking around – in all those places, I’m basically a maladroit wandering moron.  I should be quarantined.

 

But at the Zoo, people actually listen to what I have to say.  This week I found a kindergarten class sitting on the ground, each child studying the brightly-colored Zoo map.  I asked the teachers what they wanted to see and two little girls screamed “flamingos”.  So I gave them directions to our lovely pink birds, then asked, “Do you want to hear a story about flamingos?”  I instantly had 14 cherubic little faces staring up at me and I proceeded to tell them my flamingo story, which, although possibly apocryphal, is cute.  The brief version is that when pink flamingos were first brought to the Zoo, they were fed fish and grain and normal bird stuff and after a while they turned white.  Nobody wanted to see a white flamingo and the zoo people were puzzled.  Finally, they discovered that flamingos are pink because they eat shrimp and absorb the red coloring from the shrimp shells.  When they don’t eat shrimp, they turn white, and sure enough, when their diet was changed to shrimp, they turned pink and beautiful and everybody was happy, except the shrimp.  I finished the story and the little girl closest to me stuck her smiling gap-toothed face two inches from mine and said, “Can we just stay with you?”  I guess I just have a knack.

 

I have had many readers ask me where I get all the humorous stories I share with you.  Well, life is funny.  Plenty of humorous things happen around you all the time.  You just need someone to point out a different way of looking at them.  Henry David Thoreau said, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and looking forward to summer – swimming, vacationing, warm weather.  Bugs, heatwaves, pollen.  Well, every rose has its thorns.  How about maladroit as our Weekly Word?  It means unskillful, awkward and bungling.  Did I use that to describe myself?

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so (Hamlet).  Cats are very curious.  If Pops puts a box on the floor, I will jump into it to see what’s there.  He’ll just trip over it.  Purr.

 

The other day, I noticed that my son-in-law has his Siri voice set as a British male voice.  I like the idea of talking to an English butler.  Carson, call my daughter in California.  “Yes, Sir, I will make that connection expeditiously.”  Wouldn’t that be great?   I love that old style English.  That’s why I have read all of Dickens’ books.  Instead of saying, “I like writing to you,” Dickens would say, “If my readers have derived but half the pleasure and interest from its perusal, which its composition has afforded me, I have ample reason to be gratified.”   Ooo, talk British to me!

 

I know that Dickens is hard to read because the language has changed so much since the 1840s.  Heck, the language constantly changes.  The way we spoke in the 1950s isn’t the same as it is now.  There are new phrases and meanings and usages.  Some are great, but there are some of them I don’t like, like “like”.  Teens seem to use the word “like” as every third word of their vocabulary.  Give me like Dickens like any time.  Like.

 

Have you ever seen Madame Butterfly?  People in my generation know that’s an opera.  My grandchildren think it’s a monster movie.  My friend Larry loves opera, and I have been to seven operas with him.  I have hated every single minute of every one.  I must be a philistine, because opera is just not for me, but I like Larry and I go just to keep him company.  The last one we saw was La Donna del Lago by Rossini and consisted of five really good singers spending four hours telling us (in Italian) how miserable they were and how each one wanted to die.  Would that I could have helped them!  About midway through the second act, one of them thankfully succeeded in dying, whereupon the other four became instantaneously jubilant and took about 40 minutes to tell us so.  And that was it.  The story took place in Scotland amid warring Scottish clans, and I did learn a lot about the Scots: 

 

The Scots ride the hills on a stallion

And fish the cold seas in a galleon

They learn when they’re young

The pure English tongue

But sing all their songs in Italian.

 

Stop your groaning!  You go find two words that rhyme with Italian!

 

I have room enough for a quote.  W. C. Fields, one of the best known and most audacious movie personalities of the early 20^th century, was known to drink a bit.  One night at a party, a matronly woman said, “Mr. Fields, you are disgustingly drunk.”  “Yes, Madam,” he replied, “I am disgustingly drunk and you are disgustingly ugly.  But tomorrow I shall be sober.”

 

It’s time to say goodbye.  Stay well, count your blessings.  I’ll see you next Thursday.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com