Blog #442                                August 28, 2025

 

I was working at the Zoo this week, handing out maps, giving directions and trying to be jolly with the tourists, when an employee of the Zoo walked up to me.  “Thank you for bringing joy every day,” she said.  Of course, she meant that for all the volunteers, but it made me feel awfully good.  I do try to bring a little joy to the Zoo-goers, just like I try to bring a little joy to you every week.  Let’s see if I can.

 

It’s my job to know all the answers at the Zoo.  Where’s the tiger?  I know that.  Where’s the bathroom?  I know that too.  Where can I rent a stroller?  Where can I breast-feed my baby?  I know all of those.  But sometimes I get a tricky one.  I was standing by the kangaroos when a little girl saw my sash and asked this question:  How do you tell the males from the females?  I have never been accused of being slow-witted, so I bent down and answered the little girl with confidence and alacrity.  “You want to know how you tell a female kangaroo from a male kangaroo?”  She nodded.  “You take it to Nordstrom’s,” I said.  “If it buys shoes, it’s a female.”  She liked it.  Her mother liked it.  And the kangaroos hopped for joy.  Well, you really don’t want me discussing an animal’s sexual paraphernalia with adolescent girls, do you?  Suddenly I would replace the polar bear as the Zoo’s #1 predator.  And what kind of shoes would the kangaroos buy?  Kanga-Choo of course

 

Let’s do the Weekly Word.  It’s alacrity, which means a brisk and cheerful readiness to do something.  And right now, I have a cheerful readiness to say hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and looking forward to the end of summer.  I don’t know about where you are, but here in St. Louis, it was a blistering few months.  It was so hot, I saw a funeral procession drive through a Dairy Queen.  It was so hot, I saw a homeless guy carrying a sign that read “Will work for Shade”.

 

It was so hot, chickens were laying hard-boiled eggs.  You know my daughter has chickens, about 14 of them.  She told me the other day that she was cleaning out the coop and had music playing while she did.  Immediately, my warped brain asked what kind of music do chickens like?  The same brain immediately answered Rock ‘n Eggroll.  Or maybe Eggae or Yolk Songs.  And I bet their favorite song is Rock Around the Cock.  Now, that wasn’t a bad word.  That’s a rooster, but Rock Around the Rooster just doesn’t sound funny.

 

Here's a story about funerals.  Carol and I were at a party recently.  She looked at me and asked, “Is that what you’re going to wear at my funeral?”  “Yes,” I replied. “Is that the outfit you’ll wear to mine?”  “No,” she said, “I just bought the one for your funeral.  It’ll be delivered Monday.”  And I’m not even sick!  I hope the outfit gets dropped off before I do.  I think the worst part of dying is that you don’t get to eat the dessert trays.

 

Which brings up the question -- do you have a plot?  I have one plot.  It’s in a cemetery that was not too far from the place I grew up.  My father and mother and brother are buried there and there’s one extra plot.  My sister was cremated and her ashes were used to fertilize a tree, but that’s a story for another day.  So that one little oblong of well-kept dirt is for me.  Of course, Carol and I don’t live near there anymore.  We’re at least fifteen miles away, and she has informed me that she has no intention of driving that far to visit some old dead husband.  This whole burial thing is disturbing.  I don’t know what to do.  I do know what I want on my headstone.  I want a limerick:

 

For everyone life is a trial

But we’re only here for a while

And when I am gone

These words will live on

And may even give you a smile

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  When he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night (Romeo and Juliet).  I want to be buried right next to Pops.  And I want my stone to say: “Three legs, nine lives, one awesome cat!”  Purr.

 

Maybe I should buy a plot in North Carolina.  Most of my daughter’s friends think I’m dead anyway.  That could be because I actually was kind of dead for a while in North Carolina.  You know the drill – heart stops, flat-line, Code Blue, shock treatments.  I have always heard people who claim to have had a near-death experience say they remember a bright light.  Of course there’s a bright light!  You’re lying on your back in the Emergency Room with that circular spotlight shining two feet from your nose.  That thing is bright enough to wake King Tut.  So now when Carol and I are in North Carolina and we meet one of my daughter’s friends, we often get this: “Jennifer, I can’t believe this young-looking woman is your mother.”  Then they turn to me: “And Mr. Fox, how nice.  I see you’re still alive.”

 

Years before that episode, after my first heart event, the doctors released me from the hospital with a list of restrictions.  I am not making this up!

 

·        Do not operate a vacuum cleaner.  I can live with that.

·        Do not play Craps in a casino.  Something to do with standing.

·        No sex with an “unfamiliar” partner.  I presume that included the vacuum cleaner.

·        Do not lift anything heavier than Moby Dick.  The book, not the whale.

 

It has now been twenty-eight years since that attack, and I have followed those rules assiduously, although I do smile at the vacuum cleaner now and again.

 

Alright, Fearless Readers, you’ve had enough of me for this week.  I hope I brought you some of that joy I promised.  I’ll be back next Thursday.  Stay well count your blessings and come back.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #441                                August 21, 2025

 

Women have this crazy yearning to invent what they call Thought Questions, like “Would you rather be unattractive and rich or gorgeous and poor?”  They always answer that they’d rather be rich and gorgeous, thereby avoiding the thought component of the exercise.  I was the target of one of those questions the other day: Here it is: Had I been a better father or grandfather?  Well, I’d like to believe I am still a good father.  You don’t stop being a father just because you become a grandfather.  I love my daughters.  I hurt when they hurt and smile when they smile and am always excited to see them or talk to them.  Even the two ingrates who abandoned me and moved out of town.  So yes, I think I am a good Poppy, but I’m still a proud and devoted Daddy.

 

I’m also a proud and devoted story teller, so let’s get started.  Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  We’re back from our visit to Boulder.  We had a great time.  I saw a sign in Boulder at some kind of community center.  It read:

 

WE WELCOME:

ALL races and ethnicities

ALL religions

ALL countries of origin

ALL gender identities

ALL sexual orientations

ALL abilities and disabilities

ALL spoken languages

ALL ages.

 

This was a real sign and a wonderful thought, but wouldn’t it have been better just to say Everyone’s welcome?  Why list every category of people’s differences?  And if you’ve gone that far, what’s to stop more additions to the list, like:

 

ALL insy and outsy belly buttons 

ALL people who pull their toilet paper from the top and all those who pull it from the bottom

ALL Coke drinkers and all Diet Coke drinkers

But not Pepsi drinkers

 

The drive home from Colorado included five or so hours in Kansas.  I enjoyed the scenery in Kansas.  It’s the Great Plains, the heart of America, the vast, glorious, open, fertile expanse where the deer and the antelope play.  It became, and still is, the breadbasket of our nation, and as we drove, we saw miles and miles of open grazing land and cultivated corn and soy beans.  Almost no signs of civilization, clean and open prairie.  I loved it.

 

We stopped for gasoline at a Quik Trip (QT).  I grabbed a juicy grilled hotdog from the rotisserie, a large Diet Coke and a package of four Oreos.  It was a satisfying, even delicious dinner and cost me exactly $5.57.  And the employees at Quik Trip all looked and behaved like they had graduated from Princeton.  Is this a great country or what!

 

Near the QT was a prison.  I think it had a Death Row because there was a nice-looking medical clinic attached.  You know, being on Death Row is the safest place to be in the country.  First, the nation’s correctional system is extremely cautious about the health of its Death Row inmates.  Their motto is: We don’t want y’all to die until we want y’all to die.  They also have a sign:

 

Don’t smoke while you’re lying in bed

Don’t fall – you might injure your head

Stay safe and be well

‘Til you’re pulled from your cell

And hanged by the neck until dead.

 

And second, being on Death Row guarantees you will live a healthy life for thirty more years.  Why does it always take thirty years after the murder to perform the execution?

 

Let’s talk apples.  There are more than 7,500 varieties of apples.  And just among the varieties you can find in American grocery stores, they range from Earligolds and Liberty and Jazz, Keepsakes, Sundance and York York to Ashmead’s Kernel.  And I don’t know my Ashmead’s Kernel from a hole in the ground.  So, there I am in Walmart when the phone rings.  “Pick up a couple of Fuji apples,” says the Apple of my Eye.  Sounds easy, doesn’t it?  Except that Walmart has chosen not to label their apples.  There was a bag marked Golden Delicious and a bag marked Granny Smith, but the loose apples had no labels.  Am I supposed to know what a Fuji looks like?  Even more pertinent, am I supposed to be able to find a Walmart employee?  I hear they have a million and a half of them, but finding one is harder than finding Whoopi Goldberg and JD Vance doing the tango.

 

Anyway, I picked up two dark red apples with a big crown and a narrow bottom.  That was wrong of course; apples are not fungible.  But today the God of Useless Husbands must have been looking down on me because help arrived.  A daughter called.  I asked her if she knew what a Fuji looked like.  Well of course she did and led me right there.  Whew!  The God of Useless Husbands, as you know, is not Jupiter.  It’s his brother, Stupider.

 

Grocery shopping is not for the ill-informed.  Even if I am armed with written descriptions of the product, color photographs and Martha Stewart, I always get it wrong.   “I wanted Italian, not Creamy Italian.  And BBQ sauce without salt, but Soy Sauce with salt.  And you bought the cheap toilet paper!  Is that what you think of me?”   But then she tries to make me feel better.  “But you did really well on the potatoes.  I asked for two and you got two. Good job.”  I was always good at Math.  Why is it that women are somehow born with the genes for identifying Fuji apples, sewing and picking out curtains whereas men are born with the genes for fishing, killing spiders and putting up curtains?  Actually, I can’t answer that because I am horrible at fishing, killing spiders and putting up curtains.  The last time I tried, I broke the window.

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  When I do count the clock that tells the time (Sonnet 12).  I’m good at math too.  I can count to three.  I used to be able to count to four until they cut one of my legs off.  Purr.

 

I admit to being a bit garrulous today.  Garrulous, our Weekly Word, means

excessively talkative, especially on trivial matters, and I have thus run out of space.  So I’ll say goodbye.  Have a nice week, stay well and count your blessings.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #440                                August 14, 2025

 

I don’t know if you’re familiar with Dante’s Inferno, but Dante describes nine separate levels of Hell.  Level 7 is the Denver airport.  We arrived on time, but our luggage apparently arrived in a different Zip Code, because to collect it we had to walk half a mile, then board a crowded subway train which zips you to a luggage area approximately the size of Pennsylvania.  The signs directed us to Luggage Area 4, Carousel 2 where our one bag was hopefully waiting patiently for us.  It was not.  In fact, it was waiting on Carousel 3.  After 20 minutes, we were notified of this aberration and located the bag.  Ready to go.  Now, we had to find Level Five then exit and locate Island 5 where we could contact Uber for our ride.  Discovering America was easier than this.

 

You know me well enough by now to recognize that using Uber was an unfamiliar, unwanted and terrorizing prospect.  But, after much coaxing and some training by my daughters, I did it, it worked and six minutes later Mohammed arrived.  I was as proud as if I had discovered fire.  One problem -- Mohammed spoke only Arabic.  Well, I managed to say hello in Arabic (yes, I can) and discovered that Mohammed was from Mauritania (I know where that is).  But there was no other communication, and there we were, two old Jews in a strange state, in a strange car, with an unfamiliar and uncommunicative man.  Well, Mama GPS got all of us to where we should be and everything turned out fine.  But, I thought, next time I don’t want to be picked up by Jerry the Jihad who can’t speak English.  I want to be picked up by a guy named Bernie who knew my wife’s cousin in Florida.  Let’s start a new ride service.  We’ll call it JUBER.

 

When we owned a home in Phoenix, I met a cab driver named Fariborz from Iran.  We became friends and he would pick me up from the airport every time.  When I travelled to Turkey, I bought Fariborz some saffron, which he really treasured and his wife made me an antimacassar which I still have.  On our Turkey trip, we also travelled to Greece.  Now the Greek cab drivers are the worst in the world.  No matter where you want to go, they take you to their brother-in-law’s jewelry story.  Every time.  Even when you told them not to, they took you to the jewelry store.  I hated them.

 

I remember when our children were young, there was a cab-driver named Maxi.  Naturally, everyone called him Maxi the Taxi.  His wife was actually named Minny.  Maxi and Minny.  Maxi was a midget.  Ok, that’s about as much as I can say about taxis. 

 

I am writing you today from Boulder, Colorado.  I have only been here once before, briefly, and yet I have seen it a dozen times.  It’s Asheville, NC, it’s St. Louis’ Central West End, it’s Greenwich Village and Berkely and every other college town or ski resort.  It’s seedy and tacky; it’s edgy and artsy and chi-chi all at the same time.  Where ragged street jugglers, magicians and string quartets compete for tourist dollars on the street corners.  Where every restaurant is dog friendly, gluten free and vegan.  Where the forgotten culture, the counter-culture, the homeless culture, the drug culture and the artist culture merge somehow to become the avant-garde culture.  Where every night has an art festival, a revival and an exhibition.  Where a store charging $2,500 for a flower vase is next to a Himalayan gift shop that smells of incense and yak dung.   Where a double-decker bus is turned into a chocolate restaurant. Where everybody accepts everybody and loves everybody no matter what they are or believe.  It’s loud and exciting and troubling and expensive and fun.

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  How now, my lord! Why do you keep alone? (Macbeth).  I am not in Boulder.  I am home, alone, with no lap to nap on, nobody to wake up at 4:00 in the morning, nobody to scratch my ears.  I hope the old man isn’t gone for long.  I’ll just watch the birds play outside.  Purr.

 

Hi, there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and keeping busy.  The last few weeks, I have looked at my calendar and found it as blank as P. Diddy’s dance card.  Still, I somehow make it through the day.

 

Each morning I wake with the sun

And spend the whole day on the run

I’ve found that it’s true

When you’ve nothing to do,

You don’t really know when you’re done.

 

The one thing I don’t want to spend my time doing is watching the news.  The news is horrible – shootings, stabbings, legislators fleeing the state to avoid having to vote, tariffs, Epstein.  You shouldn’t even watch the news.  Take this crazy story.  Multiple lunatics have taken to throwing sex toys onto the court during WNBA games.  That’s ladies’ basketball.  One was arrested and charged with:

 

·        Disturbing the peace

·        Tresspass

·        Indecent exposure

 

Listen, instead of making up these silly charges, can’t they just charge someone with being Galactically Stupid?  It should be a crime just to be that ignorant, inconsiderate and insulting.  See, I told you not to watch the news.

 

I’d better get to a Weekly Word.  How about antimacassar?  It means a piece of cloth put over the back of a chair to protect it from grease and dirt.

 

Boulder was great fun.  I just came home last night.  We saw lots of cute stores and upscale restaurants and gorgeous mountains and a bunch of moose.  What’s the plural of moose?  Meese, mooses, moosies.  Maybe it’s just moose.  How about we just say I saw a moose and then I saw another moose?  Every time I see a moose, I think of Bullwinkle, and then I think of myself.  Carol and I are so like Rocky and Bullwinkle.  She’s just like Rocky --fast and smart and totally in charge, and I’m like Bullwinkle – slow, mostly incompetent, loyal but goofy, often lost.  We make a perfect pair.

 

But now I’m back to my home and my cat and to you.  So stay well, count your blessings and come on back next week.

 

Bullwinkle                                         Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #439                                August 7, 2025

 

My six-month check-up with Dr. Skin.  Naturally, I brought a map of all my skin’s bumps, blisters, bulges, blemishes and protuberances for her to slice and dice.  She ignored a few, froze a couple and decided one spot on my leg was suspicious.  I’m not kidding about the map.  It’s like the chalk outline of a body at a crime scene.

 

Anyway, she sliced off the suspicious spot, painlessly and sent it away for biopsy.  My leg responded by bleeding and she called for a cauterizing device.  Do not fear, I was not watching any of this.  I was reading the signs on the wall and trying to rearrange the letters to make new words.  That’s what I do to take my mind off the blood and guts and gore and misery of anything medical.  The cauterizing device must involve some electrical discharge because she said, “You don’t have a pacemaker or defibrillator, do you?”  Yes, I replied, I have both.  “Well, this shouldn’t set them off,” she said and proceeded cavalierly to zap my skin.  The bleeding stopped and my heart did not, so everything was fine.

 

I have had that defibrillator go off once, due to an electrical discharge in an underwater light while I was swimming.  It was kind of like getting whapped by Moby Dick’s tail.  But that was a long time ago, and my heart is doing fine.  In fact, my doctor just received the report that the pacemaker sends him every month or so, and he sent me the following:

 

We just have to give you some props

Cause your heart diagnostic is tops

Your heart will stay strong

And keep humming along

That is, till your battery stops.

 

Yes, it’s time to change the battery.  If it’s not one thing, it’s another, said Roseanne Roseannadanna, and she was right.  Getting old is not just a physical experience, but a mental one as well.  However, I finally have a solution for this feeling old thing.  As soon as we reach Medicare, we should change our ages to Centigrade.    I’m serious now.  Listen up.  I am 79 years old, but in Centigrade (let’s see, subtract 32 and multiply by five ninths) -- that makes me 26.  Now doesn’t that sound better?  85 would become 29.   I bet you feel younger already.  Once I had a nurse tell me my temperature was 37, so why not my age?  I’m 26! 

 

Hi there and welcome back.  Now don’t you feel better saying your age in centigrade?  I feel so good, I’m going to tell you a joke.  Fritz and Pedro are out walking their dogs.  Fritz has a big, beautiful German Shepherd; Pedro a tiny Chihuahua.  It’s a warm day and Fritz says, “Let’s go into that bar and get a beer.”  Pedro replies, “The sign says NO PETS ALLOWED.”   Fritz says, “Watch this”, puts on dark sunglasses and saunters into the bar with the German Shepherd.  A few minutes later he comes out looking refreshed.  “Well?” asks Pedro.  “No sweat,” says Fritz, “with the dark glasses they thought I was blind and that Buster was my seeing-eye dog.  The beer was great.” 

 

So Pedro borrows the dark glasses and heads into the bar where he is immediately accosted by a burly bouncer.  “No dogs, Mister,” he barks.  Pedro responds with confidence, “Can’t you see I’m blind?  This animal is my seeing-eye dog.”  “No chance, Bozo,” growls the bouncer.  “That’s a Chihuahua.”  “What?” shrieks Pedro.  “They gave me a Chihuahua?”

 

We used to have a dog named Alex.  Somehow his memory came up the other night, and I commented that Alex was a wonderful dog and that I missed him sleeping on my pillow.  Carol said, “That’s alright, you’ll see him in Doggy Heaven.”  Doggy Heaven?  First of all, I’m not even sick.  And second, is that where she thinks I’m going?  Doggy Heaven?  I guess I’m nothing more than an Alta-Cocker Spaniel to her.  Probably on our wedding night she thought to herself, “What! They gave me a Chihuahua?”  Well, alright Alex, wait up for me, Boy.  We can share a pillow for eternity.  Such a good boy!

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  To bed, to bed! There’s knocking at the gate (Macbeth.)  What?  Some dog is going to share his pillow?  I thought I was my Pops’ best buddy, and I’m certainly not going to any place named Doggy Heaven.  I need to talk with that crazy old man.  Purr.

 

I just opened the mail, and there was a bill for an echo-cardiogram.  The charge was $7834.  The insurance paid $495.  The “adjustment”, what the hospital wrote off, was $7,309, and I had to pay $30.  The hospital received a total of $525, less than 7% of the original charge.  So, in effect, 93% of the charge was fake.  What is the purpose of this flim-flam shell game?  What blind, third-level Ottoman clerk devised such a bizarre hoax.  “Step right up, ladies and gents, I have a cantaloupe for sale.  Today only, the price is $129, but if you give me $4, I’ll forget the rest.”  I can be stupid sometimes, but not stupid enough to understand that.

 

At the end of each blog, I always encourage you to send your comments.  I love to hear your thoughts, whether they are good or bad.  Recently, I have received two separate comments unmercifully, but lovingly I hope, excoriating me for the misuse of the word “less” when I should have used “fewer”.  I agree.  See, I told you I could be stupid sometimes.  Karl Popper said, wisdom is “realizing more fully the infinity of my ignorance”.  I was wrong and thank my humble readers with due obeisance. I will try to make less mistakes in the future.  Or is it fewer?

 

I like that my readers teach me things, just as I try to teach you.  Like our Weekly Word which today will be obeisance.  It is the acknowledgement of another’s importance or superiority.  I could have made it cavalier or excoriate, both of which appeared above, but those were our weekly words in previous blogs.  You think I don’t keep track of all this?

 

And I also keep track of the time, which is now over.  Stay well, count your blessings, and be back here in a week.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com