Blog #447                                October 2, 2025

 

Do you realize what an exhaustive effort goes into writing these blogs?  Have you ever tried writing a thousand-word essay every week?  I know you haven’t because you have very busy lives.  Me too!  I have to throw out the trash and squeeze the last droplet out of my toothpaste tube and do all my quotidian chores.  But I take this writing thing very seriously.  (That probably means there aren’t a lot of yucks to look forward to here.)

 

One chore I had to do this week was my Sirius call.  Every year, I get a message from Sirius Radio.  Your subscription expires on October 25 and we will begin to automatically bill you $23 a month.  Then I call and reach a person in the Philippines named Juanita and I tell her I’m only paying $7 a month now and want that to be my rate for next year.  She hesitates and fumfehs for a while and says she’ll have to talk to her manager and then comes back to tell me the $7 rate will be renewed.

 

This year was different.  I called and got this:  Hello, my name is Harmony, your Artificial Intelligence assistant.  How can I help you?  Harmony was wonderful, understood everything I said and renewed me for $6 month.  Very fast, very efficient, very sad.  What have we come to?  How is Juanita going to compete with Artificial Intelligence?  She’ll be out of a job.  What do we do when we make the world so wired up and efficient that no-one has a job?

 

That poor little Philippine sister

Was replaced by a sterile transistor

Now Juanita is gone

And the world travels on

Till we all realize that we missed her.

 

Artificial Intelligence frightens me a lot.  I mean machines named R2D2 and C-3PO were fine.  They were helpful and followed instructions.  But as soon as you give them human names like Harmony or Siri or Alexa, my pacemaker begins to heat up.  Remember HAL?  How’d that work out?

 

In honor of the Jewish New Year (5786) and Yom Kippur, which is today, our Weekly Word is the Yiddish word fumfeh, which means to mumble or speak unclearly.  I will try to hold my fumfehing to a minimum.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  Fall is here as well as the Jewish New Year, and Shakespeare is bugging me to let him say something about that. 

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  O, call back yesterday, bid time return (Richard II).  I hear it’s the Jewish year 5786.  Those Jews think they’ve been around a long time, but we cats have been around much longer.  Do you know anybody named Katz?  They got that from us.  And, of course, we’re the ones who invented Yom Ki-Purr.

 

Thank you, Shakespeare.  I feel very simpatico with you today because I’m missing the use of one paw.  That’s because my left arm is in a sling.  On Monday, they sliced open my chest to replace the battery in my pacemaker and they don’t want me to pull out the stitches.  Please do not send sympathy cards.  A Mercedes would be nice or some Rolexes or maybe a Tiffany gift card.  Actually, I have recovered from the procedure quite easily and don’t need anything.  Well, the Mercedes maybe.

 

Speaking of sympathy cards, I visited Dollar Tree this week to buy greeting cards.  What, you think I spent $4.95 for that birthday card I got you?  Besides stocking up on some birthday and sympathy cards, I actually found a card congratulating you on your last colonoscopy which I guess is when you’re 75.  It reads: I ran into your proctologist the other day and your name came up.  He said “I never want to see that asshole again”.  Congratulations!   

 

When I approached the register to pay for the cards, there was an obnoxious young man arguing with the cashier about something.  He was rude and crude and I didn’t like him.  The only satisfaction in dealing with a young jerk like that is knowing that he has all his colonoscopies in front of him.  (Can you actually have one “in front” of you?  I guess not, but we have spent too much time on this subject, so let’s put it behind us.)

 

Do you have dreams?  I dream once in a while, and I always thought my dreams were different from your dreams.  But yesterday, I read a book where the author was describing a dream in which his dream person was in college and completely unprepared for an upcoming test.  Wait, that’s my dream!  How could he have my dream?  Does everybody have that dream?  Do you?  How about the dream where you are in a movie theater and discover that you’re naked?  Do you have that one too?  How about the one where the driver of a cement mixer gets out and beats you up?  Or the one with the tuba and the sheep?  Well, never mind about that one.

 

The other day I dropped my keys right between the two front seats – you know, the place where everything disappears forever.  I looked; I reached – nothing!  There I was, freaking out and reaching between the seats with two restless grandchildren in the back seat wondering what Oldilocks was up to.  I got out and felt under the front seat – nothing.  I pulled the driver’s seat as far up as it would go; then I went to the back seat to see what was uncovered.  Holy Buried Treasure, Batman!  There, in the revealed space formerly under the front seat, were nine colored markers, two straw wrappers, a Nilla Wafer, Jimmy Hoffa, the Cardinals World Series chances and a previously unknown Kardashian sister – and my car keys.  Whew!

 

This week we went to a charity polo match sponsored by the Old Newsboys Fund for Children’s Charities, a very worthwhile charity that helps children all over the area.  Did you know that all polo players are right-handed?  Did you know that I played water polo?  I only played once because my horse drowned.

 

Alright, I’m done with you now.  You can go back to your daily chores or dreaming about that sheep.  Just be sure to come back next week.  Please stay well and count your blessings.  See ya!

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com.