Blog #500                                October 8, 2026

 

That’s right.  Your eyes have not deceived you.  This is the 500^th Limerick Oyster you have been lucky or un-lucky enough to have received.  Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you all are feeling well.  The first Oyster was let out of the bag on March 16, 2017, and the last one – well, hang in there.  I’m not done yet.  Thanks for hanging around so long.  I really have enjoyed writing to you.

 

Today, let’s talk about the death penalty.  Christa Pike, a Tennessee woman was sentenced to death in 1996 for a murder she committed in 1995, more than thirty years ago.  But a court has stayed the execution to review her lawyers’ claims that she was a victim of child abuse.  Here are some thoughts.

 

·        I’ve said this before, but Pike’s case strengthens my argument.  The best thing you can do to guarantee living for 30 more years is to get sentenced to death.  Why does it take 30 years?

·        And why has it taken 30 years for her defense to raise these abuse issues?  Who was her lawyer, Rip Van Winkle? 

·        I’m not a fan of the death penalty.  It’s morally messy and confusing, but I am a fan of harsh punishment.  How about making her watch America’s Got Talent re-runs for six hours a day?

·        Have you noticed that 19 of every 20 acts appearing on America’s Got Talent are from Asia?  Why don’t they call it Asia’s Got Talent?

·        And have you noticed that America’s Pastime, the sobriquet for Major League Baseball, is played mostly by players from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela?  Why don’t they call it South America’s Pastime?

·        And now you know why you should receive a reward for reading 500 weeks of this rambling, pointless drivel.  Why don’t they call it Limerick Drivel?

And as long as I’m rambling, let’s talk more about South America’s Pastime.  The baseball playoffs have started, and Pope Leo is rooting for the White Sox.  Well, he is from Chicago, so that’s understandable, but don’t you think the Pope, the leader of world Catholicism, should choose more Catholic-oriented images – like the Cardinals or maybe the Angels or the Padres?  Or how about the Saints?  I know, the Saints are a football team, but they could still probably play baseball better than the Cardinals!

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Like a football you do spurn me thus? (The Comedy of Errors).  I can play ball too.  Pops rolls a little ball across the carpet and sometimes I chase it.  Mostly I just let him chase it and roll it back.  He gets more exercise than I do and he thinks we’re both having fun.  He’s so goofy.  I haven’t been in all his blogs, but I’ve been purring and meowing at you for about six years, and I know I’m funnier than he is.  Purr.

 

Oh, and now they decided to go ahead with the execution of Christa Pike, and they gave her two lethal injections.  They didn’t work.  Where did they get these drugs, Taco Bell?

 

If you’ve been reading all 500 of my blogs, you have noticed that I pick on my wife a lot.  She is such a good sport and never gets offended that I use her like a lovely, little piñata.  That’s because she knows that a good part of my humor comes from using her as a foil. A foil, Weekly Word, is someone or something that serves as a contrast to another.  George Burns had Gracie as a foil; Phyllis Diller had Fang, and I’ve got Carol.  I am very lucky.

 

And, if you’ve been reading all these blogs, you’ve noticed that I consider myself a poet – a minor, silly and overrated poet to be sure, but a poet nonetheless.  And who are the poets I look up to and whose talent I envy?

 

·        Poe, of course.  I have memorized every word of The Raven.

·        Alfred Noyes.  I can recite the first and last stanzas of The Highwayman.

·        Dr. Seuss

·        Shel Silverstein

·        Robert Frost.  I can recite Provide, Provide.

·        A. E. Housman.  I am now reading his complete works (again) and I may share one or two with you as the weeks go on.

Back to Carol as my foil.  “What are we doing tonight?”  I asked my Honey last Saturday night.  By Honey, I mean my wife, in case you thought I had another Honey lying around.  She said we had no plans, so I made a date with her for dinner, just the two of us.  I love going out with her alone.  We get to talk about everything with no television, on-line bridge games, on-line canasta games, crossword puzzles or telephone calls taking up all of her concentration.  She agreed, but she decided she wanted to ask some other people.  Out came the telephone, and she easily found three other couples whose husbands wanted to be alone with their wives.

 

A dinner, just me and my date

For her was just not on the plate

“If you want to dine

Well, that would be fine

But it’s got to be dinner for eight.”

 

There you go, a minor, silly and overrated poet.  I told you. 

 

I’ve been struggling with my car lately.  It’s been a little sluggish the last couple of weeks.  When I step on the gas, it just has too much resistance, almost like there’s something under the pedal.  I decided to fix it.  As you know from reading 500 blogs, my succeeding in fixing anything mechanical is about as likely as Maxine Waters doing a foxtrot with J. D. Vance.  As likely as Donald Trump becoming a trans-female basketball player.  As likely as Carol eating at a square table.  But as a first step, I bent down and felt under the pedal, and you know what?  There was something under there.  The floor-mat had bunched up under the pedal and was keeping it from depressing all the way.  I moved the mat and everything was fine.  How about that?  Just call me Mr. Goodwrench.  No?  How about Mr. Luckywrench?  No?  How about Mr. Idiotwrench?

 

Well, I have to go now.  I have to start working on the next 500 blogs.  I’m up for it.  Are you?  Stay well, count your blessings and hang around for another 500.  Thanks.

 

Mr. Idiotwrench                       Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #499                                         October 1, 2026

 

In the course of a normal week, I take 103 pills.  Ok, I’ll pause here to give you time to calculate how many you take.  . . . . . . .  Finished?  Ok.  One of the pills I take every day is a large, white, oblong-shaped calcium pill.  It’s so big that every once in a while, it gets stuck in my throat.  I’ve tried cutting it in half, but then the halves are uneven and sharp at the edges and harder to swallow than the whole one.  Yesterday, it got stuck in my throat.  I tried coughing, then swallowed two glasses of water trying to dislodge it, but nothing worked.  So I went to the World’s Greatest Urgent Care – my wife, Urgent Carol.  “Honey, I need you,” I said.  She must have recognized my distress, because she immediately turned off the Today Show, put down her iPad on which she was playing bridge and turned down the volume of her cell phone that was playing Dolly Parton music.  “What?” she asked.  I described my problem.  “Go eat something,” she suggested.  What?  There’s a pill lodged in my throat.  Dumping some food on top of it will just clog up my throat even more.  “Eat a cookie,” she insisted.  No, I said.  “Eat a cookie or I’ll turn on The View and frighten the damn thing out of you!”  I grabbed a cookie and began to eat.  I hadn’t finished half of it before the pill dislodged and slid right down.  “Thank you,” I said.  “Now you can go back to the six or seven things you were doing.”  How does she do that?  I can’t even walk and swallow a pill at the same time.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling terrific and ready for Winter.  It’s October already and Winter is not far behind.  Let’s see what’s going on.  In the news, China will be sending Ping Ping and Fu Shuang to Atlanta.  No, that’s not a take-out order, it’s a shipment of two pandas to the Atlanta Zoo.  Here’s what I don’t get – if a pregnant Chinese woman and her husband visit America, and she delivers her baby here, the baby is automatically an American citizen.  But if Ping Ping and Fu Shuang have a baby panda at the Atlanta Zoo, it belongs to China.  Does that seem right to you?

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Exit, pursued by a bear (The Winter’s Tale).  What?  Now he’s talking about bears?  Panda bears are too big.  They wouldn’t fit on his lap like I do.  Silly old man!  You have the best pet there is.  You don’t need an ugly, smelly bear.  Purr.

 

In the English class I used to teach, I had several Chinese students, and one morning we were talking about the animals of the Chinese Zodiac.  This year is the Year of the Horse.  Why should you care?  Well, there are one billion, four hundred million Chinese on your doorstep trying to take over the world.  It might be worth your while to learn a bit about them.  The Chinese rotate their years through a menagerie of twelve animals: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig.  Hey, Chinese folk, I love your egg rolls, but your choice of animals is a bit bizarre.  I like Tiger – fierce, strong, unchallenged.  And Horse – fast, beautiful, useful.  Even Rabbit – cute, soft. But Snakes and Pigs and Rats?  Who do you have choosing your animals – General Tsao and his Chickens? 

 

And speaking of animals, last week at the Zoo, a boy asked me, “Where’s the werewolf?”  Then a little girl asked me, “Are unicorns real?”  Sure, I said.  Well, aren’t they?  Then she said, “Do you have any here?”  No, I replied, but we have green alligators and long-necked geese, some humpty backed camels and some chimpanzees.  She looked at me like I was Mork from Ork, but her Grandma smiled.

 

When little kids come to the Zoo

They want to see Winnie the Pooh

And a dragon with horns

And some pink unicorns.

That’s cool – I believe in them too.

 

I was at Walgreens recently and picked up a box of assorted sized flesh-colored Band Aids.  When I got home, Carol noticed the bag.  She notices everything.  She knows what I eat, what I wear and what the second half of each of my sentences is going to be.

 

What’s in the bag? She asked.

Oh, I replied, I just needed some . . .

flesh-colored Band-Aids, she said.

How did you . . .

Know?  I just did.  But they’re really not flesh-colored Band-Aids.

Well, I said, yes they . . .

No they’re not.  Read the box.

 

I did and discovered two things.  First, it did not say “Flesh Colored”.  In today’s world the term flesh-colored is invidious.  What color is flesh-colored anyway?  Perhaps it should be labeled “Flesh of White Americans of European Descent Colored”.  Or just “Jew-Colored”.  It occurs to me now that white people are not People of Color.   But do not be alarmed.  There is a brand called Tru-Colour Adhesive Bandages – Diversity in Healing which are the color of – well, people of color.

 

And second, (there was a first somewhere in the last paragraph, so now here’s the second) they weren’t Band-Aids.  They were Walgreen’s Adhesive Bandages.  So Carol was right.  She always is.  Just ask her.  But you can understand my mistake.  Band-Aids have been such a familiar commodity in our lives for so many decades that we presume it’s just the name of the commodity itself, not a brand name.

 

There are lots more like that.  The most familiar brand names that have become synonymous for the generic product are Kleenex, Scotch Tape and Coke.  But there are lots of others.  Aspirin, for instance, is a brand name as are Jell-O, Chapstick, Bubble Wrap, Q-Tips, Crock-Pot and Frisbee.  And now Google just means to look something up on any old search engine, just like Xeroxing used to mean making a copy.  Oh, did I tell you Carol was right about the Band-Aids?  She wanted to make sure you knew.

 

Weekly Word:  Invidious means of an unpleasant or objectionable nature.  I hope you didn’t find this blog invidious.  It’s time to go.  Stay well and count your blessings.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

Blog #498                                September 24, 2026

 

Our cell-phone monthly service bill is charged to my credit card, but I wanted to change it to a different card.  The odds of my doing that by myself were about the same as my performing brain surgery or cooking a souffle or winning a gold medal for figure skating (I can’t skate).  So I did what I do best – I begged for help.  I drove to the Spectrum Mobile store.  They open at 10.  I arrived at 10:01.  That’s what I do.  A nice young man named Joe asked if he could help.  Now, I did not want to become engaged in an imbroglio with him, so I just said, “Joe, I am 117 years old and have only one brain cell left, and it doesn’t do apps.  Can you help?”  Joe fixed it all up for me in about nine minutes.  So it was 12 minutes to drive there, plus 9 minutes to do it and 12 minutes back.  That’s 33 minutes (my last brain cell can add) to do something it would have taken me hours to figure out.  Thanks, Joe.

 

I just am not good doing apps

I’d do better by just shooting craps

When I give it a spin,

Open up and begin

My computer just starts playing Taps

 

I cannot fathom how the human brain works, especially my own.  Why, for instance, while driving home today did I suddenly realize that Peter Piper could not possibly have picked a peck of pickled peppers?  Wikipedia estimates there are 50,000 different kinds of peppers.  Fifty thousand!  There are pimiento peppers, tabasco peppers, cayenne peppers, chili peppers, paprika, jalapeno, banana peppers and of course the common green pepper.  Did you know that green peppers, like green tomatoes, are just unripened bell peppers?  But here’s the thing: Peppers do not grow already pickled, so no one can pick a pickled pepper, any more than one could pick a stewed tomato or a pumpkin pie.  Even Peter Piper could not pick a pickled pepper, let alone a peck of them.  Case closed!  I sometimes frighten myself.

 

But I apparently don’t frighten you, because you’re back and I’m glad.  Hi there and welcome.  I hope you’re feeling dandy and are ready for more of my methodical madness.  Let me explain the comment I made earlier that I can’t skate.  I have three daughters.  When they were 12, 11 and 5, they begged me to take them ice-skating at a local rink.  It was Saturday and there were special activities going on.  They rented some skates and got out there on the ice.  I watched.  I had never ice-skated.  All of a sudden, I hear, “Dad, c’mon, the skates are free.  C’mon, c’mon!”  I could never say no to them, so I got some skates and stepped onto the ice.  I was terrible.  I fell three times.  My daughters were so embarrassed, they abandoned me about halfway around the rink, hanging onto the siderail.  Then the lights started to flash and the loud speaker spoke loudly; “Please exit the ice; the show will start in two minutes.”  Show?  Everybody left the ice.  Except me.  I began to pull myself feverishly along the siderail trying to reach the exit gate before anyone noticed me.  I failed.  There I was, the only person left on the ice, a silly fool who couldn’t skate, struggling to hide himself somewhere.  The show started.  Costumed skaters flowed onto the rink and began their intricate dances and leaps.  I was still out there, pulling myself around.  Everyone was hysterical.  I finally made it to the gate and exited to a raucous mix of laughter and applause.  I was horrified.  To this day, I have never again put on ice skates. 

 

Let’s talk about dogs.  My friend took her support dog to a movie.  Really!  I think she saw Crazy Rich Afghans.  Maybe it was Jurassic Bark or Raging Bulldog or Paws! or The Good, the Bad and the Shar Pei.  I could go on forever, but I know you have places to go and people to see, so let’s move on.

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  “The cat will mew, and dog will have his day (Hamlet).”  Why does he always talk about dogs.  Silly, stupid dogs!  I am his best pet and his closest friend.  Cats like movies too.  I like Cat Ballou, The Color Purr-ple and Apocalypse Meow.  Purr.

 

In the absence of anything else interesting to talk about, there is always something medical going on in my life.  Last week I went to Dr. Skin.  Something was bothering me on my back and I wanted someone to look at it.  She did and told me it was Stoopi-goopi Poppi-noppi-cozitis, or some such mumbo-jumbo.  Have you noticed that doctors tend to speak in a language intelligible only to other doctors so as to impress us ignorant laymen with their profound intelligence?  I think they learn it at Jabberwocky class.  Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwock, as you know, is famous for words like slithy tove, mimsy, borogoves and mome raths.

 

Sounds just like a doctor!  “Yes, Ma’am, you have an enlarged Mome Rath.  But your borogoves are normal.”  Anyway, whatever was on my back is no more.  She froze it off and told me I didn’t have to worry about it.  It was only a mimsy.  Maybe the O-B should come out and say, “Congratulations, it’s a slithy tove!”

 

And speaking of doctors, I visited a friend in the hospital and stayed about three doctors.  That’s how you measure time in a hospital, by counting how many different doctors come to your room.  First was the Hospitalist from China, then the Pulmonologist from Iran and the Cardiologist from India.  They’ve changed the inscription on the Statue of Liberty, you know.  It now reads Give us your tired, your poor, your Anesthesiologists.  There’s one thing that’s comforting about having Asian doctors.  You know they graduated at the top of their class.

 

Weekly Word:  Imbroglio is a good word.  It means a complex dispute or argument.  And with that, it is time to go.  This week marks the beginning of Autumn.  So please have a good Fall.  No, wait, I don’t mean I want you to fall.  Don’t ever fall, stay well, count your blessings and come back to me next Thursday.

 

The Jabberwock             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

Blog #497                                September 17, 2026

 

Happy New Year to all my Jewish readers.  It is the Year 5787 of the Hebrew Calendar.  God, why, when You made us Your Chosen People, did you also make so many people who hate us?  You must have had a reason, but I am too humble and it is not for me to know.  We pray for a better tomorrow.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  God shall be my hope (Henry V).  Pops is Jewish and Nonnie is Jewish, so I guess that makes me a Jewish cat.  You can call me Katz.  And this is my favorite holiday – Yom Ki-Purr.

 

Ok, let’s move on to what Limerick Oyster is all about – to give you a smile every week, to teach you a new word, to let you talk to my cat.  And also, to tell you what ticks me off.  Last week it was stamps with flags on them and the Lindsay Clancy trial.  This week it’s tennis.  I was watching the men’s semi-final at the U.S. Open Tennis Championship, when I noticed the Chair Umpire was a woman from France.  FRANCE!  We have 350 million people in this country.  Can we not find an American to umpire at the US OPEN?  France has a tournament too.  But France would no sooner allow an American to umpire their tournament than they would rename the Eiffel Tower and call it the Trump Tower.  I mean, what does the umpire actually do?  The machines call the lines and keep the score.  The only thing the umpire says is, “Let, first service.”  With a French accent!  We need to get an American to umpire the American tournament!

 

Hi there and welcome back.  Are you still with me?  Stick around, I’ll calm down eventually.  I hope you’re feeling well and ready for Fall.  It’s September already, and that means the schools are open and the elections are only two months away.  Who are you going to vote for?  How can you tell?  If you watch CNN you get one set of facts, but if you watch FOX you get a different set.  It’s like going to a baseball game where all the Cardinal fans thought the guy was safe but all the Cub fans thought he was out.  And all the white folks thought O.J. was guilty while all the black folks thought he was innocent.  I’m not sure truth has any meaning anymore.  But then your truth might not be the same as mine.

 

Don’t listen to their candidate

In the “What Two and Two Is” Debate

He’ll use dirty tricks

To convince you it’s six

When everyone knows that it’s eight.

 

William Blake said, “the tree which moves someone to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way.”  We look at things today with such radically opposed points of view, it’s amazing that we haven’t started another Civil War.  Except, after listening to all the hate-filled and profane rhetoric on both sides, we’ll have to call it The Uncivil War. 

 

There will be some differences, however, between the old war and the new. That old one was between the North and the South; this is between the Left and the Right.  That was between the Blue and the Gray; this is between the Red States and the Blue States.  In the Civil War, both sides had guns.  In the Uncivil War only one side has guns.  Now that’s an interesting thought.  But it’s ok because the other side has poster-board and magic markers.  There’s even a new Japanese car especially designed for sign-carrying protest marchers with special compartments for cardboard and crayons.  It’s called the Toyota Crayola.

 

In 1839, Edward Bulwer-Lytton coined the phrase the pen is mightier than the sword.  I’m not sure, however, that the crayon is mightier than the AK-47.  If it gets any worse, I might have to leave the country.  Maybe I’ll go to California.  That’s not part of America anymore, is it?

 

And speaking of voting, our Congressional representatives tend to be disappointing, don’t they?  As Will Rogers said, “Taxpayers are sending Congressmen on expensive trips abroad. It might be worth it except they keep coming back.”

 

That was the third obscure person I have quoted so far.  No more, I promise!  You might begin to think I’m not clever enough to write my own lines.  Let’s talk about my family.  My family was a bizarre anomaly.  I have spoken about my older brother many times in my blogs.  He was one of the strangest people I have ever known.  And my sister married an older guy.  She was 47 and he was 92.  It’s a long story, but absolutely true.  My sister was crazy -- half Baby Jane and half Sybil.  In fact, when I was growing up my family made the Addams Family look like Ozzie and Harriet.  It’s a miracle I turned out so perfectly normal!  The man she married was named Bill, and he was so old, he told me the first president he had voted for was McKinley. One time Bill told me that he was in the hospital recuperating from something when a member of the clergy visited his room to offer prayers for a speedy recovery.  The clergy person asked if there was anything else bothering him, and Bill responded that yes, he did have a problem.  He was constipated.  So the clergy person scribbled a prayer for him.  This is all true!  I was hysterical.  A prayer to relieve constipation?  This must be a joke, but no, I looked it up.  Here are some of the highlights.

 

The Lord is my shepherd

His figs and his prunes, they comfort me

He preparest a table in the presence of mine enemas

He restoreth my stool.

 

And, as you know, when I start talking potty, it’s time to go.  At least I didn’t talk about anything runnething over.  But I do need to talk about anomaly, our Weekly Word.  An anomaly is something that deviates from the standard, normal or expected.  Like me.  There, now I’m finished.

 

Please stay well, count your blessings and be regular.  I’ll be back next week.  Can you wait that long?  And whether it is 5787 or 2026 on your calendar, may you have a happy and peaceful week

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

Blog #496                                September10, 2026

 

I am going to start this week with the Weekly Word, even though I haven’t used it yet.  The word is pontificate, which means to speak in an annoyingly pompous and dogmatic way, a practice in which I am expert.  Don’t worry, the word will show up later.  But for now, let’s talk about stamps.

 

I went to the Post Office to buy stamps.  Eighty-two cents.  For those of you around my age, we remember when postage was three cents.  For those of you a little older, you probably remember just feeding the pony some hay and sending it on its way.  When I asked for stamps, the young man at the counter asked me if “flags were all right”.  “Are flags all right?” I gasped. “Do you have to ask if flags are all right?”  He said, “Well, some people don’t like them.  It’s a political statement.”

 

I thanked the young man, walked to my car and sat inside for a while thinking.  I’ve lived in this country for 80 years.  I’ve had the opportunity to work, save, invest, buy a house, raise a family – and vote.  I’ve voted for sixty years.  Sometimes my favorite candidate won, sometimes not.  But I got to vote in a country that elects its leaders, good or bad.  And all this time, we’ve had a flag.  It was the same flag under Biden as it is under Trump.  It was the same flag under JFK and Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama and George Bush.  It’s the symbol of this country that has allowed us the opportunity to grow, to succeed or even to fail.  I’ve had successes and plenty of failures, believe me.  But I will always support the country and the flag that is its symbol.  “Yes,” I told the young man.  “I want the stamps with the flag on them.”

 

And by the way, in my lifetime, we have elected Democrats nine times as President and Republicans eleven times.  So both sides have contributed pretty evenly to where we are today.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  Are you still here?  Good.  I hope you are feeling well and staying away from doctors.  Do you realize that if you forget your birthday, you can never receive any medical services?  Every time I encounter a doctor, nurse, technician or office staff – they ask for my date of birth.  Over and over.  The person who drew my blood last week -- a nasty, evil-looking, vampiric creature – must have asked me four times.

 

The Nurse I call Lady Macbeth

Asked my date of birth with each breath

It’s ok - I let her

It’s surely much better

Than asking for my Date of Death.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  To me, fair friend, you never can be old (Sonnet 104). Nobody knows my birthday, but Pops celebrates it in April.  I think I’m seven years old now, but it doesn’t matter because they say cats have nine lives, which is fine with me as long as I can spend all of them with my Pops.  Purr.

 

I have told you many times that I know nothing about cars or anything else mechanical.  I only know about useless stuff – like Edgar Allen Poe or chemistry.  Here’s some chemistry:  Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, 'I've lost my electron.' The other says 'Are you sure?' The first replies, 'Yes, I'm positive.'  See?  Useless!

 

Carol and I went shopping at Nordstrom’s.  Well, Carol was the shopper.  I was the chauffer-companion and carrier of packages.  She was looking for some jeans, but when we checked out, she commiserated with the young sales clerk that all they were showing were baggy-leg jeans.  She asked the clerk if she had sold many of them.  “No,” she replied, “and I tried some on and they made me look ridiculous.”  Let me describe the young clerk.  Her legs were all tattooed up and down; her hair was bright pink, and there was enough hardware hanging from her nostrils to crack a safe.  And she thought the jeans made her look ridiculous?

 

Well, I guess we all have succumbed to the fashion of the day.  I think the silliest men’s fashion statement I tried was the medallion.  I guess it was the early 1970s and we would wear a sport coat over a turtleneck with a heavy medallion hanging from a chain around our necks like we had just won the Nobel Prize for Stupid.

 

And then there’s the trial of Lindsay Clancy who brutally strangled her three children.  Apparently, the majority of the jury was convinced she was not guilty of murder because she was mentally ill.  Most of you are not going to agree with me here and I may lose some readers, but, as Larry McMurty said, “I wouldn’t have gone in for writing if I hadn’t liked talking to myself.”  So here’s what I think:  If it looks like a duck, feels like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a damn duck.  She murdered her three children, and if our society has come to the position that mental illness is a reason for treating that kind of horror in a less serious manner, then how soon will we slide down the slippery slope to “not guilty by reason of depression”?  And then “by reason of unhappiness” or “anger” or just “having a bad day”?  Don’t send me your counter-arguments.  I’m not in the mood for arguing.  I’m in the mood for pontificating.  It’s much more fun.  Ah, I told you the word pontificate would come up and there it is.

 

I passed a drug-rehab center today and there was a sign on the lawn that said, KEEP OFF THE GRASS.  Have you ever had a bad habit that was hard to break?  Maybe even an addiction?  I used to smoke, but I don’t do that anymore.  It was easy to stop – the 86^th time.  I used to drink, but I don’t do that either.  There’s one thing to remember about bad habits or addictions -- just because you got the monkey off your back doesn’t mean the circus has left town.

 

Time to go now.  Stay well, count your blessings and keep off the grass.   Come back next week, everyone.  Who knows what I’m going to say?  Don’t miss it; it might be about you. 

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com