Blog #42
Did you all have a nice Christmas? I hope so, and no matter what our religious
persuasion 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.
2017
has only a few more days. Another year has
gone, and it was a strange one indeed!
Have you ever seen anything like 2017?
Hurricanes, fires, mass shootings, sexual scandals, politics, politics,
politics! Unbelievable! 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 and somewhat frightening when all our national
energies are expended on trying to put Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in jail. Don’t we have anything important to do?
Well I have something important to do – I’m
going to clean up a bunch of little items I’ve been meaning to tell you about
-- some light and frivolous things. Like
the death penalty!
I read a news story today
about a man who has been on Death Row since 1990 and is scheduled to be
executed next June. He is suing the
State because the food is not prepared to his religious standards. He does get his special food, but he
complains that it’s not good enough.
Well, I have the perfect solution – kill him now. Why does it take so long to execute an
execution? I don’t like the
death penalty, but if we’re going to have it, we should do it! And by the way, if you have been found guilty
of murdering your wife, who gives a Flying Franken what you eat? We as a society have determined that you are
not fit to live among us. But
you get to complain about the menu? Maybe the food’s not hot enough? Well, let’s get this over with and,
where you’re going, I’m pretty sure the food is always hot.
I feel like I know
something about a lot of things – history, astronomy, evolution, poetry. I can even talk a little about Calculus or
Sponge Bob. But there are just some
things I do not understand at all, like why “phonetic” is not spelled
like it sounds. Or why “abbreviation”
is such a long word. Or why a woman who
drives a $65,000 Mercedes and wears a diamond ring as big as a cinnamon roll
will go into a casino and play the penny slots.
Or my cable bill. Now, I
won’t bore you with all the details of my cable experience, but here’s the
bottom line: if we get rid of the
land-line, we can save twenty dollars a month, but if we keep the land-line, we can save thirty. Does that make any sense? Well, that’s what the cable man told us. You know the expression “my Mama didn’t raise no fools”? Well my
Mama raised nothing but
fools, but at least this fool
had the sense to marry a smart woman. So
Carol took that thirty-dollar deal faster than a vampire gets out of the sun,
and we left as happy as a turkey on the day after Thanksgiving
The light went out in the
bathroom. It’s one of those long
tube-thing lights. Is that too technical for you? Carol was out at a luncheon or something, so
I was on my own, a position that usually leads to disaster. But, somehow, I pried the plexiglass cover
off, got the two tubes out and took them to the hardware store where I
sheepishly asked for help. I left with
the two replacement tubes and then it hit me:
I had to get them home unbroken, install them and replace the Plexiglas
sheet all by myself. I considered that
to have about the same likelihood as my getting hit by a falling cello. Plus, my wife was gone. I was alone!
I could fall off the stepladder and break both legs and die of
starvation! I could have a cardiac event
and not be able to call 9-1-1! I
could get hit by a falling cello!
Well, I got home, took
out the stepladder and screwed up my courage.
I took a deep breath, told myself that I was a capable and clever man and had to do what a capable
and clever man should do –
wait for his wife to come home. When she
did, I asked her to hold the stepladder. She refused.
You see, she remembered too well when her father was replacing a
lightbulb and her mother was holding the ladder. They were probably about our age at the
time. Well, her father fell and broke a
hip – not his hip, the mother’s hip. So
Carol said, “I’m not going to let you fall on me. You’re on your own, Buster.” And so I was, but then I remembered what the
Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev said -- “If we wait for the moment when everything,
absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.” So I pressed forward and got it done with only
two band-aids and a little crack in the plexiglass that almost no-one can see. You gotta do what you gotta do!
I have noticed a family
of phrases being used more and more.
They are phrases like: You gotta do what you gotta do. It is what it is. Cheap is cheap. It’s not over till it’s over. I can only do what I can do. All of these phrases have the same
meaning – nothing. They really mean, “I
have nothing to say, but I was going to exhale anyway so I figured I might as
well pass it over my vocal chords.”
Prices for medicine seem to have gone up a lot in
2017. I just got a new prescription for
my arm and my leg. It cost me an arm and a
leg.
These tablets will act as a cure
Please take before bed to make sure
Dilute with some juice
‘Cause repeated use
Will cause you to be very poor.
When one of the
side-effects on the label is “Bankruptcy”, it’s time to look for a
generic. And now it’s time
to close. I have no more to say. I can only do what I can do.
My friends, we have been with each other now for 42
weeks. You know everything there is to
know about me and my wife and my daughters – even the chickens. And I feel like I’ve come to know you
too. So I think I have the right to make
this request: Don’t make any New Year’s resolutions. I like you just the way you are. Please stay well. And even though it’s not over till it’s over
– it’s over. See you next year.
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