Blog # 44
While driving around the other day, I saw a sign. It was a green sign, which always indicates
some official message like how far it is to the next town or which dead Highway
Patrol officer the street is dedicated to.
This sign said “WILDLIFE VIEWING
AREA” with an arrow and an image of binoculars. It’s a sad sign really. Its obvious translation is: “A
few miles down this road we actually found a place with a few animals
left. Bring your binoculars because
there aren’t that many and they stay pretty much away from the road. And hurry!
There’s a new Cracker Barrel coming next spring.” Pretty soon the only animals left will be at
the zoos and no-one will remember how they evolved or became extinct.
And speaking of zoos, the
St. Louis Zoo opened a new grizzly bear exhibit in July. Huck and Fin are very handsome bears, but
they have been trying to get out, digging under the glass that separates them
from the tourists. The exhibit is closed
while the problem is solved. Shame on
those Terrible Teddies, those Silly Smokies, those Bad News Bears – trying to
break out of a cage! What were they
thinking of? Probably freedom.
It was my birthday this week. I am now 72.
At the Dollar Tree, I found Carol a great birthday card to send me. It said something like “You’re a wonderful
husband and I’m so lucky to have you.” I showed it to her and she rejected it immediately. “You’re
the one who’s lucky,” she said. I am
also, apparently, the one who is not worth a dollar birthday card. She wrote me a limerick instead.
I hope on your birthday you see
How fortunate one guy can be
You’re the luckiest guy
And, Michael, here’s why:
Because you are married to me.
And that’s why she has
won the Donald Trump
Humility Award twelve years running.
Recently, Dr. Pain and I have reached an impasse in
our course of treatment. It seemed that
whatever we were doing wasn’t working. I
asked him what we should do next? “It’s
up to you,” was his reply. What! Up to me?
You’re the doctor. You’re
the one who went to medical school for seven years. You’re the one who makes people wait
six weeks to see you. You’re the
one who cheated on your organic chemistry exams. How am I supposed to know what to do? I’m just an old man in pain and I need your
help. I don’t think he liked
much of that, but I had to get it off my chest.
Sorry for being as grumpy as the guy who designed a
yellow dress for the Golden Globes. Sometimes
I think you like it when I’m grumpy because I pick on the same things that
frustrate or confuse you as well, but right now I’ll try to move on to lighter
things with a little puzzle for you. Try
putting six X’s on a tic-tac-toe grid without getting three in a row. Answer later.
My Jennifer was in town
with her kids, and the first thing we did was go to Whole Foods so
she could buy overpriced food for her family.
I admit that Whole Foods is a great store. It has terrific presentation and a wonderful
prepared-foods department and it is totally attractive and hip and “in”. But come on!
Some of the hype that goes on in there is ridiculous. There was a cooler case with a sign that read
“Five-Star
Animal Welfare Rating”. Ok, the
sign made me wander over to inspect just how well the animals had been
treated. They looked dead to me. Not only dead, but dismembered and shrink
wrapped. One package of shrink wrapped
body parts said “Fresh Young Chicken”. Seriously?
If that doesn’t bring up a scene of intense, bloody cruelty, nothing does. Here’s a gaggle of fresh young chicks in the
prime of youth with their whole lives to look forward to – snatched, butchered
and pulled to pieces. Do visions of
Harvey Weinstein come to mind? But, we
were kind to these “Fresh Young Chicks”.
We played Mozart for them and old Foghorn Leghorn cartoons before we
ripped their bodies to pieces. How
humane! Pass the barbecue sauce.
Let’s talk about
comments. I love your comments, and I
always respond to them. If you have sent
a comment and have not received a response from me, then I never received
it. On the lower right of this blog is
my email address. If you send a comment
there, I will get it. If you just click Reply, you will be sending your
comment to Neptune or Patagonia or Jay Silverheels. Please send comments to my email. I’ll be waiting. And who, by the way, is Jay Silverheels?
The first five
phone calls I received for my birthday were from Florida. That made me feel old, to know that so many
of my friends have escaped to Florida.
But more than that, it made me feel cold!
We are firmly into Winter now and it is very cold. I hate the cold, and, as I age, I seem to be
getting less tolerant of it. Why did God
have to invent winter? As a
contrast? John Steinbeck wrote, “What good is the warmth of summer,
without the cold of
winter
to give it sweetness.” Maybe God
made winter so we could marvel at the beauty of snow. Or maybe He just wanted to make us shiver.
And yes, I called God a He. Do I
need to apologize for that? It seems
that God has been called Our Father, Our King for almost
6,000 years, but in the past 25 years we have changed God to Our
Parent, Our Ruler. Why can’t God be a man? Mother Nature hasn’t been changed to Parent
Nature. Have you ever heard of Parent
Goose stories? Or the Siblings
Grimm? Or Parent Theresa? With all the scandals going on nowadays, I
guess it’s not so good to be a man anyway.
So let’s just pray to Whoever for a mild winter. Amen! Oops, I guess I should have said – A-person!
And speaking of The
Brothers Grimm. Why isn’t it the Grimm
Brothers? It just sounds strange. Have you ever heard of the Brothers
Everly? Or the Brothers Righteous? Or the Brothers Smothers?
And speaking of Parent
Theresa, she once said, “Let no one ever come to you without leaving
better and happier.” Thanks
for joining me today. I hope I have left
you a little better and happier. Maybe a
smile or two. Here are the six X’s
placed on a tic-tac-toe grid that don’t make three in a row.
X X
X X
X X
Gotta go now. I’m exhausted. Being clever and witty tires me out. And thank goodness I can’t hear any of your
smart-aleck comments to that! Oh, and Jay Silverheels was the actor who
played Tonto. Stay well. See you next week.
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