Blog #103

Africa, the Dark Continent, home of the hippo and the rhino and the tsetse fly, land of the zebra and the eland, the ostrich and the lion, the cheetah and the dik-dik.  Yes, the dik-dik.  The birthplace of mankind and the worldwide center of poverty, cruelty, AIDS and genocide.  Sounds like a lovely trip.  And it is!  You should go.  We were there a dozen years ago and it was magnificent. I have some friends who are thinking of going, and I have told them what a wonderful and uplifting adventure they have in store.

Africa’s what you should choose

To cure your depressing old blues

A ten-foot giraffe

Might just make you laugh

And zebras might bring you good gnus.

I’ve told them to practice up on their Swahili.  I only remember two phrases.  Dinka mbeke na momo is Swahili for “Does your elephant play Candy Crush?”  And ungala mambo didi uru is an old Zulu proverb which means, “When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.”

Here is an entry in the Men Are Different from Women Manual.  I showed these friends my Africa picture album.  The man’s reaction was – wow, look at the hippo and the beautiful leopard!  The wife’s reaction was – look at what Carol’s wearing; I’d better take an extra sweater.

Hi there and welcome back.  Hope you’re feeling well.  If you are, stay away from Florida.  We left North Carolina a few days ago and are now in beautiful, sunny Florida.  I don’t know why anyone would want to live here.  If it’s not hurricane season, when just walking outside could cause your remains to be washed up in Morocco, then it’s Red-Tide season when the act of inhaling within ten miles of the ocean can cause your lungs to explode.  We are lucky enough to have missed both of those, but have arrived in the middle of coconut season when the palm trees shed their coconuts – from thirty feet up.  It’s like walking down the street while it’s raining Buicks.

Plus, Florida is full of old people.  We went to dinner with two other couples, and it seemed that all we talked about were health issues.  Have you noticed that we don’t call them diseases anymore?  We call them conditions.  I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in (The First Edition, 1968. Tell me who the lead singer was.)

Florida!  You come here for the sunshine and Dr. Skin tells you to stay inside.  You come here for the food and Dr. Heart tells you not to eat it.  I’ll have the hamburger but I can’t have any salt, cheese or bread.  And salad with no oil, extra vinegar, no salt, extra pepper, no olives, extra tomato, no onions.  And I can have the vichys but not the soise.  It took six of us forty minutes to order.

Part of what made this difficult was that it was a “New Age” restaurant.  On the menu, right in the column of things that were supposed to be edible, was the following: Deconstructed Vada Pav with Chutney in a Molecular, Edible Plastic Pouch.  There is no purpose in listing anything else; that was enough to convince me that NEW AGE food is not for OLD AGE people.  We should open a restaurant that serves old, standard, comfort food specifically for the elderly.  We’ll call it Food You Remember -- To Eat with People You Don’t.  Pot roast, macaroni and cheese, rolls with butter, fried chicken, Jell-O, apple pie.  Reservation for two, please.  Me and Whatshername.  5:00 is fine; we have to be back by 7:00.

You come here for the friendship only to find all your friends have grown old and sick.  You come here for the healthy air, and the minute you cross the State Line, your health begins to seep out of you.  During the meal we talked non-stop about our health or lack thereof.  The procedures and the doctors and the side-effects were flying so fast and furious, the waiter actually thought we had ordered an enema for dessert.

And when we weren’t talking about procedures, we were talking about pills.  One of my friends has every condition, symptom and reaction that he has ever read about.  When a doctor prescribes a medicine, he looks it up on Google and reads all the side effects.  Then he refuses to take the medicine as being too dangerous.  If they force him to take the medicine, he immediately develops every side effect he can find on the internet.

You come here to get away from the cold and find cockroaches and alligators.  I saw one yesterday that was as big as a pony.  And that was the cockroach!  But I love Florida, don’t you?  We come every year.

  

Did you watch the Academy Awards?  It’s so uplifting to watch a bunch of people who just made $20 million on their last movie tell me how much inequality there is in the world.  At least I paid for the clothes I’m wearing.

When something happens that touches my sensibilities, my thoughts, my inner musings– when something like that happens, I run right to you to tell you about it.  Thanks for being there for me.  An incident happened while I was sitting in my daughter’s den in North Carolina.  I was alone with Grandchild #3, Alyssa (13).  We were both engaged and the only sounds were the rooster on the henhouse and the woodpecker on the roof.  No fiddler.  I was reading a Robert Frost poem with the line, Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.  It was an opportunity to talk with my Granddaughter, to discuss the importance of family and to pass down some knowledge from my generation to hers.  I raised my head and said, “Alyssa, have you heard of Robert Frost?”  No answer!  Then I saw the wires hanging from her ears.  She couldn’t hear me. 

In the 60s, Timothy Leary told us to “turn on, tune in, drop out.”  We didn’t exactly know what it meant back then, but it’s finally becoming clear now that we realize our grandchildren have turned us off, tuned us out and lost our number.  Oh well; their loss.

Don’t turn me off or tune me out.  I’ll be back next week.  Stay well, count your blessings and join me.  It’ll be fun.  Oh, the lead singer of The First Edition was Kenny Rogers. 

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #102

Our 13-hour drive to North Carolina last week was uneventful.  We listened to oldies and goldies on Sirius Radio, rock ‘n roll from the 50s, 60s and 70s.  Music is such an important part of our memories, leaving indelible images on our brains.  I heard one song by The Lovin’ Spoonful and instantly remembered a night when I was 19, living in Greenwich Village and was the only customer in the Night Owl Cafe when the Spoonful performed. Then another song by The Fifth Dimension reminded us of seeing them perform on our honeymoon. Songs trigger vivid memories of the times and places of our lives.  Let’s see how good your recall is.

These are three opening lines of songs that start out by telling you when:

Long long time ago

It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday

Just yesterday morning

And these are some that start out by telling you where:

Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans

On a dark desert highway

On a warm summer’s eve on a train bound for nowhere

See if you can remember the songs.  You should get most of them unless you have spent the last sixty years watching Susan Lucci and Judge Judy.  You know who you are.

One day last week, I just didn’t feel like getting up.  I felt like being lazy and useless, two of my wife’s favorite nicknames for me.  But then I remembered this exhortation: Awake, arise or be forever fallen.  That’s what Satan says to his assembled minions in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.  Satan and I are this close!  So I took his advice, got myself up and pumped for the day.  I felt young and eager and full of the goodness of life.  I felt like I was holding all the cards, until I realized that the world wanted to play chess.

It all started when I pulled up to the back gate of my subdivision where I noticed a paper cup from Burger King lying on the ground.  I got out and picked it up of course.  How can people litter like that?  Do they have no sense of anything?  Do they just hate their world and their lives so much that anything they can do to defile themselves and their surroundings brings them the glory of defiance?  Disgusting! Am I over-reacting?  Good, that’s how you make a point!  M.L. King said, The time is always right to do what is right.

I do not litter, and I try not to waste resources.  Since my memory cells are old and dusty, I write myself notes.  I know you can do notes and reminders on your cell-phone, but that would be too modern for me, so I use scraps of paper which I save by tearing up sheets I would otherwise have recycled.  You should do that too.

If it’s all the same to you, please

I’d rather you use one of these

It’s just a small scrap

But wasting is crap

And paper does not grow on trees.

Well, it does actually, but you get the point.  Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  And welcome to Kitty from Mexico.  My blog has received comments from Afghanistan and Hong Kong, but those were American readers who were visiting or were stationed there.  Kitty’s is the first comment I have received from a reader living abroad.  No, Kitty, I’m not calling you a broad.  I am trying to welcome you to Limerick Oyster and to thank you for the nice note.  I hope I didn’t mess that up.

One of the reasons we drove here to North Carolina is so my daughter and son-in-law could go on a short trip while we looked after the menagerie that is her household.  The kids are easy; they’re 17, 16 and 13 and all live by the same three-word credo – Leave Me Alone.  One of the kids takes care of the three dogs, one takes care of the two cats and the smallest child tends to the thirteen chickens.  I guess that makes her a chicken tender.  It all sounds like a piece of cake, right?  Well that’s because you haven’t tried to watch the television.  There are four remotes, each with more buttons than a South American dictator’s uniform.  The simple act of watching a program has now become an exercise in engineering surpassing the Apollo 11 moon landing and certainly beyond the meager capacities of two old people.  What ever happened to Howdy Doody?  You came home from school, pulled the on-off knob on the Philco and turned the dial to Channel 5.  Back then we had knobs and dials, not buttons.  Now, well, it’s all too complicated for this humble relic.  I’ll be reading a lot of books.

And then there’s the toilet.  The original toilet was invented in the late 19^th Century by Thomas Crapper (true!) and his daughters Fulla, Pisa and Pyla.  But the gizmo my son-in-law has is an ultra-modern hi-tech monster created by Elon Flush!  When you walk in, it automatically raises its lid like some water-filled Audrey II.  Then it sprays you, warms your privates, tells potty jokes and sings Feed me Seymour all at the same time.   Plus, it has a remote with as many buttons as the TV thing.  Maybe if I used the toilet remote, I could get Netflix.  But I was afraid and I avoided it like shingles!  I like simple things that are easy for a simple man to understand.  Like the rooster.  The damn thing gets up every morning with an arrogant chip on its drumstick and lets everybody know about it.  I can deal with that.

It’s already time to give you the song answers.  I know you got them all right.

Long long time ago – American Pie – Don McLean

It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday - Piano Man – Billy Joel

Just yesterday morning - Fire and Rain – James Taylor

Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans

          Johnny B Goode – Chuck Berry

On a dark desert highway - Hotel California – Eagles

On a warm summer’s eve on a train bound for nowhere

(You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em)

          The Gambler – Kenny Rogers

No?  Too much Judge Judy?  Well I certainly know when to fold ‘em, and that would be right about now.  So stay well and count your blessings but never count your money when you’re sitting at the table.  See you next week.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #101             

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone.  I have three daughters (plus a wife), so Valentine’s Day was always a busy time for me when my girls were young.  Even when they were all grown up and gone from home, I would send them boxes of cheap, chocolatey junk for V. Day.  In 1998, Carol the Killjoy told me that the girls didn’t want that junk anymore; they hated it.  So that year I didn’t send any candy.  On Feb. 15^th of that year, I received three phone calls.  “You are a horrible excuse for a father and don’t ever call me your daughter again.”  I immediately composed a letter of apology bemoaning my failure as a parent and sent a copy to each child – along with an extra-large box of over-priced and high-calorie garbage.  They loved the candy – and the letter, so the next week I wrote them another and have been sending them a weekly letter for 21 years.  Each letter (1,092 of them by now) contains family news, some funny stuff, a large dollop of love and a limerick. 

Two years ago, Carol said I should expand and let my friends share all the clever stuff I write in those letters and so I started this blog.  There, that’s the story!  I’m glad you’re along for the ride.  But you’re not getting any chocolate.

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling wonderful.  On the radio this morning, they said, “The temperature is 33, feels like 27.”  I called up the weather service and asked them what 27 felt like.  They said 22.

Michael and Carol are travelling again.  Sounds like the title of a Brady Bunch episode, doesn’t it?  But wherever we may roam, to Paris or to Nome, South Africa or Rome, however far from home, across the ocean’s foam, we’ll travel with a comb, and buy a plastic gnome, with booties made of chrome, and read a classic tome, and write a silly poem.  Sorry, got carried away.  I know you often think there is method to my madness, but sometimes, in truth, there is just madness. 

Yes, we jumped in the car and drove to North Carolina on our annual Mooch Tour, three glorious weeks of mooching on relatives and friends in North Carolina and Florida, where the weather is fine, there are no hotel bills and the company is excellent. (I have to say nice things about them if I want to be invited back next year.)  I’ll be telling you all about it over the next few weeks.

Did you notice up above that I spelled travelling with two ells?  I read so many books by British authors that I often lapse into their ways of spelling.  Did you know that in America gray is a color, whereas in England grey is a colour?

One thing you do know, I’m sure, is that everybody’s running for President?  It’s only 21 months until the election, so get ready.  Voting is a surreal event in this country.  I mean this is a place where you can wave your phone across a scanner to pay for your groceries, where your cell phone shows you who’s ringing your doorbell even if you’re not at home, where you can punch Google and find out anything from how to make a thermo-nuclear device to what costume the Governor of Virginia wore in medical school.

But voting, which is a pretty important exercise, is still in the 19^th century.  All the poll workers are definitely from the 19^th century.  You get in a line and show your ID to a 98-year-old woman who has cataracts.  She gives you a piece of scratch paper and you move to another line where you get a paper ballot and a black marker.  Scraps of paper, magic markers?  Pretty primitive if you ask me.  Nine-year-olds can play Fortnite with three other friends in three other states without any effort except from their thumbs, while their parents and grandparents are voting by filling in the blanks with a marker and following the instructions of a gaggle of nonagenarians.  There has to be a better way.

And look at some of the clowns we wind up electing.  Here’s one example.  A Hawaiian lawmaker has proposed a law to eliminate cigarette smoking in his state by raising the minimum age.  By the year 2024, his law proposes, the minimum age for buying cigarettes will be 100.  I could not make up something that galactically stupid.

And already, the same people who promised to leave the country if Trump was elected back in 2016 are making those vows once again.  George Clooney, Ashley Judd, Robert De Niro.  Even Barbra Streisand, whom the Democrats call Babs and the Republicans call B.S.  They’ve all threatened to leave.

                                     

If we don’t kick Trump off the track

I’m leaving and not coming back

One more day of Trump

And I’m moving my rump

To someplace that’s safe – like Iraq.

A Democracy is a wrestling match of ideas, not a pick-up game where if you don’t get to bat first you take your ball and go home.  And speaking of Presidents, next Monday we celebrate Presidents’ Day, which of course commemorates the day in 1778 when George Washington sold his first sofa and lounge chair to James Madison. Free delivery and no payments until 1780. 

Next Tuesday is the day after Presidents’ Day, which is significant in its own way.  On this day in 1778, the first return in American history occurred when James Madison brought back the sofa and lounge chair to George because they were damaged in delivery.  Madison had no trouble transporting the furniture.  He used his Dolly.

My North Carolina daughter, my sweet Jennifer, is a serious and thoughtful eater.  For dinner she made the rest of the family a lovely dinner, chicken and pasta, which we all loved but which she regarded as unhealthy.  She made for herself a kale pizza on seaweed crust. Seriously!  It looks just like it sounds.  She used an old Greek recipe that Socrates’ wife made for him one night.  Socrates looked at it and said, “That’s ok, Honey.  I’ll just have the hemlock.”

Don’t you try the hemlock, not unless I bore you again next week. Till then, stay well, count your blessings and enjoy your Valentine’s Day.  I’ll be back in a week.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #100

My wife took me to Kohl’s.  I cannot shop by myself.  Let me rephrase that – I am not allowed to shop by myself.  That’s fine, I need help.  I must have tried on 40 articles of clothing, but, as Carol likes to say, “You’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a Prince.”   I wonder how many frogs she kissed before she found me.  Or maybe I was just the last frog.  I love shopping at Kohl’s!  Everything was on sale plus we had a 30% off coupon.  I bought three pairs of shoes, 16 pairs of pants, 42 shirts and a Godiva chocolate bar for a total of $4.98.  It’s a miracle.

Last Saturday was Groundhog Day, when hairy creatures stick their heads out of their hiding places to see what the future looks like.  Here’s what happened this year:

• ·        Punxsutawney Phil exited his burrow and did not see his shadow – an early Spring is expected.
• ·        Hillary Clinton peeked out of her Chappaqua window and saw her shadow -- one more year of not being President.
• ·        Donald Trump took two steps out into the Rose Garden and saw Nancy Pelosi’s shadow – two more years of Hell.
• ·        Barbra Streisand stepped out of her Malibu estate and saw her accountant’s shadow – time for another Farewell Tour.
• ·        The Governor of Virginia looked in his yearbook and saw the shadow of himself in blackface – time to get a job at a car wash.

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you saw your shadow.  That means wherever you are, the sun is shining on you and keeping you warm.  We have had some cold and snowy weather here in Missouri, but I’ve been thinking that these few words I send out every week have reached people all over the country.  I have readers in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, Arizona, Nevada, California, New York, Kentucky and more!  Exciting and humbling!  Most of those places have better weather than here in Missouri.  Maybe I should move.  Maybe not.  

I’ve readers out there in N-C

A whole bunch in sunny A-Z

The weather’s O-K

All over C-A

But M-O is fine for M-E.

I do amuse my bad self from time to time.  Let’s see if I can amuse you too.  Some time ago, a year or more, I was at a funeral.  I don’t even remember whose funeral it was because I was so distracted by the rabbi.  He wore a cowboy hat throughout the service.  Now, whereas this accessory covers the head as required, it was a little strange to watch Rabbi Tex doing the 23^rd Psalm.  My Stetson runneth over.  Surely Lone Ranger and Tonto shall follow me all the days of my life.  There must have been some Jewish cowboys in the Wild West, don’t you think?  How about Kvetch Cassidy and the Sundance Yid or Doc High Holiday or, Carol’s favorite, Shopalong Cassidy.  She actually doesn’t call it shopping anymore; she calls it hunting and gathering.

                  

I was watching an ad for sleeping pills.  After spending 45 seconds exhorting you to try their pill to help you sleep, they spend the next 15 seconds riffling through the disclaimers as quickly as a human voice can trill.  Among the speedy litany I heard, “Side effects may include drowsiness.”  Well Damn, Hoss, they better include some drowsiness.  Isn’t that what I’m buying the thing for?  Then they said, “Do not take our pill if you are allergic to our pill.”  What?  Is this a joke?  Who would take a pill they are allergic to?  Are we that stupid?  Don’t answer that.

Although many football teams have scary names (Lions, Bears, Raiders, Panthers), the Rams and the Patriots certainly didn’t scare anybody.  They couldn’t even scare the endzone.  Super Bowl LIII (that’s 53 for those of you who don’t speak Roman) was a dud.  I even saw a commercial that said This Dud’s for You.  I ate more of those little hotdogs than they scored points.  We went to a small party.  The men watched the game while the women gabbed in the kitchen.  The real reason women don’t play football, according to Phyllis Diller, is because eleven of them would never wear the same outfit in public.

And how long are we going to keep counting things in Roman Numerals?  The Roman Empire has been dead for 1543 years.  Excuse me, MDXLIII years.  Ridiculous!  Super Bowl 59 will be LIX.  See if they don’t have some fun with that.

My middle daughter, Stephanie, has a sick cat.  I feel bad for them both.  The cat is having an MRI this week and it costs thousands of dollars.  I told my daughter to schedule the scan for herself (her insurance would pay for it), then slip the animal in at the last minute.  Well, it’s a CAT Scan, isn’t it?  Sorry about the cheap joke; I feel really sad about it.

In more family news, Grandchild #1 (Zachary) has been accepted into college.  He’s first in his graduating class of 650, so I wasn’t worried about him.  It’s my blog and I can brag about my grandchildren.  I texted him congratulations.  He texted back that he was still waiting to hear from a few other schools.  He said he hoped he would get into Washington University here in St. Louis so he could be close to me.  I said “That’s great!  You could major in Bullshit.”  I guess that would be a BS degree.

Alert!  We interrupt this drivel for a Breaking News Story.  Arliss Grunderlich, the Head Lifeguard at the Norfolk, Virginia Municipal Pool, has just been named Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, being the highest-ranking public official in the state who has not screwed up his career in the last week.  More about Grunderlich next week, if he’s still Governor.

Ok, that’s enough for one week.  I have to go kiss a few frogs.  Besides, I don’t want to make you too giddy. Try Limerick Oyster again next week.  It’s good for your health.  Warning – side effects may include laughter.  Stay well, keep smiling and count your blessings.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com