Blog #107

Next Monday is April Fools Day.  I do not celebrate April Fools Day – Carol says I am a fool every day.  A fool with no closets.  Our master bedroom has two closets.  Our second bedroom has one.  All three of those belong to my wife.  I can’t complain; I agreed to it at the wedding – For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, and you don’t get any closets.  But I have adapted.  My underwear, socks and pajamas are in my nightstand, sweaters on the floor of the second bedroom, shoes in the study, belts behind the lettuce in the fridge.  And a lot of stuff in the hall storage closet across from our unit of the condo building.  Hey, Superman has his phonebooth, I have my storage closet in the hall.

Look, out in the hall!  It’s the pest control guy, it’s the painter -- no it’s Super Hubby, strange visitor from an interior unit.  And who, disguised as a silly old man, fights a never-ending battle with blousing, linen and shoes that don’t match his belt.  You think this is funny, don’t you?

Yes, an old man is a ridiculous thing.  Except to a little boy or a little girl.  When he acts silly or immature, they love it.  When he trips or sneezes or drops his cheeseburger on the floor, they laugh.  They don’t care if he gets lost.  They don’t care if he drives too slowly.  They don’t care what he wears.  To them he’s a big, happy teddy bear who tickles and tells stories and talks like a pirate and who never says no.  They don’t pick on him; they never criticize.  They just hug and love and enjoy every minute as if they knew they would not have him forever.

We think that our Poppy’s a king

He can tell funny stories and sing

We know, truth be told,

That he’s wrinkled and old

But to us he’s a wonderful thing.

Nowhere else does anybody think I’m funny and special and wonderful or cares if I have gum or candy in my pockets.

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling fine and generous as well.  Hey, can I borrow a twenty?  No?  You haven’t got any cash?  Well, who does?  I owed my daughter some money for entering her basketball pool, and she said for me to just send it on Venmo.  What’s Venmo?  Is that some new superfood like kale or chia seeds?  I tried some chia seeds once and they found a hairy growth on my tongue with the likeness of Chuck Schumer.  No, she explained to me, it was an electronic currency thing-a-ma-jiggy.  My children have Venmo and PayPal and Bitcoin and I don’t know what any of that means.  I asked her if sending her a check would be too medieval for her.

 Congresswoman Ilhan Omar recently said, “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby.”  Well, not any more apparently.  The only people with Benjamins are drug dealers, so now when she wants to be antisemitic, she’ll have to say, “It’s all about the Venmo.”

I actually have real money in my pocket.  When I go to McDonald’s, I pay for my Diet Coke with actual money – Washingtons, Lincolns, Hamiltons, Jacksons, Grants and, yes, even Benjamins.  Everybody else is swiping some kind of card over some kind of sensor and who knows!  I certainly don’t.  I’m sure one day they’ll make me switch to PayPal or BitShit or something.  I’ll save my cash and use it for bribing an Ivy League school.

Finally, the Mueller Report is out.  What a relief!  At last we can stop with this horrible argument that has divided our nation for two years – is it MILLER or MYUULER or MULLER?  I was a MYUULER guy myself.  Thank goodness that’s behind us, so we can move on to important issues, like whether we should stop eating eggs, little aspirins and hot tea.  Leave me alone!  If I had adhered to all the food warnings I’d heard in my life, I would have starved to death during the Nixon administration.

Take the eggs for example.  First they were the perfect breakfast, then only the yolks were good, then only the whites, then the whole thing was good, and now they say eggs are as dangerous as an English soccer fan.  Not surprisingly, I overheard one of my daughter’s chickens saying, “Give me a clucking break!”

Here’s your math lesson for the week.  If you earned a dollar a second, that’s $60 a minute, $3,600 an hour, $86,400 a day, $31,536,000 a year, $315 million dollars (roughly) in a decade!  You still couldn’t afford Mike Trout, but you could probably get your kid on the UCLA soccer team.

This world is getting too crazy, isn’t it?  Parents are bribing college athletic coaches; Michael Avenatti is bribing Nike; Boeing aircraft are grounded and Jussie Smollett has bought his way out of a 16-count indictment for $10,000.   It’s hard for me to cope.  I need to get away.  Maybe I should take a Viking cruise.

Last week was the first day of Spring.  There is some disagreement, however, as to which day it was.  The people on television say it was Wednesday the 20^th, but I really don’t care about them anymore.  To me the seasons change on the 21^st.  I am a scientist and I understand the Vernal Equinox and why it occurred on the 20^th, but I have so few anchors left from the ancient days of my youth that I’m hanging on to the 21^st.  Cash is no longer acceptable, the Boy Scouts have changed their name, Rice Krispies are organic, Pluto is no longer a planet and my grandchildren have never heard of Princess Summerfall Winterspring.  We have to have something solid and unchangeable from our past, don’t we?  So I’m sticking with the 21^st.  Happy Spring!

Ok, I’m done.  My rage and disappointment have tired me out.  Stay well, count your blessings and believe with me, Brothers and Sisters – Pluto is still a planet!  I’ll see you next week.

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

 

Blog #106

O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind? – Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Percy certainly had it right.  Spring is here – blossoms, warm showers, longer days, protests.  Students around the world skip school to demand action on climate change.  That was the headline last Friday.  Am I missing something?  When did we decide that we should encourage 13-year-olds to take over the world?  Think about that.  Teenagers?  Vaping, drugs, sexting, twitter, messy rooms, rings in their eyebrows?  We want them making decisions for the planet?  They can’t even find two socks that match.

When I was thirteen, sixty years ago, my mission was to realize how much I did not know and to do my best to learn some of it so that, when I grew up, I could earn a living and raise a new generation.  Now, it seems to me, children are taught that they can do anything they want, be anything they can be and that it’s ok to spend their lives sitting in a puddle, painting eggshells while other people, people who work, pay for their food and internet access. 

And what sort of parents allow, even encourage, their teens to skip school, march with profane signs and get arrested?  The people who should be out there marching and carrying signs are us old folks.  Signs like GREY IS BEAUTIFUL, OLD LIVES MATTER, GREY IS THE NEW BLACK, or my favorite:

WE’RE OLD AND WE’RE COLD – WE LOVE GLOBAL WARMING.

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling chipper now that Spring is here.  Have you filled out your bracket yet?  I have two teams to root for.  My oldest daughter is a Duke alumna and I graduated from St. Louis University Law School.  I’ve got my sweatshirts and pennants and I’m ready to go. 

Whenever I do a routine cleaning with Dr. Tooth, I’m forced to lie there for an hour with my eyes closed without talking.  You’ve all done it.  What do you do to pass the time?  Figure out how big the bribe will be to get your grandkid into Yale?   Well, here’s what I did in an effort to exercise my memory and make the time pass.  I recited The Raven in my mind.  That took about ten minutes, but I can’t expect you to do that.  I mean, what lunatic fool would memorize 108 lines about a ghastly, grim and ancient bird who could only say one archaic word?  Then I did the parts of The Highwayman that I know.  Then I went through the ages and birth dates of everyone in my family.  Then I mentally created this paragraph so that I could share it with you.  Sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have.

Breaking News:  Felicity Huffman has pleaded guilty and was sentenced to Community Service.  She immediately paid someone $50,000 to do it for her.  Yes, money talks, doesn’t it?  It’s a shame all mine ever said was “Good-bye”.

I just bought Lucy a birthday present.  Lucy is Grandchild #8, lives in California and will be 6.   Did I go to three toy stores, walk up and down the aisles, choose something and take out my credit card, schlep the package home, wrap it up, attach an address label, drive to the post office, wait in line and pay $20 to ship it to California?  No, I pushed 17 buttons with my formerly nicotine-stained fingers and it was done.  Five minutes, free shipping.  And that’s why TOYS Я GONE.

Just now, as I was using those fingers to write to you, I heard Carol in the next room talking to Alexa.  I heard her say, “Alexa, tell me a limerick.”  What?  I have written 1200 limericks.  I am the Master of Limericks!  And now my own wife is asking some tin can full of wires for a limerick?  Am I sick?  Does she know something I don’t know?  Well, said I, let’s see what the little bitch came up with.  I meant Alexa, of course.  Then I heard Alexa’s reply:

I’m here to fill any request

So a limerick?  I’ll do my best

But I’m just a tin can

Not a clever old man

So don’t be surprised if the last line is too long and doesn’t rhyme.

I guess my writing job is safe.  In fact, I think I’m pretty good at writing.  You’ve put up with me for more than 100,000 words already, so you must agree.  But words have suddenly escaped me.  I went to get my cable bill adjusted.  Where to start?  I just wanted to cancel my land line.  Who needs a land line?  The calls are all to sell me hearing aids or convince me to donate to the Boeing Go-Fund-Me Page.  So I wanted to eliminate the line and to get rid of HBO and Showtime, which I can get on Netflix.  Simple, right?  Arranging lunch with Kim Jong Un is simpler!  First of all, new customers get a $25 discount on this and a $15 discount on that, but loyal customers who have been with the company for twenty years get treated like a urine sample.  And then there’s the business practice invented by cable companies that says, “If you add a service, it costs you more, but if you delete a service, it costs you more.”  Because I was on a PLAN.  Did I wake up in a Lewis Carroll novel?  I told the Jabberwocky waiting on us that I was going to cancel all service.  He said that was fine, but it wouldn’t reduce my bill.  Because I was on a PLAN.  I was about to tell the Marquis De Sade into what dark realm he could shove his plan when my better half (actually my better four fifths) stepped in and saved me from committing a felony.  Although I’m not sure strangling a cable company employee is a crime.  Maybe Assault with a Deadly Clicker.  Hmm, seems I wasn’t at a loss for words after all. 

I have to go now – I’m on a PLAN.  Can you live without me for a whole week?  I knew you could.  So stay well and count your blessings.  I’ll be back before you know it.

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #105

Be it ever so humble.  Be it ever so cold and snowy and blustery, there’s no place like home.  We drove home straight from Florida.  Well, I couldn’t miss Senior Day at Walgreens, could I?  Eighteen and a half hours in the car during which the odometer went up 1,000 miles while the thermometer went down 75^o.  I was wiped out, as tired as a centipede’s pedicurist.  Is there such a thing as Highway Lag?  I wish I could have just clicked my little ruby slippers, but I had forgotten to pack them.  I like my ruby slippers.  They go with my Carmen Miranda fruit turban. 

Tomorrow is the Ides of March. “Beware the Ides of March,” Shakespeare wrote in his play Julius Caesar as a warning of impending doom.  And sure enough, Caesar was killed on March 15^th, the Ides.  Boy that Shakespeare sure knew what was what.  The Ides, according to the ancient Roman Calendar, was a day (either the 15^th or 13^th) which marked the middle of the month around which all events were calculated.  And that, my friends, is why we don’t meet a lot of Romans.  They’re too busy figuring out what day it is.

Can you believe the news?  The story is about Hollywood actresses (among others) spending huge sums of money to bribe admissions officials at Yale University (and others) to accept their otherwise undeserving children or grandchildren.  They’re in big trouble now.

In school you did nothing but fail                                  

So your folks bribed your way into Yale

But they say that was naughty

And now your Cum Laude

Is getting you nowhere but jail.

So I guess the kid’s Master’s Degree will be in Prison Management.  And you thought  that those rich Hollywood types all believed in leveling the playing field!  Yah, right!

I was trying, the other day, to watch a cable news program where a young woman was espousing a cogent and well-thought argument about something.  I cannot tell you what she was talking about because Carol and her friends were all talking heatedly on the subject of whether the woman’s lips were too plumped up.  Well, some things are important.

Why do we all instantly criticize everyone’s looks?  The President’s hair, the First Lady’s jacket, Charlize Theron’s hair, Emma Stone’s dress, the color of the Governor of Virginia’s makeup!  I don’t know how many times I have seen my wife watch a stunning athletic or musical performance by a woman and only have one comment – Didn’t she look in a mirror before she went out?  Or, if it’s a man – He must not be married.  As if her own husband cannot properly dress himself.  I hate it when she’s right.

We just spent a few days with a couple who bickered, but never fought.  He would criticize something she did, but then he’d say, “But I love you, my Sweetheart.”  Then she’d call him names more scandalous than John McEnroe ever called an umpire, but then she’d coo, “But you’re my precious husband?”  It seems to work for them.  I was determined to try it.

Now, my wife is not only super critical, she’s controlling.  She came home the other day, opened the refrigerator and said, “You ate a hard-boiled egg.”  She has a firm and up-to-date inventory of every edible morsel in the house, and I had no response but, “Call my attorney.  But Sweetie-Pie, you’re my own special Princess and the love of my life.”  I don’t think that worked.  Now she’s hidden the hard-boiled eggs.  She is, of course, the love of my life, and what keeps our relationship balanced and ordered is that she’s also the love of her life.

Congratulate me, my student loan was approved.  Do you get those phone calls?  My student loan was approved, my credit card is working fine, hearing aids are on sale and there’s a 90-year-old woman in Nigerian who wants to send me 3.5 million dollars.  How do they find me?  I must have an IGNORANT PATSY sign pasted to my forehead. 

I know the Ignorant Patsy sign must have been prominently displayed when we went to get new iPhones.  Two for the price of one!  How could you pass that up?  The catch (there’s always a catch) was that one of us had to change his number.  Notice I didn’t say “his or her” number.  Initially, I suggested that my wife should change her number.  She looked at me like Nurse Ratched looked at Jack Nicholson!  The likelihood of Carol volunteering to change her number was the same as Donald Trump and Maxine Waters doing the tango or R. Kelly guest-hosting Sesame Street.  So, there I was, the poor dumb schmuck with the Ignorant Patsy sign pasted firmly on his skull, agreeing to change his number.  I opened my list of contacts, prepared to go through them one by one, and then it hit me.  This is my Salman Rushdie moment, my chance to disconnect from the world and all the people in it, to join the Witness Protection Program and disappear.  But no, I couldn’t do it.  I have too much fun blabbing to you every week.

Do you remember a phone called the Princess Phone?  Well Carol’s new phone is an updated version, the iPrincess.  First of all, it turns into a mirror when she picks it up and says Mirror, Mirror.  It predicts the weather and likelihood of precipitation on every square foot of her daily itinerary.  And, it tells her that her hair looks nice every two hours.  Her Siri calls her Precious and has been instructed not to respond to my voice.  I’m used to that.

To those of you who are Irish; to those of you who are somehow green; to those of you who will gladly get plastered at the drop of a shamrock – Happy St. Patrick’s Day.  I myself have never liked green popcorn, green bagels, green beer, avocados or kale.

I have a box with cut-out newspaper headlines I thought were interesting.  This one (and it’s real) is from last August:  FOUR DEAD WHEN SKYDIVING PLANE CRASHES AT GEORGIA AIRPORT.  Why didn’t they jump out?  I guess they were too busy reading my blog.  Stay well, count your blessings and come back next week – unless you are skydiving.  If you are, stay away from the Space Needle and the Empire State Building.  Ouch!

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #104

Ok, now I’m pissed.  I’ve stood by while the Health Police have killed every good thing in America.  I used to like cigarettes – no, no, no.  I used to like wine but then they said one glass was good but that’s all.  That was like saying you could inhale once a day, but no more.  The only person I know with that kind of will power is my wife.  I’ve probably told you this before but am reasonably certain you’ve forgotten, so here goes.  After dinner at a mall restaurant one night, we walked past a candy store.  Carol called the clerk over to the chocolate-covered raisin display, pointed and said, “I want that one.”  One chocolate-covered raisin.  Who does that?

Bacon is bad and coffee and eggs and now sugar.  I would rather live less years with more sugar than more years with no sugar.  Did that make sense?  Everything is free range and organic and cage-free and gluten-free and GMO-free and sugar-free.  Diet Coke is bad for you and Big-Macs and the Boy Scouts and the Governor of Virginia!  But now they’ve gone too far.  They’ve made Rice Krispies Organic!

The Health Food Police are Satanic

They’ve made my Rice Krispies organic

And they’ll never stop

Till Snap, Crackle, Pop

Are Asian and Black and Hispanic.

The name of the cereal has gone from Snap, Crackle, Pop to Juan, Amal, Mao.  If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Amal.  And what about Cap’n Crunch?  There’s a white supremacist for you!

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and ready to party, because next Tuesday is Fat Tuesday.   In French that translates to Mardi Gras, so get your beads and your beignets and your booze and act utterly stupid for a week.  It’s easy.  I do it all the time.  In fact, when I speak to my wife, it’s no longer a matter of smart or stupid.  It’s a matter of whether I’m stupid, utterly stupid or Jussie Smollett stupid.  And she wonders why I’m quiet.  Taciturn – that’s a good word.

Well, Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show is on the road again, and here we are in Naples visiting dear friends.  They’re “dear”, of course, because they invite us down every year.  When we arrived, with more luggage than the Beverly Hillbillies, we noticed they had a dog.  Further discussion revealed that they were dog-sitting for one night while the dog’s owners were elsewhere.  Upon unloading our 87 bags, suitcases, boxes and portmanteaux, we noticed that the high-pedigree and high-cost canine was nowhere to be found.

Everyone panicked and started running around the neighborhood like balloons with holes punched in them looking for the runaway Rin-Tin-Tin, the lost Lassie.  Except Carol, who realized that looking for a dog outside would mean exposing her hair to the slightest of breezes and the heartbreak of perspiration.  So she stayed home.  Naturally, while we stupid humans were chasing our tails in the Florida sun, waving our arms and screaming Fluffy, the dog crawled out from under her hiding place in the bedroom and calmly curled up on Carol’s lap.  It’s probably the best strategy, when something alive is lost, to just sit down and wait for it to show up.  I hate it when she’s always right.

My health insurance carrier has changed its dental plan and my dentist is no longer a part of the group, so a couple of weeks ago, I went looking for a new Dr. Tooth.  I talked to friends and asked around and found a promising replacement.  I then called her office.  It happened to have been a horrible wintry day, and when I said I would bring in my insurance card and set up an appointment in a few days, the woman on the other end of the line jokingly suggested I bring some hot chocolate as well.  A week later I showed up at the office with my teeth, my insurance card and the hot chocolate (from McDonald’s of course).  “You Never Get A Second Chance to Make a First Impression,” said Will Rogers, and my hot chocolate offering was a big hit.  I am already their favorite patient.

On the way back, I drove by a Catholic Church called St. Leo the Great.  What accolade could we possibly accord someone that’s higher than Saint?  Not the Nobel Prize or the Pulitzer or Dancing with the Stars!  So why add “The Great” at the end.  We know he’s great; he’s a saint!  After thinking about it, I determined that there must be another St. Leo – St. Leo the Not So Great.  But why did we ever think of canonizing such a loser? 

Talking about Dancing with the Stars, there actually is a show called Dancing with the Saints.  It’s on the Catholic Game Network right after Vatican Squares and before The Pope is Right and Who Wants to be a Pedophile.

How’s your math?  Not too good?  Let me give you an easy one.  This is Blog #104 and they come out once a week, so how long have we been doing this together?  Well, there’s seven days in a week and the average lunar month is 29½ days and then there’s the square root of pi and Planck’s Constant and that gives us two years.  I know you love it when I talk mathy.  Two years, 104 episodes!  Doesn’t that seem like a lot?  It does to me, but as long as you’re out there and I still have one finger that can punch a keyboard, I’ll keep at it.

So stay well, count your blessings and come back for Number – let’s see, square the hypotenuse, raise that to the fourth power and round to the nearest quadrant in Base 2.  Got it – Number 105.  Wasn’t that easy?  Oh, and don’t forget to change your clocks next Saturday at 2:00 a.m.  It’s Spring (or within three weeks of it), so move your clocks forward and go back to sleep.  Next week, I’ll try to be an hour early to make up for the time change.  See you then.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com