Blog #166
Oh, sweet friends, hearken to me. While I’m reading Moby for the 6th
time, I am also reading Paradise Lost for the second time and The
Origin of Species for the first. Just now, I am at the part of Paradise Lost
where Adam (Remember Adam? He was the
first chauvinist.) is talking to one of the Angels. I will paraphrase. He says, “I understand that nature has
made the woman inferior in the mind but most excellent in outward appearance.” I told you he was a chauvinist. I guess that means he’s not going to be
chosen as Joe Biden’s running mate. I
think Joe and Adam graduated together.
Last month was the 50th Anniversary of the
first Earth Day, which, of course, means it was the 51st
Earth Day. More math;
trust me. The Internet was full of
pictures of wild animals (goats, lions, baboons) lounging on empty highways
around the world, and all the Animal Huggers were ecstatic. Isn’t it wonderful, they say? Three-hundred thousand people are dead. Less pollution! And all the rest are hunkering inside. Less cars, more room for the animals! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all the humans
died and the baboons took over the world?
Sometimes, I think they already have.
I hope all you mothers out there had a nice Mother’s
Day. And for all you mothers
with children at home – children with no school and no camp and no play-dates –
this Mother’s Day has certainly reminded you how fed up you are
with this sequester thing. I don’t mean to wax lugubrious* here, but are
we ever going to get out of this? Is
this the way all humankind will have to live forever?
Each
person from cradle to tomb
Will
live without leaving his room
Until
this thing ends
No
haircuts, no friends
Just
Amazon, Netflix and Zoom.
Weekly
Word: Lugubrious means mournful,
gloomy, dark, dramatic. It’s hard not to
think that way these days. Maybe my grocery-shopping
exploits will lift your spirits. It’s
always cheery to make fun of the incompetent.
So I put on my mask and
hospital gloves and ventured out to the grocery store. Carol had made me a shopping list, jotting
down the items randomly as they came to her mind, so I recopied it in the order
of the store, from right to left. I
always shop right to left. I had it all
planned out, but as I was leaving, she yelled, “Oh,
and get some celery.” Where am I going to put celery on my list? There’s no room between the whatever fruit’s on sale and the two
bananas, one mostly yellow and one mostly green. The only
place I could put “celery” was at the end, which meant that, after buying eggs,
I had to go all the way back to the produce section. I’m only kidding; I didn’t need eggs. And where is Jell-O? In the bakery aisle, the candy aisle, the
soup? I always get lost looking for
Jell-O.
But I never get lost looking
for you. Look, I’ve found you
already. Hi there and welcome back. Are you staying home? Are you staying well? Are you staying in touch with your friends
and family?
People all over the World
are doing their best to stay connected, and, in that vein, our Rabbi hosted a Zoom session to talk about Jewish humor. Rabbi S. is retired now or Emeritus or
whatever. I like him a lot. I reminded my wife that he married us. She reminded me that he didn’t; it was Rabbi
N. and what kind of an
idiot forgets who married him.
I will now digress into a
grammatical diatribe for the express reason that my Spellchecker has informed
me that the above sentence that includes “what
kind of
an idiot” is a question
and should be followed by the appropriate punctuation. To me, a question is an utterance that seeks
information in the form of a response.
Some series of words that look like questions really are not asking for
an answer. They are called
Hypothetical. Like Who knows, or Is
the Pope Catholic, or What the f**k!
Ok, back to the Rabbi. He told a bunch of Jewish jokes. Here’s my favorite. A
Jewish man goes sailing. Wait, that’s already funny. Jews don’t sail. If Jews could sail, God would not have needed
to part the Red Sea. Ok, sorry, back to
the joke. So
he sails out and gets shipwrecked on a Desert Isle. Now that
sounds more like a Jewish man – lost and useless. I'm sure he missed the exit. Sorry again, back to the joke. This
schmuck is on the island for two years until, at last, a rescue ship
arrives. The rescuer
says, “I see you have built three buildings out of driftwood. A Jewish
man building? I can’t hang a picture
without breaking the frame, the wall or my thumb. “What
are these buildings for?” asks the rescuer.
The guy replies, “That one’s my home.
Next to it is my Synagogue and the other one is the Synagogue I wouldn’t
be caught dead in.”
Message
from Shakespeare: With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles
come. (Merchant of Venice). See, I
told you not to laugh at his silly jokes.
You’ll get wrinkles!
I’m getting tired of the
word unprecedented. The number
of times this word has been used in news broadcasts about the coronavirus is
ridiculous. It’s overkill. It’s unprecedented!
And speaking of words, I
heard a new word yesterday. We all
believe that medical workers and first responders are heroes. But some woman, a Governor I believe, called
them Heroes and Sheroes. Hey, I
understand that female letter-carriers should not be called mailmen. And the same goes for Congressmen and fireman
and policemen. Ok, we’ve accepted
that. But most words that start with HE do not have any gender reference.
If we get a birthday balloon for a girl, is it filled with shelium? Does the
First Lady ride in a shelicopter? Do women,
when they die, go to Sheaven or Shell?
It all gives me the sheebie-jeebies.
And that means it’s time to
go. Am I coming back next week? Is
the Pope Catholic! Until then, stay well and count all your
blessings.
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