Blog #194

 

I overheard my wife talking to a friend who was recovering from knee surgery.  Carol, the kind and caring person that she is, offered to bring her some dinner. “No,” the friend said, “I don’t want you to go out.”  Don’t be silly, my wife said, I’ll just send Michael out to do it.  Send Michael out to do it?  What am I, the Chinese butler in Auntie Mame?  I’ll send Hop Sing out to do it.   I’ll tell Hop Sing to go to the store.  Oh, Hop Sing, can you drop me off at the door; it’s raining.  Oh, Hop Sing, can you get me a mocha frappe while you’re out?   I dug out our marriage contract just to review exactly what I had promised 53 years ago, and there it was – love, honor and obey.  At least that’s what my copy said.  Hers said – push, wheedle and control.

 

And don’t get all Funk & Wagnalls on me because the Chinese butler in Auntie Mame was actually Ito.  I like the name Hop Sing better.  Hop Sing was the cook on Ponderosa. 

 

Hi there and Happy Thanksgiving.  I hope you’re feeling well and staying upbeat as you prepare for what is most likely the loneliest Thanksgiving you have ever spent.   I bet you’re ready to get back to the Good Old Days, aren’t you?

 

That golden and halcyon scene

When life was so bright and serene

Those days long ago

I do miss them so

The Good Old Days – 2019.

 

You remember the Good Old Days, don’t you?  2019?  When you used to be afraid of people wearing masks instead of being afraid of people not wearing masks?  When toilet paper was a necessity, not a luxury item?  When you took your doctor’s advice without first checking who he or she voted for?  When getting together with friends meant being in the same room?  When you could hug something other than your pillow?  When Social Distancing meant the Rockefellers didn’t dine with the Bernsteins?

 

It’s sad, isn’t it?  But, at least, I’m here, right?  And you’re there, where you are every Thursday morning.  Welcome back.  What should we talk about?  First, let’s get the Weekly Word out of the way.  Halcyon (hal-see-on) means a time in the past that was idyllically happy and peaceful.  I guess that was before The View.

 

Do you have an Alexa?  Of course you do.  Everyone has an Alexa or an Echo Dot or some silly cylinder that doesn’t understand what you’re saying.  I really don’t get along with our Alexa, but Carol tries to use her sometimes:

 

Carol:   Alexa, play some Barbra Streisand music.

Alexa:   I cannot find a movie of that name near you.

Carol:   No, Alexa, play some Streisand music.

Alexa:   Ok, connecting you to the Albanian Embassy.

Carol:   Damn it, Alexa, PLAY BARBRA STREISAND!

Alexa:   Getting directions to the nearest Bar-be-cue restaurant.

 

Life is too complicated.  Alexa and Siri and cell phones and – well, just getting dressed.  It’s all a mystery to me.  The following is a true story.  While I was still working, Carol had occasion to go to Disneyworld with two of the grandchildren.  I was home alone and surviving tolerably until I realized I had a fancy-schmancy bank party to go to after work.  I was the bank’s biggest customer, so I had to make an appearance.  I found a black and gray houndstooth jacket and black pants, a white shirt and a snappy little paisley yellow tie and wore these to work.  As soon as I walked in the office, Amanda, my loyal and wise associate, grabbed me by the paisley.  Foxy, she said, you can’t wear houndstooth with a paisley tie.  You look like a dime-store kaleidoscope.  She removed my tie and threw it in the shredder.  Thirty minutes later, I had a meeting with a representative of a different bank.  As soon as he sat down at my desk, I buzzed for Amanda to come in.  How’s that tie? I asked her, pointing to the banker’s solid-gray neckwear.  She grudgingly conceded it would work.  I need that tie, I told him.  He immediately removed it and handed it over.  I was his biggest customer too.

 

The part about throwing the tie in the shredder didn’t happen, but one day, my partner walked into my office with a scissors and cut my tie in two.  I laughed, of course.  The next day, he brought me six new ties.  Now that’s the truth.

 

It is astonishing to me that a man so inept at dressing or operating any device more sophisticated than a rubber band has survived this long.  I am consistently wrong, lost or mismatched, and cannot fathom why so many people ask me for advice.  I am good, however, for a few limited things.  As an example, my oldest granddaughter, Zoey, needed some information about the characters in Moby Dick.  And who do think she called?  If you answered Ghostbusters, I’m not sending you any more blogs.  She called me, of course, the only person in the Northern Hemisphere to have read the book six times.  I am definitely the right person to call if you have any questions about Moby, The Raven or Paradise Lost.  But not about fashion.  Stevie Wonder dresses better than I do.

 

More new Christmas songs have been released.  My favorites this week are Rudy the Giuliani Had a Very Shiny Nose and Oh Kamala All Ye Faithful.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  If music be the food of love, play on (Twelfth Night).  I like Christmas music, I guess.  This will be my first Christmas with Pops.  I think my favorite song is All I Want for Christmas is A New Left Leg.

 

It’s time for me to go now.  Just one more thought.  It’s Deer Season here in Missouri.  For all you deer hunters out there, with firearms or with bow, I pray with all my heart and spirit that you miss.   

 

Well, loyal readers, I am grateful for many things, and one of them is the opportunity to share with you each week.  Enjoy your turkey, stay well and count your blessings, because every day should be a day of thanksgiving.  See you next week.

 

Hop Sing                        Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

Blog #193

I just heard that some election officials who are counting and re-counting Presidential ballots have actually received death threats.  If you vote the wrong way or Tweet the wrong tweet or support the wrong cause nowadays, someone will start threatening to kill you.  What a country!  Death threats have become what Valentine cards used to be when we were kids.  You just send them to everybody.  Hallmark, never one to let an opportunity go by, has just unveiled a new line of Death Threat Cards.  Here’s my favorite:

 Dear Donald,

         We all know that roses are red

I’d like to shoot you in the head

Now violets are blue

And I really hate you

And I hope when you get this – you’re dead.

 

Your Friend,

Joy

 

I wish the re-counting and the legal challenges would stop and we could all just congratulate Joe Biden as the new President and move on.  But who knows how long he will last?  I’ve begun to hear little school children chanting new lyrics to an old rhyme:

 

Joe and Jill went up the Hill

Into the White House Tower

Joe fell down and broke his crown

And Kamala took power.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  Are you tired of my psychotic poetry? The border between genius and madness is subtle.  I hope you are feeling well and staying safe.  Next Thursday is Thanksgiving.  What are you going to do?  You can’t travel to be with family.  You can’t get together with friends.  You can’t go to a restaurant.  I’m not even sure you should get within six feet of a turkey.  You don’t know where it’s been!  All you can do is microwave some Trader Joe’s thing and FaceTime your loved ones.  But do not spend Thanksgiving Day complaining about the life you live and the world you live it in.  Nobody wants to hear you bitch on a day set aside to being thankful.  Even in this dystopian nightmare, you can still find a way to be positive!  You have a whole week to come up with a list of things you and your family can be thankful for.  Here are some helpful suggestions:

 

·        Be thankful for your health.  It could be worse. 

·        Be thankful you live in a world with FaceTime, Zoom, Twitter and email so that you can be in touch with your family.

·        Be thankful that the election is over.  At least I think it’s over.

·        Be thankful we don’t elect a President every two years.

·        Be thankful that Pfizer has come up with a vaccine that should be available in a few months.  And don’t give me that crap about -- Well I’m not taking the vaccine until it’s been proven safe.  Covid has certainly been proven unsafe.

·        Be thankful you have something to read on Thursday mornings that makes you laugh.  That would be Limerick Oyster, in case you have fallen asleep already.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks (Twelfth Night).  Thanks to Nonnie and Pops for adopting me so I wouldn’t have to be an orphan.  And thanks to you for letting a cat talk to you every week.  You’re pretty weird.

 

As soon as Thanksgiving is over, the Christmas season begins.  Actually, it has begun already.  Mattel has come out with their new Covid Barbie.  She’s dressed in sweat clothes, a pink mask and no bra.  She has no makeup, her roots are showing and she’s put on a few pounds.  And she sends Ken to the grocery store.  Plus, I’ve already heard a few new Christmas songs.  My two favorites are You’re a Mean One, Mr. Trump and I Saw Biden Sniffing Santa Claus.

 

And speaking about that vaccine, the issue now arises of who should get it first.  Conventional wisdom says that all the health-care providers should get it first.  Well, that notion should instead be called Conventional Stupidity.  What if we’ve made a mistake and all the health-care providers get some bad side effect?  Who’s going to take care of them?

 

Next on the list would be the most “vulnerable”.  That would be old people like me, but let’s think about that a minute.  On the plus side, old people do entertain their grandchildren by talking about strange things like ice-boxes and typewriters, but there are many negatives:

 

·        Old people drive too slowly and clog up the highways.

·        Old people use up our health-care resources.

·        Old people make young people waste their time by explaining the latest iPhone update.

 

But since the decision will be made by politicians, here’s really who will get the vaccine, in this order:

 

·        Politicians.  Duh!

·        News Media – so they will say nice things about the politicians. 

·        Contestants on The Voice.  We have to have entertainment.

·        Everybody else.

·        Every illegal immigrant.

·        Harvey Weinstein.

 

Weekly Word:  A place is dystopian when everything in it is bad.  It’s the opposite of Utopian, I guess.

 

I have a question.  You’re sitting on the couch watching television, and somebody is next to you – your spouse, your grandchild, Jake from State Farm -- whoever it is.  You wouldn’t dream of grabbing a blanket and throwing it on them, would you?  But let them fall asleep, and you run to the nearest blanket and instantly drape it over them.  Then you turn down the volume on the TV and turn off the lights.  Why do we do that?  The person was supremely comfortable with the surroundings.  That’s why he or she dozed off.  So why do we immediately change their temperature and the sound and the light?  I admit not having an answer.  I don’t have all the answers, you know.

 

I don’t even know what I’m doing here in this crazy dystopian world.  I searched for reasons not to blow my brains out and I found one – writing to you.  I like it, and you do too.  What a perfect match.  Besides, what else do you have to do, buy a Covid Barbie?  Stay safe, everybody, and count your blessings.  Don’t just count them, write them all down and read them next week on Thanksgiving.  I’ll talk to you then.  For now, I’m done!  Turn me over and baste me, because this bird is outa here!

 

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #192

 

My iPhone got updated.  Stop it!  I don’t want my phone changed.  Which iPhone big-wig can I complain to?  Is there a Mr. Apple, a Mrs. Apple, a Granny Apple?  Whoever you are, stop changing my phone as soon as I get used to the last load of crap you threw in there.  I don’t need it to do anything else.  I can call, text, email or FaceTime anyone in the world.  I can get the weather and the time and Google.  And Siri gives me directions, even though I still get lost.  Plus, I can find my wife.  I have an app that can track Carol’s phone anywhere on the planet, and once I find her phone, she is usually there too.  Hey, I’ve known where she's been for 53 years; I’m not about to lose her now.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  You will always know that you have someone to be with you and help you through anything (Romeo and Juliet).  That’s what Romeo told Juliet, whoever they are, and that’s what my Pops tells me all the time.  I guess that means he loves me.  It’s nice to have a family.

 

Oh, and now Granny Apple wants me to use face recognition.  I presume that means my face, but that’s a problem.  My face changes over the years.  Just look at my wedding pictures.  My face has changed so much, my wife only recognizes me because of the clothes I’m wearing.  I don’t want to use face-recognition anyway because then the only way Carol would be able to use my phone would be to make her face somehow look like mine.  That would be as likely as Heidi Klum making herself look like Big Bird.  I wonder if Big Bird is getting shorter as he gets older.  He’s probably Medium Bird by now.

 

Ok, back to hi-tech stuff.  I have this website that communicates between myself and my doctors.  It tells me all my upcoming appointments (as if I’m too ignorant to write them down in my calendar) and allows me to send questions to my doctors (as if my phone doesn’t work) and sends results from tests.  It’s a great website.  It’s called MyChart.  Obviously, I hate it!  I got an email today telling me to visit MyChart for new test results.  I haven’t had any tests recently, but I was curious to see what they were talking about.  My pacemaker-defibrillator (which I call my device) talks to a little monitor that sits on the floor near my bed.  I don’t know what they talk about, but every three months, the monitor reads the device and sends three months’ worth of my heart activity electronically to Dr. Rhythm.  It’s kind of like those Quarterly Report Cards we got in grade school, except if you flunk this one, they start engraving your name on a marble slab.

 

Anyway, those were the results they were talking about.  The good news is that in the last three months, my heart has been working like a Swiss clock – absolutely perfect.  But there was a line that said: Remaining life – 3.8 years.  I hope they were talking about the battery. 

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and settling in to the reality of a President Biden.  As you have probably noticed, I have made a conscious decision to ignore the political cage-match that consumes our country and to concentrate my energies on more pleasant things.  That could be why my heart has been behaving so politely.  I hope you also noticed that earlier I used the phrase “write them down in my calendar”.  That’s right, I do not use an electronic calendar.  Each year, I buy a magazine-sized calendar.  It has all the months, in the proper order, each month having the correct number of days allotted to it by the Greek Gods or whoever figured that out.  What could be easier?  I write down my doctor appointments, my grandchildren’s soccer games, lunch with friends, meetings with the Pope – everything that intrudes upon my day.  I never miss an event and I am never late.  Why would I even think about changing?

 

One thing that is written in large caps in my calendar is my granddaughter’s Bat Mitzvah which is this Saturday.  Except for a few family members and the Rabbi and the Cantor, the ceremony will be watched on some kind of Zoom feed.

 

Speaking about the Cantor made me wonder about the music at Jewish services.  Music is universally written left to right, but the Hebrew words are written right to left.  How does that work?  I Googled it on my phone which I didn’t need any Apple person to upgrade.  The music goes, of course, left to write and the Hebrew lyrics proceed left to write under the corresponding notes, even though each Hebrew word is spelled right to left.  There has to be a limerick there.

 

Hebrew music is read left to right

With words underneath in plain sight

But Jews write each word

Right to left – how absurd

That’s it – nothing more left to write.

 

Wrong!  I have plenty left to write.  Show me an Apple friggin’ update that can write a limerick.

 

I will be very happy when this whole election thing is over and we can get back to our normal lives – living like agoraphobic toilet-paper hoarders.  An agoraphobic person (Weekly Word) is afraid of leaving home or being in crowded places.  Paul Simon wrote a song called I Am a Rock.  In it are these lyrics -- I am alone.  Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.  I touch no-one and no-one touches me.  It sure feels like that sometimes, doesn’t it?  On the other hand, you have your Bridge online and your Zoom calls with your family and your conference calls with your friends and you have me every week.  And I have you.  Aren’t we lucky!  Let’s do it again next week.  Until then, stay well and count your blessings.  Now I have nothing left to write.  Later!

 

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blog #191

 

As of this writing, the election is still not decided.   When it is finally over, some of you will be as disappointed as the 4^th–place finisher at the Olympics and the rest will be as happy as a flea on a big dog.  But whether your old white man wins or the other side’s old white man wins, we all need to move on, make peace and deal with those parts of the Universe that we can actually handle.  Like Daylight Savings Time.

 

Let’s see – it’s Spring Forward and Fall Back, right?  I think that’s what I did last Saturday, but one year, I got so confused that I re-set the calendar instead of the clock and woke up in March.  Hey, that’s not such a bad idea.  Let’s hibernate like a bear and maybe, by the time we wake up, winter will be over and the Covid will be gone and they’ll be finished counting all the mail-in ballots.  But, if you can’t hibernate, maybe you should just go away on vacation.  Mexico sounds nice and warm and friendly.

 

The Mexican weather is clear

The beaches and palm trees are near

We all love to visit

So tell my why is it

That Mexicans want to come here?

 

Whatever day or month or country it is, I’m back.  And so are you.  Hi there and welcome.  Did you have a fun Halloween?  I went as Fred Flintstone.  At least that’s who my wife said I looked like after I put on my regular clothes.  Halloween probably has roots in the fall harvest festivals of ancient Celts.  The early Christians celebrated a holiday named All Hallows’ Day which was a day to celebrate the upcoming harvest and give thanks to God.  Hallowed means holy, sacred and revered.  That’s our Weekly Word.  The night before this sacred day was called All Hallows’ E’en (E’en being short for evening if you were an ancient Celt who was in such a hurry that you didn’t have time to pronounce three syllables.  Probably had to rush to get a good seat at the rock concert that night -- The Rolling Stonehenge.)  From Hallows and E’en, we got Halloween.  What would you do without me? 

 

I hope you’re feeling well today and ready for some more of whatever it is we do here each week.  A portion of what we do here is to discuss my myriad daily challenges.

 

Like cars.  I just learned from Google that my car has about 30,000 different parts.  And I only know how to use seven of them.  My car is ten years old and I still have trouble guessing which one of those little pully-things opens my trunk and which one opens my gas tank.  And where is the hazard-light button?  I refuse to get a new car because it would have a touch screen instead of the buttons and knobs I am used to, and then the seven things I know how to do would drop to three.  And by the way, the thing (that’s a technical term, at least to me) that opens the gas tank is in a different place in every make of car.  I drove my neighbor’s new car last week and, for the life of me, I could not get the car to go into PARK.  I tried everything including kicking and promising to watch The View.  I even tried, “Hey, Siri, PARK!”  I gave up, pulled it into a parking space and spent 15 minutes locating the emergency brake.  It was right next to the Gas Tank Thing.

 

And doctors.  Do you ever have trouble communicating with your doctor?  The first time I visited Dr. Blood, he told me I had Monoclonal B-Cell Lymphocytosis.  I turned to him and calmly replied, “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”  Aha!  Now we both understood each other that neither one of us understood each other, and we proceeded to speak English.  Try it sometime.  Your doctor will get the message.  By the way, the monoclonal stuff is just some heebie-jeebie thing in my blood that nobody has to worry about.  Is heebie-jeebie a medical term?  I bet it is. 

 

The doctors spend much too much time at school learning Latinesque words like lymphocytosis.  Instead of all that medical gobbledygook, they should just spend ten years as a wife and mother.  That’s the best medical education there is.  I know you women agree.  I recently had my annual physical with Dr. Doctor.  Late that afternoon, the nurse called.  That’s always bad news.  Your gobbledtgook test came back positive and Doctor wants you to see a specialist.  My wife, who is not just another Hostess Cupcake, got my attention and whispered, “Tell her you want to take the test again.”  What? I replied.  Take the test again?  That’s ridiculous.  She insisted, so I suggested that possibility to the nurse.  What? she replied.  Take the test again?  That’s ridiculous.  I insisted.  So I went back in and took the test again.  Guess what?  Negative!  It’s amazing how good my wife is about medical diagnoses.  You should call her sometime.  On second thought, she charges a fortune.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Forget, forgive, conclude and be agreed. Our doctors say this is no month to bleed (Richard II).  The last doctor I saw cut off my left leg and both my balls.  As soon as I woke up, I bit him.

 

You know, I was born when Truman was President, grew up under Eisenhauer, graduated High School under Kennedy and got married under Johnson.  My kids were born during the Nixon and Ford administrations and my grandchildren under the Bush II and Obama administrations.  And under President Trump, I celebrated fifty years of marriage to my wonderful wife.  During my life, there have been eighteen presidential elections, eight won by Democrats, ten by Republicans.  I’ll bet that surprises you, doesn’t it?  But however often the balance of power changes, we seem to move forward.

 

Whoever wins, we all had a chance to vote, and the world will move on.  I’ll be here next week.  You’ll be here next week.  Hey, why don’t we rent a barn and put on a show?  I’ll bring the hotdogs.  Stay well, please, and count your blessings.

 

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com