Blog #202

 

I have nothing to talk about.  My eye is fine, so we can’t talk about that.  It’s not my birthday.  The election is over and we have a new President.  Congratulations and good luck to President Biden.  So that’s old news.  Now, what are we going to talk about?  How about trash.  Each day I take the small amount of trash generated by two old folks and a cat, bag it up and throw it down the trash chute, where it descends to the nether reaches of Hell or the local landfill – I’m not sure which.  I recycle paper (mostly junk mail) and cardboard (mostly Amazon boxes) by throwing them in a separate container.  Pretty simple, actually.  Not in California!  Steph, my California daughter, has seven containers – paper, plastic, glass, metal, organic, batteries and mixed.  The last time we visited, Carol was so afraid of putting something in the wrong container that she packed up her trash and brought it home in our suitcase.  Totally true.

 

Jennifer, my North Carolina daughter, has an even more complicated system.  She has chickens, so you have to decide between compost, trash, recycle and chickens.  One afternoon she decided to give last night’s leftover eggplant parmesan to the chickens.  Who feeds their chickens eggplant parmesan?  But before she carried it out to the coop, she saw me and asked if I wanted some.  I don’t eat eggplant when it’s the main course, let alone the garbage, but I told her I was grateful that I was mentioned in the same category as the poultry.  I guess that puts me just above compost.  Hey, as long as I know my place.  They also serve who only stand and cluck.  And yes, the chickens will eat leftover chicken.  I think there’s some biblical injunction against that (“You shall not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk” Exodus 23:19), but the last time we showed a Bible to the chickens, they ate it.

 

Hi there and welcome back to Limerick Oyster where you can get Milton quotes and Bible quotes while talking about chicken food.  I hope you’re feeling well.   Have you gotten your vaccination yet?  Not here in Missouri.  Now they’ve decided that obese people and people who smoke should come before old people.  So here’s the message – Take up smoking, eat some Twinkies and rob a bank.  All three of these activities will make you eligible for the vaccine long before the law-abiding seniors who have given up smoking and watched their weight.  It doesn’t pay to be a good citizen.

 

They should have contracted the whole vaccine process to the most efficient and reliable organization in the country – Chick-fil-A.  Have you ever been there for the lunchtime rush?  They have their act together.  Let them do the vaccine.  Pull up, grab some nuggets, stick your arm out the window and – Wham Bam Hot Damn – you get the vaccine and a good lunch at the same time.  And let Medicare pay for the lunch!  Right on!

 

Back to the prisons.  When the prisons start giving shots, it will surely be the Death Row prisoners who get the vaccine first.  The nation’s correctional system is extremely cautious about the health of its Death Row inmates.  Their motto is: We don’t want y’all to die until we want y’all to die.  They also have a sign:

 

Don’t smoke while you’re lying in bed

Don’t fall – you might injure your head

Stay safe and be well

‘Til you’re pulled from your cell

And hanged by the neck until dead.

 

Hey, I warned you I was a couple of bulbs short of a chandelier.  I am also, as you may have noticed, a diligent collector of the impractical and totally useless.  Here’s some,

 

Why do YouTube videos that are made to be watched only by cats contain commercials?

 

Why, when the number on your bathroom scale is a little higher than you’d like, do you move the scale a few feet over?  You know you do.

 

Why do we turn the volume down on the car radio when we want to see better? 

 

Or why, at a live play, do the actors sometimes smoke a cigar and stink up the whole theater?  If a character dies in the play, he only acts like he’s dead.  We can handle it.  We know it’s a play for goodness sake.  It says so on the ticket.  So let him act like he’s smoking.  We’ll figure it out without getting lung cancer.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players (As You Like It).  I’ve never been to a play, but I’d like to act sometime.  That Shakespeare person wrote a lot of parts for cats.  Maybe I could play Romeow or Cleocatra or even Richard the Purred.  Purr.

 

This week we observed Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a day which celebrates his birthday three days after it really was.  There are no longer very many holidays named after people.  Washington’s Birthday is gone, Lincoln’s Birthday is gone and Columbus Day is gone, shredded and burned to a crisp.  The only eponymous holidays left are Christmas, named after Christ, and Easter, named after Eostre, a pre-Christian goddess in England, probably the goddess of bunnies and colored eggs and Judy Garland.

 

Yesterday I was reading some stuff I had written years ago.  It was about my 40^th High School Reunion.  My goodness, it made me realize that my 60^th reunion is in a couple of years.  That’s pretty sobering, isn’t it?  It’s interesting how the perception changes as the reunions march along.  At my 25^th, a girl came up to me and said, “I remember you.”  At my 40^th, the same girl said, “I think I remember you.  You were taller.”  At my 50^th, that very same girl said, “I thought you were dead.” 

 

Ok, I wasted enough of your time with another otiose edition of rambling nothingness.  Otiose, the Weekly Word, means serving no practical purpose, unnecessary.  Fits perfectly, right?  I’ll never understand why you come back every week.  But you’d better.  Who else will tell you to stay well and count your blessings?  See you in a week.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com