Blog #220

 

My middle daughter (Stephanie) lives in California.  I know she’ll be upset with me because she loves living there, but California is as strange to me as Wonderland was to Alice or Oz was to Dorothy.  But look who’s talking – I live in St. Louis, a place with bad weather, no scenery and a murder rate higher than a eunuch’s voice.  Steph has a cat named Rags.  She’s a beautiful creature.  So is the cat, but the cat has been having behavioral issues that the veterinarian has not been able to reverse, so Steph took some advice from a friend and hired a Cat Psychologist to do an online interview with Rags.  How could I make this up!

 

It now is the conventionality

To recognize feline reality

And offer our pity

To poor little kitty

Who suffers from split PURR-sonality.

 

So the shrink actually spoke with the cat on Zoom and came up with the following:  First, the cat wants to be called Rose.  Second, the cat would appreciate if Steph would play some Barry Manilow music.  Go ahead and laugh.  I did.  Except for the limerick, I made none of this up.  I like Barry Manilow.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t (Hamlet). Cousin Rags might need some Freudy-cat shrinky-dink to tell her she’s got claws-trophobia, but I am perfectly normal.  Except for that missing leg thing.  And see, Pops?  I can make dumb cat jokes just like you can.  Purr.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling great and getting outdoors to enjoy this late-spring weather.  I try to go for a walk when the weather allows.  I have a very nice route through our subdivision with beautiful trees and green lawns.  The problem arises because a day that is nice for walking is a day that is perfect for mowing lawns, and the stentorian cacophony of those machines gives me a headache and ruins my walk.  As a society, we have decided to trade peace and quiet for a three-inch lawn.  It is a poor bargain.

 

Carol and I have spent a considerable amount of time indoors at Best Buy shopping for a television.  Going to Best Buy for a television is like going to Starbucks and ordering a coffee.  There are too many choices – the size, the brand, the sound-bar, the wall brackets, the price, whip-cream or no whip-cream.  It’s overwhelming for someone so technically challenged that he thinks a hard-drive is a trip from St. Louis to Florida.  Did you know that most of the people who show you televisions at Best Buy work directly for Samsung or Sony or other makers?  They do, and they will steer you toward their own special brand.  But, finally, after three weeks of mounting confusion, on our fifth trip to Best Buy, we found Dallas, a young supervisor who took us by the hand, told us exactly what we needed and how to save money.  It felt like having a huge bowel movement after a week of constipation.  Sorry about that.

 

As soon as the TV is all set up, I’m going to try to find the Al Jazeera station.  Now that the Israeli’s and Palestinians have taken a break from bombing the crap out of each other, I’d like to see what Al Jazeera’s side of the story looks like.  I looked up their program listings on line and was surprised to find a number of Middle Eastern comedy-shows. Here they are:

 

Malcolm in the Middle East              Oil in The Family

America’s Got Taliban                      How I Bought Your Mother

Sonny and Sharia                             Jimmy Camel -- Live!

 

The set will be delivered next week.  The installation will take an hour and the instruction on how to use it will take the rest of our natural lives.  It’s too damned complicated!  When did we lose control of the thing we used to call “television”?  Now it’s not even called that.  It’s cable or multi-media or smart-TV.  And not only are the TVs smart, but there are smart phones, smart cars, smart houses, even smart toilets.  Every time I get near something that’s “smart”, I feel dumb. When did the world pass me by?  And which clicker do I use to change the channel?  Have you ever gone to babysit for your grandchildren while the parents are gone?  The mother gives you instructions on feeding, carpools, soccer practice – and all you really want to know is how to turn on the television.  You know I’m right!

 

Are you challenged, like me, with all these smart devices designed to confuse anyone who still remembers The Cisco Kid?  I have Siri and Alexa, but what do they know?  I just picked up my iPhone and said, “Hey, Siri – Oooh, Cisco.”  When she didn’t reply Oooh, Pancho, I knew she was too young for me.

 

And then there’s voicemail.  First of all, when I call you, I want to hear your voice, not Robby the Robot’s.  Please record your own voice on the instruction part.  And be brief.  I know how to leave a message.  I have a college education, a law degree, and have been using answering machines for fifty years.  I don’t need thirty seconds of instructions on what to do when it beeps.  Trust me, you don’t want to talk to someone who doesn’t know how to leave a message.

 

Last Sunday, after dinner at my daughter’s house, Carol asked the three grandkids (ages 15, 13, 11) whether they were Pro-Life or Pro-Choice.  My sweet wife has a big heart, a big personality and a mouth to match.  Not only did the kids understand the subject, they had very strong opinions about it.  The current trend among educators is to provide sex education at an earlier and earlier age.  What’s wrong with a little mystery about sex?  A little taboo?  In my time (that would be Methuselah, the dinosaurs and me) – in my time, the big thrill was to make out in the back seat of a car.  Now the kids having sex are too young to have a car. 

 

Our Weekly Word is stentorian which means very loud, as in my description of the lawnmowers.   Getting wordy here, so I’ll let you go.  I hope you enjoyed.  Have a nice Memorial Day, stay well and count those blessings.  See you next week.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

Blog #219

 

Most of my friends read the obituaries every morning.  I don’t need to because I have CNN, the Carol News Network.  She and her friends can spread news faster than I can get lost on a cloverleaf.  She showed me an interesting obituary recently: 

 

Died:  J---- H----, aged 79.  She is survived by two sons and a daughter, seven grandchildren and a husband who stands up straight, can drive at night, likes tuna-noodle casseroles and is not planning on a long period of mourning.

 

Hey, as long as you’re paying the newspaper that kind of money, you might as well do some marketing, right?

 

Which brings up the question -- do you have a plot?  I do.  It’s in a cemetery not far from the place I grew up.  Of course, Carol and I don’t live near there anymore.  We’re at least fifteen miles away, and she has informed me that she has no intention of driving that far to visit some old dead husband. 

 

Some dear friends were looking to buy plots recently and were shown a nice shady spot that looked fine.  She asked the Cemeterian (I made that word up), “Who owns the plot next to these?” and when she heard the name she freaked out.  “I’m not spending eternity next to that bitch!”  Then there was my friend Tim who tested out his plot by lying on his back on the site.  He liked the view and bought the plot.

 

Maybe I should buy a plot in North Carolina.  Most of my daughter’s friends think I’m dead anyway.  That could be because I actually was kind of dead for a while in North Carolina.  You know the drill – heart stops, flat-line, Code Blue, shock treatments.  I have always heard people who claim to have had a near-death experience say they remember a bright light.  Of course there’s a bright light!  You’re lying on your back in the Emergency Room with a circular spotlight shining a foot from your nose.  That thing is bright enough to wake Elvis.  So now, when Carol and I are in North Carolina and we meet one of my daughter’s friends, we often get this: “Jennifer, I can’t believe this young-looking woman is your mother.”  Then they turn to me: “And Mr. Fox, how nice.  I see you’re still alive.” 

 

I’m not planning to shuffle off this mortal coil yet.  I’m planning to spend many more years being a clueless old man who doesn’t understand what’s going on in this frighteningly parlous world.  Like what exactly is a Bennifer?  Or these gender-neutral pronouns.  I don’t get it, but I’m not supposed to get it.  I’m a clueless old man, remember?  My grandparents didn’t understand the Beatles or burning bras or Nehru jackets, so we thought they were just stuffy old people being left behind by progress.  And we were right.  Three thousand years ago, Homer wrote in the Iliad, “Very like leaves upon this earth are the generations of men – one generation flowers even as another dies away.”

 

And now we have turned into our grandparents -- just as old, just as stuffy, living in the past.  There are so many new concepts that I don’t understand, so it doesn’t surprise me that, amidst the controversy over Snow White’s non-consensual kiss, the Seven Dwarfs have rebelled against Snow White Privilege and demanded she call them by their chosen pronouns.  Now, officially, the Seven Dwarfs must be addressed as We, They, Them, You, Us, It and Happy.  Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it’s off to the asylum we go.

 

 

Disney is still in trouble for allowing Prince Charming to kiss the sleeping body of Snow White at the Disneyland ride.  Protesters say the kiss in non-consensual.  Well, of course Prince Charming’s kiss is non-consensual.  Snow White’s asleep.  She’s under a spell induced by the Wicked Queen, and will never wake up unless the Prince kisses her.  What’s he supposed to do, let her lie there in a coma forever?  

 

This kiss controversy’s a joke

Their argument goes up in smoke

If the Prince doesn’t kiss

The poor sleeping miss

Then Snow White will never be Woke.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  He that filches from me my good name . . . makes me poor indeed (Othello).  Pops doesn’t call me by any pronouns.  Sometimes he calls me Shakey; sometimes he calls me “you miserable feline”.  Mostly he calls me Pooch.  He is so weird.  Purr.

 

Hi there and welcome back.   I hope you’re feeling well.  Are you still there or are you protesting my blog?  Our Weekly Word is parlous, which means full of danger and uncertainty; precarious.

 

If you have the urge to throw things at me, you can usually find me taking an afternoon walk near my house.  One afternoon this week, I was on the homeward leg of my walk, and as I approached the gate to my subdivision, I noticed a car parked there and not moving.  I walked toward it and the window opened revealing an elderly (that means anyone older than me) gentleman.  I said, “Can I help?”  It was like being back at the Zoo.  I was so excited.  I used to greet the tourists and give them directions to the animals or the bathrooms or the hamburgers.  I loved it. 

 

This fellow at the gate had a piece of paper and read me an address.  It was the address of my building.  I asked who he was visiting.  He told me, and it happened to be a lady who lives on my floor, so I gave him directions – take the 4^th left turn and then right at the kangaroos.  I sure hope he doesn’t get lost.  Actually, he did get lost – must have turned at the elephants by mistake – and I had to go out and find him.  What a nice man!  He was 90 and had gone to kindergarten with the woman and was dropping by to say hello.  He was totally alert and bright and the kind of person I’d like to know better.  His only problem was getting lost.  But hey, I’ve been lost since the Nixon Administration.  I just thank God I didn’t get lost on the way to my wedding.  I wore the wrong shirt, but I showed up on time.

 

And speaking of time, we’re out of it so I’ll say goodbye.  Stay well and count those blessings.  See you next week.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

Blog #218

 

Amazon is now testing the new palm-scanning technology at its Whole Foods store.  No cash, no credit-cards, just pass your palm over a scanner and you’re good to go.  Congratulations, you’ve saved 10 seconds.  Can we just stop for a minute?  Why is everybody in such a hurry?  If you shop at Whole Foods once a week, the palm scanner will save you enough time so that every four years you can watch a Friends episode.  Was that worth it?  We do everything online so we don’t have to spend time going anywhere.  We bank online, buy food online, order prescriptions online.  What are we doing with all this extra time?  I have a different concept.  I like to do things in person.  I don’t order prescriptions online.  I go to the pharmacy and learn the names of the people working there.  I say, Hi, Mark; he says Hello, Mr. Fox.  Sometimes we chat for a little while.  If I ever need some help on anything, Mark is happy to help me.  I do the same with banking and other routine services.

 

Our world is becoming more and more impersonal and intrusive.  There are video cameras everywhere – on the street corners, inside businesses, at everybody’s front door.  Google knows everything about us -- where we are, what doctors we use, what cat food we buy.  We are constantly tracked, monitored and controlled.  The least they could do is tell me where I left my reading glasses.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope all you mommies out there had a happy Mother’s Day, or, as they’ll be calling it in the future, Birth Person’s Day.  Don’t get me started!  I hope you’re feeling well and getting ready for a glorious summer.  That’s right, it’s May already and the weather is warming up, although last week it rained so much that I stopped worrying about Global Warming and started to worry about Global Drowning.  But today it was so sunny and pleasant that I reached for a sporty linen shirt I haven’t worn in a while.  Warning! Warning!  Alarms began to ring in my brain about wearing linen out of season.  So I checked my calendar, my horoscope, Poor Richard’s Almanac, the phases of the moon and an old Martha Stewart Prison-Wear Catalog and determined that yes, I could wear my linen shirt.  I put it on and walked into the living-room.  Carol looked at me.  Memorial Day to Labor Day.  It’s not Memorial Day yet.  Take it off.  My wife is under the impression that the sun wouldn’t come up if she were not there to allow it.  I believe she’s right.  Actually, she didn't really say that.  She barely looked at me.

 

I don’t need to scurry around saving time by palm-scanning and the like.  I have plenty of time.  I certainly have enough time to do all the unpleasant errands my wife chooses not to do.  Do you remember Dirty Harry?  Clint Eastwood?  Go ahead, make my day?  They called him Dirty Harry because he was always the one chosen whenever there was a dirty job to do.  Well, I’m Dirty Mikey.  When someone has to drop Princess Summerfallwinterspring at the restaurant door, then park two blocks away and walk back in the pouring rain, who does it?  Dirty Mikey!  When someone has to pick up the dozen Everything Bagels and stink up his car and his clothes with that caustic, garlicky stench, who does it?  You guessed it.  One time, on the way back from picking up those nasty bagels, I stopped at McDonald’s and went in.  My clothes smelled so much like the Everything Bagels that two old Jewish women started spreading cream cheese on my shirt.  I liked it.

 

Yes, I have plenty of time for all the dirty jobs.  Plus, I have plenty of time for my little conservation projects.  I’ll bet you do the same things.  Do you squeeze the last little eensy infinitesimal bit of toothpaste out of the tube?  Do you use the bar of soap until it’s tinier than Andrew Cuomo’s chances of re-election?   I don’t consider that being parsimonious; it’s just conserving resources.  Like saving paper clips.  Do you save paper clips?

 

One summer, our family rented a house on Bald Head Island and two of my granddaughters (they were 8 and 10 at the time) asked me if I had a paper clip.  They had heard about someone who had traded a paper clip for something else and that something else for something else and so on.  I gave them a paper clip and off they went.  Now, the island has at most 20 merchants – shops, hotdog stands, restaurants – but these two were persistent and cute as bunnies.  They traded the paper clip for a Hershey bar, which they traded for two cans of soda, and so on.  After two hours, they returned with two candy bars, two necklaces, two pairs of earrings and a $25 gift certificate to a spa.  So of course I save paper clips.  Look how valuable they are.

 

We’re going back to Bald Head Island this summer.  Eight adults, eight grandchildren, two dogs and a lot of pills.  I have to start planning pretty early to make sure I have a supply of all the medicines I need.

 

There’s heart pills to keep me from dying

And Zoloft to keep me from crying

I’ve so many pills

To treat all my ills

I need extra luggage for flying.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  How like a winter hath my absence been from thee (Sonnet 97).  I hate when they go away.  I hate it.  I hate it.  I hate it!  I’m all alone except when some stranger comes for two minutes to feed me.  Can a cat take some of that Zoloft?  I think for cats they call it Purrzac.  Purr.

 

The Weekly Word is parsimonious.  I’ll bet you figured that out.  Parsimonious means frugal or stingy or downright cheap.  I am very parsimonious with my writing, and I try to keep each blog under 1100 words.  That’s enough to put most of you to sleep and I’m getting close to that number now, so I’ll stop.  It’s been very nice talking to you and I hope you enjoyed.  Stay well, count your blessings and make sure you file your taxes on time.  I’ll see you next week.

 

Dirty Mikey                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blog #217

 

Last Tuesday, May 4^th, was Star Wars Day.  May the 4^th be with you!  Then yesterday was Cinco de Mayo.  Did you celebrate?  Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican holiday which celebrates the victory of the Mexican army over the French in 1862.  That’s right, the French.  What the French were doing over there in Mexico is a mystery.  The holiday has no relevance for Americans and barely any for Mexicans, but it is an excuse to party and get drunk.  Hope you enjoyed it.

 

With so many Spanish-speaking citizens and residents here, I’m beginning to understand why we have to Press 1 for English, Press 2 for Spanish.  That’s ok with me.  I get it.  But recently, I have been getting a different response:  Press 1 for Spanish, Press 2 for a lady from the Philippines who knows six words of English.  Good luck. 

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and coming out of the malaise the pandemic has forced upon us.  This past week, I did something I had not done in more than a year.  Can you guess?

 

A:  Rode an elephant

B:  Had lunch with Joy Behar

C:  Ate kale

D:  Went to a movie

 

If you chose B, you were right.  Joy and I had a wonderful lunch.  She’s not as bad as I thought.  I’m kidding of course.  My having lunch with Joy is about as likely as seeing Maxine Waters and Donald Trump doing the foxtrot. In truth, Carol and I went to a movie for the first time in 14 months. There were about 15 people in the theater and we felt completely safe.  And now I am able to resurrect an old feature of Limerick Oyster.

 

Movie Review:  The movie was Minari, about a Korean family who moves to the United States.  It was mostly sub-titled, well-acted, not great, not terrible.  It was pleasant but unremarkable. 

 

I like movies, but I have no patience for watching television.  The commercials are annoying.  After watching television one night for a little while, I came to the conclusion that one out of every three people in this country is a personal injury attorney.  And the other two are suing somebody.  I tried to sue somebody once.  I bought a house, a 100-year-old impressive stone mansion in a very desirable part of town.  My plans were to fix it up and sell it.  The day after I bought it, I was meeting some contractors in the house when a neighbor walked over.  “You know this house is haunted, don’t you?”  She commenced to tell me the story of a child who had died on the second floor and could be heard moaning from time to time.  I did a little research and discovered that the house featured prominently in a book called Haunted Houses of St. Louis, a fact which I believed should have been disclosed to us by the seller.  I asked my lawyer to sue the seller for damages.  He laughed.  What damages, he asked?  Well, I told him, we spent $100,000 remodeling the house and put it on the market, but every time a potential buyer came to view the house, that same neighbor (don’t you love neighbors?) trotted her little busy-body over to inform them the house was haunted, whereupon the buyers would run faster than Bruce Jenner running toward a camera.  The lawyer laughed louder and refused to take the case.  We finally sold it to a man who loved the house and was thrilled that it was haunted.  It takes all kinds.  To this day, I still think we would have won the lawsuit.

 

And then there was the lawsuit, which really happened, to determine ownership of an escaped parrot. The parrot was actually allowed to testify, after the Judge gave him these instructions:

 

Well now we will hear from the parrot

Please perch on the bible and swear it

Just raise your right wing

Go on, Bird, and sing

And then we’ll decide on the merit.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  I’d rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad (As You Like It).  And I do have a big fool that takes care of me and keeps away the malaise.  I guess I’ll keep him.  Purr.

 

Our Weekly Word is malaise, a general feeling of discomfort or illness.  The best way to cure your malaise is to get a chuckle, and I hope I can give you one every week.

 

For instance, the LBAE (Let’s Bitch About Everything) Movement is after Disney and the Snow White ride at Disneyland.  Why?  Is it because she’s white, is named White or employs seven vertically challenged and underpaid miners?  Or is it minors?  Is it because she treats her dwarfs so horribly that six out of seven say they’re not Happy?  Apparently not.  It is because of the true love’s kiss that the Prince plants upon Snow’s lovely red lips in order to wake her from the sleeping spell placed upon her by the Evil Queen. They claim the kiss was without consent. Didn’t they watch the movie?  Didn’t they hear the song where Snow sings:

 

Someday my Prince will come . .

He'll whisper I love you
And steal a kiss or two . .
Someday when my dreams come true?

 

She’s not only consenting, she is begging the Prince to give her a big sloppy smack to make her dreams come true.  C’mon, People.  It’s a cartoon.  It’s a kiss.  It’s a dream come true.  Just because it’s not your dream, don’t ruin it for everyone else. 

 

Another thing we did this week was play golf.  Carol hit a lot of great shots.  I hit three.  But they were all on the same hole and I got a birdie.  I guess it’s better to clump all your great things together instead of stringing them out.  If a baseball player hit five home runs in a year, nobody would care.  If he hit them all on the same day, he would be in the record-book forever.  If a guy wrote one funny thing every month, no big deal.  If he wrote dozens of funny things all at once – it would be Limerick Oyster.  Don’t miss it next week.  Until then, stay well and count your blessings.

 

Happy                                     Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com