Blog # 236                                         September 16, 2021

 

My oldest daughter’s father-in-law passed away.  He was 97 and a very accomplished, intelligent man.  Which got me to thinking:  it doesn’t pay to die old.  All your friends are gone; you’ve been too old and too sick to sustain the adoration of your family and your death has been labeled “a blessing”.  I don’t want my death to be a blessing.  I want mine to be a horrible and devasting shock to my friends and family.  See, I’m always thinking about you.

 

And what to do when I die?  Last week, my grandson, Tyler, introduced me to a 30-minute video about Human Composting.  It’s the new thing, he tells me!  Here are the Cliff Notes:

 

·        Traditional burial takes up too much real-estate, too much wood and too much concrete.

·        Cremation is better, but the ashes are useless.

·        The human body can be composted in 30 days and used as excellent fertilizer for your vegetable garden.

·        I’m not making this up, and it sounds interesting to me.

 

My end-of-life wishes are these:

I want to be composted, please.

My compost should go

To help gardens grow

And make sure that I Rest in Peas.

 

Now that’s what I call really putting your ass in asparagus.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Death, a necessary end, will come when it will come (Julius Caesar).  I know where I’ll be buried – in the catacombs.  I guess I’ve been hanging around Pops too much because I’m making dumb jokes just like him.  Purr.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  Another day, another sunrise, or, as it says in the Odyssey – Dawn came up … with fresh light in her arms for gods and men.  And I hope the fresh light of this morning finds you feeling well and calm.  I am delighted to discover that you were paying careful attention to last week’s blog and were quick to correct me when I said the Jewish New Year was 5781.  It is, indeed, 5782, and I’d like to say I was just testing you, but I never lie to you – at least not too often.  I hereby confess to having made a mistake and am filled with contrition.  Luckily, today is the Day of Atonement, and I trust God has forgiven me.

 

My wife, however, was not so generous.  I was called on the carpet, reviled, castigated and beaten within an inch of my miserable and useless life.  Then she told me I was an oafish, crass and caustic, grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and filthy wretch.  I always appreciate friendly criticism.

 

Enough about funerals and composting and mistaken dates.  Let’s switch to something fun.  How about a quiz for kids?  Are you ready? 

 

THE KIDS QUIZ:

 

1.     Who played the Cincinnati Kid?

2.     Who played the Sundance Kid?

3.     Who played Kid Shelleen?

4.     Who played the Karate Kid?

5.     Who played Lois Lane in the first Superman movie?

6.     In the HBO series, The Undoing, who played Hugh Grant’s wife?

7.     Who played The Cisco Kid in the 1950s TV show?

 

Ok, all you critics out there who were smart enough to correct me, see how many you get right.

 

Did you watch the US Open Tennis?  Wasn’t it exciting?  Did it bother you that there were no lines-people?  All calls were made by electronic devices and recorded voices.  And there are no checkers at Walmart, only self-checkout machines.  And McDonald’s is trying to make everyone order from an electronic kiosk.  The problem with having machines replacing what are mainly low-paying jobs is that our education system is turning out more and more students who are unqualified for anything but low-paying jobs.  The Woke & Broke Generation.  Are we looking toward a future where McDonald’s and Walmart will be saving money on labor costs but paying it all in more taxes so the government can pay a “minimum income” to the unemployed?  And what is this unemployed class supposed to do?  Well, what they’ll do is protest to demand higher government payments which will encourage more working people to join what will be the new “leisure class”.  And so on and so forth until the unemployed class outnumbers the employed class and that will lead to revolution and collapse.  And all because of tennis.  I knew they shouldn’t have replaced the lines-people.

 

I have a new machine.  It scans my clothing and tells me what doesn’t match.  It tells me which parking place to take.  It makes sure I eat at a round table.  It makes all my social plans.  Wait, that’s my wife.  She’s irreplaceable.

 

This past week, we all observed Nine-Eleven with our own thoughts and remembrances.  I was in the kitchen getting ready to leave for work when it happened.  The television was on NBC where Katie Couric and Matt Lauer were beginning to report a plane crashing into the World Trade Center.  You know, on the Today Show, when they say it’s 9:00, it’s 8:00 in St. Louis, but they delay the show one hour so that when we listen to them say it’s 9:00, it’s 9:00 in St. Louis.

 

In 2005, I was in New York buying shoes at Barney’s when Matt Lauer sat down next to me.  Really!  We began to talk, and I asked him why, if his show was on an hour delay in St. Louis, that the Nine-Eleven reporting was live.  He told me that once a breaking news event happens, they switch to a live broadcast.  Interesting.  He wears a size 8½.

 

Ok, here are the answers to the Quiz:

 

1.     The Cincinnati Kid was Steve McQueen in the movie Cincinnati Kid.

2.     The Sundance Kid was Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

3.     Kid Shelleen was Lee Marvin in the movie Cat Ballou.

4.     The Karate Kid was Ralph Macchio.

5.     Lois Lane was played by Margot Kidder.

6.     Hugh Grant’s wife was Nicole Kidman.

7.     The original Cisco Kid was Duncan Renaldo.

 

Oh, Cisco, did you get them all right!  Oh, Pancho, no.  And our Weekly Word is contrition, which means the state of feeling guilt, regret or remorse – a feeling I have every time I put you through another week of this.  Please forgive me and come back again next week, and in the meantime, stay well and count your blessings.

 

The Limerick Kid                               Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com