Blog #251                                         December 30, 2021

 

A lot of things happened this week, so relax; this could take a while.  First, on Christmas Eve, I celebrated my 12^th birthday.  You see, it was twelve years ago on Christmas Eve that they brought me back to life with that most delicate and clever of medical tricks – massive electric shock.  I truly thought it was all over for me then, but I’m still here and the electric shock does not seem to have had any residual effects.  Except of course that when I cough, the garage door goes up.

 

On this year’s Christmas Eve, my daughter Jennifer and her family came from North Carolina to visit us for the holidays, and she brought me a gift – arthritis pills.  I’ve been having some arthritis lately.  We all have it, don’t we?  It’s nothing serious, but Jennifer said she had some arthritis pills she could bring me.  When I looked at the bottle, there was a picture of a poodle on the label, and yes, she confessed, she had gotten them for her dogs.  The canines apparently didn’t like the pills, so she offered them to me.  What did she think I had, Irritable Bow-Wow Syndrome?  Or maybe:

 

·        Ulcerative Collie-itis?

·        Barkinson’s?

·        Dysenterrier?

·        Restless Tail Syndrome?

·        Rin Tin Tinnitus?

·        Aarfritis?

 

Message from Shakespeare:  One pain is lessened by another’s anguish (Romeo and Juliet).  Why does Pops care about doggy diseases?  Cats have problems too, like cat-aracts and purr-sitis.  I know what disease Pops has – Rhyme Disease.  Happy New Year from your favorite three-legged cat.  Purr.

 

Also this week, I took two of my granddaughters to get a smoothie.  In my day – remember my day?  My day was when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, Howdy Doody ruled the television, Twitter was the sound a bird made and nobody protested their children getting the polio vaccine.  In my day, we had milkshakes – chocolate, vanilla or strawberry with a dollop (great word) of whipped cream on top and a cherry plopped down in the middle with the stem sticking up.  Now they have smoothies, and while my granddaughters were ordering, I was perusing the menu.  There was no chocolate, no vanilla, no strawberry among the flavor choices.  Instead, they had Acai, Pitaya, Chia, Matcha, Algae.  I was ashamed to order because I couldn’t pronounce the flavors.  Actually, they did have a Vanilla with Intestinal Benefits.  I’m not making any of this up.  Just picture yourself, 15-years-old.  Girls in your poodle skirts and penny loafers, boys in your blue jeans and t-shirts.  Your parents ask where you are going.  Just down to the Ice Cream Shoppe, Dad, to get some intestinal benefits.  Our local soda-fountain was Jack ‘n Jill’s, and the only intestinal benefit you got there was that if you finished the 30-Scoop Fountain Mountain, you got a free ride to the emergency room. 

 

You almost didn’t get a blog this week.  I woke up one morning and my Microsoft Word, the program I use to write L. Oyster, would not work, so I did what any intelligent and well-balanced adult would do.  I panicked and ran screaming around the house declaring that my world had come to an end.  Or should that be “my Word had come to an end?”  I called Geek Squad and made an appointment.  They fixed it in three minutes.  Lucky me!  Lucky you!  Hi there, and welcome back.  I hope you are all feeling well and ready for New Year’s Eve.  It has surely been strange the past two years.  I’d like to believe that the year 2022 will bring us back to normal, but I’m not sure what normal is anymore.  Let’s just hope for a safe and healthy year. 

 

Whenever my wife and my daughters get together, they need guacamole, but we had no limes and, it being Christmas Day, all the grocery stores were closed.  Carol said she needed her guac.  She was miserable!  When my wife mentions the word “miserable”, something had better change!  And that means now!  Like the Holiday Party we went to one year.  After about an hour, I could see that she wanted to leave more than Bette Midler wanted to leave West Virginia.  You can always tell when she wants to make an exit.  She starts to make comments like, “Do you think your remote door opener will work from here?”  Or, “Do you remember where you parked?”  Or the ever-popular, “What’s a nine-letter word starting with “m” that means if you don’t get me out of here in the next 30 seconds, I will stick a fork in your eye?”  That nine-letter word, of course, is “miserable”.   It works every time.

 

Obviously, I had to find some limes.  I discovered a Chinese grocery store called Pan-Asia that was open on Christmas, and Jen and I went shopping.  We found the limes and 10,000 other things.  If you’ll permit me a little hyperbole, the store was the size of Tibet and was filled with thousands of kinds of sauces and cookies and strange things I never knew existed.  Especially the fruit!  There was a fruit that looked like used tires and one that looked like an armadillo and another that looked like Louis Armstrong.  The store was filled with Asian folks, grocery shopping like any other day, and a few Jews looking for limes.  All the people were wearing masks.  Well, we all knew what you can get from the Chinese.

 

For eons our friends the Chinese

Have given us treasures like these

They gave us Kung Pao

And General Tsao

And also the Covid Disease.

 

Our Weekly Word is hyperbole, which means extravagant exaggeration.  I don’t exaggerate, do I?  That often?  Anyway, speaking of grocery stores, every time I drop my wife off at a grocery store or restaurant, as she gets out of the car, she says either front or back to warn me which way she is going around the car so I won’t accidentally run her over.  She’s pretty foxy.  Well, Happy New Year, Foxy Lady.  Any year with you will be a great one.  And Happy New Year to all of you.  My New Year’s Resolution is to keep writing to you every week.  And yours should be to stay well, count your blessings and come back every single Thursday in 2022.  Have fun and don’t stay up too late.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #250                                December 23, 2021

 

I’ve had an interesting week.  Sit back and relax while I share.  Last Friday, I was rummaging through a closet when I found an old, dusty bottle.  I grabbed a rag and began to rub off the dust when a funny-looking Genie popped out.

 

Master, I grant you one wish, said the Genie.

One?  Don’t you Genies usually grant three wishes.

I had three, Master, but I gave one to a guy in New York who asked me to light up the Fox News Christmas Tree.  And I’m working on a wish by Chuck Schumer to turn Joe Manchin into Frosty the Snowman.  Besides, it’s so hard to re-stock anything nowadays, so I only have one.  I am at your command.

Ok, I want to go to Hawaii, but I get seasick and I don’t like long airplane flights, so I want you to build a bridge to Hawaii so I can drive.

Master, that would be impossible.  There isn’t enough concrete in the world to build a bridge that long.  Not to mention the permits!  Pick something else.

Genie, I read a book by Richard Russo where he said that women in general offer what you don’t want or have no use for, or even worse, what’s good for you. I wish you would make me understand women.

Master, do you want that bridge to be two-lane or four-lane?

 

Then, Friday night, I got a text from a friend.  His daughter was moving the next day and he could use some help shlepping a bunch of boxes.  The text was to five people who the friend said were the only people he knew who didn’t have bad backs.  I watched the message-string as four of the five reported they were not available, and the next day, it was just my friend and me – two old men with a litany of old man stuff like heart problems and joint problems and vascular problems and, yes, bad backs.  We moved the stuff and looked exactly like you would expect old men to look while doing something they should not have been doing.  You’ve heard of TWO MEN AND A TRUCK?  We’re calling ourselves- TWO MEN AND AN AMBULANCE.

 

Then there was yesterday, when I had a really nice day.  It started with a visit to Dr. Retina.  There’s nothing like getting a couple of injections in your eyeball before 9:00 am.  Hey, it’s better than a sharp stick in the eye.  Actually, it is precisely a sharp stick in the eye – twice.  It’s really not so bad.  If you are ever told you need a shot in the eye, don’t worry.  I’ve done it plenty of times, and I’m the biggest baby there is.  I faint when I eat a blood orange.  I cover my face when they show somebody getting a vaccination on television.  And I refuse to visit Needles, California.  Plus, I was 17-years-old before I would allow my dentist to put a needle in my mouth.  I went through the drilling without Novocain. 

 

Dr. Retina told me he wasn’t worried about my eye.  Isn’t it funny how the doctor is never worried about your eye or your heart?  I wonder why that is. 

 

I’m really not worried, my friend

I’m confident you’re on the mend

But if you are not,

I don’t care a lot

Either way, I get paid in the end.

 

I like all my doctors and appreciate how well they take care of me.  I do have one complaint about doctors in general, and the thought was brought back to me when I saw a gravestone recently:  Alan Schwartz, MD (1922-1997).  What unbelievable, unmitigated and unnecessary arrogance.  Who cares if he was a doctor?  Certainly not now that he’s dead.  He’s still six feet under, the same as Sophie Rose in the next grave, and she was only a butcher’s assistant.  At a country club recently, I saw a posted list of all the members.  Every doctor had an MD after his name and every dentist had a DDS.  There was even a veterinarian with a DVM.  To me that says, “I’m special and I’m better than you because I’m a doctor.  Don’t call me Mister and don’t write my name without putting the MD there.”

 

I’d rather meet a really good plumber than a boring proctologist.  Actually, I’d rather meet anyone than a boring proctologist.  I have nothing against doctors.  As I said, I like all my doctors, but lose those initials after your name on the country club wall.  Put up your handicap instead, and then see how proud you are.  I worked hard to earn my degree and even harder to earn a living.  And so does a streetsweeper, an electrician, a teacher or a restaurant server.  But you don’t see us putting a bunch of letters after our names.

 

Anyway, back to my nice day.  The people who work at Dr. Retina’s office were very nice.  And the people were nice at the Post Office and at Best Buy.  I don’t recall if the people who work at Walmart were nice.  I couldn’t find any.  It just made for a pleasant day, which I now get to share with you.  How delightful.  Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and are having a delightful day too.   

 

Jennifer, my North Carolina daughter, is coming to visit me tomorrow.  She’s the one with three dogs, two cats, twelve chickens and two roosters.  She’ll probably find being here very restful.  We have no dogs, no chickens, no roosters and only three-quarters of a cat.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Now that wasn’t very nice, was it?  But I’ll forgive him because I know he loves me.  He should love me.  I’ve made him famous.  Without me, his blog would be just a bunch of old jokes and ridiculous rants.  Merry Christmas and Purr-fect New Year from your favorite three-legged cat.  Joy delights in joy (Sonnet #8).

 

And a merry and joyous Christmas from me and my Christmas Carol.  Let’s not forget our Weekly Word.  It’s unmitigated, which means absolute and complete, and my wishes for you to stay well and have a wonderful holiday season are truly unmitigated.  Don’t forget to count your blessings.  See you next week.

 

Michael, BS, JD, Phi Beta Kappa, Omicron Delta Kappa, Phi Eta Sigma.

So there!                         Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #249                                         December 16, 2021

 

It’s almost time for New Year’s Resolutions.  Carol announced hers early.  “My resolution,” she proclaimed, “is to be less controlling.  And yours,” she continued, pointing at me, “is that you will always do what I tell you.”  Yes, Dear I replied.  La Reyne le vault.  That’s a French phrase meaning the Queen commands it.  Sometimes I feel like she’s Shari Lewis and I’m Lambchop.

 

What I really wanted her resolution to be is that she will stop pouring pickle juice out of the pickle jar.  I bought a jar of Kosher Dill Spears, the long kind that they somehow get to stand straight up in the jar.  At lunch this week, I grabbed the jar and went to extract a pickle, when I discovered an inch of pickle juice was missing.  She does it every time.  She doesn’t eat the pickles, but she somehow feels the duty to drain off the top of the juice to make it less likely to spill.  I hate when she does that because then I get a three-inch pickle with the top inch dry and shriveled.  Don’t touch my pickle!

 

You know the joke about the man who comes home early from his job at the pickle factory.

 

Why are you home early, his wife asks?

 I got fired.  They caught me with my weenie in the pickle slicer.

Oh, my god, are you alright?

Yes, I’m fine.

Oh, good, but what did they do with the pickle slicer?

They fired her too.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and staying warm.  Are you all in Florida yet?  If you’ve flown down to Florida or anywhere else, you’ve experienced airport toilets.  In this brave new world where everything seems to have become unfamiliar, public toilets are a prime example.  FIRST: What happened to flushing?  Is that one of those jobs that “Americans won’t do”?  Was it such a complicated process that we had to turn it over to an intricate and expensive sensor beam?  I want to flush when I’m finished, not when R2-Pee2 has decided I am far enough away from the seat?  SECOND:  I want some soap and water.  What happened to faucets?  They’re gone.  Instead, I have to wave my hands under a spout and wait for water to come out.  It doesn’t work the first time – or the second.  Sometimes, I have to conduct the entire 1812 Overture before a brief gush of water comes out.  THIRD:  I want a towel, not hot air.  I get enough hot air listening to talk radio.  And besides, the only thing that hot air does is turn the cold water on my hands into hot water on my hands.  What could be more simple than to have a bathroom with a toilet, a sink, some soap and some paper towels?  Instead, we have a fully-automated factory that whisks you in, flushes you down, soaps you off and blows you out.  I hate public toilets.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? (Macbeth)  I use my litter box, and I never miss.  It’s always clean and smells good.  Pops cleans it out every morning.  And, every Sunday, he takes it to the garage and washes the box out with soap and water.  He’s such a good boy!  Purr.

 

And you know what else has gotten complicated?  Eating.  It has to be free-range, gluten-free, non-GMO, organic, without carbohydrates, vegan or vegetarian -- basically, a meal only a sheep could love.  You’ll notice not one of those categories will guarantee that it tastes good.  We have so much food that Americans will not eat that we could feed all the hungry people in the world, except that the food snobs won’t send the “unhealthy” stuff to the starving.

 

Now all of this food that we had for you 

We decided it really was bad for you

So we threw it away

And you’ll starve one more day

But you’re healthy and that makes us glad for you.

 

The other day, Carol was on the phone listening to a friend telling a story when I walked into the room.  She said into the phone, “Tell the story to Mark.  He just walked in.”  I turned to her and calmly, quietly and without rancor said:  WHO THE HELL IS MARK?  She’s known me for almost 60 years and all of a sudden I’m Mark?  It’s as unthinkable as if, after a quarter century on television, Ed McMahon had come out one night and said, “Heeeere’s Jimmy!” 

 

It looks like Sirhan Sirhan, the man who assassinated Robert Kennedy, will be set free soon.  He will then join the three living people who have attempted to kill a United States President, all of whom are free: John Hinckley who shot Ronald Reagan, Sara Jane Moore and Squeaky Fromme, both of whom tried to kill Gerald Ford. All four have agreed to appear in a new game show starting next Spring.  It’s called You Bet Your Assassin.  During a recent interview about Sirhan’s release, I heard one of Robert Kennedy’s sons say, “We’re Catholics.  We’re not haters.”  I guess they don’t teach about the Inquisition in Catholic School.

 

We have a Visa card associated with a big retailer.  I pass by one of their stores often, so each month I go in and pay the bill in person.  I am always waited on by the same lady who takes my payment.  She’s from Egypt, a grandmother, and wears a hijab.  I insist that she help me because she is very nice and she insists on it also.  Today, I brought her a holiday present – a big, round Christmassy-looking tin containing three bags of popcorn, one that’s plain, one that’s sweet and makes you sticky, and one that’s cheesy and makes you orange.  As I gave it to her, I said, “I’m Jewish and you’re Islamic and I’m giving you a Christmas present.  Joy to the world.”

 

And joy to all of you as well.  Our Weekly Word is rancor, which means bitterness or resentfulness, and I hope you don’t have any rancor after reading my blog.  Just keep your heart full of joy and remember: money can’t buy happiness, but it’s much more comfortable crying in a Porsche. Stay well and count your blessings.  I’ll see you next week. 

 

Mark                                       Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #247                                         December 2, 2021

 

In celebrating Thanksgiving last week, I came to realize how thankful I am that I’m not in my grandchildren’s’ generation and forced to grow up in these disturbing and confusing times.  I’m reluctant to write my thoughts down.  I’m fearful of insulting someone, which I don’t mean to do, or sounding stupid, which I often do.  I’ll give it a try and hope you forgive me.

 

I grew up in the 1950s.  A boy growing up then in my neighborhood knew what his future would be.  I would go to high school (check), graduate college (check), marry the prettiest girl in the world (check), go to work in my father’s business (check, for a little while), have cute little kids (triple check), get rich (for a few years), grow old (working on it), retire and tell stories to the grandchildren.  That’s what was expected, and that’s pretty much how it went.  It was like walking down a path in the woods.  The path had been made by thousands and millions of people who came before me and had trampled it down so all I had to do was follow it one step at a time, one foot after the other.

 

That path is not so simple any more.  You can’t just stride along one foot after the other.  The path has become a twisting and ever-changing quagmire with forks in the road that didn’t used to be there, and when you come to each fork, you stop, you shuffle back and forth and you become confused.  You have the choice of gender.  You have the choice of sexual orientation.  Which path should you take?  Should you get married?  Should you have kids now or later or never?  Would it be better to get rich or to save the world?  Some might say that just having those choices has been real progress for many, and I suppose that’s so.  But it has made the path a perplexing and dangerous journey full of therapists and Prozac.

 

I never went to a therapist when I was a kid; I went to an orthodontist.  But all eight of my grandchildren have been to a therapist at some time.  When I was young, we knew what to do and where we stood.  We knew to look both ways before crossing the street and to be home by dinner.  We knew that if you went out without your coat you would “catch your death” and that atomic bombs wouldn’t hurt you if you crawled under your desk.  Now, kids don’t even know where to put their trash – compost, landfill or recycle. 

 

We kids just don’t know what to think

Our world seems to be out of sync 

We haven’t a clue

Where to go, what to do                                                                                                          

We just need some pills and a shrink.

 

Can you blame them?  If kids today have trouble deciding where to toss their banana peels, how do you expect them to decide which bathroom to use? 

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and recovering from your Thanksgiving feasting.  Holy crap!  It’s December already and Hanukkah is here. Hanukkah has been celebrated for a long, long time and by a lot of people that you would not have suspected were Jewish:

 

·        We knew King Arthur was Jewish when he said, “I want a round table.”

·        We knew Venus de Milo was Jewish when she said, “Damn, I broke a nail.”

·        We knew Helen of Troy was Jewish when she said, “Menelaus, take me to Paris.”

·        We knew Little Red Riding Hood was Jewish when she said, “We’re going out with the Wolfs again tonight.”

 

Message from Shakespeare:  If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work (Henry IV, Part 1).  Am I Jewish too?  I celebrate all the holidays:  Hanu-cat and Yom Ki-purr, even Pussover.  So I guess I must be.  Shalomeow!

 

The flight home from North Carolina was fine and without incident.  The Transportation Safety Administration has hired extra officers and everything went quickly, although I got the feeling that they had all been trained by my wife, who is more sweet to me than sunlight.  One lady officer told me, “Put your laptop in the tray, make sure your buttons line up with your belt buckle and don’t ever wear linen again in November.”

 

At the airport and on the plane, I read.  Right now, I’m reading two books.  One is a mathematics book entitled Infinite Powers.  What a boring title.  The musical satirist, Tom Lehrer, had a great suggestion for a title, The Tropic of Calculus.  If I ever write one, I’ll call it The Grapes of Math.

 

The line I used above, describing my wife as more sweet to me than sunlight, was from The Odyssey.  That’s the other book I’m reading.  Did you know that Homer and I went to high school together? I liked his stories, but I warned him that the name The Iliad was misleading and totally forgettable.  I gave him some other choices:

 

·        To Helen and Back

·        Don’t Forget Your Trojans

·        Schitt’s Greek

 

He rejected my advice.  Too bad.  He might have been famous. 

 

Yesterday, I received a message on my health-care portal.  It was from Dr. Pacemaker and described the results of a scheduled remote monitoring of my heart activity.  This happens every three months or so, and I usually ignore it, but this time I decided to read the report.  Using complicated doctor-talk exclusively, the report described, in excruciating and undecipherable detail, everything that was wrong with my heart.  I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or update my will.  I sent them this response:

 

It would really be helpful if I could decipher the test results you sent me.  I have no idea whether I’m doing fine or should call the coroner.

 

I really did send it just that way, and I got a response: “Our report has been reviewed and shows normal device function and there are no concerns at this time.”  Much better!

 

The Weekly Word is quagmire, which is a soft and unsteady swamp or an awkward and hazardous situation.  Kind of like today’s blog.  But you made it through.  I’m proud of you.  Stay well, my people, and count your blessings.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com.