Thursday, December 29, 2022

 

Blog #303                      December 29, 2022

 

While walking from my car to the Walmart entrance a few days ago, I saw a glove nestled against one of the empty carts in the parking lot.  It was white and blue and dirty.  On closer approach I saw that it was a left glove made of white mesh with a blue wristband.  This glove must have a story, I thought.  Why was it there?  Where was its partner?  A mesh glove – not very practical in cold weather.  Maybe it was a golf glove; that would explain the absence of a partner.  Maybe it was Michael Jackson’s.  Just a lonely, abandoned piece of flotsam in a lonely and disturbed world.  It was the stuff of a Chekov story or a Poe novella or a Robert Frost poem.  Or a Limerick Oyster paragraph.  The Weekly Word is flotsam, which means something worthless, rejected and discarded. 

 

My router stopped working.  I have suffered through episodes when my heart stopped working and episodes when my eyes stopped working, and believe me, those were only slightly more traumatic than the router.  I mean what are you supposed to do without Wi-Fi?  The human race was born, survived and evolved for several hundred-thousand years without the Internet, but we have somehow arrived at a point in the history of our species where we can no longer exist without instantaneous access to everything.  I mean, how are we supposed to survive if we can’t go on Amazon and buy something we don’t need and have it delivered two weeks before we didn’t need it?

 

I remember the good old days when online was where you hung your laundry.  When spam was a canned meat spread, cookies were sweet and tweet was the sound a little bird made.  Oh well, those days are gone, and now I’m sitting at my desk surrounded by enough wires to reach Sweden and so many different passwords I have to keep a printed list of them on my desk, which sort of negates their usefulness.

 

I found a phone number for Linksys, the router company, and prepared to call them for help, a feat of communication only slightly easier than contacting L. Ron Hubbard.  Surprisingly, however, it took only thirty seconds to contact a helpful representative named Svetla who was born in Serbia, lived in Belize and sounded like Bela Lugosi on Librium.  We exchanged some information, pressed some buttons, chose some passwords and twenty minutes later had accomplished nothing except to find out that the weather in Belize was beautiful.  

 

 Vanna, what do we have as a Booby Prize for this pathetic loser?  I absorbed that failure and did what any rational seasoned citizen should do.  I called my daughter Abby and begged her to fix it, which she did.  I guess I should have thought of that first, but I didn’t want to aggravate her with my time-consuming, childish problems.  But then I thought -- Hey, I’m the guy who changed her diapers and told her stories and sang her songs (even at her wedding) and helped her with all her childhood problems. What goes around comes around; do unto others; cast your bread upon the waters, and all those other Golden Rulish phrases.  The least she can do is repay the effort.  Except the diaper thing.

 

And speaking of songs, when my grandchildren were little, I used to sing to them.  I even wrote two songs for them – There’s A Dinosaur in My Diaper and A Pirate Has Stolen My Cookie.  Where’s Casey Kasem when you need him?  And I told them stories I would make up on the fly.  Naturally, I was their hero:  Look, it’s Poppy Man – faster than a rhyming dictionary; able to tell tall tales in a single night.  And who, disguised as a mild-mannered Jewish husband with no closet, fights a never-ending battle for fun, pirate stories and Scooby-Dooby-Doo.

 

Now my grandchildren are older, and they have no time for stories.  But I still have you.  You like my stories, don’t you?  I guess you do, because this is Blog #303 and you’re still here.  Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and staying warm.  We had some major cold here last week.  It was so cold I saw a politician with his hands in his own pocket.  The news media, of course, were absolutely euphoric with the dangerous cold spell, almost as much as a school-bus accident or a lost puppy.  They spent hours telling us to stay indoors because the cold was so dangerous.  Then they switched to one of their reporters standing outside telling us how cold it was.  They got even more excited when someone actually died of the cold.

 

We warned the poor schmuck it was cold

But he didn’t do what he was told

He collapsed and he froze

From his head to his toes

He was either too dumb or too old.

 

My oldest, Jennifer, came to visit us on Christmas Eve, which reminded me of a Christmas Eve 13 years ago.  I was visiting her that year in North Carolina and using her house and hospitality to recover from bypass surgery, when my heart started to behave as dysfunctionally as Southwest Airlines.   At the emergency room, they shocked me back to life which is why I always consider Christmas Eve as a second birthday.  Thirteen years.

 

For a week, my house was graced with Carol and my daughter and granddaughter Alyssa, all of whom are exercise freaks.  Every morning, they’re running and stretching and crawling and lifting and jumping and stomping.  It’s like three generations of Richard Simmons.  It tires the hell out of me just to watch.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  He’s all my exercise, my mirth, my matter (Winter’s Tale) Those three women surely do flop and bop and climb all over my house.  And they all look alike. The only exercises I do are limping and hiding.  I’m very good at hiding.  I don’t like anybody in my house except my two pet people.  Purr.

 

Time to go and also time for New Year’s resolutions.  If you resolve to come back every week, I’ll resolve to keep up this lunacy.  How’s that?  2022 is over now.  I hope you have a peaceful, healthy and happy 2023.  Stay well and count your blessings.

 

Michael                                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday, December 22, 2022

 

Blog # 302                     December 22, 2022

 

Carol and I are planning to go to a movie on New Year’s Eve.  I don’t think I went to any movies in 2022.  When I go to a movie and settle back in one of those new plush seats, I always have a reflexive impulse to strap on a seat belt.  Does that ever happen to you?  No?  Well, strap yourself in right now and let’s see how much trouble I can get into.

 

There was a glitch (isn’t that a great word?) in my online banking site, so I called and, after waiting ten minutes was greeted by a lovely young lady named Crystal.  The account was in Carol’s name and they would only talk to her, but Carol was out with some of her girlfriends playing canasta with her left hand, bridge with her right hand, reading a book and doing the WORDLE with a stylus clenched between her teeth.  What a magnificent creature!  Anyway, when Crystal asked to whom she was speaking, I just said Carol to avoid delays.  I figured that in this age, she would not question me and she didn’t.  Within a few minutes, Crystal and I had solved the problem.  She was such a nice young lady.  I don’t know, maybe Crystal was a guy.  If I can convince her I’m Carol, anything goes.

 

I have two grammatical comments about the above paragraph that will likely be boring to you, so be forewarned.  First is the use of the word girlfriend.  To my grandchildren, a girlfriend is a female person with whom you have a sexual relationship.  If I ask my granddaughter if she was out with her girlfriend, she would be scandalized.  “Poppy, she’s not my girlfriend.  She’s my friend.”   I’m confused. 

 

Second, I used to whom and with whom properly.  Most people today would use who.  It’s just my tiny personal rebellion against the English language turning feral in my lifetime.  Feral, our Weekly Word means having reverted to the wild state.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  Have you turned feral on me?  Somehow, I can’t imagine most of you being wild, but who knows.  Wild for me would be getting an Egg McMuffin to go with my Diet Coke.  I hope you are feeling jolly with Christmas around the corner.

 

I remember when I was growing up, every Christmas Eve I would sit by the front door patiently waiting for the bell to ring.  When it did, I rushed to open the door, and there he was – that same bearded old man carrying a sack which contained wonderful goodies for the whole family.  “Mom,” I yelled, “Dad, it’s General Tso.  I get dibs on two eggrolls.”

 

Besides Chinese food, Christmas is the season for candy assortments.  I have told you before that men and women are different.  Here’s another example.  Do you know how a man eats candy, like from a Russell Stover assortment box?  He picks out a piece, eats half of it and then, if he likes it, will eat the other half.  Even if he doesn’t like it, he more often than not will eat the other half.  A woman, on the other hand, will use her finger nail to excavate a tiny chunk of chocolate from the bottom and then look inside.  If she likes what she has discovered, she will eat the candy.  If not, she replaces the piece in its little fluted-paper nest and moves on to the rest.  Men, being by nature chivalric creatures, always allow the women to have their go at the box first.  That leaves us the sloppy seconds which consist of cracked and fingered chocolates with creams and jellies leaking out of holes in their bottoms.  You know I’m right.

 

Harry and Meghan are back on Netflix.  Gag me!  I know you’re going to hate me for this, but I’m just not a Meghan fan.  She was an actress, beautiful, a glutton for fame and she married a Prince.  Harry’s family gave her a royal wedding and made her a duchess.  My in-laws gave me cufflinks.  Now she says the Royal Family was mean to her.  Didn’t she take the time to research their history?  There’s only a thousand years of it.  Mean is what they did to Anne Boleyn.  All they did to Meghan was to make her the most famous person in the world and worth millions of dollars.  But no, the Duchess of Boo-Hoo isn’t happy unless she’s slitting the throats of her husband’s family.  Poor Harry.  If the Royal Family ever reads this, they’ll grant me a Knighthood.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  He that plays the king shall be welcome (Hamlet).  We have our own royal family here.  I’m the King, Carol is the Queen of course and Pops is the Court Jester.  If the British royals make him a knight, they’ll call him Sir Stupid.  But I’m glad he stopped being mad at me for eating his computer keys.  We’re back to being best friends again.  Purr.

 

It has been a busy week for my doctors.  Dr. Eye, Dr. Heart, Dr. Skin, Dr. Asshole.  Damn, at least my brain still works – I think.

 

My eyes and my skin and my heart

This body’s just falling apart

Some nice-looking brains

Are all that remains

Of this fragile and feeble old fart

 

And finally – you’ll love this story – my daughter told me her chicken coop is now equipped with a remote door opener that opens when the sun rises to let the birds out and closes when it gets dark so they can sleep safely.  Really!  I asked her if she had given garage-door clickers to all her cluckers.  She smirked.  What’s next for the most spoiled hens in North Carolina – NetChix?  Then they can watch their favorite movies:

 

The Gizzard of Oz                              A Cluckwork Orange

A Few Good Hens                             Coop Dreams

The Maltese Chicken

 

There’s nothing like a good chicken joke, is there?    I thought I heard Jennifer clucking the other day.  Willa Cather said, “If you cluck often enough, the hens will mistake you for one of themselves.”

 

I’m finished now.  And just in time for you to take a nap.  Have a very Happy Holiday and come back next week.  We’ll have New Year’s hats and everything.  Meanwhile, stay well and count your blessings

 

 Sir Stupid                               Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday, December 17, 2022

 

LIMERICK    OYSTER

Blog #299                                December 1. 2022

 

Good gracious, it’s December already!  The calendar just keeps racing along at top speed.  The Hebrew Calendar is 11 days shorter than the solar year and uses a 19-year cycle to bring it into line, with the addition of an extra month every two or three years.  No wonder Jews are always confused.  An extra month every once in a while?  That explains why it’s so hard to get an appointment with my gastroenterologist.  He doesn’t know what month it is.

 

The calendar never bothered my father.  He lived to be 96.  My Dad was a scotch-drinker most of his life, but switched to vodka in his eighties.  Everybody loved my father.  In his nineties -- a widower, blind, living in an assisted-care facility -- he would order his monthly vodka supply by phone from a local store.  He knew their number by heart.  The manager of the store, who was 25 years old, liked my father so much that he would always deliver the order himself, then stay and talk for an hour, after which my father would try to get a better price out of him.

 

Dad was in pretty good health, and his doctor never gave him any trouble about the drinking.  In fact, he sanctioned it whole-heartedly.

 

Right now, Mr. Fox you’re on pace

To outlive the whole human race

If whatever you drink

Keeps you in the pink

Continue – and send me a case.

 

Dad would always wait for his afternoon drink until I came to visit.  He kept a bottle of Chardonnay in the fridge, and I’d pour a big glass for myself and a vodka on the rocks for him, and we would sit and talk and drink.  How nice that was!  About six months before he died, I gave up drinking alcohol, but I would still be there in the afternoon.  I poured his vodka and filled my wine glass with water.  I never told him I had stopped.

 

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and in the holiday spirit after a nice Thanksgiving.  Besides Christmas and Hanukkah, December also brings the Miss America Pageant.  It’s only two weeks away.

 

I’m sure you know that the Miss America Organization will no longer include the swimsuit competition, replacing it with a Social Impact Statement.  I’m not sure I ever asked Carol for her Social Impact Statement when we were dating.  She had other impacts I was more interested in.

 

I wonder how many people will tune in to see which covered-up Miss America contestant is the most woke.  Probably less than the number of letters in BOREDOM.  The only audience for the pageant consists of men who want to see sexy bodies and women who want to criticize everything.  

 

I always turn the sound off when the pageant is on and just listen to my wife.  She’s better than Bert Parks!  “That one’s too short-waisted.  She’s too flat-chested.  How did her mother let her go out with that hairdo?  That gown is horrible!  Who dressed her?”  My math is pretty good:  No Bodies = No Audience.   The next change, of course, will be the name.  MISS is gender insensitive and exclusive.  And AMERICA congers up thoughts of the flag, the Constitution and the National Anthem, all things we want to avoid.   So next year the pageant will be called The Most Politically Correct Person in the Western Hemisphere and not even their own mothers will watch.

 

And December means Christmas music, and many of your local radio stations are already playing Christmas songs 24/7.  I know there’s only so much Brenda Lee and Burl Ives you can take, but Christmas songs are generally pleasant and enjoyable.  Except Frosty the Snowman of course.  Poor Frosty has become a victim of the WOKE FOLK just like Miss America.  Let’s look at the lyrics:

 

Frosty the Snowman:  The anthropomorphizing of inanimate objects disturbs a child’s ability to adjust to real-world situations.  Lose the name. 

Was a jolly happy soul:  Frosty is fat.  To display him as jolly minimizes the dangers and misery of obesity.  And how can he possibly be happy when Trump is running for President again?  Lose the jolly.

With a corncob pipe:  A pipe?  We have enough evidence of the dangers of smoking that displaying a pipe to children is criminal.  No pipe either!

And a button nose:  Most buttons are plastic and therefore not biodegradable.  No nose!

And two eyes made out of coal: Coal is a hydrocarbon and a major source of the contamination that leads to global warming.  No eyes!

 

So that leaves just a blind, nameless, nose-less, smoke-free, unhappy Snowblob.  I liked him better as Frosty.

 

Once in a while, people are angered by some of the things I say.  That’s ok, actually.  You wouldn’t want to listen to some namby-pamby loser who has no opinion and does everything his wife says and lets her pick out his clothes and goes to McDonald’s every morning and reads Moby Dick, would you?  I hope you’re not mad enough at me to get me invited to dinner at Mar-a-Lago.  I wonder what they do for a seating chart there.  Does he just say, “Jared, you’re in between the white supremacist and the antisemite?”

 

Did you watch the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show?  The French Bulldog won.  Dogs are loyal, loving members of the family who want to hug you, please you and treat you like God.  Cats are royalty who dislike you and tolerate your existence only because they have successfully trained you to wait on them.  Kind of like wives.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  And don’t you forget it, Big Boy.  That woman and I have you trained so well we could lead you around by a leash at the dog show.  But it’s nice to have a trained human to fetch for you and pet you and call you pretty.  At least that’s what Carol says.  You may deny me, but I’ll be your servant (The Tempest).

 

Our Weekly Word is namby-pamby, meaning a feeble person lacking in strength or courage.  That’s not me, of course.  I have the courage to send out this blog every week, don’t I?  And I have the courage to send another next week – if she lets me.  Stay well and count your blessings.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

Friday, December 16, 2022

 

LIMERICK    OYSTER

Blog #298                                November 24, 2022

 

Happy Thanksgiving Day to every one of you and welcome back.  Thanksgiving is a unique and introspective day where we give voice to all the blessings we have.  We are truly thankful for our family and friends; I don’t need to tell you that.  And as for those that we have lost and sorely miss, they are blessings as well. “Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”  That’s a quote, believe it or not, from Dr. Seuss, my favorite poet, and it should remind us to be grateful for the memories that mean so much to us.  We are also thankful for our own lives.  Yes, we may have health issues -- aches, pains or more serious challenges – but look at it this way: we’re doing the best we can, we’re still here and we are way better off than the turkey.  And, yes, there are people who are richer, younger, better-looking.  But we have love and warmth and a wonderful meal to share.  Have a good day, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk to you every week.

 

A few days ago, I was at McDonald’s (duh) with my Diet Coke (duh) and my book (ditto).  Seeing me without a book would be like seeing Pat without Vanna, or Fred without Ethel, or Joy without Whoopi.  Whoopi and Joy!  Sounds like a big party, doesn’t it?  I’d rather be at McDonald’s.

 

And I was, reading a few pages, relaxing and doing the Wordle.  When I was ready to leave, I refilled my soda and went out to my car.  It didn’t start.  Deader than Queen Elizabeth.  I went back inside and called AAA.  It was about 9:45 and they told me a service truck would be there at 11:00.  I know them to be very reliable and accurate, so I calmly and patiently settled down for the wait.  The problem arose at 10:15 when I finished my book.  What was I going to do for 45 minutes?  I do not talk on the phone in a public place, so I decided to read everything online about Crypto Currency.  I knew nothing about it when I started, but after reading for twenty minutes, I discovered two things -- I now knew even less and I now cared even less.  I mean, who really cares if some fast-talking twenty-something just lost $75 billion worth of Gypto-Crypto that he made up to begin with when I’m trying to find a better price on a turkey than Aldi’s $1.09 a pound?

 

Then I read the announcement by the United Nations Populations Fund that the 8-billionth person on the Earth was born last week.  They also announced that the population will peak at 10½ billion around 2080 and then start to decrease.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that by then, there won’t be enough food left on the Earth and the population will decrease because the young people will have to eat the old people.  The UN sent a congratulatory card to Number Eight Billion.

 

Eight Billion – yes you are the winner

You’re a baby and just a beginner

Grow old but not fat

‘Cause if you do that

You’ll surely be Ten Billion’s dinner.

 

Do you think I’m getting weirder?  I think I’m getting weirder.  Maybe I need a shrink.  Have you ever been to a shrink?  Do you know who the first psychiatrist was?  I’ve told you before, but I’ll do it again.  It was Snow White.  Seriously!  When she asked each of her roommates, “Are you Happy?” and six of them said no, she figured they needed some help and she hung up a PSYCHIATRIST shingle on the cottage.  But when customers arrived and noticed that all the people coming out of her office were dwarves, they all said, “She’s not helping their mental problems, she’s just shrinking them.”  And that’s how the term shrink was born.  Aren’t you happy that I give you all of this information?  No?  You’re not Happy?  Go see Snow.

 

I used to go to a shrink.  I like talking to people, as you can tell, and I liked talking to my shrink.  I found it to be quite cathartic.  After all, your psychiatrist will listen more than your spouse or your kids or your friends.  Almost as much as your hair stylist.  The first time I visited Dr. Head, I brought a newspaper to read in the waiting room, and, when I was finished reading, I tossed it into the waste basket.  Then I realized it still had my address label attached, so I retrieved the paper and tore off my name label.  Hey, if you can’t be paranoid in a shrink’s office, where can you?

 

During the first session, the shrink asked what my family was like when I was growing up, and I began to tell him about my lovable lunatic brother and my sad schizophrenic sister.  Wow, he thought he had won the Power Ball jackpot.  He’d never heard of a family so messed up since Morticia and Gomez.  He was as excited as a Vietnamese chef at a dog park.

 

Our Weekly Word is cathartic, which means providing psychological relief through the open expression of strong emotions.  Writing to you is cathartic for me.  It keeps my mental health in tip-top shape.  And if you think this is tip-top, you’re sicker than I am.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Take from my heart all thankfulness (Pericles). I am thankful today too.  I am thankful that 2½ years ago I chose Pops to be my pet human.  The shelter-lady had just asked him if he would accept a three-legged cat, and he said no.  She said, “Ok, just hold this cat for a second,” and then she put me in his arms.  I looked over at his woman.  She looked to be the absolute boss of the family, and I figured if she could train this old man, so could I.  So I flashed my feline cuteness on him and he was mine.  I suspect that’s how she got him too.  I am also thankful I’m not a turkey.  Purr.

 

Alright, you have relatives to hug and turkeys to eat, and blessings to count, so I’ll let you go.  Stay well and thank you for listening to me each week.  See you soon.

 

Cousin Itt                                          Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday, December 15, 2022

 

Blog #301                                December 15, 2022

 

Last Friday night, Carol and I went to a neighborhood Italian restaurant for a pizza and salad. Just the two of us.  We had a lovely time and were waited on by a nice young man named Kevin.  He was so pleasant and efficient and friendly that I was about to say, “Kevin, you’re going to make some lucky girl very happy one day.”  But then I thought – maybe he’s going to make some lucky guy very happy instead.  Or a goat.  How am I supposed to know?  And besides, it’s not my business.  So I just asked for the check.

 

Well. they’ve finally done it!  Scientists have finally proven something our grandmothers told us when we were young – that when you go out in cold weather, you are more likely to catch a cold.  A new study has shown that cold air damages the immune responses in our noses and makes it more likely that viruses will be allowed to grow.  See, your Nana was right.  But, according to science, she was wrong about all of the following:

 

·        Crossing your eyes will make them stay crossed.

·        Swimming after eating will give you cramps and you might drown.

·        Eating chocolate will give you acne.

·        Drinking coffee will stunt your growth.

 

When my girls were young, Carol and I had an African-American woman who cleaned our house once a week.  We called her a black woman then, but what did we know?  Her name was Clara.  One time, when my oldest daughter Jennifer was about five, she was sitting at the breakfast table with Clara, who was drinking a cup of coffee.  Jennifer asked if she could have a cup.  “No, Honey,” said Clara.  “Coffee will turn you black.”  True story.

 

One thing my grandparents said must have been true, that thirteen is an unlucky number.  My Grandfather was triskaidekaphobic, which means (Weekly Word) he thought the number 13 was unlucky.  At Thanksgiving or other family gatherings, we had to make sure there were not 13 people at the table, or my grandfather would get up and eat in the kitchen.  Maybe that’s why he divorced my Nana – she must have been the thirteenth.  It certainly was unlucky for her. 

 

Writing that last paragraph just made me think about something.  My paternal grandparents were Grandma and Papa.  My mother’s mother was Nana, but I don’t remember ever calling my mother’s father anything but Sir.  Never Granddad or Poppy or anything else.  I also don’t remember ever getting a hug from him.  I guess he was too busy counting to 13.

 

I woke up last Friday morning to find that Shakespeare had eaten four keys off my computer keyboard.  He ate the H and the K and two control keys I never knew what they were for anyway.  I was very upset with him.

 

Message from S a espeare:  He’s punishing me by not using the H or K in my name.  He’s also punishing me by not letting me near the computer, which means I don’t get to watch any more bird videos.  I’m sorry, Pops.  I really am.  I was just trying to write you a  appy  anu  a card.  Please don’t be mad at me.  Purrty please!  The quality of mercy is not strained. (Merchant of Venice).

 

And speaking of Hanukkah, I went to a shopping center to do a little holiday browsing.  You know, if you’ve seen one shopping center, you’ve seen a mall.

It is not Politically Correct to talk about anyone as fat, but I guess I’ve already gone past that PC line, haven’t I?  Instead of “fat”, we invent little euphemistic phrases like, “He’s not fat, he’s just easier to see.”  And in every mall, there are plenty of people who are really easy to see.  I mean how can some of those people be that horribly obese?  I saw one woman so fat, her belly-button didn’t have lint in it; it had furniture.  I saw one teenaged guy so fat, if he had gone missing, they would have had to use all four sides of the milk carton.  There was an old woman so fat that when Columbus discovered America, he discovered her first.  Go ahead, cancel my Politically Correct Membership Card.  As I've grown older, I've learned that pleasing everyone is impossible, but pissing everyone off is a piece of cake.

 

Last Tuesday I had a colonoscopy.  Of course, I shaved before I went.  I wanted to look nice for the doctor, even though I was pretty sure he wasn’t interested in my face.

 

Don’t go like a bum or be crass

Dress up and look good, show some class

Put on your best face

Even though it’s the case

That they’ll only be watching your  . . .

 

Well, you get the idea. This is my first visit to the G-I guy since I’ve been writing to you, so I guess I’ll have to give this doctor a name.  I’ve decided to call him Dr. Asshole.  It’s descriptive. 

 

I checked in for my procedure and they told me Joe would take me to the room.  I looked where they were pointing and there was Joe, a volunteer only slightly younger than Stonehenge.  With both feet tied together and strapped to a trash truck I could walk faster than Joe.  I could crawl faster than Joe.  Mold could grow down the center of the hallway faster than Joe.  The Arctic Ice Sheet is melting faster than Joe.  I could not stop laughing.

 

I wonder what Carol would have done, Miss Inahurry of 2022.  Yes, the Princess of Lickety Split would probably have tripped the old coot, stepped over him and found the damned thing herself.  And demanded a round table and warm bread.  I love that woman!  The test showed everything was fine.

 

Google tells me there are approximately 15 million Jews in the world, a number which coincides with the number of ways to spell Hanukkah.  Whichever way you spell it, even if you’re missing the H and the K keys, if you celebrate it, have a happy one.

 

Not much funny stuff today, just a lot of stories.  But don’t cancel your subscription to Oyster.  Who else would listen to my stories?  Stay well, count your blessings and show up next week.  Or else!

 

Mic ael                                              Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Thursday, November 24, 2022

 

Blog #298                                November 24, 2022

 

Happy Thanksgiving Day to every one of you and welcome back.  Thanksgiving is a unique and introspective day where we give voice to all the blessings we have.  We are truly thankful for our family and friends; I don’t need to tell you that.  And as for those that we have lost and sorely miss, they are blessings as well. “Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”  That’s a quote, believe it or not, from Dr. Seuss, my favorite poet, and it should remind us to be grateful for the memories that mean so much to us.  We are also thankful for our own lives.  Yes, we may have health issues -- aches, pains or more serious challenges – but look at it this way: we’re doing the best we can, we’re still here and we are way better off than the turkey.  And, yes, there are people who are richer, younger, better-looking.  But we have love and warmth and a wonderful meal to share.  Have a good day, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk to you every week.

 

A few days ago, I was at McDonald’s (duh) with my Diet Coke (duh) and my book (ditto).  Seeing me without a book would be like seeing Pat without Vanna, or Fred without Ethel, or Joy without Whoopi.  Whoopi and Joy!  Sounds like a big party, doesn’t it?  I’d rather be at McDonald’s.

 

And I was, reading a few pages, relaxing and doing the Wordle.  When I was ready to leave, I refilled my soda and went out to my car.  It didn’t start.  Deader than Queen Elizabeth.  I went back inside and called AAA.  It was about 9:45 and they told me a service truck would be there at 11:00.  I know them to be very reliable and accurate, so I calmly and patiently settled down for the wait.  The problem arose at 10:15 when I finished my book.  What was I going to do for 45 minutes?  I do not talk on the phone in a public place, so I decided to read everything online about Crypto Currency.  I knew nothing about it when I started, but after reading for twenty minutes, I discovered two things -- I now knew even less and I now cared even less.  I mean, who really cares if some fast-talking twenty-something just lost $75 billion worth of Gypto-Crypto that he made up to begin with when I’m trying to find a better price on a turkey than Aldi’s $1.09 a pound?

 

Then I read the announcement by the United Nations Populations Fund that the 8-billionth person on the Earth was born last week.  They also announced that the population will peak at 10½ billion around 2080 and then start to decrease.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that by then, there won’t be enough food left on the Earth and the population will decrease because the young people will have to eat the old people.  The UN sent a congratulatory card to Number Eight Billion.

 

Eight Billion – yes you are the winner

You’re a baby and just a beginner

Grow old but not fat

‘Cause if you do that

You’ll surely be Ten Billion’s dinner.

 

Do you think I’m getting weirder?  I think I’m getting weirder.  Maybe I need a shrink.  Have you ever been to a shrink?  Do you know who the first psychiatrist was?  I’ve told you before, but I’ll do it again.  It was Snow White.  Seriously!  When she asked each of her roommates, “Are you Happy?” and six of them said no, she figured they needed some help and she hung up a PSYCHIATRIST shingle on the cottage.  But when customers arrived and noticed that all the people coming out of her office were dwarves, they all said, “She’s not helping their mental problems, she’s just shrinking them.”  And that’s how the term shrink was born.  Aren’t you happy that I give you all of this information?  No?  You’re not Happy?  Go see Snow.

 

I used to go to a shrink.  I like talking to people, as you can tell, and I liked talking to my shrink.  I found it to be quite cathartic.  After all, your psychiatrist will listen more than your spouse or your kids or your friends.  Almost as much as your hair stylist.  The first time I visited Dr. Head, I brought a newspaper to read in the waiting room, and, when I was finished reading, I tossed it into the waste basket.  Then I realized it still had my address label attached, so I retrieved the paper and tore off my name label.  Hey, if you can’t be paranoid in a shrink’s office, where can you?

 

During the first session, the shrink asked what my family was like when I was growing up, and I began to tell him about my lovable lunatic brother and my sad schizophrenic sister.  Wow, he thought he had won the Power Ball jackpot.  He’d never heard of a family so messed up since Morticia and Gomez.  He was as excited as a Vietnamese chef at a dog park.

 

Our Weekly Word is cathartic, which means providing psychological relief through the open expression of strong emotions.  Writing to you is cathartic for me.  It keeps my mental health in tip-top shape.  And if you think this is tip-top, you’re sicker than I am.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Take from my heart all thankfulness (Pericles). I am thankful today too.  I am thankful that 2½ years ago I chose Pops to be my pet human.  The shelter-lady had just asked him if he would accept a three-legged cat, and he said no.  She said, “Ok, just hold this cat for a second,” and then she put me in his arms.  I looked over at his woman.  She looked to be the absolute boss of the family, and I figured if she could train this old man, so could I.  So I flashed my feline cuteness on him and he was mine.  I suspect that’s how she got him too.  I am also thankful I’m not a turkey.  Purr.

 

Alright, you have relatives to hug and turkeys to eat, and blessings to count, so I’ll let you go.  Stay well and thank you for listening to me each week.  See you soon.

 

Cousin Itt                                          Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com