Blog #255                                January 27, 2022

 

Covid permitting, Carol and I are planning to drive to Florida to visit friends and get warm.  We will spend a night in a hotel in Macon, Georgia.  I dread it.  The last hotel we visited was brand new, so new that they should have put a sign in each room that said:

 

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR

OLD PEOPLE

 

Unlocking the door was the first challenge.  There’s this little card and you don’t stick it into anything.  You just flash it in precisely the right place at absolutely the right angle and it opens.  Well, it’s supposed to.  I was about to ask the desk clerk for the proper Feng Shui when Carol finally got it to work.  She’s good with things that are shaped like a credit card.  Once the door was unlocked, you had to open it.  It weighed 800 pounds.  I had to get two bell-hops and Arnold Schwarzenegger to help me push.  Who designed this place?  Mengele?  Then you have to turn on the lights.  There was no light-switch.  What happened to light switches?  Instead, there was a white, plastic plate with a picture of a light-bulb on it and, if you touched it in the right place, some lights got brighter or dimmer.  All I wanted was to turn on the light, not engineer a New Year’s Eve light show.  And, of course, the likelihood that we would figure out the television set was the same as the likelihood of Joy Behar asking Donald Trump to the prom.  And don’t even get me started about how to work the shower.

 

Why would you replace a thing as simple and obvious as a $2 light switch with a $90 touch-plate with arrows and pictures of light bulbs that only Elon Musk knows how to operate?  It was obvious that all these highfalutin, modern gizmos cost a lot of money, but don’t worry – the hotel makes it up by using toilet paper as skinny as Scotch Tape.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Every toy is the prologue to some great amiss (Hamlet). I just got a new electronic toy.  Pops bought me a fish that flops its tail when I grab it.  I guess I’m supposed to be fooled into believing it’s a real fish, like I’m an idiot.  What does he think I am, a dog?  Purr.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and making your way through the mind-numbing farrago of this high-tech world.  I’m not convinced that all this technology can improve on the old, reliable things they purport to replace – simple things like light switches, paper towels or light bulbs.  Take these new Alexa things.  My wife has an Alexa.  “Alexa, add avocados to my shopping list.”  And my wife has Siri.  “Siri, where is the nearest Shake Shack?”  But neither of them can compete with the old reliable Honey.  “Honey, come open this jar.  Honey, can you get that bowl off the top shelf?  Honey, drive me to the bridge game; it’s raining.  Honey, can you turn up the heat?  Honey, get in the car; we’re driving 20 miles to a new restaurant to get a hamburger and fries.

 

When Shake Shack came to town, we just HAAAAD to go.  FOMAB, right?  Fear Of Missing A Burger.  I mean, how could we allow a new restaurant to come to town and not eat there before the first ketchup spill had dried on the floor?  (And don’t tell me it’s catsup.  Ketchup is what normal people put on their fries.  Catsup is what strange people from Long Island put on their scrambled eggs.)  So we drove twenty miles.  I like Italian food better than burgers and fries, and I especially like Sicilian food with lots of olive oil and lemon and garlic.  A Sicilian restaurant is an Italian restaurant with pictures of criminals in the Men’s Room.  They usually have Marlon Brando and Al Pacino in poses from The Godfather and James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano.  Why do they display pictures of murderers and gangsters?  Are they proud of them?  Do you go to a Jewish deli and see pictures of Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein in the MENS room?  Do German restaurants have pictures of Hitler? 

 

I had a physical this week.  First, a nurse took my blood.  I hate needles.  She told me not to worry – it’s just a little prick.  Then a different nurse gave me my flu shot.  No big deal – just a little prick.  Then the doctor came in to do a prostate test.  He told me to lower my shorts.  I looked at him and said, “If you say it’s just a little prick, I’m wrapping that stethoscope around your neck.”

 

Over all these weeks, I have offered you an eclectic selection of topics intended to make you laugh or curse or fall asleep.  But I don’t think I have ever talked about guns, and I don’t really want to talk about them now, except the image of children with guns is always in the news.  When I was in business, I had a crew of workmen, loyal, long-time employees whom I got to know very well.  I knew, for instance, that our work would slow down in November because all my guys would be out for deer season.  I hate guns and I love animals, but I reluctantly understood that they were all dedicated gun-advocates.  At one Holiday Party, I asked Ernie if he had gotten his deer this year.  He said that he had indeed bagged a deer and so did his nine-year-old son.  He had yelled at his son and felt bad about it, so he bought the kid a rifle.  What, I wondered, would he get if he had really treated the boy badly?

 

Last week I was really a sorehead

And I smacked my poor kid in the forehead

So I bought him with love

A new baseball glove,

A bike and a nuclear warhead.

 

Nine-year-olds with guns!  What can I say?

 

Farrago is our Weekly Word, and it means a confused mixture, a hodgepodge.  Kind of like this silly blog sometimes.  Hey, where else can you read about guns, hotels, ketchup and little pricks?  With that image fresh in your mind, I’ll say goodbye.  Please stay well and count your blessings.  See you next week.

 

Michael                          Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com