Blog #257                                February 10, 2022

 

I was so busy last week, that I forgot to talk about Groundhog Day.  It was a week ago Wednesday and here’s what happened:

 

***Punxsutawney Phil came out of his hole and saw his shadow.  We will be in for six more weeks of winter.  And how right he was!  I feel guilty that I left for Florida just before the terrible blizzard that has buried my friends in St. Louis under a foot of snow.  Sorry about that:

 

I know that you’re all in a bind

And it certainly weighs on my mind

But when I saw the snow

I decided to go

And leave all you suckers behind.

 

***Shakespeare came out of his litter box and did not see my shadow.  That meant we won’t be home for another ten days.  Poor baby!  I left you alone for two weeks.  I love you Shakey.  I even called this blog Limerick Cat just for you.  I love all animals (except mosquitos) and I hate how the human race has treated them.  While driving around here in Florida, I saw a sign.  It was a green sign, which always indicates some official message like how far it is to the next town or which dead Highway Patrol officer some bridge is dedicated to.  This sign said “WILDLIFE VIEWING AREA” with an arrow and an image of binoculars.  It’s a sad sign really.  Its obvious translation is: “A few miles down this road we actually found a place with a few animals left.  Bring your binoculars because there aren’t that many and they stay pretty much away from the road.  And hurry!  There’s a new Cracker Barrel coming next spring.”  Pretty soon the only animals left will be at the zoos and no-one will remember how they evolved or became extinct.

 

Then we wandered over to an up-scale, woke kind of grocery store.  There was a cooler case with a sign that read “Five-Star Animal Welfare Rating”.  Ok, the sign piqued my curiosity, and I went over to inspect just how humanely the animals had been treated.  They looked dead to me.  Not only dead, but dismembered and shrink-wrapped.  One package of shrink-wrapped body parts said “Fresh Young Chicken”.  Seriously? If that doesn’t bring up a scene of intense, bloody cruelty, nothing does.  Here’s a gaggle of fresh young chicks in the prime of youth with their whole lives to look forward to – snatched, plucked, butchered and pulled to pieces.  Do visions of Jeffrey Epstein come to mind?  At least we were kind to these “Fresh Young Chicks”.  We played Mozart for them and old Foghorn Leghorn cartoons before we ripped their bodies to pieces.  How thoughtful!  Pass the barbecue sauce.

 

Message from Shakespeare: Nature teaches beasts to know their friends (Coriolanus).  If he loved animals so much, he wouldn’t have left me alone for two weeks.  I hope that stupid groundhog bites the old man in his sanctimonious butt.  And I hope he comes home soon.  Purr.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and digging yourselves out from the snow.  We’ll drive home from Florida tomorrow and Saturday. Let’s see what else happened on Groundhog Day.

 

***Joy Behar came out of her condo and saw her shadow.  That means two weeks without Whoopi, who said the Holocaust was about man’s inhumanity to man.  You notice she didn’t say anything about woman’s inhumanity.  Go figure.

 

We’re down here in Florida for a couple of weeks because I hate the cold, and, as I age, I seem to be getting less tolerant of it.  Why did God have to invent winter?  As a contrast?  John Steinbeck wrote, “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”  Maybe God made winter so we could marvel at the beauty of snow.  Or maybe He just wanted to make us shiver.

 

And yes, I called God a He.  Do I need to apologize to Whoopi for that?  It seems that God has been called Our Father, Our King for almost 6,000 years, but in the past 25 years we have changed God to Our Parent, Our Ruler.  Why can’t God be a man?  Mother Nature hasn’t been changed to Parent Nature.  Have you ever heard of Parent Goose stories?  Or Parent Theresa?  Or the Siblings Grimm?  With all the scandals going on nowadays, I guess it’s not so good to be a man anyway.  So let’s just pray to Whoever for milder weather.  Amen!  Oops, I guess I should have said – A-person!

 

And speaking of The Brothers Grimm, why isn’t it the Grimm Brothers?  It just doesn’t sound right.  Have you ever heard of the Brothers Everly?  Or the Brothers Righteous?  Or the Brothers Smothers?

 

***Joe Biden came out from hiding under his desk and saw nothing.  The room was too crowded with potential Supreme Court nominees.  Did you know that the President has a new cat?  Its name is Willow.  I’m pretty sure it’s a black female.

 

***Dr. Fauci came out from behind his KN95 mask and saw the future: sixteen more years of wearing masks.  I don’t even remember what my friends look like.  Sometimes, I just go through all my old picture albums so I can memorize the faces I will never see again.  Do I have to get a new Driver’s License photo taken while wearing a mask?  Will my grandchildren’s high-school yearbook pictures show them with a mask?  Twenty years from now, they’ll look in the Yearbook and say, “I remember Todd.  He wore a yellow mask with a red Smiley Face.”

 

The Weekly Word is sanctimonious, which means acting as if you were morally superior.  I guess I’m guilty of that once in a while.  Also guilty of being grumpy, but sometimes I think you like it when I’m grumpy because I pick on the same things that frustrate or confuse you as well. 

 

Parent Theresa once said, “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.”  Thanks for joining me today, and even though I was grumpy and sanctimonious, I hope I left you a little better and happier.  At least you got a smile or two, didn’t you? Admit it and come back next week for some more.  Stay well and warm and count your blessings.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com