Blog #281                                                   July 28, 2020

 

A few weeks ago, I shared with you some stories about my nutty brother and psychotic sister.  Some of you thought the stories were so bizarre that they couldn’t be true.  Bizarre?  Those stories about my sister burning a dead bird on the ping-pong table and my brother carving his frozen Coke into seven portions – those were only the mildest of stories about them.  I didn’t even mention that my sister, when she was 40, married a 90-year-old farmer, sold the farm and bought a nice house in a suburban subdivision for her, the farmer and the cow.  The cow stayed in the basement, filling it up with cow poop until it died.  After the farmer also died and my sister abandoned the house, the stench of the dead cow and its accumulated excrement caused the city to condemn the property and tear it down.  Or the time two police officers visited my brother’s house to investigate reports that he had a dead woman sitting in a chair in the living room looking out the window.  Insanity didn’t run in my family -- it galloped!

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and not depressed.  I hope you are never depressed, but I know better.  We all have our periods of depression.  Health, money, politics, a dozen other things.  They say the signs of depression are losing appetite or sleeping too much.  I’ve had some depression to deal with, and I’ll tell you this: depression isn’t sleeping too late.  Depression is being told you have a week to live the day after you paid $900 apiece for two tickets to Hamilton, and you know your widow will take some other guy.  Depression isn’t losing weight.  Depression is losing your job and having the employment office tell you the only position for which you are qualified is to manage the Joe Biden Re-Election Campaign.  And happiness is maybe making you smile a little on a depressing Thursday.

 

But it's hard to be happy when you’re hot.  Last week it hit 105^o in St. Louis.  And those weren’t Canadian degrees where you have to divide by nine and subtract your shoe-size.  Those were 105 Degrees American.  It’s so hot out there, one of my daughter’s chickens laid an omelet.  It’s so hot I saw a dog chasing a cat and both were walking.

 

Message from Shakespeare: Fear no more the heat o’ the sun (Cymbeline).  Why is it always the dog chasing the cat?  Most cats I know would rip a dog’s face off just for fun.  A dog may be able to outrun me because I only have three legs, but it sure isn’t going to chase me.  Grrrr!

 

It’s so hot, Adam and Eve traded their fig leaves for ice cubes.  If you have read even a small sample of these blogs, you know that I talk about my wife a lot and that I sometimes pick on her.  Making fun of your wife is as old as Adam and Eve.

 

Hey, God, it’s Adam.  This woman thing you made is always nagging at me about some damned apples.  Didn’t You tell me I was on an apple-free diet?  And now she wants clothes!  And she wants to know on what day You’re going to create Netflix.  Seriously, God? What were You thinking? You could have just created three other guys and a golf course.

 

I just got the mail.  There were two pieces.  The first was the results of my latest blood test.  My cholesterol was absolutely perfect.  The second was a Victoria’s Secret catalog.  I liked that too.

 

My lab reports had me elated

Then Victoria showed up X-rated

It’s so good to know

That my lipids are low

And everything else elevated.

 

Slap me the next time you see me.

 

“Hi, God, it’s Adam again.  I don’t know what to say, God.  I told you what a horrible mistake it was to create woman, but in the past week or so I’ve gotten used to her a little.  I mean she’s annoying and a real pain in the rib, but she’s taken up gardening and I’ve learned how to hunt and we pretty much stay out of each other’s way.  But now she’s gotten persnickety and wants a new cold shoulder fig-leaf outfit.  Something called Figtoria’s Secret.  And she wants a nicer donkey – something German.

 

Weekly Word:  Someone who is persnickety is fussy and places too much emphasis on trivial things. 

 

“Hey, God.  It’s Adam again.  That woman you made just gathered some fruit and wants me to ask if You have a round table.  There’s only two of us on the whole planet and she thinks she needs a reservation!  Oh, and she wants it not too near the serpent.  Jesus Christ!  Oh, You like that, God?  That Jesus Christ thing?  I just made it up.  You like it so much that you’re going to name Your Son that?  Catchy.”

 

Ok, it’s about time for me to get hit by lightning.  Yom Kippur cannot come too soon.  Actually, there was another piece of mail I didn’t tell you about.  It was addressed to Resident.  Here’s what it said, word for word, no joke: Dear Jesus, we pray that you will bless someone in this home spiritually, physically and financially.

         

Do they think Jesus lives here?  Who knows?  I looked everywhere.  I even looked in the bathtub.  He could be taking a walk.  I’ve heard of Dear John letters and Dear Santa and Dear Abby, but Dear Jesus?  I should be careful what I write about Jesus.  He could sneak out of wherever He’s hiding and read it.  And my luck – I’d be the first person He doesn’t forgive.

 

Well, you’ll forgive me, won’t you, if I apologize for anything I’ve said in the last 281 weeks that has shocked, insulted, scandalized or disappointed you?  I’ve been married fifty-five years, so I’m good at apologies, but come to think of it, I retract the apology.  I am who I am and you get what you get.  I’m not apologizing to anyone.  Except Carol.  So come back next week and be shocked and scandalized some more. I know you love it.  So count your blessings, stay well and be careful of the heat.  I’ll see you next week.

 

Adam                                      Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

  

 

Blog #280                                         July 21, 2022

 

I had a little eye issue this week, so I visited Dr. Retina.  In the last three years, he has successfully treated me for a couple of serious issues.  He is a bumptious bastard who exudes genius and superiority and arrogance.  I love him.  He gives me a sense of comfortable confidence when I put my eyes (figuratively and literally) in his hands.  When I called and revealed my symptoms, they got me in on one day’s notice and dealt with me quickly and efficiently.  First, I visited with several techs, each of whom had a different test or scan to take, and I told each one my long story of symptoms.  When all the tests were completed, I sat in an examination room and awaited God himself.  He came in, looking dapper and handsome as he always does.  “How are you doing?” he asked.  Well, I said, do you want to hear my story?  He gazed at me with his holy eyes and replied, “Well, you can tell me your story or I can just examine your eyes and tell you what’s wrong.”  Don’t you just love somebody who’s that cocky?

 

Our Weekly Word, bumptious, means conceited, arrogant and cocky.  Just my kind of guy!

 

Hi there.  I’m back.  And so, apparently, are you.  Welcome, and let’s get started.  I hope you’re feeling chipper.  I came home from visiting Dr. Retina and was met by my lovely wife.  We started to compare stories of the day, but after ten seconds her phone rang.  She answered it, said “Hold on” to whoever it was, and looked at me.  You see, I like talking to my wife.  I like to tell her about the people I have met or how my appointment went or how many times I took the wrong exit on the highway.  What I hate most is getting shoved aside by a phone call from one of her over-talkative friends.  You know who you are.  She recognized my feeling and started to tell the caller she’d call back.  But instead, she looked at me and asked, “Are you going to clean up?”  Clean up?  Did I look dirty?  Well, I knew how to translate that simple question after five and a half decades of marriage.  Are you going to clean up? translates to, “I really would rather talk to this person than you, but I know you don’t like it, so if you have something to do, do it now.”

 

Although I make fun of my wife, you all know I would do anything for her, even clean up when I wasn’t dirty just so she could yabber with her friends.  You still know who you are.  Or give her my socks.  We went to a movie and Carol reached into her purse for a pair of hospital socks to keep her feet warm.  You must have some of those, don’t you?  They’re the ones with rubber on the bottom so when you walk around in the hospital you won’t slip and break whatever you haven’t broken already.  I love long sentences. She has at least one pair of every color of these socks, and the sad truth is that she got them all from the various times I was in the hospital.  I would be lying in the hospital bed and the phone would ring.  “How do you feel? When are you getting out? Grab me a few pairs of socks. I like pink.”  But when she searched at the movie, she realized she had forgotten socks so I removed mine and handed them to her.  Is that love or what?  I have a warm heart.  And cold feet.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  I have no more … stockings than legs, nor more shoes than feet (The Taming of the Shrew).  I do have more shoes than feet, and if Pops got me two pairs of hospital socks, I’d have one sock left over to use as a pillow.  I like pink too.  Purr.

 

Have I told you my wife is speedy at everything?  She likes to call it “efficient”.  Let me put it this way -- if she had been married to Jules Verne, he would have made it around the world in a week.  Yesterday we were at the grocery store and she was running the aisles like a kangaroo with a hot coal in her pouch.  I mean she was in a New York hurry!  And all the while she was talking to me: “Why aren’t these bags over here? It would save so much time. Why are these here? Why aren’t those there? Get that old lady out of my way. Go stand in line at the deli so I don’t have to wait.”  Then she saw somebody she knew and stopped in the aisle to talk for twenty minutes while I stood around shuffling my feet and trying to figure out the difference between a rutabaga and a turnip

 

There are so many TV, cable, Netflix, Hulu, Disney, Apple, Amazon and other streaming services that there are literally thousands of new shows to choose from.  Yet, there are still some old shows that have been around seemingly forever.  The longest running scripted show that is still on the air, The Simpsons, has run for over 30 seasons.  I have never seen one episode, but I’m guessing Bart Simpson has never matured.  Neither, most likely, have the people who watch it.  But there are plenty of programs that have grown older and have decided to change their names to reflect their extreme longevity.  Modern Family is now Ancient Family.  Blue Bloods has been changed to Thin Bloods.  Walking Dead has become Barely Alive.  There’s Hawaii Nine-O, Grey Haired Anatomy and Wheelchair of Fortune.

 

I don’t watch any of them.  Groucho Marx said, “I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go into the library and read a good book.”  I whole-heartedly agree.

 

To waste my whole day is a crime

Just tuned in to Netflix or Prime.

I’d rather be home

With a book or a poem

Now that’s a good use of my time.

 

And it looks like I’ve wasted enough of your time today.  It’s because I’m bumptious.  Stay well, count your blessings and stay cool.  I’ll see you next week.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

Blog #279                                July 14, 2022

 

When my daughters were in town a few weeks ago, we were all rummaging through a box of old pictures.

 

·        Oh, look at my hair, my wife screeched with glee.

·         I still have that shirt, I confessed. 

·        Who are those people? my girls would ask.

 

It was great fun.  We came across a few nostalgic pictures of my brother and sister.  There are two kinds of crazy people.  I grew up with one of each.  The first kind knows he’s crazy, the second thinks everybody else is crazy.  My brother (Richard, 1940-2001) was the first kind.  Everything about him was weird, bizarre and amusing.  He restricted himself to having one Diet Coke a week, so each Monday, he would go to 7-Eleven and buy a large Diet Coke and put it in the freezer.  Then each morning for a week, he would remove the frozen Coke, slice off a seventh portion, let it melt, and drink it.  I could give you dozens of other examples, but in sum, he was harmless, lovable and entertaining.  He knew what he was and how he was perceived, and he enjoyed the part.  He was truly a “character”, and I miss him a lot.

 

My sister (Nancy, 1939-2002) was the second kind.  She was sad and psychotic and believed she was the smartest and sanest person in the world.  She was hapless and helpless and unbearable and delusional, regularly stating that she had spoken to the United Nations or the Pope.  I do not miss her one bit.

 

The only humorous thing I remember about my sister was the time she discovered a dead bird in our back yard on Groby Road.  She was probably thirteen; I was 6.  She, in her surreal belief that she could save the world, decided to start by resurrecting this bird.  It was deader than Prohibition, but she thought she could warm it back to life.  Get a shoebox, fill it with cotton, insert bird and a hairdryer.  Place the shoebox on the ping-pong table and plug in the hairdryer.  When the firemen arrived, the ping-pong table was in flames.  Luckily, no-one was hurt – except the poor, dead bird which had been fricasseed.

 

Alright, so much for our little trip to the Addams Family I grew up in.  Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re well and making your way through this crazy world.  It’s getting so bad that truckloads of Americans are now sneaking into Mexico.  Did you go last Monday to a 7-Eleven store?  It was July 11, aka 7/11, so on their eponymous day, they gave all their customers a free Slushy or Slurpee or Slimy or whatever they call it?  Did you get yours? 

 

I’ll tell you how nuts it is out there. Today I saw a guy with a parrot!  Yes, a parrot.  I got up this morning at 7:15 and headed out to McDonald’s accompanied by my Wordle and my Balzac.  Why is it that every time I say Balzac, I think of Hermione Gingold?  Honoré de Balzac was a nineteenth century French author that I have never read, so I decided to give him a try.  I like him.

 

After that, I needed to go to Best Buy, but Best Buy operates under the rude presumption that all of its customers sleep late, and does not open until 11:00.  I went home, spent a while writing some pithy paragraphs for you and then went to Best Buy. 

 

As I was waiting in the checkout line, I noticed the parrot, a small but extremely beautiful and colorful creature, perched upon the shoulder of a customer as he walked through the store.  Is there such a thing as a Support Parrot?  If so, that was it.  I looked it up when I got home and discovered that service parrots are not uncommon and can provide emotional support by mimicking comforting words.  There you go.  Instantly, the bizarre mind that I apparently share with my siblings, Lurch and Morticia, screamed “limerick”, and 45 seconds later, I had this:

 

I tend to be quite melancholy

Whenever I’m not with my Polly

She smiles and she preens

While I feed her Saltines

And her voice keeps me stable and jolly.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Come, come you paraquito, answer me directly (Henry IV, Part 1).  A support bird?  I’ll support that bird on the ends of my nails.  Who could give more support than a soft, loving, adorable cat?  Feed me that stupid parrot!  Put it in a shoebox with a hairdryer.  Meow.

 

Years ago, before Covid, I used to tutor at the County Jail, and I would always come up with these weird ideas.  You may have noticed that I am overflowing with weird ideas.  These involved the inmates participating in an exhibition of their talents.  No, not breaking and entering -- singing and dancing.  There must be a lot of talent among the prison population.  We could have a show and call it Broadway Felonies or something.  Or maybe a game show like Let’s Make a Plea Deal or You Bet Your Life Sentence.  Or maybe we’ll just do a talent show.  We’ll call it So You Think You Can Sing Sing.

 

Our Weekly Word is pithy, which means concise and forcefully expressive.  Here’s a pithy saying: The world is an assemblage of fools and knaves.  Balzac

said that.  I told you I liked him.  I’d tell you that I look these weekly words up in a dictionary, but that’s no longer true.  I recently read Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck, a record of a road-trip which he took in 1960 with Charley, his Standard French Poodle.  He took along as source material several dictionaries, a set of encyclopedias and other reference books.  How the world has changed!  Do you own an encyclopedia?  Do you even have a dictionary?  Reference books?  Of course not.  The Encyclopedia Britannica used to look nice in the bookshelf, but now you just have Google in your pocket and me every Thursday.  That’s all you need.

 

And what you need now is a rest, so I’ll stop.  But not for long.  Shakespeare and I will be back next week with more humorous stories, silly puns, pithy comments and a new word to learn.  Stay well until then and count your blessings.

 

Michael                          Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 Blog # 278                                        July 7, 2022

 

Each year, to celebrate her birthday, my wife has lunch or dinner with every woman west of the Mississippi.  This can take some time, and the season of celebration often is so protracted that it no longer becomes obvious which of her birthdays is being celebrated.  What is certain, however, is that I am left alone for dinner.  Sometimes I bring in Chinese.  I am convinced that all the Chinese food in America is made in Toledo and shipped to a million outlets nationwide.  This time, however, I eschewed the moo shu, soured on the sweet and sour and didn’t want the wonton.  So I opened a can of sardines.  Yes, I know to most of you the thought of eating sardines is as appealing as a baboon’s butt – but, I like them.  Sardines are named after the island of Sardinia, where they are plentiful.  People eat about thirty billion of the little fellows each year.  I only wanted six, and found them in my cupboard conveniently packed – like sardines -- in a little can surrounded by olive oil.

 

With my sardines, I wanted some toast.  The problem with toast, of course, is that it requires the employment of a toaster oven, a device that has given me serious trouble on earlier occasions.  But we had acquired a new one, and I hoped this one might be easier to understand.  In a fit of dauntless optimism, I grabbed two slices of bread, frisbeed them in, closed the door and began to examine the machine’s dashboard which consisted of four dials around which were a bunch of French words next to a corresponding number of English words.  French!  Why did she have to buy a French toaster oven?  There were also some large numbers which I assumed were temperatures.  Some were in Fahrenheit and some in Centigrade.  There were not, however, any buttons for off, on, stop or start and no timers.  I started playing around with the dials.  You’ve heard the old saw about a million monkeys and a million typewriters?  Well, nobody remembers typewriters, but you get the concept and I must have been the lucky monkey, because I was surprisingly able to make two things happen – light and sound.  The light was accompanied by heat and the sound was most likely a fan.  I somehow made them go on at the same time and, in a short while, my bread became toast.  Easy enough.

 

Then I tried to turn it off.  I could not find any combination of dials that would cause both the light and the sound to go off at the same time.  Do I know anybody who speaks French?  Do I know anybody who speaks Centigrade?  “There is no-one so lost as he who searches for a way where there is no way.”  I thought about calling my wife and asking her how to turn the damn thing off, but if I called her, then all the girls at dinner would laugh at what a fool I was.  Instead, I unplugged the entire contraption, ate my dinner and ran to the computer to write this so that all of you would laugh at what a fool I was.  What a fool I am!

 

My Princess came home, instantly noticed the unplugged appliance and said, “Couldn’t figure out the toaster oven, could you?  What a fool you are.”  God, I hate when she’s right!  “No, I could not figure it out,” I said. “It’s French!”  “Well, maybe it’ll make a funny story for your blog.”  God, I hate when she’s right!

 

Message from Shakespeare:  He hath eaten me out of house and home (Henry IV, Part 1).  What a fool he is!  Toast is above his pay-grade.  The only thing he’s good at is opening a can of sardines or a can of Fancy Feast Salmon Pâté.  And he’s kind of good at scratching.  And rubbing my forehead.  Purrrrrr!

 

Following will be the last visit to my Address Quiz.  On what street, lane, avenue, etc. do the following live?

 

1.     Oscar and Big Bird

2.     Daddy Warbucks

3.     Dr. Peter Burns, Amanda Woodward and Dr. Michael Mancini

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and that you had a nice Independence Day to celebrate the birth of our nation and the first truly American tradition, the furniture sale.  George and Martha bought a love seat.  Lafayette bought an accent chair.  Don’t you get tired of the TV ads for furniture sales?

 

·        We’re going out of business

·        It’s tax time and if we don’t sell it, we’ll have to pay taxes on it

·        It’s President’s Day

·        It’s Fourth of July

·        No money down

·        We’re going out of business again

·        It’s the biggest sale ever

·        No payments until we find Jimmy Hoffa

·        We lost so much money on that sale that we have to go out of business again

 

Welcome to Furniture Den

We’ll triple the prices and then

We’ll cut them in half

And just for a laugh

We’ll go out of business again.

 

Movie Review:  Elvis was good.  Tom Hanks as Colonel Parker was exquisitely despicable and Austin Butler as Elvis was talented and super cute.  Go see it. 

 

Answers:

1.     Sesame Street

2.     Easy Street

3.     Melrose Place

 

I don’t believe in omens or fortune-telling or parapsychology or magic.  I’m a scientist, after all, and yet – well, something happened today that has me a bit shaken.  Some years ago, my son-in-law Robert bought me a bobble-head made to look like me, standing in a golf shirt holding my putter.  That’s PUTTER!  You have a filthy mind.  Today I moved the little figurine from one spot to another.  The head fell off and rolled under my chair.  The head that looked exactly like me!  Images of Marie Antoinette and Ichabod Crane flashed through my startled brain.  It was very spooky!  Does that mean this is my last blog?  Who knows?  But rest assured, your dauntless monkey with the typewriter will try again and see what pops out next week.   

 

I seem to have used the word dauntless twice this week.  It must be our Weekly Word.  It means fearless and unintimidated.  Who knew?  I thought it just meant lacking daunt.  Anyway, stay well, count your blessings and remain dauntless.  I’ll see you next week.

 

Michael                                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com