Blog #319                                         April 20, 2023

 

Cue the marching bands, alert the international news media, launch the fireworks.  A new bagel store has opened in St. Louis County!   It opened last Saturday, and my wife let it be known that she wanted some of those bagels as soon as physically possible.  So I was there at 8:00.  And there was the owner, standing outside, apologizing to everyone that the bagel machine had broken down.  Somehow, that reminded me of the joke about the guy who comes home and tells his wife he was fired from the pickle factory for sticking his penis in the pickle-slicer.  Are you hurt, asked the wife?  No.  What happened to the pickle slicer, she asked?  They fired her too.

 

Sorry!  Anyway, the owner was giving everyone a free bagel from the few he still had.  I brought it home and Carol liked it.  Try again, she exhorted, so Sunday I was there at 8:00 once more.  The line out the door was 40 people long on a cold and windy morning.  I went to McDonald’s instead, got my soda, did the wordle – DWELT.  Then I drove back to the store.  There were only six people waiting outside, so I got out and joined the line.  In about ten minutes, I made it to the door and walked inside where I was amazed to see a line of 75 people snaking back and forth from wall to wall waiting for a stupid bagel.  It’s a bagel, People, not a Taylor Swift ticket!  I used my extensive mathematical training and quickly calculated that, with 75 people ahead of me, the ETB (estimated time of bagel) was way beyond my LAP (limited amount of patience) and I left.  It’s a bagel!

 

It’s a boy!  That’s what Charley, my 15-year-old granddaughter texted me last Friday.  Charley has received an electronic doll (automated infant simulator) that she has to take care of all weekend as part of her Domestic Science Class, which we, in the Dark Ages, used to call Home Economics.  If she ignores the little brat, it will report her to the teacher.  If she doesn’t feed it on time or change its diaper or swaddle the thing properly, it will rat on her faster than Michael Cohen. I’m not sure whether the purpose of this childcare exercise is to give the high-schoolers experience in childcare, or to discourage them from ever considering giving birth to a whining, screaming, peeing little monster in the first place.

 

It stayed up all night whimpering

And threw up when I tried to sing

All day it would cry

And it peed in my eye

Whoever would want such a thing?

 

I think the whole exercise will eliminate more children than the abortion pill.  Last Sunday was Easter, the day when all Christians celebrate the resurrection of a Jewish carpenter whose message was eternal peace and love and, in whose name, Christians have slaughtered every Jew they could find for twenty centuries.  Go figure.  Between Passover and Easter, I hope that all of you Christians and Jews had a wonderful holiday weekend.  And for those of you whose religions I have not yet insulted, there’s always next week.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling fit as Jack LaLanne in his prime.  We went out to dinner last week, ten of us, to celebrate a birthday.  Do you realize how hard it is to find an acceptable table for ten?  It can’t be too close to the front door (too cold) or the kitchen door (too noisy).  And this guy can’t hear out of his left ear so he can’t sit to the right of that girl who talks softly.  And the table has to be round.  And no-one wants to face the wall, so all the girls have to move to one side and all the guys to the other.  And he cannot sit next to her because they sat next to each other last week.  I’m telling you, it’s no wonder the Jews spent forty years wandering in the desert.  The Gentiles would have made it out in a week, but the Hebrews were busy figuring out should I go to the right.  No, you go the right.  I’ll go the left and meet you under the cactus, but not before we eat lunch.  And I don’t want to sit too close to the manna.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  I drink to the general joy of the whole table (Macbeth).  I don’t know exactly when I was born and I don’t remember my Mama Cat, but Pops decided I should have the same birthday as the Shakespeare guy who uses my name.  So next Saturday will be my 4^th birthday.  I’ll bet Pops gets me a cookie or something.  He’s so predictable.  Purr.

 

You know by now that I am a sesquipedalianist, so you are expecting a Weekly Word.  Let’s just make it sesquipedalianist which means a person who uses big words.  I guess it’s the only word that just by saying it makes you one.

 

I read recently that the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris is set to re-open in December after the cataclysmic fire that occurred four years ago this week.  Notre Dame is one of the most meaningful places I have ever experienced.  Carol and I went to Paris several years ago and visited Notre Dame.  I was so affected by its majesty that I went back the next day alone, except for a few dozen penitents, worshippers and tourists.  There was some kind of old music softly playing somewhere, the kind of music you would expect in such a place of unbounded reverence.  I looked up into the vacant vastness of the cathedral expecting somehow to see the face of Quasimodo peeking from behind the ornate stonework.  I stayed for 45 minutes.  I am not a Catholic, but it was a moment full of history and Godliness for me.  I never saw the Hunchback, but I believe to this day that he saw me.  I hope they can restore Notre Dame to the center of awe and worship it has been for centuries.

 

And I hope you will return next week to this center of foolishness and fun.  At least it’s fun for me.  Stay well and count your blessings.  See you next week.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com