Blog #407                                December 26, 2024

 

The Penguin Classics edition of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is 1,276 pages long.  As you may remember, I am reading it as a side book, four pages a day.  On page 454 is the following: ‘Punctuality”, said Monte Cristo, ‘is the politeness of kings.’  I have not seen that quote since my high-school yearbook.  It was the quip that the editors placed under my yearbook photo.  Apparently, they couldn’t think of anything nice to say about me except that I was on time.

 

And some of them still don’t have much nice to say about me.  At my 25^th reunion, a girl came up to me and said, “I remember you.”  At my 40^th, the same girl said, “I think I remember you.  You were taller.”  At my 50^th, that very same girl said, “I thought you were dead.” 

 

I had a business partner who was always late – always.  If we had a 2:00 meeting, he would show up at 2:30.  Of course, it aggravated me for years until I decided to use that information to my benefit.  I began to calculate how late he would be for a meeting and I would arrive at the calculated time.  That worked and resulted in my being right on time for the meeting.  And now it’s Thursday morning, and here I am.  And there you are, right on time.  Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are well.  Yesterday was Christmas Day as well as the beginning of Hanukkah.  Happy Holidays!  May your Christmas star or your Hanukkah candles twinkle with good health and good cheer.

 

I gave Shakespeare a holiday present.  It’s just the cap from a bottle of pills, but it rolls on the floor and he chases it.  He thinks it’s a mouse.  He’s a good boy.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible (Julius Caesar).  Pops got me a great Hanu-cat present.  It’s white and it’s round and I chase it around the floor, pretending it’s a mouse.  It makes Pops happy to think I’m that stupid.  He’s a good boy.  Purr.

 

What should we talk about?  How about trash.  Each day I take the small amount of trash generated by two old folks and a cat, bag it up and throw it down the trash chute, where it descends to the nether reaches of Hell or the local landfill – I’m not sure which.  I recycle paper (mostly junk mail) and cardboard (mostly Amazon boxes) by throwing them in a separate container.  Pretty simple, actually.  Not in California!  Steph, my California daughter, has seven containers – paper, plastic, glass, metal, organic, batteries and mixed.  The last time we visited, Carol was so afraid of putting something in the wrong container that she packed up her trash and brought it home in our suitcase.  Totally true.

 

Jennifer, my North Carolina daughter, has an even more complicated system.  She has chickens, so you have to decide between compost, trash, recycle and chickens.  One afternoon she decided to give last night’s leftover eggplant parmesan to her birds.  Who feeds their chickens eggplant parmesan?  But before she carried it out to the coop, she saw me and asked if I wanted some.  I don’t eat eggplant when it’s the main course, let alone the garbage, but I told her I was grateful that I was mentioned in the same category as the poultry.  I guess that puts me just above compost.  Hey, as long as I know my place.  They also serve who only stand and cluck.  And yes, the chickens will eat leftover chicken.  I think there’s some biblical injunction against that (“You shall not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk” Exodus 23:19), but the last time we showed a Bible to the chickens, they ate it.

 

Hey, where else can you can get Milton quotes and Bible quotes while talking about chicken food?   

 

Last Saturday was December 21^st, the shortest day of the year.  I woke up and tried to write you a limerick:

 

I’m writing a limerick here

But I might not get finished, I fear

I’d best start a rhyme

Lest I run out of time

‘Cause today:  Shortest Day of the . .

 

See, I told you.  I didn’t even have time to finish the limerick.

 

Next Tuesday is New Year’s Eve.  In previous years, when we were younger and richer, we would don our tuxes and our jewels and go out to hobnob with our friends.  Lots of wine, expensive food and dancing.  I would hug the men and buss the women and give my wife a big, well-deserved kiss.  But that was then.  We no longer lead the lifestyle of the rich and famous.  More like the modest and quiet. 

 

There will be no wine for me, certainly no jewels.  We might not even stay up till midnight.  But one thing I won’t give up – an Auld Lang Syne dance and a kiss for my beautiful wife.  She’s the best!

 

Much of 2024 was about as pleasant as a toothache, but the Fox Clan made it through without too much kvetching and whining.  And I only got one year older even though it feels like eight.  And The View has not been expanded to two hours.  Oh, tidings of Whoopi and Joy, Whoopi and Joy.  I’m rambling here, but just let me go on; it usually works out well.  I know you think there is method to my madness, but, mostly, there is just madness.  Let’s see where this takes us

 

Here’s a little lexical curiosity for you.  You know the Three Rs of our elementary education (Reading, Writing, Rithmetic).  Isn’t it interesting that the Three R’s stand for three words, only one of which starts with R?  No wonder there is so much illiteracy.

 

Our Weekly Word is lexical, which means pertaining to words or vocabulary.  And, of course, I like learning new words every week and sharing them with you.

“It is always in season for old men to learn,” said Aeschylus, an ancient Greek playwright.  Which begs the question: why should someone who WRITES a play be called a playWRIGHT? 

 

Time to go, and I’m always on time.  Stay well, count your blessings and have a Happy New Year.  See you next year.  Be punctual.

 

Michael                                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

Blog #406                                December 19, 2024

 

Drones.  Big drones.  Drones the size of SUVs.  They are large, fulgent and mysterious.   Are they from Iran?  Are they from A Galaxy Far Far Away?  Are we being invaded by aliens?  The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said “The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.”  He also said, recently, that if he were an alien come to Earth to observe the human race, he wouldn’t have chosen New Jersey.

 

Well, have no fears.  Our government will handle it.  The Army, the Air Force, the CIA, Homeland Security, Planned Parenthood – somebody knows what it’s all about and they will inform and protect us.  Except that’s not happening, at least on Saturday when I’m writing this.  No one knows, no one is concerned, no one wants to tell us anything.  It’s all in our imagination.  The IRS can find a dollar and a half from 2003 that we haven’t paid tax on, but the government cannot follow a flying object the size of a bus.  What happened to radar, sonar, J-dar?  I guarantee you, if Taylor Swift were in one of those drones, they’d know.   

 

I have been researching the actress Helen Hunt.  She is 61, went to UCLA, was married to Hank Azaria and won an Academy Award for As Good as it Gets.  I’m doing this because I decided to call my Congresswoman’s office to get an answer to this drone mystery.  When I politely asked for an explanation, the nice assistant told me I could go to Helen Hunt for it.  I sure hope she answers the phone.

 

Message from Shakespeare – Hell is empty and all the devils are here (The Tempest).  It sure seems like all the devils are here if you watch the news, but I’m neither a Republi-cat nor a Demo-cat, so I don’t know.  But if Pops wants to go to Hell and hunt for something, maybe he could find me an extra leg.  Purr.

 

Hi there.  Are you back?  You bet your red-nosed reindeer you’re back.  Where else could you get such silliness?  Welcome.  This will be the last time I talk to you before the holidays begin, so I am wishing a Happy Hanukkah and a Merry Christmas to you all, plus a Feliz Navidad to all my readers in Mexico, and her cats.  With all this cold weather, Mexico sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

 

The Mexican weather is clear

The beaches and palm trees are near

We all love to visit

So tell my why is it

That Mexicans want to come here?

 

Weekly Word – how about fulgent?  It means dazzlingly bright.

 

Carol is back from her spa trip, and she had a wonderful time.  I am very glad she is back.  She is now busy getting ready for the holiday celebrations by making reservations.  My wife knows more about reservations than Geronimo.  She just told me that she’s made a reservation (round table and all) at a very expensive restaurant to celebrate one of her friend’s birthday.  “Oh,” she added, “we’ll count that as your birthday too.”  Really?  I just get tossed in as an afterthought and not even asked where I would like to go on my birthday?  Well, yes, People.  That’s how it works in my family.  I am not exactly at the top of the Official C. Fox Priority Chart.  I have just recently seen a copy of the current Priority Chart, and it goes like this.  At the top come her First Tier Friends. Then, in order, come her children, her Second Tier Friends, her grandchildren, her Third Tier Friends, the women on The View, Luigi Mangione, the cat and me.  Hey, at least I made the list.

 

I’d better not get aggravated, or I’ll set off my pacemaker.  Next Tuesday is Christmas Eve, and that will mark the fifteenth anniversary of the Christmas Eve that my heart stopped and I needed that little fellow implanted in my chest.  Nice to know we’re both doing great. 

 

A couple of years ago, a plumber came by to fix a broken handle in my shower.  He only replaced the COLD but they come in a set, so I had an extra handle.  He said save it for when the HOT breaks.  It did last night.  So this morning I got out the handle, read the instructions and immediately had a panic attack.  I can’t do this; I can never do things like this.  I will flood the condo and blow up the entire block and break a nail.  Oscar Wilde said, “Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes”, and I have a universe of experience in that regard.  I was terrified.

 

Here were the instructions:  unscrew the screw, pull off the old handle, put on the new handle, screw it in.  Shakespeare, with one paw, could do that.  But the killer was -- First, turn off the water, so I went to the laundry room.  There were two valves – one said hot water, one said all water.  Very clearly marked.  Nonetheless, I felt like the scene in every James Bond movie where the bomb is ticking down to explosion and James has to cut one of a dozen colored wires and if he chooses the wrong one, he will be fatally shaken, not stirred.  But he always does it right and the countdown always stops at 007.  I chose the one marked all water and turned.  Nothing catastrophic happened.  Then I went back to the shower to do steps 1,2 and 3.  It took 12 seconds.  Then back to turn the water valve, where I discovered I had forgotten which way I had turned it to shut it off.  Well, it would only turn one way, so that must be right.  Then back to the shower to turn the new handle.  It worked.  I could not have been more pleased if I had discovered fire.  I walked, smiling, back into my study where I noticed my clock had stopped at 007. 

 

And now it’s time for me to stop as well.  If you’re a Christian, have a Merry Christmas.  If you’re Jewish, have a Happy Hanukkah.  If you’re Mennonite, Monday is National Pfeffernüsse Day.  Look it up.  But whatever you are, wherever you are, stay well and count your holiday blessings.  See you next week.

 

James – James Bond                          Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #405                                December 12, 2024

 

Shakespeare and I are alone.  My wife left town on Monday with Jennifer, my North Carolina daughter, to visit a spa in Texas as a celebration of Carol’s upcoming birthday.  No, I won’t tell you which birthday.  I have been sworn to secrecy upon punishment of either castration or having to watch three episodes of The View.  Whatever her age is, she doesn’t look it.  By the way, I chose castration.  So now, of course, I’m lonely.  I’m as lonely as Venus de Milo’s manicurist. 

 

On the plus side, with her gone, I’m the undisputed master of the house.  I can do anything I want.  I can watch anything I want on the television.  I can eat anything I want, dress any way I like and sleep as late as I care to.  It’s good to be the King.  Just please don’t tell the Queen

 

But now that I can do anything I want, what am I going to do?  I could go out to a bar and pick up a young chick, except my wife tells me the only way I could pick up a young chick would be to stand on my wallet, and my wallet isn’t big enough.  I could get high on alcohol or pot, except I gave up smoking in 1995 and drinking in 2007.  Wait, I’ve got it – gambling.  So I drove to a casino, played the nickel poker machines for 20 minutes and got a free Diet Coke.  I lost $4.  I would not have done well in Sodom and Gomorrah.  And I’m as lonely as Lady Godiva’s seamstress.

 

But I have my loyal cat.  And I have you.  Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and working on your New Year’s Resolutions.  I’m having trouble this year.  I’ve given up smoking already and drinking and ice cream and red meat.  I’m not overweight.  I do my exercises.  I’m nice to my family and friends.  I’m not messy.  So I put a lot of thought into this year’s resolution.  Here it is: In 2025, I resolve to make you smile at least once a week.

 

Let’s see if I can squeeze a snicker out of you with this.  When Simple Simon said to the Pie-Man, “Let me taste your wares,” what did the pie-man say?  He replied, “My whats?”  “No,” said Simon, “your wares.”  “Ok,” said the Pie-Man:

 

I have a few wheres and some whats

They’re loaded with sprinkles and nuts

Some nows and some thens

Some whys and some whens

But sorry, no ifs, ands or buts.

 

After all these years, are you tired of my psychotic poetry yet?  The border between genius and madness is subtle.  Did I tell you I’m as lonely as Kamala Harris’ campaign manager?  

 

Other people, of course, are making their New Year’s Resolutions:

 

·        Joe Biden said “I promise not to pardon Hunter.  Wait, what?  I did already?  I must be a lying dog-faced pony soldier.”

·        Elon Musk resolved to carry at least one of his children on his shoulders at all times

·        And my wife and I have made a joint resolution to get matching tattoos.  We’ve already picked them out.  Mine says I LOVE CAROL.  So does hers.

 

Well, since I’m as lonely as Will Smith’s booking agent, my daughter and my friends have stepped up to the plate to take care of me with breakfast meetings and lunch and dinner.  I guess they think I’m too stupid to do anything for myself.  They must have read my blogs.

 

I hope my wife sleeps better in Texas than she does here.  I’ve tried telling her stories, but she says I don’t talk fast enough.  I have suggested that she try going to the Opera – that always puts me to sleep -- but instead she keeps trying new cocktails and stratagems, all suggested by her friends who are quick to give her a list of things to try, none of which has ever worked for them.  “I take organic cherry juice to sleep and it never works.  You should try it.”  Recently, one of these well-meaning friends told her about white noise, random sounds that she could find on her phone.  Having selected three different ones and unable to decide which was best, she played all three simultaneously: screeching psychotic birds, torrential tropical monsoons and another that was just loud.  Amid the cawing, dripping and screaming – she could not sleep, and neither could I.  The next day I called the well-meaning friend to ask her if this night-time cacophony actually helped her sleep.  “Hell no,” she confessed, “but it keeps my husband up all night.  Why should he sleep if I can’t?” 

 

Message from Shakespeare:  She is never sad but when she sleeps (Much Ado About Nothing).  I sleep just fine.  I don’t understand why these humans want to sleep when it’s dark outside. And did I hear him say he’s the undisputed master of the house.  That’s what he thinks.  Come here, you old man and scratch my ear.  Yes, you’re such a good boy. Purr.

 

If I haven’t made you laugh yet?  Let’s try this:

 

Frank and Kevin, best friends, are having a beer.

Frank:  Kev, you look depressed.

Kevin:  You know, I’m pushing 30 and I want to settle down, but every time I find a nice girl and bring her home, my Mom hates her.

Frank:  Take my advice, find a girl that’s exactly like your Mom.

Kevin:  I tried that.  I found a girl who looks like my Mom, talks like my Mom, even cooks like her.

Frank:  Did your Mom like her?

Kevin:  Of course she did, but my Dad couldn’t stand her.

 

I hope my grandiloquence hasn’t bored you. Grandiloquence, our Weekly Word, is the use of extravagant or pompous language, so I guess that just using the word automatically makes you grandiloquent. And now, we’re getting to the end of the blog and the end of the week.  Carol is coming home tomorrow, and I’m as happy as a sunflower on a summer’s day.

 

Stay well and count your blessings.  I’ll be back next week with something or other to talk about.  Be there.  I hope this week’s edition has made you all as happy as a bunch of mosquitoes at a nudist colony.  See you next week.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1745@gmail.com

 

 

Blog #404                                December 5, 2024

 

I got a call this week from some marketing company that wanted to pay me $70 to participate in a 2-hour focus group on radio preferences.  I agreed, but when they found out my age, they said no thanks.  They don’t care what radio stations old people listen to.  Nobody cares about old people in general?  They clog up the highways and waste our country’s medical resources.  They pester their children about the simplest technological task.  Who needs these silly old people anyway?  Unless you’re a four-year-old or six or eight or ten, and you want a cool bedtime story about dinosaurs and princesses and old men who fall down and make you giggle and who never stop loving you no matter what. 

 

Recently, I was privy to a story of the passing of a woman in her late nineties.  You know, I almost said “an elderly woman”, but as I encroach upon the world of the elderly myself, I prefer to use other terminology.  The thought-provoking part of the story was the fact that the children of this lovely woman, all in their sixties, began to quibble and argue about the woman’s knickknacks, figurines, chotchkes, paintings – all the accumulated flotsam of a long and well-lived life.  And the thought this story provoked in me was, “What’s going to happen to all my stuff when I’m gone.”

 

Yes, one day I shall be gone.  Even Betty White died eventually.  And what’s going to happen to my “stuff”.  Who is going to want all the accumulated letters, blogs, poems and stories I have written?  And who’s going to take Shakespeare?

 

Message from Shakespeare: The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together (All’s Well That Ends Well). Wait!  What the fur are you talking about?  You can’t go anywhere and leave me with someone else.  You’re not even coughing!    And who would want a limping, crippled cat anyway?  We’re a team!  I couldn’t get used to anyone else’s lap.  And who would chase the ball down the hall with me or let me sleep under the covers?  You can’t leave me.  I will even give you all of my extra lives.  Purr.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you had a warm, loving and peaceful Thanksgiving and are feeling well.  People often ask me why I started writing this blog, and I always give them the easy answer, relating how I have been writing letters to my daughters for 30 years and I just transitioned into the blog.  But that’s not the real reason.  The real reason I started writing to you is that whenever I’m with my wife and our friends, I cannot get a word in edgewise.  The women talk over you, through you, behind you and around you.  They interrupt you.  They all talk continuously and all at once.  They all must have at one time been parole officers because they never let anyone finish a sentence.  I have as much chance of being heard as a piccolo player in a marching band.  And that is why I write to you every week, just so I can have someone to talk to.

 

So now that you’re here and I’m here, let’s talk.  I did something stupid last Saturday.  I had promised some friends that I would take them to the airport.  That wasn’t the mistake.  I’m happy to do them favors and they treat me the same.  But a snowstorm arrived.  It was a wet, slushy, sloppy, sluggish snow, but I had promised.  The visibility was umbrous, the roads were difficult and tense and ugly, but we made it.  And what did I get out of it – a thank you from my good friends and a limerick for you:

 

It really was stupid to go

But we went in the wet, sloppy snow

We slogged through the slush

And the muck and the mush

“Cause that is what good friends are fo’.

 

See, it was all worth it.  I got a limerick and a Weekly Word.  It’s umbrous, which means shady, dark, in a shadow.

 

I’ve never loved winter.  Winter used to mean it’s cold outside so let’s get our behinds out of here and go someplace warm.  But life has changed so much that now outside simply means the space between my heated car and the front door of the grocery store.  And travelling?  We used to drive to Florida and North Carolina, but we don’t do that so much anymore.  But I still have many friends who winter in Florida.  I love how they’ve made the name of a season into a verb:  I winter in Florida.  I summer in Vermont.  As long as they don’t fall in the bathroom.

 

The advent of cold weather signals that two big holidays are coming up, Christmas and Hanukkah.  Of the 8,312 alternative spellings of Hanukkah, I have chosen to use this version because it’s the one my children and grandchildren use.  When I was a kid (images of dinosaurs and telephone cords dance through my gray-haired head) we spelled it with a Ch at the beginning, but languages and spellings adapt to common usage.  We no longer can understand the 14^th Century language of The Canterbury Tales -- Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote -- and I’m certain that 500 years from now, people (if there are still people) will think our literature as foreign as Chaucer is to us.

 

But I will never abandon the language I learned from my teachers and my mother.  I will always use the proper forms of lie and lay and always use none as a singular and always spell kidnapped with two Ps.  As phones have gotten smaller, so have words and now kidnaped with one P has become acceptable.  Well, for every P that young generation uses, we seniors need to P twice.  But fear not.  I, your bastion of all that is fuddy and duddy, shall remain steadfastly loyal to the ancient language I learned so many years ago. 

 

It’s time to go.  I’ve probably gotten a little too wordy.  Am I getting too wordy?  I don’t think I’m getting too wordy.  Do you?  Really?  I’ll stop.  Soon.  Wait, just one more thing.  Stay well and count your blessings.  There, I’m done.  See you next week.

 

Michael                                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com