Blog #410                                January 16, 2025

 

Our Saturday night plans were cancelled last weekend, so we decided to do something wild and crazy.  “Live, live, live!” said Auntie Mame.  “Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.”   So we decided to go wild.  Did we fly to Tibet?  Did we ride the Ferris Wheel?  Rob a liquor store?  Nope, we had a tête-à-tête and decided to embark on a high-risk venture appropriate only for the young and fearless.  We went to the nearest casino and shared a nickel poker-machine for two hours, rooting and hooray-ing like a crowd watching James Bond beating the arch-villain at baccarat.  And we didn’t lose too much.

 

We played the machine, then departed

But we didn’t leave broken-hearted

‘Cause me and my Queen

We left the machine

With five dollars less than we started.

 

Plus, I got a free Diet-Coke -- shaken, not stirred.

 

Weekly Word.  A tête-à-tête is a private conversation. Head-to-head in French.

 

Larry McMurtry says that the chief paradox of life is that the thing you most want is the thing you are least likely to get.  I cannot agree.  It seems to me that the thing I most wanted in life, at least when I was seventeen, was a small, cute, dark-haired girl I spotted in the High School cafeteria.  And I got her!  I’m still not sure how.  Yes, maybe I was a little smart and a little humorous.  Mostly I was completely devoted and easily trained.  But I certainly wasn’t remotely Rock Hudson-ish.  Of course, in retrospect, neither was Rock.   Did I tell you that my wife could multitask?

 

There is, in the Guinness World Records, a record for Multitasking.  They report it like this: Multitasking has taken on an entirely new meaning for one UT student who can recite the first 100 digits of the mathematical constant pi while solving a Rubik’s Cube and balancing 15 books on her head.  Pshaw!  You call that multitasking?  That’s only three things, not one of which is remotely useful.  My wife would not be caught dead solving a Rubik’s Cube -- I might break a nail.  Or placing books on her head -- my hair!  Or memorizing the digits of pi – what a waste!  But Carol is the undisputed Queen of Multitasking.  This morning, for instance, I walked into the bedroom and found her simultaneously performing four tasks using four different electronic devices and four separate parts of her body:

 

·        Her feet were walking on the treadmill

·        Her eyes were watching the television

·        Her fingers were playing bridge on her iPad

·        Her ears were listening to a Podcast on her phone

 

And she still managed to use her mouth to tell me to change my shirt.  Five tasks at once.  I was so proud!   The woman just has a surfeit of internal energy.  She even has a sign hanging in the kitchen:  Don’t Just Sit There – Nag Your Husband.

 

Look, I’m not trying to make fun of people who multitask.  In fact, I’m jealous.  I cannot read and listen to music at the same time.  I cannot talk and drive.  It amazes me that I can, at the same time, breathe and write things like “Hi there, and welcome back.”

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and staying warm.  Next Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a day which celebrates his birthday five days after it really was.  His actual 96^th birthday was yesterday.  There are no longer very many holidays named after people.  Washington’s Birthday is gone, Lincoln’s Birthday is gone and Columbus Day is gone, shredded and burned to a crisp.  The only eponymous holidays left are Christmas, named after Christ, and Easter, named after Eostre, a pre-Christian goddess in England, probably the goddess of bunnies and colored eggs and Judy Garland.

 

Carol will be upset that this blog mentions her so much, but I’ve been with her 24 hours a day for over 57 years – who else would I write about, a three-legged cat?

 

Message from Shakespeare:  It is not enough to speak, but to speak true (A Midsummer Night’s Dream).  Whoa!  I am not just some run-of-the-mill (maybe that should be limp-of-the-mill) cat.  I am Shakespeare, the most famous three-legged cat in the world.  So there, Big Mouth.  Purr!

 

Last week, Blog #409 included a poem.  After the poem I asked if you had made it all the way through, and I received many comments saying, “Yes, I read it.”  But not one of you told me that you “got it”.  You see, there was a trick.  The poem was my confession that I am a compulsive rhymer and also my attempt at breaking that compulsion by making the last two lines not rhyme.  Which they didn’t.  Or did they?  Here is the ending of the poem.

 

To think that I can’t write without a rhyme is just pathetic.

The next two lines I promise won’t at all appear poetic.

It’s surely just as trivial as putting on your socks.

I told you I could do it and I’ve done it.

 

Michael Fox                           

 

Now, you’ll see that by including my signature as part of the last line completes the poem and that I failed at avoiding my compulsive rhyming.  Do you get it now?  Good.  Sorry to take up your time.

 

And speaking of time, there are many ways of measuring time.  Sand in an hourglass, atomic vibrations, the movement of a pendulum, the progress of the sun.  I was at the doctor’s office last week, and he decided that the cough I have is just a lingering vestige of the pneumonia I had in August.  He suggested I get a CAT scan.  I said, “Fine, I’ll have Shakespeare do it.  Here, kitty, kitty.”  He decided a radiologist might do better, so off I went to the hospital.  I arrived early (punctuality is the politeness of kings).  I brought a book (The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett).  When I got home, Carol asked me how long they made me wait.  “About 35 pages,” I replied.  As I said, there are many ways of measuring time.

 

And now, the old sun-dial on my wrist tells me it’s time to go.  Stay well and count your blessings.  See you next week.  Trump will be your President then.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

Blog #409                                January 9, 2025

 

Holy shit!  I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that, but Tuesday was my 79^th birthday.  Seventy-nine years old.  Don’t send me any presents; you’re already too late.  But if you want to send me a Bitcoin or two, I’ll overlook that.  If I had spent all 79 years counting one person a second, I would have counted about one-third of the people on Earth.  And, if I had spent the last eight years writing silly, wordy letters to you, I would be up to 409 blogs.  Four hundred nine blogs?  Holy shit!  Sorry, I’m beginning to sound like a doctor examining the Pope’s stool specimen.

 

Did I tell you it’s my 79^th birthday?  I don’t need a calendar to remind me I’m old.  Father Time reminds me every morning when my hands are a little more numb and my back is a little more sore and my joints are a little more creaky.  As I stand, looking in the mirror and orienting myself to another day, there’s old Father Time looking over my shoulder.  “Hey, Michael, remember me,” he asks?  “I’m still the same old guy I used to be and you’re not.  Have a nice day.”  And the day will move along and I’ll do my thing and enjoy my wife and my family and my cat and all of you.  I’ll go to bed and wake up the next morning. “Good morning, Father Time,” I’ll say.  Just a couple of old friends starting a new day.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are safe and well and warm.  I know many of my readers are in sunny and cozy climes – Florida and Georgia and North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada and California, even Mexico.  But I, your tireless guide, am here in St. Louis, the lint-filled navel of America, where this week it snowed five to seven inches.  The snow is beautiful, of course, but it has confined me to my house and stifled my ability to go to the grocery store, an activity which I call hunting and gathering.  Today, I was planning to hunt and gather a Sumo Orange.  I don’t know what that is and neither does Carol, but Hoda Kotb said we had to have one, so there you go.  If Hoda said you had to have a moose, Carol would sit on the couch and yell, “Michael, get me a moose.”  And I, dumb and loyal Bullwinkle that I am, would do it.

 

I do everything she tells me.  I even let her proofread my blogs.  Every once in a while, she wants me to change a word.  I wonder if Mrs. Poe ever said, “Eddie, I have a suggestion;

 

I’ve read your long poem of Lenore

To tell you the truth, it’s a bore

The bird should not say

That “No way, Jose”

Why can’t he just say “nevermore”?

 

Not a bad suggestion.  I mean “Quoth the raven, ‘No way Jose’”?  That just doesn’t flow.   She also talked Edgar out of writing

 

·        The Tell-Tale Kidney

·        Murders in the Rue Coffee Shop

·        The Pit and the Paper Clip

·        The Fall of the House of Slivovitz

 

Many of our famous lines in history would have been different if some well-meaning wife or friend hadn’t suggested a change.  Lines like:

 

·        I came, I saw, I took a selfie

·        The only thing we have to fear is Brussel sprouts

·        Ask not what your country can do for you; it won’t listen.

·        To be or not to be.  Bingo!

 

Message from Shakespeare:  They have their exits and their entrances (As You Like It).  Pops does everything his wife says, but he also does everything I say too.  Let me out, let me in, feed me, pet me, scratch the left side of my face.  That’s the only part of my body I can’t reach.  He’s such a good boy.  Happy Birthday, old man.  Purr.

 

Yesterday, I went to a funeral of a long-time friend, Ivan – a good man to be sure.  And of course, the lovely speeches by his son and grandchildren acted as a fillip that started me to wonder what would be said at my funeral.  My children and grandchildren are very smart, loving and eloquent, and I have no doubt they will say nice things about me.  And, of course, I have already written my speech for the funeral.  That doesn’t surprise you, does it?  It is addressed to my family and to you, my friends, and will be read by the rabbi.  It’s a good speech.  Don’t miss it.  

 

And don’t miss our Weekly Word, fillip, which means something that acts as a stimulus or boost to an activity.

 

 

 

Since this is the first blog of 2025, I hope you’ll give me permission to bore you with a poem I wrote some time ago.  It’s a little long, but hey, you’re my loyal reader.  You can handle it, but in case you drop off to sleep before you finish it, Happy New Year to everyone.  Stay well and count your blessings.  See you next week.  Here’s the poem.

 

I write so darn much poetry – I do it all the time

That people think that everything I write has got to rhyme.

Well nothing could be sillier or further from the truth

For I’ve been writing prose, you see, since I was just a youth.

And prose is so much easier, it’s cleaner and it’s neater

Because it doesn’t have to rhyme or have a pleasing meter.

So you can go on thinking that I’ve only one dimension,

But I can write prolific prose, if that is my intention.

To prove my point, I shall herewith submit this simple letter.

No evidence besides this little prose could do it better

Because it doesn’t rhyme at all; indeed this little sample

Is unpoetic prose, of which it is a fine example.

But wait, the last two lines – they rhymed.  I’m filled with such revulsion!

Perhaps it’s true: I’m riddled with obsession and compulsion.

To think that I can’t write without a rhyme is just pathetic.

The next two lines I promise won’t at all appear poetic.

It’s surely just as trivial as putting on your socks.

I told you I could do it and I’ve done it.

 

Michael Fox                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

Did you make it all the way through?  Thanks.

 

 

 

Blog #408                                January 2, 2025

 

Did you know there was something called Naked News?  That’s right.  I did not make it up.  I checked it out the other night and it’s pretty self-explanatory – some babe reads the news as serious as can be while taking off her clothes.  Just another example of how tragic and degraded the human animal can become.  Also an example of how far I would go for a limerick:

 

She did News and Traffic together

While shedding her lace and her leather

And during the Sports

She pulled down her shorts

And showed a warm front for the Weather.

 

Well, that started out the New Year with a bang, didn’t it?  Hey, I warned you I was a couple of bulbs short of a chandelier.  I am also, as you may have noticed, a diligent collector of the impractical and totally useless.  Here’s some,

 

Why do YouTube videos of birds, which are made to be watched only by cats, contain commercials?

 

Why, when the number on your bathroom scale is a little higher than you’d like, do you move the scale a few feet over?  You know you do.

 

Why do we turn the volume down on the car radio when we want to see better? 

 

Or why, at a live play, do the actors sometimes smoke a cigar and stink up the whole theater?  If a character dies in the play, he only acts like he’s dead.  We can handle it.  We know it’s a play, for goodness sake.  It says so on the ticket.  So let him act like he’s smoking.  We’ll figure it out without getting lung cancer.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  With heigh! The sweet birds, O, how they sing!  (Winter’s Tale).  Pops and I like to watch bird videos together, schnuggled up in front of the screen.  Pops calls it Close Encounters of the Bird Kind.  He thinks he’s funny.  Purr.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and looking forward to the New Year.  At least we’ll have a President who is my age.  In fact, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Donald Trump and I were all born in 1946.  We make a wonderful quartet, don’t we?  Three Presidents and a clown who writes limericks.  Sounds like one of those cognitive tests where they ask you which bird doesn’t belong in a picture of three eagles and a duck.  Well, somebody has to be the duck.  I have never kept score of my life by the great things I have or have not accomplished.  Most people never accomplish anything great.  But to live an ordinary life that’s fairly decent and fairly honest and to see your contributions to the next generation and even the one after that; well, I’m not sure there is more that most of us ducks can wish for.

 

I hope you had a nice New Year’s Eve.  We went to a lovely restaurant with lovely friends.  I drove, and when we arrived Carol congratulated me on finding the place.  She said she never could have located it.  If my charming wife has one fault, it’s her lack of directional skills.  Luckily, she has me to drive, because she could not find most places.  If my wife had been with Christopher Columbus, poor Chris wouldn’t have discovered anything except a lululemon.

 

I don’t eat breakfast – never have -- and Carol makes wonderful dinners, so that leaves lunch.  I eat a small lunch which consists of one of three choices which I buy at Walmart.  First, there are those wonderful, frozen PB&J sandwiches called Uncrustables – soft and sweet, no mess, pop two in the microwave.  Yummy.  OR, Walmart’s ersatz SpaghettiOs.  OR, Hormel Compleats, meal-sized, vacuum-packed servings of meaty stuff that are loaded with preservatives and probably decades old.  But they’re delicious.  I had the Turkey and Dressing today and noticed that on the package it said, “Packed during the Johnson Administration.”   That didn’t bother me so much until I looked closer and noticed it was Andrew Johnson.

 

Well, it works for me.  They’re all delicious, all under $3 a serving and all microwavable.  Forget the wheel, forget the steam engine, forget the cell phone – the greatest invention of man is the microwave oven.  Can you imagine living in the stone age when bringing in meant killing an animal and dragging it to the door?  When fast food meant too fast to catch?  When warming up the leftovers meant gathering sticks and building a fire?  What would you do if you didn’t know how to build a fire out of sticks?  Look it up on Stickipedia?  Thank goodness for my microwave.

 

Sometimes, do you feel like you’re losing it?  You can’t find your reading glasses or your keys or your bathroom?  You forgot where you parked your car or the license plate or the color or whether you even have a car?  And how about your passwords?  Who can remember a password you were forced to create for some obscure website you set up two years ago?  And if you can’t remember, you’re up Schitt’s Creek without your Netflix. 

 

Name That Password!  Yes, Name That Password, the show that tests your skill in remembering the one word you chose because you knew you’d never forget it and then promptly forgot it.  Was it your dog’s name?  How about your mother’s name?  Or your mother’s dog?  Or your German nanny’s barber’s sister’s dog?  Berlin-Tin-Tin!  That’s it!  Congratulations!  You win.

 

But what do you do if you can’t remember it?  You do what I do.  You submit yourself to the most degrading and embarrassing torture imaginable – you call your grandchild and beg for help.  To avoid such ignominious groveling in the future, I have written all my passwords on an Excel document on my computer and snapped a picture of the spreadsheet.  Now, I can look up my passwords on my computer or my phone.  But that’s not safe, I hear you grumble.  Who cares!  What’re they going to steal – my library card number?  My frequent movie-goer balance?

 

Time to go.  I hope that 2025 will bring you much delectation and good health.  I guess we’d better stop for our Weekly Word, which is delectation, which means delight and enjoyment.  Stay well, count those blessings, and be back here next week.  I’ll leave the light on for you.

 

Daffy                              Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com