Blog #433                                June 26, 2025

 

The Zoo was packed with a few thousand people.  They were all shapes and sizes.  They were black and white and Asian and everything else.  There were women in halters and shorts, women in hijabs, girls in Catholic school uniforms.  Young couples abounded, some holding hands, some pushing strollers.  They were of every combination: black and white, purple and orange, tall and short, striped and polka-dot.  And not one of them wanted to blow anything up or shoot anybody.  No-one cared about the color or religion or sexual orientation of the people next to them.  Everyone was polite and excited and hungry.  And all the kids behaved themselves. They made faces at the lemurs, followed the strutting geese like rats following the Pied Piper and ate everything they could wheedle out of their parents.  And for a few hours everyone forgot about their job or the bully at school or their mother-in-law or the bills they couldn’t pay.  Everyone enjoyed the weather and the animals and even the old man with the green sash who gave them directions. When I’m at the Zoo I cannot resist an upwelling of love and faith in humanity.  Then I leave, turn on the car radio, listen to the news and realize how wrong I was.  It’s a shame we can’t all go to the Zoo.  The animals would love it if we do.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  It is officially Summer, which began on the longest day of the year, last Saturday.  Or was it Friday?  Or maybe Sunday?  Actually, the official start of Summer in the Northern Hemisphere was at 9:42 p.m. last Friday, Central Daylight Time.  Does anybody give a rat’s tush, other than a small coterie of egghead busybodies. who are, by the way, the same people who told us that hiding under your desk at school would protect you from a nuclear bomb and that Pluto was no longer a planet?  Thank you, guys.

 

I am writing at my desk and just bent over to pet Shakespeare, who is lying comfortably next to my chair.  As I did so, I happened to look under my desk.  If John Milton were writing Paradise Lost today, I’m certain that his choice for the location of Hell would be the space underneath my desk.  There are enough wires down there to reach Mars and enough plugs to populate Howie Mandel’s head.  There are eight “things” plugged in.  There’s a router and a modem and a computer and a printer and a lamp and my iPod and two other things that could be nuclear warheads for all I know.  I am so technically hapless that I could screw up a nail file.  If it has a wire, I’m guaranteed to put it in the wrong place.  It amazes me that I have children!  I’ll bet it looks just like that under your desk. 

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  O comfort-killing Night, image of hell! (The Rape of Lucrece).  I wasn’t sitting by his chair because I’m the loving, wonderful creature he thinks I am.  I was there because, when he finally gets up, I will jump onto the seat where it’s all warmed up.  Don’t tell him.  Purr.

 

Coterie is a good Weekly Word.  It means a small group of people with shared interests and tastes.  Like all of us, I guess.

 

My wife was just talking to a friend who wanted to come over and pick up a book.  Carol said, “Just call when you get to the front and I’ll send Michael up with the book.”   Send Michael up with the book?  What am I, the Chinese butler in Auntie Mame?  I’ll send Hop Sing up with the book.  Oh, Hop Sing doesn’t care where we eat.  Oh, I’ll have Hop Sing pick up the movie tickets early.  Oh, Hop Sing, can you drop me off at the door; it’s raining.  Now don’t get all Ken Jennings on me because the Chinese butler in Auntie Mame was actually Ito.  I know that, but I like the name Hop Sing better.  Hop Sing was the cook on Ponderosa, and, speaking of Ponderosa, can you name all three Cartwright brothers?

 

For our anniversary a couple of weeks ago, Carol and I celebrated at my daughter Abby’s house.  Abby’s a great cook, and she prepared a wonderful meal which perfectly epitomized the spirit of our fifty-eight year partnership.  She made everything my wife liked.  Abby called her mother, asked what she should cook for the celebratory meal, and Carol rattled off all her favorites.  “Don’t worry about Hop Sing; he doesn’t care what he eats.”  That’s ok; I know my place.  For our next anniversary, we have agreed to get matching tattoos.  Mine will say “I Love Carol”.  So will hers.

 

We have finally found something as large as Donald Trump’s ego.  It’s called the Big Beautiful Bomb.  The Middle East story has characters just like a fairy tale, doesn’t it?  There’s poor little Cinderella (Israel) who has been beaten and bullied for years by the Mean Stepmother (Iran) and the Ugly Stepsisters (Hamas and Hezbollah).  Then along comes Donald Trump, the Fairy Godmother, who drops a Big Beautiful Bomb on the Wicked Stepmother and everyone lives happily ever after.

 

The Jews do not fear the Imam

‘Cause we have the 23^rd Psalm

By drones we’ve been peppered

But the Lord is our Shepherd

And Trump has the world’s biggest bomb.

 

Or

 

In Israel we all are calm

We know we won’t lose to Islam

We won’t run and hide

‘Cause Trump’s on our side

And he’s got the world’s biggest bomb.

 

Or

 

The Jews will not lose to Islam

‘Cause we have a Fairy God-Mom

Who’s big as an ox

With wavy, orange locks

And carries the world’s biggest bomb.

 

Except it’s not a fairy tale, is it?  It’s all very frightening.  Besides, the image of Donald Trump as a Fairy Godmother is a bit disturbing.  Let’s all pray for peace.

 

I’m sorry for the three limericks.  I couldn’t decide which one was my favorite.  What’s yours?

 

I guess it’s time to go now.  The three Cartwright brothers on Ponderosa were Adam, Hoss and Little Joe.  Have a nice week, stay well, stay cool and count your blessings.

 

Hop Sing                                 Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

Blog #432                                         June 19, 2025

 

My wife’s having a birthday soon.  Birthdays at our age are fun, but lurking behind the merriment is the realization that we are now one year closer to all the stuff we don’t want to be closer to.  Grandkids are different; they want to get older. 

 

Kid:  Yay! Another year closer to getting my driver’s license. 

Grandparent:  Oy! Another year closer to losing my driver’s license.

Kid:  Yay! Another year closer to moving into a home of my own.

Grandparent:  Oy! Another year closer to moving into a home.

Kid:  Yay! I’m getting taller. 

Grandparent: Oy! I’m getting shorter.

Kid:  Yay! I’m growing up so fast.

Grandparent:  Oy! He’s growing up so fast.

 

But I have the perfect recipe for living long.  Let me start by relating a recent news story that highlighted the fact that two Death Row inmates were executed on the same day.  Two different states, two different methods of execution.  One had committed his murder 31 years ago; the other 37 years ago.  And there’s the answer.  In this country, killing someone and earning a death sentence guarantees you at least thirty more years of peaceful life.  What a world!

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  Do you have a dog?  My daughter Jennifer in North Carolina has three dogs.  I remember taking her oldest, Micah, out on a leash.  A dog’s morning walk is akin to your reading the morning newspaper.  If only Micah could talk: “Ok, Pops, a doe crossed over here this morning with her fawn.  Boy they smell good.  And look, it’s trash day.  Sassy’s humans had meatballs last night for dinner.  I bet they didn’t give Sassy any.  And ooh, ooh, look over here, Pops.  A squirrel was here not more than a few minutes ago.  Can you smell it?  No, I guess you can’t.  What a primitive species you humans are!   I can see better than you, hear better than you, certainly smell better.  And I can run faster too.  Look, there’s Rocco.  Hi, Rocco.  Nice day to be walking your human, isn’t it?  Yah, this one’s just babysitting.  He’s old.  Oh, thanks.  Your butt smells nice too.”

 

Those humans shake hands, which is nuts.

That’s just not an option for mutts.

We’ve no hands, you know

So when we say hello

We do it by sniffing our butts.

 

How could you possibly have imagined when you awoke this morning that you would be reading such a thing?  Well, that’s what you get for hanging with me.  Glad you’re here. 

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat:  I have a proclivity for behinds of great mass (The Tempest).  Why is he always talking about stupid dogs?  Cats are too high class to sniff another creature’s behind.  And cats don’t tie their masters up to a leash and drag them around outside.  Why would anyone want a dog?  Cats are purr-fect.  Purr.

 

The following story is absolutely true.  At a McDonald’s recently, I came upon an employee lingering around the outside, welcoming patrons, directing traffic and generally being joyful and upbeat.  Her name was Bonnie.  We exchanged the following colloquy:  Bonnie started with

 

Hello, Darling, and how are you today?

I’m fine, Bonnie.  How are you?

I’m good, Sweetie.  And very thankful to the Man upstairs.

But Bonnie, I said, what if it’s really a Woman upstairs?

Then God help us all.

 

Ok, I have just insulted all my women readers.  Let’s move on to the men.  At the Zoo the other day, I saw two men looking over a map while their companions (wives? girlfriends? parole officers?) watched.  I walked up and offered my services.  No, the men said, we have it figured out.  I turned toward the distaff half and said, “Men never accept directions.  Come see me when they’re lost.”  C’mon, men, you know I’m right.  We never accept directions. “Siri be damned, I know how to get there.”  Really?  You don’t know where your reading glasses are.  You barely know where the bathroom is.  And how many times have you lost your car in the parking lot?  We, as husbands, have learned how to say yes to everything.  Yes. Dear.  Yes, Honey.  Whatever you want, Cupcake.  Except, “Let’s ask directions.”  We would sooner be spayed than ask directions.  I’m a man!  I know what I’m doing!  And what do we do when we finally and inevitably get lost?  We start yelling at our wives, as if they had anything to do with our galactic idiocy.  I’d better stop; my wife is calling.  Yes, Dear.

 

Carol does not sleep well.  I do not have that problem and I feel very sorry for her.  I have a sleeping pill that I take every night and it works.  I have suggested that she try going to the Opera, but instead she keeps trying new cocktails and stratagems, all suggested by her Voodoo 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 and I never sleep.  You should try it.”  Each night she lays out a pill to take when she wakes up at 2:00 a.m.  It cannot, to my simple and well-rested mind, be a good strategy to plan to get up in the middle of the night in order to take a sleeping pill.  So yesterday, the head gypsy, whom I call Mama Doc, told her about white noise, random sounds that she could find on her iPhone.  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 Mama Doc to ask her if this cacophony of Muzak actually helped her sleep.  “Hell no,” she confessed, “but it keeps my husband up all night.  Why should he sleep if I can’t?”

 

I need a nap.  You probably do too, so I’ll let you go.  But first, our Weekly Word.  Colloquy means a conversation or dialogue, and since we’ve had such a nice one today, I expect you back next week right on time.  Until then, stay well and count your blessings.  See you next week.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

  

 

 

Blog #431                                June 12, 2025

 

You’re Special!  That’s what the little pamphlet that was hidden in my library book said.  It went on with some religious stuff, and that’s ok, but it was just nice to be told that I was special.  So, listen up – you also are special.  You take the time each week to read my silly ramblings and that makes you special to me.  So, hi there, and welcome back.  I hope you’re doing well.

 

Yesterday was my anniversary.  Carol’s too.  Fifty-eight years of, as they say, wedded bliss.  I actually don’t think Carol and I have much in common at all besides our mutual social and educational background.  I like animals; she likes clothes.  I like the outdoors; she’s an indoor girl.  I like quiet; she likes television.  I like collecting; she likes clothes.  But in one crucial respect we agree.  We have the same goal in life -- to keep her happy.  It works for us.

 

Seriously, sometimes our differences actually work to our advantage.  I flourish in a quiet atmosphere, Carol needs constant noise – the television, some music playing, phone calls with her friends.  It is fortunate, therefore, that our place is big enough for me to escape to a quiet room away from her cacophonous milieu.  Our ability to be apart all these years has kept us together all these years.

 

I pick on my wife a lot in my blogs, but this week I promise I’m not going to pick on her.  Carol is a beautiful and special partner who has given me a spectacular family and a glorious 58 years.  She is the sunshine of my life! So, Honey, in honor of our anniversary, I won’t pick on you this week.

 

There, that was easier than buying a bunch of flowers, wasn’t it?  Seriously, Carol and I have had a wonderful marriage, although sometimes I feel like we have failed to share things equitably.  For instance, we have, between us, two holes-in-one.  She has them both.  And we have, between us, 112 wrinkles.  I have them all.

 

Do you remember last fall when I had that long-lasting, annoying cough for two months?  Well, my wife has it now.  So she tries not to talk.  No, I won’t make some gratuitous joke about that.  I sympathize with her frustration.  So I got out the bell – the little ringy-dingy thing that she has given me every time I have had to recover from some surgery.  Now she has it next to her, and she can ring whenever she needs me.

 

My Honey cannot talk or sing

So I gave her a bell she can ring

One ring of the bell

And I run just like hell

She calls me her Big Ding-a-Ling

 

Speaking of ringy-dingy.  Who used to say “One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy”?

 

Do you recycle?  I mean I love the planet and I hate to waste, but today you need an engineering degree to know how to recycle.  My sweet daughter Stephanie in California has four containers in the kitchen (well, it’s California!).  I can’t remember what each one is for, but when we visit, I always bring an empty suitcase just to put my trash in.  I can’t risk putting a compost item into a landfill bucket.  Heaven knows what havoc that would create in the state economy, so I just bring it all home. 

 

My Jennifer in North Carolina has an even more complicated system.  She has chickens, so you have to decide between compost (she makes her own), trash, recycle and chickens.  One afternoon she decided to give last night’s leftover eggplant parmesan to the chickens.  Who feeds their chickens eggplant parmesan?  But before she carried it down to the coop, she saw me and asked if I wanted some.  I declined, but 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 where I stand.  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”), but the last time we showed a Bible to the chickens, they ate it.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  And of the cannibals that eat each other (Othello).  The chickens eat chicken?  Well, what did you expect from a bird.  A cat wouldn’t eat a cat.  That’s cat-ibalism.  And I don’t get eggplant parmesan either.  Yuck!  And also purr.

 

A friend of mine had a little episode the other day.  He wound up at the hospital where the doctor told him . . .  Well, let’s start by saying what the doctor should have told him.  The doctor should have said, “Your heart started beating too fast; could have been caused by a lot of things.  We’ll keep an eye on it.”  Plain, non-threatening English.  What the doctor actually said was, “You have Paroxysmal Atrial Tachycardia.”  I’ve picked on you doctors before and now I’m going to do it again.  Remember your oath?  “Do no harm” it says.  First of all, scaring the crap out of your patient is harmful.  Second, using a bunch of indigestible words that only doctors can understand is insulting.  Don’t tell me my temperature is 39 and don’t tell me I have mumbo-jumbo-itis.  Speak English!  I think if doctors didn’t have to learn all that gobbledygook, they could graduate medical school in eighteen months.

 

The first time I visited Dr. Blood, he told me I had Monoclonal B-Cell Lymphocytosis.  I turned to him and calmly replied, “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”  Aha!  Now we both understood each other that neither one of us understood each other, and we proceeded to speak English.  Try it sometime.  Your doctor will get the message.  By the way, the monoclonal stuff is just some heebie-jeebie thing in my blood that nobody has to worry about.  Is heebie-jeebie a medical term?  I bet it is.

 

And speaking of mumbo jumbo, it’s time for the Weekly Word.  Gratuitous means unwarranted, lacking good reason.

 

What else?  Oh, one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy?  That was Lily Tomlin as Ernestine, the phone operator.  So turn off the oven, Mama, ‘cause we’re done here.  Stay well and count your blessings.  See you in a week

 

Big Ding-a-Ling                       Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

LIMERICK    OYSTER

Blog #430                                         June 5, 2025

 

I remember when arcade video games came out.  We got an Atari in 1975 or so, and I remember two games I liked – Pong and Breakout.  That was a long time ago.  Now, kids are obsessed with all the games on Nintendo or a million different phone aps.  My granddaughter, Charley, dragged me down in her basement the other day to show me her Wii.  “Look Poppy,” she said, and showed me a new game character she had created.  It was called Poppy and wore a yellow shirt (my favorite color) and had gray hair.  It also had an excessive collection of wrinkles.  I turned to Charley and asked if all those wrinkles were necessary.  She examined my face closely, smiled and said, “Yes.”  That’s ok, a grandfather is someone with silver in his hair and gold in his heart.  I watched her play a game with the new character.  There he was, wrinkles and all, limping around the course and taking all the wrong exits.  Go, Poppy! 

 

I’ve figured out why I love working at the Zoo.  It’s the only place I’m not lost.  Most everywhere else, on the highways, local roads, just walking around – in all those places, I’m basically a maladroit wandering moron.  I should be quarantined.

 

But at the Zoo, people actually listen to what I have to say.  This week I found a kindergarten class sitting on the ground, each child studying the brightly-colored Zoo map.  I asked the teachers what they wanted to see and two little girls screamed “flamingos”.  So I gave them directions to our lovely pink birds, then asked, “Do you want to hear a story about flamingos?”  I instantly had 14 cherubic little faces staring up at me and I proceeded to tell them my flamingo story, which, although possibly apocryphal, is cute.  The brief version is that when pink flamingos were first brought to the Zoo, they were fed fish and grain and normal bird stuff and after a while they turned white.  Nobody wanted to see a white flamingo and the zoo people were puzzled.  Finally, they discovered that flamingos are pink because they eat shrimp and absorb the red coloring from the shrimp shells.  When they don’t eat shrimp, they turn white, and sure enough, when their diet was changed to shrimp, they turned pink and beautiful and everybody was happy, except the shrimp.  I finished the story and the little girl closest to me stuck her smiling gap-toothed face two inches from mine and said, “Can we just stay with you?”  I guess I just have a knack.

 

I have had many readers ask me where I get all the humorous stories I share with you.  Well, life is funny.  Plenty of humorous things happen around you all the time.  You just need someone to point out a different way of looking at them.  Henry David Thoreau said, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and looking forward to summer – swimming, vacationing, warm weather.  Bugs, heatwaves, pollen.  Well, every rose has its thorns.  How about maladroit as our Weekly Word?  It means unskillful, awkward and bungling.  Did I use that to describe myself?

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so (Hamlet).  Cats are very curious.  If Pops puts a box on the floor, I will jump into it to see what’s there.  He’ll just trip over it.  Purr.

 

The other day, I noticed that my son-in-law has his Siri voice set as a British male voice.  I like the idea of talking to an English butler.  Carson, call my daughter in California.  “Yes, Sir, I will make that connection expeditiously.”  Wouldn’t that be great?   I love that old style English.  That’s why I have read all of Dickens’ books.  Instead of saying, “I like writing to you,” Dickens would say, “If my readers have derived but half the pleasure and interest from its perusal, which its composition has afforded me, I have ample reason to be gratified.”   Ooo, talk British to me!

 

I know that Dickens is hard to read because the language has changed so much since the 1840s.  Heck, the language constantly changes.  The way we spoke in the 1950s isn’t the same as it is now.  There are new phrases and meanings and usages.  Some are great, but there are some of them I don’t like, like “like”.  Teens seem to use the word “like” as every third word of their vocabulary.  Give me like Dickens like any time.  Like.

 

Have you ever seen Madame Butterfly?  People in my generation know that’s an opera.  My grandchildren think it’s a monster movie.  My friend Larry loves opera, and I have been to seven operas with him.  I have hated every single minute of every one.  I must be a philistine, because opera is just not for me, but I like Larry and I go just to keep him company.  The last one we saw was La Donna del Lago by Rossini and consisted of five really good singers spending four hours telling us (in Italian) how miserable they were and how each one wanted to die.  Would that I could have helped them!  About midway through the second act, one of them thankfully succeeded in dying, whereupon the other four became instantaneously jubilant and took about 40 minutes to tell us so.  And that was it.  The story took place in Scotland amid warring Scottish clans, and I did learn a lot about the Scots: 

 

The Scots ride the hills on a stallion

And fish the cold seas in a galleon

They learn when they’re young

The pure English tongue

But sing all their songs in Italian.

 

Stop your groaning!  You go find two words that rhyme with Italian!

 

I have room enough for a quote.  W. C. Fields, one of the best known and most audacious movie personalities of the early 20^th century, was known to drink a bit.  One night at a party, a matronly woman said, “Mr. Fields, you are disgustingly drunk.”  “Yes, Madam,” he replied, “I am disgustingly drunk and you are disgustingly ugly.  But tomorrow I shall be sober.”

 

It’s time to say goodbye.  Stay well, count your blessings.  I’ll see you next Thursday.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #429                                May 29, 2025

 

Ahoy there, and welcome back! This is the Pequod, bound round the world! Tell them to address all future letters to the Pacific Ocean. And this time three years, if I am not at home, tell them to address them to Hell!

 

I have just finished my seventh voyage aboard the Pequod.  Moby Dick has prevailed, Ahab is vanquished, the Pequod is no more.  Please, don’t ever read the book.  It’s a strange compilation of recondite whaling minutia and raving madness that would interest only a very strange person.  I, of course, am eminently qualified.  Plus, I’ve already ruined the ending for you.  People who like the Grateful Dead are called Dead Heads.  I wonder what they call people who like Moby Dick. 

 

Let’s have some fun, shall we?  A quiz!  Do not attempt this quiz unless you are old enough to remember when there was only one kind of Oreos and Pluto was a planet.  What’s with that anyway?  You can’t just eliminate a planet because you have a degree in Astronomy.  Nobody can just pop up and tell me that Pluto’s not a planet!  Or that Elvis is dead!  Or that Goofy was a dog!  If Goofy was a dog, what was Pluto?  Don’t you dare say “a planet”.

 

 Ok, the quiz -- here are some lines from oldies but goodies; name the song:

 

1.     Drove my Chevy to the levee

2.     I made it with a red-haired girl in a Chevrolet

3.     Someone stole my bran new Chevrolet

4.     Got an old, gold Chevy and a place of my own

5.     I took her for granted – I was so Cavalier

6.     He’s trading in his Chevy for a Cadillac

 

I’ll give you some time to think about it.  I hope you’re feeling well today.  St. Louis suffered a devastating tornado last week.  The damage even affected the Zoo, which had to close for a couple of days.  We missed the event, as you know, because we were vacationing on Bald Head Island with my three daughters.  What a wonderful trip – my favorite island with my favorite people and my favorite book.  I even managed to send last week’s blog from there.

 

On Thursday I sent my blog post

From an island just off the East Coast

Where we had perfect weather

For a whole week together

With the people that I love the most.

Recently I got a deal from eBay.  If I listed something for sale and sold it for more than $25 by a certain date, they would give me a $50 PayPal gift certificate.  So I did and I got the certificate.  It expired in only a few days, and I began to ponder about what to buy.  I mean, it’s the World of eBay!  Every possible item made or conceived or saved or dug up by the human race since the dawn of civilization is on eBay.  I have my choice from vast and unlimited selections of electronics, art, fashion, household items, sporting goods, vacations, automotive, luxury items, jewelry, collectibles, investments, nostalgia, antiques, futuristic, leisure.  Twinkies, false teeth, rubber bands, ANYTHING!  So what did Mr. Exciting decide to buy from this unbounded emporium of riches, this galactic cornucopia of wonders, this magnificent market of multifarious marvels?  I bought a year’s supply of fiber pills.  It is a sad and curious life, isn’t it?  Fiber pills. 

Message from Shakespeare:  A good leg will fall, a straight back will stoop (Henry V).  I wonder if I could buy an artificial leg on eBay.  Even Ahab in that stupid book had an artificial leg.  Maybe I could find it on that new ap for cats.  It’s called MewTube.  Or maybe I could buy Pops a new book.  I’m only six years old, and I’ve had to sniff through that book twice already.  Purr.

 

I chose multifarious to be our Weekly Word.  It means having great variety, diverse.  And as long as I am in a professorial mood, I’m going to teach you about cousins.  Are you ready?  If you have the same parents, you are siblings.  If you have the same grandparents, you are first cousins.  (Go on, pick a cousin, work it out.)  If you have the same great-grandparents, you are second cousins, and so on.  If your first cousin is Joe, then Joe’s daughter is your first cousin, once removed because she is one generation away from your first cousin.  Her kid would be your first cousin, twice removed.  Are you ready to blow your brains out yet?  Are you ready to blow my brains out?  I’d better stop.  Back to the Chevy Quiz:

 

Answers:

1.     American Pie – Don McLean

2.     Keepin’ the Faith – Billy Joel

3.     Neutron Dance - Pointer Sisters

4.     Crocodile Rock – Elton John

5.     She’s Out of My Life – Michael Jackson

6.     I’m Movin’ Out – Billy Joel

 

How’d you do?  I know -- it was on the tip of your tongue.  I have so many things on the tip of my tongue, it’s more crowded than a Taylor Swift concert.  I would let you send in your answers and then announce a winner, but winning is evil.  Didn’t you know that?  Participation is everything.  Winning is colonial, it’s master vs. slave, it’s supremacy, it’s not to be allowed.  Well, I don’t agree.  Winning is fun and a reward for hard work and preparation.  And losing is a good lesson.  It’s even ok to be pissed if you lose.  Vince Lombardi once said, “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.”

 

It’s almost golf season for me.  I don’t play much golf.  I’m pretty bad, but sometimes I hit a few good shots.  The last time I played, I hit three good shots.  But they were all on the same hole and I got a birdie.  I guess it’s better to clump all your great things together instead of stringing them out.  If a baseball player hit five home runs in a year, nobody would care.  If he hit them all on the same day, he would be in the record-book forever.  If a guy wrote one funny thing every month, no big deal.  If he wrote dozens of funny things all at once – it would be Limerick Oyster.  Don’t miss it next week.  Until then, stay well and count your blessings.

 

Michael                          Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #428                                May 22, 2025

 

I have a question to ask you.  Have you ever spent a night in a hospital?  There’s not much worse, I think, than a night in the hospital when you’re sick and alone.  When your only companions are things that beep.  When your night nurse has the brains of a house slipper. When the simple act of going to the bathroom requires as much engineering as the digging of the Panama Canal.  When you are wrapped in mankind’s most annoying invention – the hospital gown.  And when you may or may not have a fever.

 

My wife, my daughters and I are in North Carolina now on our Island Vacation, and I’m always a bit nervous in North Carolina, for it is in that lovely state that I have three times had extended hospital visits.  The last time was for pneumonia.  The nurses would come to take my temp several times a day.  It was always 37 or 39.  Now I knew that was in Centigrade, but I wondered why.  Was I in France, Guatemala, Abu Dhabi?  No, I was in the USA, where the meteorologists tell us the forecast in Fahrenheit.  Where every recipe, every oven, every toaster contraption is calibrated in Fahrenheit.  Where water freezes at 32 and boils at 212.  So why is my nurse trying to confuse me?  If the medical community wants to conduct their affairs in the Wonderful World of Metric, great.  I don’t care.  But I would like to know what my temperature is.  Being a math nerd, I knew the conversion, but what if I didn’t or if I made a mistake?  When she told me my temperature was 39, I did the calculation and got 103.  I’m dying!  But just to make sure, I asked feverishly and politely, “What’s that in Fahrenheit?”  She didn’t know.  I asked the other nurse.  She didn’t know either.  I was too sick to yell, but really – is that nuts?  Either train the nurse or put a chart on the wall.  This isn’t the Peace Corps; it’s North Carolina.  Tell me what my temperature is!  One night they told me my weight was 75.  Now that I didn’t mind.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well.  We are feeling sunny and sandy and achy here on Bald Head Island.  We have been eating and wassailing, playing pickleball and taking the dogs to the beach and asking a bunch of silly questions, the kind of pointless wastes of cranial energy we call Carol Questions.  Like -- “Would you rather be an ugly tall-person or a beautiful midget?”  That one kept me up at night.  Another was, “What famous couple do you and your partner most resemble?”

 

What famous couple do Carol and I resemble?  Let’s see.  George and Gracie?  I hate cigars.  Lucy and Desi?  My wife doesn’t have red hair.  Bill and Hillary?  Carol would never be caught in a pants suit.  Taylor and Travis?  Who am I kidding?  I finally decided we most resemble Rocky and Bullwinkle.  Carol would be Rocky of course.  Rocky was small and fast and smart and made all the decisions.  Bullwinkle was loyal and steady and goofy, always getting it wrong, always getting in trouble, always getting lost.  What does a moose eat?

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Fools are as like husbands (Twelfth Night). What about Shakespeare and Bullwinkle?  I agree he’s goofy and lost, but he’s such a good Pops, and we make a great couple.  I’ll give him a big schnoogle when he gets back.  Purr.

 

Our Weekly Word today is wassailing.  To wassail is to drink lots of alcohol and have fun.  Try it!  I don’t drink, of course, not even a beer at a baseball game.

 

And speaking of baseball.  Were we speaking of baseball?  Well, we are now.  I’m a Cardinals fan.  The St. Louis Cardinals, not the Vatican Cardinals, although they might have a baseball team too.  After all, Pope Leo XIV is a White Sox fan. Who knows?  Wouldn’t it be fun to have the two teams play each other?  The Pope, could throw out the first pitch, bless the umpires and sell Pope-Corn and indulgences in the stands.  I think the Pontifical Cardinals would be pretty certain of victory:

 

The St. Louis Cardinals? Who cares!

They sin and they make lots of errors.

They don’t have a hope

Cause we play for the Pope:

Lots of hits, lots of runs, lots of prayers.

 

That was a tough limerick.  Sometimes, when I’m writing and looking for the right word or phrase, I get up and begin to pace forth and back.  It’s impossible, of course, to pace back and forth.  To go back, you must already have left the place you are going back to.  And that act of leaving is what is called going forth.  So, you have to go forth first.  In a similar vein, no-one can jump up and down.  Once you jump up, you cannot jump down – you can only fall down.  So people, when excited, are actually jumping up and falling down.  Or running forth and back.  Got it?

 

Ok, this is the time for my apologia.  I used the word “midget” before.  Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I just don’t have the energy to keep up with all the political correctness in the universe.  By now you know I bear no ill will to any human or beast (other than nurses who can’t change Centigrade to Fahrenheit).  I would have said “man or beast” just now but then I would be in trouble for that.  It’s too much for one poor old moose to remember.  Hate me, if you must.

 

And speaking of this poor old moose’s ability to remember, I do not remember where I ate dinner last Saturday night.  I certainly cannot remember what I ordered or what I was wearing.  I can only sometimes remember where I parked.  But ask me the words to any song by The Coasters, The Four Tops or The Beatles – I’m all over it.  Why is that?  “Take out the papers and the trash or you don’t get no spending cash.”  Go on, finish it.  I’ll wait.  Oops, I forgot, it’s time to end for this week.  Stay well, count your blessings and come back next week.  Or forth.

 

Bullwinkle J. Moose       Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com