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