Blog #480                                May 21, 2026

 

Tell me, why is everything so complicated?  Even a glass of water is complicated nowadays.  It comes from the refrigerator door now with bubbles or no bubbles, crushed ice or cubed ice, lime flavor or orange flavor, chilled or room temp.  Even plain old eggs are now organic, cage-free, hormone free, antibiotic free, non-GMO,  free range eggs.  Seriously?  And don’t get me started about coffee.  I was at Starbucks and the lady in front of me ordered the following:

 

A Double Ristretto Venti Half-Soy Nonfat Decaf Organic Chocolate Brownie Iced Vanilla Double-Shot Gingerbread Frappuccino with Foam Whipped Cream Upside Down Double Blended, One Sweet'N Low and One NutraSweet, and Ice.

 

That is an actual thing available at Starbucks.  I looked it up.  But what confuses me is this:  once you’ve ordered the chocolate brownie iced vanilla with whipped cream, does adding the Sweet’N Low make you feel like Oprah would be proud of you?

 

Did you know that Florida resident William L. once ordered a 101-espresso-shot latte at his local Starbucks that cost $83.75 and came with 17 pumps of vanilla syrup, mocha and green tea matcha powder served with steamed milk?  Each year, Starbucks gives their employees sensitivity training.  Man, if I had to deal with people that wired on caffeine and sugar, I wouldn’t want sensitivity training.  I’d want a flame-thrower. 

 

Hi there and welcome back.  Summer is coming and I hope you’re feeling well and keeping busy.  It’s at this time in my blog every week that I begin to feel anxious about what I’m going to write about.  But I decided not to worry.  Worry is like a rocking chair – it’s something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.  Besides, I’ve come to feel confident that some bizarre concoction of insanity and foolishness will pop out of my strange head if I squeeze hard enough – or drink a Starbuck’s.  Let’s see what’s hiding up there.  How about Presidential assassinations?  That should cheer us all up.

 

In 1975 Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme pulled a gun on President Gerald Ford and pulled the trigger.  The six-shooter she held had four bullets, but the chamber she shot was empty.  Otherwise, she would likely have killed the President.  She is now 77, free and living in New York.  In 1981 John Hinckley fired four rounds into the Presidential limousine, hitting President Ronald Reagan in the chest and wounding three others.  He is 70, also free and living with his mother.

 

Pardon my complete ignorance, but isn’t shooting the President a bad thing?  I thought it was.  Then why are Fromm and Hinckley running around free?  Of course!  I get it now -- Ford and Reagan were Republicans and in Washington, shooting a Republican isn’t considered such a terrible crime.  Hell, everybody’s doing it now!  Nobody shot at Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama or Biden.  And the guys who tried to shoot Trump will probably be pardoned by the next Democratic president.  You’ll notice that the guy who shot a Democratic president (Kennedy) was dead two days later.

 

I’m getting old.  No, I know you’re not and Carol surely isn’t, but I am.  And that means my grandchildren are growing up.  The 5^th oldest of my eight grandchildren just graduated high school this week Summa Cum Laude.  That means there are only a few proms in the future.  Of all the members of the family, the one most obsessed with the Prom experience is Carol.  When our oldest, Zachary, was prom age, my imperious wife urged and cajoled him for months about asking someone to the Prom by telling him how happy he would make the girl’s mother.  I’m trying to remember if, when I asked Carol to our High School Prom, I was thinking of her mother.  Let’s move on.

 

Luckily for Grandma Busy-Body, the Prom was the weekend we were in North Carolina, and Carol was peppering Zach for days with tips and suggestions about how to behave.  He was very receptive to all the suggestions except the one about the step-stool.  You see, Zach drives a pickup truck.  Everyone in North Carolina has a pickup truck, and his is a big one.  It is so tall off the ground that I cannot get into the thing without a Sherpa.  Hence, the step-stool, so the girl won’t have to pole vault into the truck with her high heels and tight dress.  I mean, how happy would the girl’s mother be if the girl broke her leg before dinner?  It’s all about the mother.  Anyway, he rejected the idea, so Carol enlisted Zach’s twelve-year-old sister to do a dry run.  She put on some of her mother’s heels and gave it a try.  She made it.  It wasn’t elegant, but it worked.

 

Our Weekly Word is imperious, which means fond of ordering people around.  Sound familiar?

 

Now here I am with nothing else to do today.  Bummer!

 

Whether you’re in the shade or the sun

Having nothing to do is not fun

Besides which, it’s true

When you’ve nothing to do

You never can tell when you’re done.

 

I’ve got it!  A terrific new business idea!  I’m not kidding here, so listen up.  Have you ever had a cat that became unruly or incontinent?  You don’t want to put poor old Fluffy down, but what choice do you have?  What we need is an old folk’s home for cats.  Don’t laugh – yet!  For $99 a month we will board your cat, feed him his favorite food, and let him tinkle anywhere he damn pleases.  You can visit him and play with him.  You can even Facetime him.  We’ll have a vet on call and a cemetery out back (a nice plaque is extra).  We’ll call it Feline Gardens or Meow and Later or Tom & Geriatric or something.  Think about it.

 

Message from Shakespeare, the three-legged cat: "Oh, that way madness lies; let me shun that (King Lear).  I know the old man goes looney sometimes, but that’s the craziest idea he’s had yet.  I am not going to any old-cat’s home, and that’s that!  Says the cat!  Purr.  And who the hell is Fluffy?

 

Ok, another week.  Seven damn days closer to the future.  Well, one good thing the future has – next week’s blog.  Don’t miss it.  Stay well and count your blessings.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #478                                May 7, 2026

 

Last weekend, we took a little trip to Las Vegas.  Southwest Airlines was wonderful.  The plane was on time and the flight was pleasant.  Just the thought of the amazing engineering and sophisticated technology that goes into crafting a vehicle that can carry 200 people through the air at 30,000 feet and 600 miles per hour while carefully monitoring electronically every meteorological and aeronautic aspect of the flight is mind-bending.  It makes you wonder, though, (and I know you know what’s coming) – it makes you wonder why these super-smart engineers cannot design a speaker system on which you can actually understand what they’re saying.  “The captain scribbitz gwaldemang tooseidram the cokseld.”  And the system in the terminal is even worse.  “Would the passenger Qgoblhet Jugfurnace, please fribitz his flabunglator to gate forsemonty.”  They can take people to the Moon.  You’d think they could make a speaker system.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  Did you celebrate May Day on May 1 and Star Wars Day on May 4?  May the fourth be with you.  And if you don’t know what that means, well, I’m not sure what to say.

 

I hope it’s not one of those days for you.  You know what I mean, a day when everything is wrong, hopeless or broken.  It seems like a lot of days are one of those days nowadays.  I’m feeling it too.  Maybe it’s just my weekly angst over finding something that will entertain you.  I mean it’s been 478 weeks and often I worry where the next thought is coming from.  478 weeks!  That’s longer than any of Elon Musk’s wives lasted.

 

But I decided not to worry.  Worry is like a rocking chair – it’s something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.  Besides, I’ve come to feel confident that some bizarre concoction of insanity and foolishness will pop out of my strange head if I squeeze hard enough.  How about a confession.

 

I don’t actually know why I feel the compunction to lay bare all the peccadilloes, foibles, idiosyncrasies and utter stupidities that speckle my life.  But here it is.  On the way back from Las Vegas, I left my computer at the airport.  You know, you have to put your laptop in a separate bin and run it through security, and I forgot to retrieve it.  I’m sure there were notifications on the loud speaker announcing that some blithering fool had left his computer behind, but of course, nobody could understand the loud speaker.  I didn’t realize what I had done until I got home and unpacked my carry-on.

 

I was devastated, embarrassed, almost suicidal.  Me without my computer is like a snail without a shell, like a car without a steering wheel, like a baby without his bankie, like a politician without his teleprompter.  I wigged out and had a mini-breakdown.  But my trusty, loyal, clever and lovely wife rescued me.  She called the lost and found at the airport.  They located the errant electronics and Fed-Exed it to me within a couple of days.  Thank you, Honey.

 

You didn’t know I had foibles, did you?  That’s our Weekly Word and means minor weaknesses or eccentricities.  I’m loaded with them.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear (All’s Well That Ends Well).  I hope Pops doesn’t lose me somewhere and have to ship me home in a box.  I’m not traveling anywhere with him.  He’s not trustworthy.  I’ll just stay here and wait for him to come home.  If he can find it.  Purr.

 

Now to something important.  Do you have a middle name?  Do you remember your middle name?  Is there any reason for having a middle name?  I am convinced that the sole purpose of a child's middle name is so he can tell when he's really in trouble.  If my mother called out “Michael”, she just wanted to see me.  If she yelled “Michael Bruce”, I knew some serious punishment was on my horizon.  Some people have more than one middle name, like Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus.  I have a granddaughter with two middle names.  And then, of course, there’s Picasso, or should I say:

 

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso

 

That’s his real name.  By the time he wrote all that on the canvas, there was so little room left he had to squash up the faces.

 

I just got the mail.  Let’s see – a discount on hearing aids, an invitation to visit the new elderly facility, a free dinner if I listen to a money manager, 30% off at Kohl’s and a whole bunch of stuff addressed to Resident, Occupant or Loser.  Is this too exciting for you?  This is my life!

 

But wait, what’s that?  A small envelope with a hand-written address and no bar codes.  It was from my granddaughter – snail mail.  Not an e-mail or a fax.  Not a text or a tweet or a twit or a twoot.  Not a Facebook or a YouTube or a Snapchat.  Just a little old envelope with my name written on it in pencil.  I dove for it like a pelican after a sardine.  Isn’t it funny how something as simple as an actual letter can be so exciting?

 

I needed a battery in my watch and I went to a Chinese-run place that sells purses and belts and hats and gimcracks of all sorts.  I walked in and said Ni Hau to the owner.  That’s Mandarin for “hello”.  I learned that when I taught English to Chinese students.  The owner replied, “We’re Korean. We all look alike.”  I apologized, of course.  When I left, she said, “Goodbye, John.”  No, I said.  Don’t you remember me?  I’m Michael.  Oh, she replied:

 

Please put on my record a strike

I truly forgot you were Mike.

I’m just poor Korean

Have trouble with seein’

Besides all you Whites look alike.

 

I think I’m finished for this week.  You made it through another one.  I’m proud of you.  Stay happy and in good health, count your blessings, and Hung Hau.  That’s Mandarin for “Your camel has whooping cough.”  You’d be surprised how often that comes up.  See you next week, if I don’t lose my computer again.

 

Michael                                    Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com