Blog # 502                               October 22, 2026

 

I currently have four grandchildren in college.  I have a Freshman, a Sophomore, a Junior and a Senior.  The cost of attending college has become scandalous.  A four-year education at Stanford is upward of $300,000.  But wait – if your family makes less than $150,000 per year, Stanford considers you impoverished (well, it’s California) and your tuition is free.  That’s right.  Under $150,000 income – free.  Over $150,000 income – they’ll stick it to you big time.

 

If poverty is your condition

You won’t have to pay the tuition

But if you have dough

We’ll charge enough so

You won’t have a pot you can pish in.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school (Henry VI, Part 2).   I don’t know why Pops doesn’t send me to college.  I could go to Purr-due, take the M-CATs and learn about CAT scans.  Purr.

 

I don’t know whether you think that taking from the rich and giving to the poor is a good thing or not, but certainly that is what occurs in the calculus of college tuitions.  A rich family pays twice what the rate should be so that a poorer student can attend for free.  I’m not sure the one-to-one ratio is the correct permutation, but you get the point.

 

I apologize for all the mathematical terms – calculus, permutation, ratio – but you know I used to be a math teacher, and I sometimes lapse unknowingly into math-speak.  I’m planning to write a racy and erotic novel about a math teacher one day.  I think I’ll call it Fraction in the Rye.  Or maybe Five Squared Times Two Shades of Grey.  Or Tropic of Calculus.

 

Hi again and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling fine.  Have you ever looked inside a toilet tank?  Inside this sleek and shiny porcelain receptacle, perfect for the sanitary and odorless elimination of human waste and eyebrow-pencil shavings, rests the most arcane, jerry-rigged, Rube Goldberg collection of junk imaginable.  Chains and plastic rods and rubber balls jammed inside in such a delicate and tangential configuration that the smallest tremor will make the chain detach from the plastic rod or the rubber ball lodge against the side wall.

 

This is the 21^st Century, the age of the Internet and the iPhone and Artificial Intelligence.  Where are the geniuses of today?  Where is the Bill Gates of plumbing?  Where is Elon Flush?  We have mapped the human genome.  Why can’t we invent a toilet that isn’t filled with non-replaceable, non-interchangeable, non-transferable refuse that looks like it came out of a Fat Albert cartoon?  Well, what do you expect from a device invented by a man named Crapper?  (Thomas Crapper, 1836-1910)

 

Weekly Word:  Tangential means merely touching; only slightly connected.  It’s another pesky math term.  Sorry.

 

You know I love lists.  I keep lists of everything.   I’m working on a list of new names for sports teams because none of the current names will survive the scrutiny of the Politically Correct crowd.  No more can we tolerate the Indians, the Chiefs or the Braves – they’re demeaning to Native Americans.  And Lions and Tigers and Bears – oh my!  They’re too violent.  The Cardinals, Padres and Angels are too religious.  So what will the future politically correct sports teams be called?  I have a few guesses.  The Chattanooga Choice (a pro team of course, the San Fran Trans, and of course, the Mobile Warming.

 

I just finished a book by Agatha Christie.  Google tells me that, next to the Bible, the most books sold by one author is a tie between Shakespeare (William, not my cat) and Agatha Christie.  She has sold more than two billion books.  Thought you’d like to know.

 

Since I’m rambling here with no apparent purpose, let’s talk about Hanukah.  For some reason, my strange brain was remembering a Hanukah we spent in North Carolina.  I think my grandson Zach was six.  When we gave out gifts, he got a Playmobile Rescue Helicopter.  He assembled it all by himself in about an hour, an endeavor that would have taken his Phi Beta Kappa, Juris Doctor Poppy six months and the constant aid of a staff of rocket scientists to accomplish.  Zoey (age 4) got a sticker-making machine.  Alyssa (age 2) got some crayons.  My son-in-law got some socks.  My daughter got some shirts.  Carol got some stationery.  I got what the arrow-maker’s husband got – the shaft.  My gift, I was told, was watching my loved-ones’ pleasure at opening their presents.  I felt like the coach of the Washington Generals. 

 

After the presents, Zach and I made up a whole adventure using his helicopter and told stories till bedtime.  Sometimes I wish I was six and had a Poppy to take me to movies and buy me popcorn and tell me scary stories.  Zach is now 25, and my grandchildren don’t need bedtime stories any more.  But at least I can still tell stories to you.  Here’s one.

 

Some time ago, Carol had lunch with her pedicurist.  I thought that was a little bizarre to begin with, but who am I to interfere in a relationship between a woman and her pedicurist?  I’m not sure where they were going, either Dunkin ToeNuts or Ruby Toesday, but I was assigned to pick her up.  She told me if I got there early, I could wait at the bar next door.  Early?  I am always early.  Always! Punctuality is the politeness of kings!  I really didn’t want to wait at a bar, but she said just go there and try to pick up some girls.  How am I going to pick up some girls?  Read them my blog?  I can just see all those young women shoving each other out of the way to get closer to the raggedy old fart reading some kind of limerick gibberish.  It’s a good thing I’m not in the market to pick anyone up.  I’m happy I can pick up my cat.  Instead, I passed the time wondering what you eat at lunch with your pedicurist.  Probably corn chowder and, of course, toe-fu.  How about French bunion soup?  I know, I’m corny, but at least I’m on time.

 

And I’ll be on time next week.  So have a lovely, count your blessings and stay well.  And don’t be late.

 

Michael                          Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com