Blog #309                                         February 9, 2023

 

As I was working in my study this morning, Shakespeare jumped on my desk and began staring at the computer screen.  He sat there unmoving for 15 minutes.  I knew what he wanted – a bird video.  Ok, I’m a pushover.  I put on the bird video he likes -- squirrels and little birds eating from a display of nuts and seeds.  He turned and stared at me.  I knew what that look meant too – get off your chair and let me sit there, and adjust the pillow so I can see the birds better.  I did that too, and he immediately curled up on the chair pillow and settled in for the bird show.  I’m surprised he didn’t ask for popcorn.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  The cuckoo then, on every tree, mocks married men (Love’s Labours Lost).  No, Pops, I don’t need popcorn.  I’ll just eat the keys off your computer when you’re not looking.  Purr.

 

I went to the couch and read, not willing to leave him alone with my computer.  He was happy, until, that is, he heard Carol take the sheets out of the dryer.  He leapt down and raced into the bedroom so he could roll in and out among the sheets and blankets as we tried to put them back on the bed.  It’s his favorite thing.  What a life.

 

We all know that our vision is measured as 20-20 or 20-40 and so on.  The higher the second number, the worse your vision until it gets up to 20-500 where your vision is so bad, you can’t even see Al Sharpton’s hair.  After 20-500, and this is true, the vision categories become:

·        How many fingers?

·        Can you see the waving hands?

·        Can you see the moving light?

·        Blind!

 

My right eye was in the waving hands category for two months.

                                     

Hi there and welcome back.  A week ago was Groundhog Day.  I hope you saw your shadow because, if you saw your shadow, you were someplace sunny.  How nice.  And I hope you’re feeling well today.  Did that big, bodacious Chinese Spy Balloon frighten you?  It apparently didn’t frighten President Biden, because he chose not to shoot it down right away.  I guarantee you he would have shot it down if it had been wearing a MAGA hat.  The Pentagon would not tell us exactly where it was, even though every news channel had a chart of its movements like it was Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.  I suppose the Pentagon thought the balloon’s location was classified material.  Well, no matter, you can always find a copy in the trunk of Joe Biden’s Corvette.  They wouldn’t tell us what was inside the balloon either, but I know.

 

That big thing that looks like the Moon

Is just a Chinese Spy Balloon

It can see, it can hear

Cause it’s loaded with gear

And a million and two crab Rangoon.

 

Now that’s what I call a delivery.  Probably for a Super Bowl party at Mar-a-Lago.  Our Weekly Word is bodacious which means remarkable or noteworthy.

 

Are you ready for Super Bowl LVII?  That’s 57 for those of you who don’t speak Roman.  And how long are we going to keep counting things in Roman Numerals?  The Roman Empire has been dead for 1547 years.  Excuse me, MDXLVII years.  Ridiculous!

 

On Sunday, 70,000 people will gather like flies on a dead horse to watch the game.  They will see very little of it, hear none of it, have beer spilled on them and have a wonderful time.  And that’s just the party I’m going to.  I like people; I like my friends.  What I don’t like is listening to a bunch of women all talking loudly during the game about what’s really important: whether that guy in South Carolina actually killed his wife and son or why they haven’t tried the Idaho killer yet.  These lovely, kind, gentle women love to talk about violent and bloody crime.

 

I’m a little confused about the actual football game.  My high-school teams were the Indians when I was there.  Of course, when I was there, there were still Indians.    That name has been changed to the Lions.  The Washington Redskins are now the Commanders.  Ok, I get it.  But the Kansas City Chiefs are still the Chiefs and play in Arrowhead Stadium.  Where are the picketing mobs of politically correct protestors?  Where are Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Tonto?  How can they get away with using that name?  I have the perfect politically correct name if they ever put an NFL team in Alabama – the Mobile Warming.

 

Some time ago, a year or more, I was at a funeral.  I don’t even remember whose funeral it was because I was so distracted by the rabbi who was wearing a cowboy hat throughout the service.  Now, whereas this accessory covers the head as required, it was a little strange to watch Rabbi Tex doing the 23^rd Psalm.  My Stetson runneth over.  Surely Lone Ranger and Tonto shall follow me all the days of my life.  There must have been some Jewish cowboys in the Wild West, don’t you think?  How about Kvetch Cassidy and the Sundance Yid or Doc High Holiday or Schlepalong Cassidy?  

 

I’m still not driving yet after my eye surgery, so my wife took me to Kohl’s.  I cannot shop by myself.  Let me rephrase that – I am not allowed to shop by myself.  That’s fine, I need help.  I must have tried on 40 articles of clothing, but, as Carol likes to say, “You’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a Prince.”   I wonder how many frogs she kissed before she found me.  Or maybe I was just the last frog.  I love shopping at Kohl’s!  Everything was on sale plus we had a 30% off coupon.  I bought three pairs of shoes, 16 pairs of pants, 42 shirts and a Godiva chocolate bar for a total of $4.98.  It’s a miracle.

 

And it’s also a miracle that I made it through another bodacious blog.  I hope you liked it, but it’s time to go.  I have to go kiss a few frogs.  Try Limerick Oyster again next week.  It’s good for your health.  Warning – side effects may include laughter.  Stay well, keep smiling and count your blessings.

 

Schlepalong                                       Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

  

 

 

Blog #308                                February 2, 2023

 

What in me is dark, illumine.  What is low, raise and support.  That is the exhortation John Milton offered to the muse, Urania, to inspire him as he began writing Paradise Lost in 1658.  I went to school with John.  Well, sometimes I feel that old.  You know you’re old when you fill in your date of birth in some online application and the dropdown box hits the floor before it gets to your year.

 

Every writer needs an inspiration, a muse.  My muse is, of course, my wife.  Not only that, she’s most of my material, and as much as I pick on her every week, she’s pretty much a combination of Glenda the Good, Mother Theresa, Joan of Arc, Martha Stewart and Natalie Wood.  Well, I may have exaggerated a bit with the Joan of Arc, although Carol does like to be warm.  Even so, she’s a jewel.   Some men have an old bag for a wife, I have a Judith Leiber.

 

But she picks on me as much as I pick on her.  She says I have two faults – I don’t listen and something else.  I’m pretty sure I have more than two faults.  I am moody, stubborn, quick-tempered, forgetful, moody and often forgetful.  In my 77 years, I’ve crammed so much stuff into my brain cells that other stuff had to leak out to make room.  So I am often a font of cogent and titillating information but, just as often, lost.  I recently had somebody from Arthur Murray come and paint footprints on the carpeting so I could find the bathroom.  Cha-Cha-Cha.

 

My neighbors take care of Shakespeare when I’m out of town, and I take care of their plants when they’re gone.  Last winter I was watering their jade plant, a gnarled and brawny old beauty that probably weighs more than 60 pounds.  I noticed a twig on the floor that had fallen off the jade.  That wasn’t abnormal; the jade sheds leaves and twigs from time to time.  This twig was Y-shaped, about eight inches long and had a few healthy leaves on each arm.  I didn’t feel like throwing it away, so I took it home.  I found a small glass vase, filled it with some soil I scraped from under a bush outside and shoved the base of the Y into the soil.  I’m not good with plants -- black thumb they call it – but I put the vase on the porch, an environment with little sun and little warmth in winter.  There it sat.  I watered it each Sunday and after a year it was still in its little vase growing over the edge.  When my daughter was in town in December, she took pity on it and bought a large pot and some potting soil and replanted the little thing.  It’s now sitting in my kitchen, still small but healthy, waiting for warm weather and a trip back to the porch.  I have named it Nemo, which is Latin for nobody.  No, you will not see a new section in each blog called Message from Nemo.  Nemo can’t talk.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  I would I had some flowers o’ the spring (The Winter’s Tale).  Of course plants can’t talk.  Only cats and a few humans can.  Even if it could talk, what would it do?  Recite a limb-erick.  I’m so funny I could just purr, but I’m not happy he named the ugly thing, like it was a pet.  There will be no more pets in my house!  Grrr.

 

As the writer Robert A. Heinlein said, Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.  Hi there and welcome back.  I know you’re not going to believe this, but I had another cornea transplant on Tuesday.  The last one, three weeks ago, didn’t “take”, so Dr. Eye decided to try something a little different.  He’s using a kangaroo cornea this time.  It should work fine, but I will always hop.  Only kidding, but I did have the operation and now I’m lying on my back for 22 hours a day again, dependent upon my wife for care.  That’s why I said all those nice things about her before.  Obviously, I am writing this in advance.  I hope you’re all doing well.  Today is Groundhog Day and I am happy to report that:

 

·        Punxsutawney Phil crawled out of his burrow, saw that Donald Trump and Joe Biden both were planning to run again, then went back inside and shot himself.  Or he may have just hired Alec Baldwin to shoot him.

·        Joe Biden crawled out of his Corvette and saw a bunch of lawyers searching his garage.

·        Representative George Santos crawled out of his office and claimed he was the real Punxsutawney Phil.  And the Tooth Fairy too.

 

I was a math teacher once, and one thing I can do while staring at the ceiling this week is solve mathematical problems in my head.  I’m planning on writing 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.

 

The following is an absolutely true news report:

 

All jailed Russian mothers

 would be freed regardless

 of their crimes under an

amnesty proposal

Putin has approved.

I think Putin decided on the amnesty after receiving the following letter from a group of sad Russian children:

 

We’re writing you, Dear Mr. Commissar

To find out where all of our Mamas are

We’re very good Commies

And we miss our Mommies

‘Cause we don’t know where our pajamas are.

 

I thought that was a pretty clever limerick, until I heard there is now an artificial intelligence program that can write limericks.  What?  As clever as that?  That rhymes with commissar?  I mean, who are you going to bet on, a modern, highly technical and sophisticated machine or an old, blind man with a pacemaker?  Don’t answer that.

 

Our Weekly Word is exhortation, which is an emphatic urging, like me exhorting you to come back next week and see if I’ve been replaced by some antiseptic Artificial Intelligence that won’t even tell you to stay well and count your blessings.  Or find a rhyme for commissar.

 

  Michael                                           Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

Blog #307                                January 26, 2023

 

The local forecast for yesterday was for a blizzard with high winds and 6-10 inches of snow.  Stay inside, shoot a moose, pay your heating bill, don’t even open the door.  Everyone panicked, of course.  The schools closed. The St. Louis Zoo shut down.  Worst of all, my wife’s mahjong game was cancelled.  And what happened?  Nothing!  A piddly little inch of snow.  It didn’t really affect me.  I’m not scheduled to search Joe Biden’s refrigerator for classified documents until next week, but it did make me snicker.

 

Meteorologists have an easy gig.  They just look at the weather three hundred miles to the west and assume that’s what we’ll get tomorrow.  Then they add a bunch of colored charts we don’t understand and a bunch of fancy terms we don’t understand like wind-chill factor, heat index, Doppler, El Niño, La Niña, jet stream, lake effect, polar vortex and wind shear.  And the new one they made up for the rain in California – atmospheric rivers! After they have us completely baffled, they terrify us.  Storm warnings, hurricane warnings, category 5, tornado warnings, winter advisory, heat advisory, Global Warming, thirty million people affected.  They’re like snake-oil salesmen with maps!  You know what, weather people?  Stick that El Niño up your polar vortex and just tell us what the weather is three hundred miles to the west.  Then we can flip a coin and do better than you.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Fair is foul and foul is fair (Macbeth).  Bad weather is good for me.  If it makes Pops stay home, that means more play time for me and a warm lap in the afternoon.  Pops still can’t drive, so Carol had to drive us to Dr. Cat’s office to get my nails clipped.  I get a discount.  I only pay ¾ of the usual price.  Purr.

 

My recovery from eye surgery will make it unlikely that we will take our annual peregrination to Florida this year, but that’s ok.  It’s dangerous down there, especially on the golf course.

 

When golfing a Florida venue

You hit your shot quickly and then you

Run fast as a wizard

‘Cause some ten-foot lizard

Is thinking you’re part of the menu.

 

Peregrination, our Weekly Word is the act of travelling or wandering around.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  It must be Thursday. I know I have some new readers, so let me welcome you with the information that we will always have a limerick, a weekly word and a message from Shakespeare, my three-legged cat.  So let’s get started on our weekly journey through nuttiness and hopefully some humor.

 

I hope you’re all feeling well and enjoying the NFL playoffs.  It’s interesting to me that football is the most popular sport in America, but only if the men are playing.  Women’s football has never been able to build any popularity.  They used to have a league, and I remember watching a game where they put a microphone in the huddle.  I remember the quarterback calling the play and listening to the feedback from her teammates:

 

·        This helmet is destroying my hair.

·        I think the huddle should be round with the Q-Bitch in the middle.

·        Why am I the Wide Receiver? I’m skinnier than that Tight End.

·        I want water with no ice.

 

It was never going to work anyway.  No woman wants to be seen with ten other women who are wearing the same outfit.

 

I had an appointment with Dr. Pacemaker this week.  He draped an electronic mouse over my chest and told me every possible thing about my heart while he stood six feet away at his computer.  “Now,” he said, “I’m going to slow down your heart a little and see what happens.”  What? You can slow down my heart from over there?  Can you slow down my wife?  There was actually one other thing I wanted him to try while he was controlling my body, but – well, it’s a family blog.  Isn’t it?  Aren’t you my family?  Who else would put up with my stories every week?  Then he told me my battery was good for another 6½ years.  I’m not sure I am, but the damn bunny is!  Wow, 6½ years!  That’s 338 more blogs.  Can you make it?

 

A visit to Dr. Pacemaker always makes me think about my Health Care Directive.  You probably have one.  It’s the document which delegates the authority to terminate life support.  Obviously, I named my wife as the Designated Agent to decide when to – well, let’s just say it – pull the plug.  I’m worried, though.  Carol is always in a big hurry.  A pack of piranhas has more patience than my wife.  An ice-cream cone on a hot day has more patience than my wife.  She abhors waiting for silly, mundane things like slow restaurant service, traffic lights or her husband recovering from a coma.  What?  He’s not going to get out before my canasta game?  Sayonara, Sucker!

 

Actually, I wasn’t really                                                                                                  worried at all before I had this eye trouble.  Why would Carol ever get rid of me?  I did everything for her -- the pharmacy for pills, the library for a book, the grocery for two bananas (one greenish-yellow and the other yellowish-green), the gas station for a Powerball ticket. I was busier than a pickpocket in a herd of kangaroos.  I was busier than Joe Biden’s lawyers looking for classified documents.  But now that I’m not driving, well, I’d better be a good boy.

 

Yes, I know the lottery thing is a waste of money, but you never know.  I have a chance -- about as much chance as Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi sharing an Uber.

 

All this talk about end-of-life directives brings up another question.  Once you're in heaven, do you get stuck wearing the clothes you were buried in for eternity?  Just think about that.  They don’t exactly have retail stores up there, do they?  Like a Burlington Halo Factory or a luluheaven?  That’s probably for the best.  For once, I won’t have to check whether my shoes match my belt.  Now that’s Heaven!

 

Ok, enough.  I’ve insulted all your favorite politicians and made fun of my darling wife.  Sounds like a good day’s work.  She’s such a good sport   Besides, I’ve got to go change my belt.  Stay well, count your blessings and be sure to peregrinate your butt back here next week.  You wouldn’t want to miss it.

 

Michael                                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

Blog #300                                December 8, 2022

 

That’s right, Brothers and Sisters, Uncles and Aunts, Red-Staters and Blue-Staters – this is Blog #300 in a string of sometimes silly, often serious and occasionally lyrical adventures into filling up an otherwise dull Thursday morning.  It’s been a long ride.  Thanks for sharing it with me.

 

After 300 blogs, I feel I have earned the right to go off on a rant.  I apologize in advance, but the recent lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree has me hopping mad.  And I’m not a good hopper.  The tree was a 90-year-old, glorious, stately and magnificent 82-foot Norway Spruce, one of God’s noblest and most beautiful creatures, home to literally millions of birds, insects and small mammals.  It was, that is, until they chopped it down it to decorate NBC’s Plaza.  Hoda and Savannah often weep and bemoan the destruction of the planet’s forests and all its creatures, and yet the slaughter of this poor, defenseless life doesn’t bother them a bit.  The poor spruce and I have much in common – just two of God’s simple, old creatures living their lives with dignity, providing a home for other creatures and propagating new generations. 

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and staying warm.  As I am starting to write this week’s exercise in foolishness, it is very cold here in St, Louis.  In fact, much of the country is experience wintry weather.  It was so cold I saw Nancy Pelosi wearing a fur cap with horns that was left in her office.  It was so cold I saw Donald Trump warming his hands in front of some burning classified documents.  It was so cold I saw Al Gore begging for more Global Warming.  It was so cold I saw Kanye West wrapping himself in a nice, warm Nazi flag.

 

There’s just something wrong about Kanye, isn’t there?  I’m pretty sure the wheels on his bus do not go round and round.  Some people are like clouds – when they go away, it becomes a nice day.  He is the epitome of moral turpitude!  Maybe they should have chopped him down and hung tinsel all over his ass?  You can tell I’m aggravated. What we all need is a Happy Hour to cheer us up.  The problem is that at our age, we don’t drink much anymore.  I drink never, my wife almost never, my friends not much at all.  So we have to find other ways to get happy, like signing up for a new Cellular Plan that saves us $2 a month.  Now that’s happy.  What we really need is a Miserable Hour.  We’ll all congregate at a restaurant that has an Early Bird Special and bitch about our health and politicians and the price of medications and our daughter-in-law’s parents and why it is that our neighbor is paying $5 less for cable than we are.  That, and half off on a chicken sandwich will make us about as happy as we’re going to get.  See you there.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  Make the coming hour o’erflow with joy (All’s Well That Ends Well).  My happiest hour starts about 2:00 every afternoon.  I find Pops reading in his favorite chair with a blanket on his legs.  I hop on and curl up in his lap.  I sniff the book to make sure it’s ok and he starts to rub my neck and my forehead.  Pretty soon I’m asleep and I think he is too.  Now that’s happy.  Purrrr!

 

Turpitude will be our Weekly Word.  It means depravity, decadence, corruptness – all good words for Kanye.

 

Here’s something happy to talk about - crime.  I heard on the radio today about a man who killed his wife.  The Prosecuting Attorney said he had been charged with aggravated murder.  What exactly is “aggravated murder”?  I mean how much more can you aggravate someone than by murdering her?  Is aggravated murder worse than plain old murder?  “Not only did Mr. Smith murder his wife, Your Honor, he aggravated her.” 

 

There is so much crime going on, it’s frightening just to leave the house, but my wife reassures me that I am the least likely person to get mugged.  She says the way I dress, I look like I’ve been mugged already.

 

That’s really not fair.  My wife is always wonderful to me.  She even promised to save me if I was about to be hit by a train.  Really!  Well, depending on the weather.

 

I’d pull you from under a train

As long as it’s not in the rain

I’ll save you, that is,

If it won’t make me frizz

Or cause me the least little pain

 

Aww, true love is a wonderful thing.

 

I have some Thanksgiving thoughts to share with you.  On Thanksgiving morning, I was in my study calling some friends when I noticed that the noise from the bedroom was exceedingly loud.  My wife had turned up the bedroom TV loud enough so she could hear the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade while she did her hair in the bathroom.  Who listens to a parade without watching?  It’s like listening to a dog show, which she actually did after the parade.  It’s like listening to fireworks.  It’s like listening to the Miss America Pageant.  Do they still have those?

 

Years ago, each Thanksgiving, I would listen to my favorite Thanksgiving song, Alice’s Restaurant by Arlo Guthrie.  The song takes fully twenty minutes, but I liked it.  I liked it so much that I began to listen to it every night.  Every single night, rain or shine, no matter what, twenty minutes.  You thought reciting The Raven with a paper bag over my head was weird?  Well, the Alice Obsession was weird enough that it took my shrink six months to cure me of it.  But I still sneak it in on Thanksgiving.

 

Did you know that in Maryland you need a license to be a fortune teller?  It’s true.  First you have to take a test that checks your ability to predict what will happen in the upcoming week.  If you pass, you get a Fortune-Tellers’ license.  If you fail you become a meteorologist.  Here’s my forecast for next week: you’ll come back to read the next episode of Limerick Oyster.  I’ll be waiting for you.  Till then, stay well and count all your blessings.

 

Michael                                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

Blog #305                                         January 12, 2023

 

I started this edition more than a week ago and finished it last Sunday.  You see, I had a cornea transplant in my right eye this past Tuesday, and I figured I wouldn’t be able to write to you for a while after the surgery.  So I’m writing to you two days before the surgery and you’re reading it two days after the surgery.  I’m as confused as you are.  But I’m fine, or I guess I will be.  Anyway, the reason I sent last week’s blog out early was because I wasn’t seeing well and needed to make sure it got out properly.  This will be (or was) my 9^th eye surgery, and I just found out I will need another cornea transplant on my left eye in the coming months.  Well, I’m not going to sit around feeling sorry for myself?  I don’t have time for that.  I have to spend all my time feeling sorry for Meghan.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  ‘Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind (King Lear).  I just caught Pops sitting on the floor talking to a bronze cat in the TV room.  He thought it was me.  The poor old fool is lost.  He needs cheering up.  I think I’ll write him a limerick:

 

                             My Pops is as blind as a bat

                             He just doesn’t know where he’s at

                             He can’t find his pants

                             And he’s talking to plants

                             And he thinks that old statue’s a cat.

 

I’ll go give him a bite to let him know who the real cat is.  Purr.

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and enjoying 2023.  Since I’m writing this early, I’ll just throw in a bunch of stuff – a smorgasbord, a hodgepodge, a mishmash, a veritable cornucopia of variegated flotsam that have been loitering in the remote recesses of my eerily unusual brain.  Wow, my tongue hurts from that sentence.  The translation is -- I’m going to unload a lot of shit on you.  Ouch, that furball just bit me.  And the Weekly Word is cornucopia: a great amount or source of something

 

I had a birthday last Saturday.  Seventy-seven, 77, LXXVII.  I feel like an old Roman.  I talked to all my children and grandchildren and friends.  Very nice.  And I treated myself to all the foods that are bad for me – hamburgers, French fries, Diet Cokes, chocolate cake.  By the time my daughters read this blog, it’ll be too late for them to yell at me.  I ate hot dogs and fast food and drank Coke all my life and look at me!  So there!  Maybe that was a bad example.  I should find an example who doesn’t have a pacemaker, an artificial hip and is as blind as Mr. Magoo. 

 

My birthday was the deadline for renewing my driver’s license.  My vision was terrible and I wasn’t driving, but I got it renewed anyway.  That goes to show you how our system works.  If I hadn’t gotten it renewed on time, when I got my eyes working again, my license would have expired and I would be required to take the driving part of the test.  If they saw me parallel park, they wouldn’t allow me to walk, let alone drive. I’m optimistic that soon after my surgery, I’ll be back to driving again.  You’ll be able to recognize me; I’ll be the one who just got off at the wrong exit. 

 

I received the new license already, and I took a good look at it.  It included my sex, height, weight, birthday, eye color and a new picture which makes me look as horrible as the last picture, only older. At my age, that’s not what I want on my primary identification card, the card the first responders will look at if I’m in an accident.  I want my ID Card to list three things -- the phone number of my cardiologist, the serial number of my pacemaker and directions to the nearest McDonald’s.

 

Carol and I visited the Geek Squad at Best Buy last week, where two very nice young men helped her with some iPad problems.  We were so innocent and clueless about electronics that we had them laughing.  “I’ll bet you get a lot of people like us,” I said.  Yes, they replied, but they said we were the most entertaining.  And then it hit me.  A Travelling Senility Show, like the old Royal American Freak Shows.  20 and 30-year-olds would come to see what their grandparents’ lives had been like.  We could show them Flash Gordon comic books and sing them some Patti Page songs and let them try talking on a phone that was attached to a wall.

 

You know I don’t like impersonal hi-tech commerce.  I like going to the bank and talking to the tellers.  I like buying the product at the store, not on-line.  And I certainly don’t like buying movie tickets on-line.  The last time I tried that, I wound up with two tickets at a theater in Poughkeepsie – and a service charge.

 

So Carol got in the car and drove to the theater.  My wife is an attractive woman who has spent a lifetime getting men to do anything she wanted.  Even now, when she is – let us say, older – she still has considerable face-to-face talents.  She arrived at the theater, ferreted out the manager and, by the time she was through with him, had gotten a refund for my purchase and free tickets and a coupon for free food and a booking on America’s Got Chutzpah. 

 

If you want something done, get out there and do it!  Marie Antoinette didn’t say “Let them shop on-line,” did she?  And Juliet never said, “Romeo, Romeo, let my Google Maps track your location.”  And Joan of Arc never said, “Alexa, turn down the temperature.”  (You want more?  Just one more and then I promise I’ll stop.)  And Lady Godiva never said, “The package of clothes I bought on Amazon hasn’t arrived yet.”  (Aw, c’mon, one more?)  And Dorothy never clicked her heels and said, “Hey Siri, directions to Kansas.”

 

And you won’t need to click your heels to find Limerick Oyster next week.  Just follow the laughing people.  I hope to be able to find you.  We’ll see.  Stay well and count your blessings.

 

Michael                                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com

 

 

 

Blog #306                                          January 19, 2023

 

This week, we celebrated Martin Luther King Day.  Dr. King would have been 94 this year, but he’s not because he’s dead.  Of all the national holidays, only three recognize an individual – ML King Day, Christmas and Columbus Day.  I’m not sure why we have a day for Columbus, an Italian guy working for a Spanish queen who never actually set foot anywhere in the United States.  The only American who has his own day is Dr. King.  Not George Washington, not Abraham Lincoln, not Jefferson, not FDR or JFK or LBJ.  Not even Meghan Markel.

 

In January of 1969, almost one year after Dr. King was assassinated, before there was a day attached to his name, I was teaching math at Kinloch High School, a school with all black students, all black staff and all black teachers – except for me.  On his birthday, which was January 15^th back then, not some convenient Monday, the school had an assembly to mourn Dr. King’s death, and every speaker denounced the devil White People.  That was fun.  Being easy to spot, I actually hid under the bleachers.  True!  Here’s another true story.  I was in a bank recently, and I noticed the name-plate in front of one of the tellers said her name was Robirda.  I said to her, “You know, fifty years ago I taught high school and I had a student named Robirda.”  Where did you teach, she asked?  Kinloch, I said.  She smiled at me.  That was my Gran-mama, she said.  Talk about feeling old!

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are all feeling well.  Thank you for your kind wishes and concerns.  After my eye surgery. I spent most of five days lying on my back.  Some days it was 22 hours.  It was torture, as endless as waiting for a hockey season to finish, as frightening as being stuck in an elevator with the My Pillow guy, as boring as sitting in a Corvette in Joe Biden’s garage for six years guarding his documents.

 

Ok, just warming up here, exercising the old funny bone.  One of my friends suggested I trade in my cat for a seeing-eye dog. Kind of like trading in a car with only three wheels.

 

Message from Shakespeare: I count myself in nothing else so happy, as in a soul remembering my good friend (Richard II).  Seeing-eye dog!  That’s not happening.  You think he’s going to have a Message from Stupid Fido in every blog?  And I don’t care if he can’t see me.  I can always find him.  He’s the one whose clothes don’t match.  Don’t worry.  I’ll take care of him.  Purr.

 

In addition to Shakespeare, of course, my loyal bride is taking care of me as well.  As soon as we got back from the surgery, she placed a bell on my night-stand.  Do you remember the Ed Sullivan show where some Swiss milkmaid would appear with a row of bells?  The bells were lined up in order of size, and Heidi would grab them to play Somewhere Over the Rainbow by shaking them with strength and enthusiasm as if she were servicing a group of shepherds in the . . . wait, maybe different people have different images of her act.  Ed must have liked it; he invited her back four more times.

 

Where was I?  All these Heidi images have confused me.  The bell.  My bell was the littlest one, the final I in why oh why can’t I.  If I needed anything, I would ring the bell and Nurse Speedy for the Needy, Nurse Quick for the Sick would whoosh in like a mama hawk to see what her baby needed. I don’t know about Heidi, but Carol has always rung my bell.

 

I do have trouble reading a book, so I tried listening to music on the radio.  But somehow all I could get were Gangsta Rap stations.  Do your grandchildren like Gangsta Rap?  I’m not really sure what it is, but my grandchildren like it.  My, how popular music has changed!  We’ve gone from I Wanna Hold Your Hand to I Wanna Be Your Pimp.  From You Light Up My Life to You Light Up My Bong.  From Bye Bye Miss American Pie to Hello You Bitch Ho!  I made up those Gangsta Rap song titles because I looked up the real songs and the names were not fit to print.  What a world!

 

What is it about music that soothes us or excites us or makes us dance?  From an evolutionary perspective, it probably comes from birds and monkeys using sounds to attract mates.  So even the most ancient members of our species probably “sang”.  Of course, back then before the invention of the wheel, it wasn’t Rock n’ Roll, it was Rock n ’Rock.  I wonder who their big singing stars were.  Probably Sheryl Cro-Magnon, Rolling Stonehenge and Dinah-Saur (see the USA in your Pterodactyl).  If I can’t read or listen to music, maybe I’ll be like Don Quixote and “withdraw into the mountains in the company of a hermit.”  Except that one hermit plus another hermit do not make two hermits; they just make two guys who were not very good hermits at all.  And yes, to all you grammatically observant busy-bodies out there, “do not make” is correct.  I think.

 

And how, you might ask, am I writing this highly entertaining and informative blog if my vision is impaired?  It is because I have changed the size of the type on my computer screen from Lilliputian to Brobdingnagian.  What?  Our Weekly Word shall be Brobdingnagian which means gigantic and refers to the giants in the book Gulliver’s Travels as opposed to the tiny creatures called Lilliputians.  I guess I’m somewhere in the middle, between gigantic and tiny, except for one part:

 

I’m sorry to say, but my parts

Are midway on medical charts

Except for the best

‘Cause right here in my chest

Is a big, Brobdingnagian heart.

 

You thought I was going to say something else, didn’t you?  Shame on you.  But I love you anyway.  You light up my bong.  I trust that all you Brobdingnagians and all you Lilliputians and everyone in between will stay well, count your blessings and find your way back here next week.  I’ll leave breadcrumbs.

 

Michael                                             Send comments to mfox1746@gmail.com