Blog #107

Next Monday is April Fools Day.  I do not celebrate April Fools Day – Carol says I am a fool every day.  A fool with no closets.  Our master bedroom has two closets.  Our second bedroom has one.  All three of those belong to my wife.  I can’t complain; I agreed to it at the wedding – For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, and you don’t get any closets.  But I have adapted.  My underwear, socks and pajamas are in my nightstand, sweaters on the floor of the second bedroom, shoes in the study, belts behind the lettuce in the fridge.  And a lot of stuff in the hall storage closet across from our unit of the condo building.  Hey, Superman has his phonebooth, I have my storage closet in the hall.

Look, out in the hall!  It’s the pest control guy, it’s the painter -- no it’s Super Hubby, strange visitor from an interior unit.  And who, disguised as a silly old man, fights a never-ending battle with blousing, linen and shoes that don’t match his belt.  You think this is funny, don’t you?

Yes, an old man is a ridiculous thing.  Except to a little boy or a little girl.  When he acts silly or immature, they love it.  When he trips or sneezes or drops his cheeseburger on the floor, they laugh.  They don’t care if he gets lost.  They don’t care if he drives too slowly.  They don’t care what he wears.  To them he’s a big, happy teddy bear who tickles and tells stories and talks like a pirate and who never says no.  They don’t pick on him; they never criticize.  They just hug and love and enjoy every minute as if they knew they would not have him forever.

We think that our Poppy’s a king

He can tell funny stories and sing

We know, truth be told,

That he’s wrinkled and old

But to us he’s a wonderful thing.

Nowhere else does anybody think I’m funny and special and wonderful or cares if I have gum or candy in my pockets.

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling fine and generous as well.  Hey, can I borrow a twenty?  No?  You haven’t got any cash?  Well, who does?  I owed my daughter some money for entering her basketball pool, and she said for me to just send it on Venmo.  What’s Venmo?  Is that some new superfood like kale or chia seeds?  I tried some chia seeds once and they found a hairy growth on my tongue with the likeness of Chuck Schumer.  No, she explained to me, it was an electronic currency thing-a-ma-jiggy.  My children have Venmo and PayPal and Bitcoin and I don’t know what any of that means.  I asked her if sending her a check would be too medieval for her.

 Congresswoman Ilhan Omar recently said, “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby.”  Well, not any more apparently.  The only people with Benjamins are drug dealers, so now when she wants to be antisemitic, she’ll have to say, “It’s all about the Venmo.”

I actually have real money in my pocket.  When I go to McDonald’s, I pay for my Diet Coke with actual money – Washingtons, Lincolns, Hamiltons, Jacksons, Grants and, yes, even Benjamins.  Everybody else is swiping some kind of card over some kind of sensor and who knows!  I certainly don’t.  I’m sure one day they’ll make me switch to PayPal or BitShit or something.  I’ll save my cash and use it for bribing an Ivy League school.

Finally, the Mueller Report is out.  What a relief!  At last we can stop with this horrible argument that has divided our nation for two years – is it MILLER or MYUULER or MULLER?  I was a MYUULER guy myself.  Thank goodness that’s behind us, so we can move on to important issues, like whether we should stop eating eggs, little aspirins and hot tea.  Leave me alone!  If I had adhered to all the food warnings I’d heard in my life, I would have starved to death during the Nixon administration.

Take the eggs for example.  First they were the perfect breakfast, then only the yolks were good, then only the whites, then the whole thing was good, and now they say eggs are as dangerous as an English soccer fan.  Not surprisingly, I overheard one of my daughter’s chickens saying, “Give me a clucking break!”

Here’s your math lesson for the week.  If you earned a dollar a second, that’s $60 a minute, $3,600 an hour, $86,400 a day, $31,536,000 a year, $315 million dollars (roughly) in a decade!  You still couldn’t afford Mike Trout, but you could probably get your kid on the UCLA soccer team.

This world is getting too crazy, isn’t it?  Parents are bribing college athletic coaches; Michael Avenatti is bribing Nike; Boeing aircraft are grounded and Jussie Smollett has bought his way out of a 16-count indictment for $10,000.   It’s hard for me to cope.  I need to get away.  Maybe I should take a Viking cruise.

Last week was the first day of Spring.  There is some disagreement, however, as to which day it was.  The people on television say it was Wednesday the 20^th, but I really don’t care about them anymore.  To me the seasons change on the 21^st.  I am a scientist and I understand the Vernal Equinox and why it occurred on the 20^th, but I have so few anchors left from the ancient days of my youth that I’m hanging on to the 21^st.  Cash is no longer acceptable, the Boy Scouts have changed their name, Rice Krispies are organic, Pluto is no longer a planet and my grandchildren have never heard of Princess Summerfall Winterspring.  We have to have something solid and unchangeable from our past, don’t we?  So I’m sticking with the 21^st.  Happy Spring!

Ok, I’m done.  My rage and disappointment have tired me out.  Stay well, count your blessings and believe with me, Brothers and Sisters – Pluto is still a planet!  I’ll see you next week.

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

 

Blog #106

O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind? – Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Percy certainly had it right.  Spring is here – blossoms, warm showers, longer days, protests.  Students around the world skip school to demand action on climate change.  That was the headline last Friday.  Am I missing something?  When did we decide that we should encourage 13-year-olds to take over the world?  Think about that.  Teenagers?  Vaping, drugs, sexting, twitter, messy rooms, rings in their eyebrows?  We want them making decisions for the planet?  They can’t even find two socks that match.

When I was thirteen, sixty years ago, my mission was to realize how much I did not know and to do my best to learn some of it so that, when I grew up, I could earn a living and raise a new generation.  Now, it seems to me, children are taught that they can do anything they want, be anything they can be and that it’s ok to spend their lives sitting in a puddle, painting eggshells while other people, people who work, pay for their food and internet access. 

And what sort of parents allow, even encourage, their teens to skip school, march with profane signs and get arrested?  The people who should be out there marching and carrying signs are us old folks.  Signs like GREY IS BEAUTIFUL, OLD LIVES MATTER, GREY IS THE NEW BLACK, or my favorite:

WE’RE OLD AND WE’RE COLD – WE LOVE GLOBAL WARMING.

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling chipper now that Spring is here.  Have you filled out your bracket yet?  I have two teams to root for.  My oldest daughter is a Duke alumna and I graduated from St. Louis University Law School.  I’ve got my sweatshirts and pennants and I’m ready to go. 

Whenever I do a routine cleaning with Dr. Tooth, I’m forced to lie there for an hour with my eyes closed without talking.  You’ve all done it.  What do you do to pass the time?  Figure out how big the bribe will be to get your grandkid into Yale?   Well, here’s what I did in an effort to exercise my memory and make the time pass.  I recited The Raven in my mind.  That took about ten minutes, but I can’t expect you to do that.  I mean, what lunatic fool would memorize 108 lines about a ghastly, grim and ancient bird who could only say one archaic word?  Then I did the parts of The Highwayman that I know.  Then I went through the ages and birth dates of everyone in my family.  Then I mentally created this paragraph so that I could share it with you.  Sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have.

Breaking News:  Felicity Huffman has pleaded guilty and was sentenced to Community Service.  She immediately paid someone $50,000 to do it for her.  Yes, money talks, doesn’t it?  It’s a shame all mine ever said was “Good-bye”.

I just bought Lucy a birthday present.  Lucy is Grandchild #8, lives in California and will be 6.   Did I go to three toy stores, walk up and down the aisles, choose something and take out my credit card, schlep the package home, wrap it up, attach an address label, drive to the post office, wait in line and pay $20 to ship it to California?  No, I pushed 17 buttons with my formerly nicotine-stained fingers and it was done.  Five minutes, free shipping.  And that’s why TOYS Я GONE.

Just now, as I was using those fingers to write to you, I heard Carol in the next room talking to Alexa.  I heard her say, “Alexa, tell me a limerick.”  What?  I have written 1200 limericks.  I am the Master of Limericks!  And now my own wife is asking some tin can full of wires for a limerick?  Am I sick?  Does she know something I don’t know?  Well, said I, let’s see what the little bitch came up with.  I meant Alexa, of course.  Then I heard Alexa’s reply:

I’m here to fill any request

So a limerick?  I’ll do my best

But I’m just a tin can

Not a clever old man

So don’t be surprised if the last line is too long and doesn’t rhyme.

I guess my writing job is safe.  In fact, I think I’m pretty good at writing.  You’ve put up with me for more than 100,000 words already, so you must agree.  But words have suddenly escaped me.  I went to get my cable bill adjusted.  Where to start?  I just wanted to cancel my land line.  Who needs a land line?  The calls are all to sell me hearing aids or convince me to donate to the Boeing Go-Fund-Me Page.  So I wanted to eliminate the line and to get rid of HBO and Showtime, which I can get on Netflix.  Simple, right?  Arranging lunch with Kim Jong Un is simpler!  First of all, new customers get a $25 discount on this and a $15 discount on that, but loyal customers who have been with the company for twenty years get treated like a urine sample.  And then there’s the business practice invented by cable companies that says, “If you add a service, it costs you more, but if you delete a service, it costs you more.”  Because I was on a PLAN.  Did I wake up in a Lewis Carroll novel?  I told the Jabberwocky waiting on us that I was going to cancel all service.  He said that was fine, but it wouldn’t reduce my bill.  Because I was on a PLAN.  I was about to tell the Marquis De Sade into what dark realm he could shove his plan when my better half (actually my better four fifths) stepped in and saved me from committing a felony.  Although I’m not sure strangling a cable company employee is a crime.  Maybe Assault with a Deadly Clicker.  Hmm, seems I wasn’t at a loss for words after all. 

I have to go now – I’m on a PLAN.  Can you live without me for a whole week?  I knew you could.  So stay well and count your blessings.  I’ll be back before you know it.

Michael                                    Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #105

Be it ever so humble.  Be it ever so cold and snowy and blustery, there’s no place like home.  We drove home straight from Florida.  Well, I couldn’t miss Senior Day at Walgreens, could I?  Eighteen and a half hours in the car during which the odometer went up 1,000 miles while the thermometer went down 75^o.  I was wiped out, as tired as a centipede’s pedicurist.  Is there such a thing as Highway Lag?  I wish I could have just clicked my little ruby slippers, but I had forgotten to pack them.  I like my ruby slippers.  They go with my Carmen Miranda fruit turban. 

Tomorrow is the Ides of March. “Beware the Ides of March,” Shakespeare wrote in his play Julius Caesar as a warning of impending doom.  And sure enough, Caesar was killed on March 15^th, the Ides.  Boy that Shakespeare sure knew what was what.  The Ides, according to the ancient Roman Calendar, was a day (either the 15^th or 13^th) which marked the middle of the month around which all events were calculated.  And that, my friends, is why we don’t meet a lot of Romans.  They’re too busy figuring out what day it is.

Can you believe the news?  The story is about Hollywood actresses (among others) spending huge sums of money to bribe admissions officials at Yale University (and others) to accept their otherwise undeserving children or grandchildren.  They’re in big trouble now.

In school you did nothing but fail                                  

So your folks bribed your way into Yale

But they say that was naughty

And now your Cum Laude

Is getting you nowhere but jail.

So I guess the kid’s Master’s Degree will be in Prison Management.  And you thought  that those rich Hollywood types all believed in leveling the playing field!  Yah, right!

I was trying, the other day, to watch a cable news program where a young woman was espousing a cogent and well-thought argument about something.  I cannot tell you what she was talking about because Carol and her friends were all talking heatedly on the subject of whether the woman’s lips were too plumped up.  Well, some things are important.

Why do we all instantly criticize everyone’s looks?  The President’s hair, the First Lady’s jacket, Charlize Theron’s hair, Emma Stone’s dress, the color of the Governor of Virginia’s makeup!  I don’t know how many times I have seen my wife watch a stunning athletic or musical performance by a woman and only have one comment – Didn’t she look in a mirror before she went out?  Or, if it’s a man – He must not be married.  As if her own husband cannot properly dress himself.  I hate it when she’s right.

We just spent a few days with a couple who bickered, but never fought.  He would criticize something she did, but then he’d say, “But I love you, my Sweetheart.”  Then she’d call him names more scandalous than John McEnroe ever called an umpire, but then she’d coo, “But you’re my precious husband?”  It seems to work for them.  I was determined to try it.

Now, my wife is not only super critical, she’s controlling.  She came home the other day, opened the refrigerator and said, “You ate a hard-boiled egg.”  She has a firm and up-to-date inventory of every edible morsel in the house, and I had no response but, “Call my attorney.  But Sweetie-Pie, you’re my own special Princess and the love of my life.”  I don’t think that worked.  Now she’s hidden the hard-boiled eggs.  She is, of course, the love of my life, and what keeps our relationship balanced and ordered is that she’s also the love of her life.

Congratulate me, my student loan was approved.  Do you get those phone calls?  My student loan was approved, my credit card is working fine, hearing aids are on sale and there’s a 90-year-old woman in Nigerian who wants to send me 3.5 million dollars.  How do they find me?  I must have an IGNORANT PATSY sign pasted to my forehead. 

I know the Ignorant Patsy sign must have been prominently displayed when we went to get new iPhones.  Two for the price of one!  How could you pass that up?  The catch (there’s always a catch) was that one of us had to change his number.  Notice I didn’t say “his or her” number.  Initially, I suggested that my wife should change her number.  She looked at me like Nurse Ratched looked at Jack Nicholson!  The likelihood of Carol volunteering to change her number was the same as Donald Trump and Maxine Waters doing the tango or R. Kelly guest-hosting Sesame Street.  So, there I was, the poor dumb schmuck with the Ignorant Patsy sign pasted firmly on his skull, agreeing to change his number.  I opened my list of contacts, prepared to go through them one by one, and then it hit me.  This is my Salman Rushdie moment, my chance to disconnect from the world and all the people in it, to join the Witness Protection Program and disappear.  But no, I couldn’t do it.  I have too much fun blabbing to you every week.

Do you remember a phone called the Princess Phone?  Well Carol’s new phone is an updated version, the iPrincess.  First of all, it turns into a mirror when she picks it up and says Mirror, Mirror.  It predicts the weather and likelihood of precipitation on every square foot of her daily itinerary.  And, it tells her that her hair looks nice every two hours.  Her Siri calls her Precious and has been instructed not to respond to my voice.  I’m used to that.

To those of you who are Irish; to those of you who are somehow green; to those of you who will gladly get plastered at the drop of a shamrock – Happy St. Patrick’s Day.  I myself have never liked green popcorn, green bagels, green beer, avocados or kale.

I have a box with cut-out newspaper headlines I thought were interesting.  This one (and it’s real) is from last August:  FOUR DEAD WHEN SKYDIVING PLANE CRASHES AT GEORGIA AIRPORT.  Why didn’t they jump out?  I guess they were too busy reading my blog.  Stay well, count your blessings and come back next week – unless you are skydiving.  If you are, stay away from the Space Needle and the Empire State Building.  Ouch!

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #104

Ok, now I’m pissed.  I’ve stood by while the Health Police have killed every good thing in America.  I used to like cigarettes – no, no, no.  I used to like wine but then they said one glass was good but that’s all.  That was like saying you could inhale once a day, but no more.  The only person I know with that kind of will power is my wife.  I’ve probably told you this before but am reasonably certain you’ve forgotten, so here goes.  After dinner at a mall restaurant one night, we walked past a candy store.  Carol called the clerk over to the chocolate-covered raisin display, pointed and said, “I want that one.”  One chocolate-covered raisin.  Who does that?

Bacon is bad and coffee and eggs and now sugar.  I would rather live less years with more sugar than more years with no sugar.  Did that make sense?  Everything is free range and organic and cage-free and gluten-free and GMO-free and sugar-free.  Diet Coke is bad for you and Big-Macs and the Boy Scouts and the Governor of Virginia!  But now they’ve gone too far.  They’ve made Rice Krispies Organic!

The Health Food Police are Satanic

They’ve made my Rice Krispies organic

And they’ll never stop

Till Snap, Crackle, Pop

Are Asian and Black and Hispanic.

The name of the cereal has gone from Snap, Crackle, Pop to Juan, Amal, Mao.  If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Amal.  And what about Cap’n Crunch?  There’s a white supremacist for you!

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well and ready to party, because next Tuesday is Fat Tuesday.   In French that translates to Mardi Gras, so get your beads and your beignets and your booze and act utterly stupid for a week.  It’s easy.  I do it all the time.  In fact, when I speak to my wife, it’s no longer a matter of smart or stupid.  It’s a matter of whether I’m stupid, utterly stupid or Jussie Smollett stupid.  And she wonders why I’m quiet.  Taciturn – that’s a good word.

Well, Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show is on the road again, and here we are in Naples visiting dear friends.  They’re “dear”, of course, because they invite us down every year.  When we arrived, with more luggage than the Beverly Hillbillies, we noticed they had a dog.  Further discussion revealed that they were dog-sitting for one night while the dog’s owners were elsewhere.  Upon unloading our 87 bags, suitcases, boxes and portmanteaux, we noticed that the high-pedigree and high-cost canine was nowhere to be found.

Everyone panicked and started running around the neighborhood like balloons with holes punched in them looking for the runaway Rin-Tin-Tin, the lost Lassie.  Except Carol, who realized that looking for a dog outside would mean exposing her hair to the slightest of breezes and the heartbreak of perspiration.  So she stayed home.  Naturally, while we stupid humans were chasing our tails in the Florida sun, waving our arms and screaming Fluffy, the dog crawled out from under her hiding place in the bedroom and calmly curled up on Carol’s lap.  It’s probably the best strategy, when something alive is lost, to just sit down and wait for it to show up.  I hate it when she’s always right.

My health insurance carrier has changed its dental plan and my dentist is no longer a part of the group, so a couple of weeks ago, I went looking for a new Dr. Tooth.  I talked to friends and asked around and found a promising replacement.  I then called her office.  It happened to have been a horrible wintry day, and when I said I would bring in my insurance card and set up an appointment in a few days, the woman on the other end of the line jokingly suggested I bring some hot chocolate as well.  A week later I showed up at the office with my teeth, my insurance card and the hot chocolate (from McDonald’s of course).  “You Never Get A Second Chance to Make a First Impression,” said Will Rogers, and my hot chocolate offering was a big hit.  I am already their favorite patient.

On the way back, I drove by a Catholic Church called St. Leo the Great.  What accolade could we possibly accord someone that’s higher than Saint?  Not the Nobel Prize or the Pulitzer or Dancing with the Stars!  So why add “The Great” at the end.  We know he’s great; he’s a saint!  After thinking about it, I determined that there must be another St. Leo – St. Leo the Not So Great.  But why did we ever think of canonizing such a loser? 

Talking about Dancing with the Stars, there actually is a show called Dancing with the Saints.  It’s on the Catholic Game Network right after Vatican Squares and before The Pope is Right and Who Wants to be a Pedophile.

How’s your math?  Not too good?  Let me give you an easy one.  This is Blog #104 and they come out once a week, so how long have we been doing this together?  Well, there’s seven days in a week and the average lunar month is 29½ days and then there’s the square root of pi and Planck’s Constant and that gives us two years.  I know you love it when I talk mathy.  Two years, 104 episodes!  Doesn’t that seem like a lot?  It does to me, but as long as you’re out there and I still have one finger that can punch a keyboard, I’ll keep at it.

So stay well, count your blessings and come back for Number – let’s see, square the hypotenuse, raise that to the fourth power and round to the nearest quadrant in Base 2.  Got it – Number 105.  Wasn’t that easy?  Oh, and don’t forget to change your clocks next Saturday at 2:00 a.m.  It’s Spring (or within three weeks of it), so move your clocks forward and go back to sleep.  Next week, I’ll try to be an hour early to make up for the time change.  See you then.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #103

Africa, the Dark Continent, home of the hippo and the rhino and the tsetse fly, land of the zebra and the eland, the ostrich and the lion, the cheetah and the dik-dik.  Yes, the dik-dik.  The birthplace of mankind and the worldwide center of poverty, cruelty, AIDS and genocide.  Sounds like a lovely trip.  And it is!  You should go.  We were there a dozen years ago and it was magnificent. I have some friends who are thinking of going, and I have told them what a wonderful and uplifting adventure they have in store.

Africa’s what you should choose

To cure your depressing old blues

A ten-foot giraffe

Might just make you laugh

And zebras might bring you good gnus.

I’ve told them to practice up on their Swahili.  I only remember two phrases.  Dinka mbeke na momo is Swahili for “Does your elephant play Candy Crush?”  And ungala mambo didi uru is an old Zulu proverb which means, “When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.”

Here is an entry in the Men Are Different from Women Manual.  I showed these friends my Africa picture album.  The man’s reaction was – wow, look at the hippo and the beautiful leopard!  The wife’s reaction was – look at what Carol’s wearing; I’d better take an extra sweater.

Hi there and welcome back.  Hope you’re feeling well.  If you are, stay away from Florida.  We left North Carolina a few days ago and are now in beautiful, sunny Florida.  I don’t know why anyone would want to live here.  If it’s not hurricane season, when just walking outside could cause your remains to be washed up in Morocco, then it’s Red-Tide season when the act of inhaling within ten miles of the ocean can cause your lungs to explode.  We are lucky enough to have missed both of those, but have arrived in the middle of coconut season when the palm trees shed their coconuts – from thirty feet up.  It’s like walking down the street while it’s raining Buicks.

Plus, Florida is full of old people.  We went to dinner with two other couples, and it seemed that all we talked about were health issues.  Have you noticed that we don’t call them diseases anymore?  We call them conditions.  I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in (The First Edition, 1968. Tell me who the lead singer was.)

Florida!  You come here for the sunshine and Dr. Skin tells you to stay inside.  You come here for the food and Dr. Heart tells you not to eat it.  I’ll have the hamburger but I can’t have any salt, cheese or bread.  And salad with no oil, extra vinegar, no salt, extra pepper, no olives, extra tomato, no onions.  And I can have the vichys but not the soise.  It took six of us forty minutes to order.

Part of what made this difficult was that it was a “New Age” restaurant.  On the menu, right in the column of things that were supposed to be edible, was the following: Deconstructed Vada Pav with Chutney in a Molecular, Edible Plastic Pouch.  There is no purpose in listing anything else; that was enough to convince me that NEW AGE food is not for OLD AGE people.  We should open a restaurant that serves old, standard, comfort food specifically for the elderly.  We’ll call it Food You Remember -- To Eat with People You Don’t.  Pot roast, macaroni and cheese, rolls with butter, fried chicken, Jell-O, apple pie.  Reservation for two, please.  Me and Whatshername.  5:00 is fine; we have to be back by 7:00.

You come here for the friendship only to find all your friends have grown old and sick.  You come here for the healthy air, and the minute you cross the State Line, your health begins to seep out of you.  During the meal we talked non-stop about our health or lack thereof.  The procedures and the doctors and the side-effects were flying so fast and furious, the waiter actually thought we had ordered an enema for dessert.

And when we weren’t talking about procedures, we were talking about pills.  One of my friends has every condition, symptom and reaction that he has ever read about.  When a doctor prescribes a medicine, he looks it up on Google and reads all the side effects.  Then he refuses to take the medicine as being too dangerous.  If they force him to take the medicine, he immediately develops every side effect he can find on the internet.

You come here to get away from the cold and find cockroaches and alligators.  I saw one yesterday that was as big as a pony.  And that was the cockroach!  But I love Florida, don’t you?  We come every year.

  

Did you watch the Academy Awards?  It’s so uplifting to watch a bunch of people who just made $20 million on their last movie tell me how much inequality there is in the world.  At least I paid for the clothes I’m wearing.

When something happens that touches my sensibilities, my thoughts, my inner musings– when something like that happens, I run right to you to tell you about it.  Thanks for being there for me.  An incident happened while I was sitting in my daughter’s den in North Carolina.  I was alone with Grandchild #3, Alyssa (13).  We were both engaged and the only sounds were the rooster on the henhouse and the woodpecker on the roof.  No fiddler.  I was reading a Robert Frost poem with the line, Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.  It was an opportunity to talk with my Granddaughter, to discuss the importance of family and to pass down some knowledge from my generation to hers.  I raised my head and said, “Alyssa, have you heard of Robert Frost?”  No answer!  Then I saw the wires hanging from her ears.  She couldn’t hear me. 

In the 60s, Timothy Leary told us to “turn on, tune in, drop out.”  We didn’t exactly know what it meant back then, but it’s finally becoming clear now that we realize our grandchildren have turned us off, tuned us out and lost our number.  Oh well; their loss.

Don’t turn me off or tune me out.  I’ll be back next week.  Stay well, count your blessings and join me.  It’ll be fun.  Oh, the lead singer of The First Edition was Kenny Rogers. 

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #102

Our 13-hour drive to North Carolina last week was uneventful.  We listened to oldies and goldies on Sirius Radio, rock ‘n roll from the 50s, 60s and 70s.  Music is such an important part of our memories, leaving indelible images on our brains.  I heard one song by The Lovin’ Spoonful and instantly remembered a night when I was 19, living in Greenwich Village and was the only customer in the Night Owl Cafe when the Spoonful performed. Then another song by The Fifth Dimension reminded us of seeing them perform on our honeymoon. Songs trigger vivid memories of the times and places of our lives.  Let’s see how good your recall is.

These are three opening lines of songs that start out by telling you when:

Long long time ago

It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday

Just yesterday morning

And these are some that start out by telling you where:

Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans

On a dark desert highway

On a warm summer’s eve on a train bound for nowhere

See if you can remember the songs.  You should get most of them unless you have spent the last sixty years watching Susan Lucci and Judge Judy.  You know who you are.

One day last week, I just didn’t feel like getting up.  I felt like being lazy and useless, two of my wife’s favorite nicknames for me.  But then I remembered this exhortation: Awake, arise or be forever fallen.  That’s what Satan says to his assembled minions in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.  Satan and I are this close!  So I took his advice, got myself up and pumped for the day.  I felt young and eager and full of the goodness of life.  I felt like I was holding all the cards, until I realized that the world wanted to play chess.

It all started when I pulled up to the back gate of my subdivision where I noticed a paper cup from Burger King lying on the ground.  I got out and picked it up of course.  How can people litter like that?  Do they have no sense of anything?  Do they just hate their world and their lives so much that anything they can do to defile themselves and their surroundings brings them the glory of defiance?  Disgusting! Am I over-reacting?  Good, that’s how you make a point!  M.L. King said, The time is always right to do what is right.

I do not litter, and I try not to waste resources.  Since my memory cells are old and dusty, I write myself notes.  I know you can do notes and reminders on your cell-phone, but that would be too modern for me, so I use scraps of paper which I save by tearing up sheets I would otherwise have recycled.  You should do that too.

If it’s all the same to you, please

I’d rather you use one of these

It’s just a small scrap

But wasting is crap

And paper does not grow on trees.

Well, it does actually, but you get the point.  Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling well.  And welcome to Kitty from Mexico.  My blog has received comments from Afghanistan and Hong Kong, but those were American readers who were visiting or were stationed there.  Kitty’s is the first comment I have received from a reader living abroad.  No, Kitty, I’m not calling you a broad.  I am trying to welcome you to Limerick Oyster and to thank you for the nice note.  I hope I didn’t mess that up.

One of the reasons we drove here to North Carolina is so my daughter and son-in-law could go on a short trip while we looked after the menagerie that is her household.  The kids are easy; they’re 17, 16 and 13 and all live by the same three-word credo – Leave Me Alone.  One of the kids takes care of the three dogs, one takes care of the two cats and the smallest child tends to the thirteen chickens.  I guess that makes her a chicken tender.  It all sounds like a piece of cake, right?  Well that’s because you haven’t tried to watch the television.  There are four remotes, each with more buttons than a South American dictator’s uniform.  The simple act of watching a program has now become an exercise in engineering surpassing the Apollo 11 moon landing and certainly beyond the meager capacities of two old people.  What ever happened to Howdy Doody?  You came home from school, pulled the on-off knob on the Philco and turned the dial to Channel 5.  Back then we had knobs and dials, not buttons.  Now, well, it’s all too complicated for this humble relic.  I’ll be reading a lot of books.

And then there’s the toilet.  The original toilet was invented in the late 19^th Century by Thomas Crapper (true!) and his daughters Fulla, Pisa and Pyla.  But the gizmo my son-in-law has is an ultra-modern hi-tech monster created by Elon Flush!  When you walk in, it automatically raises its lid like some water-filled Audrey II.  Then it sprays you, warms your privates, tells potty jokes and sings Feed me Seymour all at the same time.   Plus, it has a remote with as many buttons as the TV thing.  Maybe if I used the toilet remote, I could get Netflix.  But I was afraid and I avoided it like shingles!  I like simple things that are easy for a simple man to understand.  Like the rooster.  The damn thing gets up every morning with an arrogant chip on its drumstick and lets everybody know about it.  I can deal with that.

It’s already time to give you the song answers.  I know you got them all right.

Long long time ago – American Pie – Don McLean

It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday - Piano Man – Billy Joel

Just yesterday morning - Fire and Rain – James Taylor

Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans

          Johnny B Goode – Chuck Berry

On a dark desert highway - Hotel California – Eagles

On a warm summer’s eve on a train bound for nowhere

(You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em)

          The Gambler – Kenny Rogers

No?  Too much Judge Judy?  Well I certainly know when to fold ‘em, and that would be right about now.  So stay well and count your blessings but never count your money when you’re sitting at the table.  See you next week.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com

Blog #101             

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone.  I have three daughters (plus a wife), so Valentine’s Day was always a busy time for me when my girls were young.  Even when they were all grown up and gone from home, I would send them boxes of cheap, chocolatey junk for V. Day.  In 1998, Carol the Killjoy told me that the girls didn’t want that junk anymore; they hated it.  So that year I didn’t send any candy.  On Feb. 15^th of that year, I received three phone calls.  “You are a horrible excuse for a father and don’t ever call me your daughter again.”  I immediately composed a letter of apology bemoaning my failure as a parent and sent a copy to each child – along with an extra-large box of over-priced and high-calorie garbage.  They loved the candy – and the letter, so the next week I wrote them another and have been sending them a weekly letter for 21 years.  Each letter (1,092 of them by now) contains family news, some funny stuff, a large dollop of love and a limerick. 

Two years ago, Carol said I should expand and let my friends share all the clever stuff I write in those letters and so I started this blog.  There, that’s the story!  I’m glad you’re along for the ride.  But you’re not getting any chocolate.

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you’re feeling wonderful.  On the radio this morning, they said, “The temperature is 33, feels like 27.”  I called up the weather service and asked them what 27 felt like.  They said 22.

Michael and Carol are travelling again.  Sounds like the title of a Brady Bunch episode, doesn’t it?  But wherever we may roam, to Paris or to Nome, South Africa or Rome, however far from home, across the ocean’s foam, we’ll travel with a comb, and buy a plastic gnome, with booties made of chrome, and read a classic tome, and write a silly poem.  Sorry, got carried away.  I know you often think there is method to my madness, but sometimes, in truth, there is just madness. 

Yes, we jumped in the car and drove to North Carolina on our annual Mooch Tour, three glorious weeks of mooching on relatives and friends in North Carolina and Florida, where the weather is fine, there are no hotel bills and the company is excellent. (I have to say nice things about them if I want to be invited back next year.)  I’ll be telling you all about it over the next few weeks.

Did you notice up above that I spelled travelling with two ells?  I read so many books by British authors that I often lapse into their ways of spelling.  Did you know that in America gray is a color, whereas in England grey is a colour?

One thing you do know, I’m sure, is that everybody’s running for President?  It’s only 21 months until the election, so get ready.  Voting is a surreal event in this country.  I mean this is a place where you can wave your phone across a scanner to pay for your groceries, where your cell phone shows you who’s ringing your doorbell even if you’re not at home, where you can punch Google and find out anything from how to make a thermo-nuclear device to what costume the Governor of Virginia wore in medical school.

But voting, which is a pretty important exercise, is still in the 19^th century.  All the poll workers are definitely from the 19^th century.  You get in a line and show your ID to a 98-year-old woman who has cataracts.  She gives you a piece of scratch paper and you move to another line where you get a paper ballot and a black marker.  Scraps of paper, magic markers?  Pretty primitive if you ask me.  Nine-year-olds can play Fortnite with three other friends in three other states without any effort except from their thumbs, while their parents and grandparents are voting by filling in the blanks with a marker and following the instructions of a gaggle of nonagenarians.  There has to be a better way.

And look at some of the clowns we wind up electing.  Here’s one example.  A Hawaiian lawmaker has proposed a law to eliminate cigarette smoking in his state by raising the minimum age.  By the year 2024, his law proposes, the minimum age for buying cigarettes will be 100.  I could not make up something that galactically stupid.

And already, the same people who promised to leave the country if Trump was elected back in 2016 are making those vows once again.  George Clooney, Ashley Judd, Robert De Niro.  Even Barbra Streisand, whom the Democrats call Babs and the Republicans call B.S.  They’ve all threatened to leave.

                                     

If we don’t kick Trump off the track

I’m leaving and not coming back

One more day of Trump

And I’m moving my rump

To someplace that’s safe – like Iraq.

A Democracy is a wrestling match of ideas, not a pick-up game where if you don’t get to bat first you take your ball and go home.  And speaking of Presidents, next Monday we celebrate Presidents’ Day, which of course commemorates the day in 1778 when George Washington sold his first sofa and lounge chair to James Madison. Free delivery and no payments until 1780. 

Next Tuesday is the day after Presidents’ Day, which is significant in its own way.  On this day in 1778, the first return in American history occurred when James Madison brought back the sofa and lounge chair to George because they were damaged in delivery.  Madison had no trouble transporting the furniture.  He used his Dolly.

My North Carolina daughter, my sweet Jennifer, is a serious and thoughtful eater.  For dinner she made the rest of the family a lovely dinner, chicken and pasta, which we all loved but which she regarded as unhealthy.  She made for herself a kale pizza on seaweed crust. Seriously!  It looks just like it sounds.  She used an old Greek recipe that Socrates’ wife made for him one night.  Socrates looked at it and said, “That’s ok, Honey.  I’ll just have the hemlock.”

Don’t you try the hemlock, not unless I bore you again next week. Till then, stay well, count your blessings and enjoy your Valentine’s Day.  I’ll be back in a week.

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com