Thursday, December 30, 2010

Breakfast at Tiffany's

So I invite loopy neighbor Emory to breakfast at Edna's Cafe on main street. As we enter the restaurant, a woman with a dog enters at the same time.

"Whoa!" Emory says to me, "A dog can't come into a restaurant."

"Don't worry," I reply, "it's wearing a sign which says, 'Service Dog.'" Emory grunts and we're quickly met by the waiter who leads us to our table.

Emory proceeds to embarrass me by ordering---ugh---beets and squash loudly enough for the other customers to overhear, as he thinks that he's thereby promoting our farm products. As we're finishing our meal, the knucklehead then turns to the dog which is on the floor at the table next to ours and shouts several times, "Hey, service dog, get me another cup of coffee!"


Monday, December 27, 2010

Joy to the World

Thanks to my six readers who mailed me a fruitcake or figgy pudding. Five of the items arrived here in Seine in time for Christmas. O blessed am I! Enough to last me until at least the summer! The sender of the one item (a figgy pudding) which was late---and you know who you are---is penalized by having the homework assignment of rereading all my blogs and properly categorizing them.

Ma and Pa Ternity

I'm eating for two these days. Yep, while Jonka is visiting her relatives in the mysterious ethnic neighborhoods of Cleveland, I'm cooking for both of us and eating both our meals.

Seat of Wisdom

I was relaxing reading the newspaper in my easy chair after the Christmas hubbub when my young grandson, Huey (yes, the other two are named Dewey and Louie), said to me, "Are you busy, Grandpa?"

"Yes, I am," I replied.

"You don't look so busy," he said.

"Well, I am. I'm obfuscating superfluous malfeasance."

"Wow," he remarked wide-eyed, "you make it look so easy."

A Most Deserving Kind of Guy

I really, really hope Gary Busey had a merry Christmas.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

A Christmas Carol

When I recently was with the Gulliver's Travels group playing The Tourist in Quebec, I decided to extend my Social Network by hitting a couple of bars at night. At the Burlesque, I met a beautiful Black Swan which, as it turned out, had True Grit. To my surprise, she spoke to me in The King's Speech. When I expressed my disbelief at her ability, she responded with such screeching and scratching, I thought I was trapped in a Tron nightmare. I got the hell out of there faster than you could say "Roger Ebert!"

Friday, December 24, 2010

They Prefer Santa

After some forty years, this will mark the first Christmas Day that none of my children will be with the little woman and me. I wonder if it's because they're tired of their old man belching and farting at the Christmas dinner table.

What Not To Wear

I wonder if Mrs. Claus cracks the same joke every Christmas Eve as Santa departs the North Pole: "Don't tell me you're going out again this year dressed like that"?

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Feeling Anything Yet?

I've previously complained how Americans in general and even professional media persons in particular confuse "feel" and "think." "Feel" denotes emotion, whereas "think" denotes thought or idea. So the interviewer asks, "Tell me, Senator, how do you feel about the new tax policy?" And the senator spends two minutes giving an analysis of the political and economic implications of the policy, to the interviewer's satisfaction. But I shout at the tv screen, "No, no, Senator, she asked how you FEEL about it! Simply answer "Angry" or "Joyful" or "Sad"!

As has been said by someone, Christmas is the feeling Christian's holyday, whereas Easter is the thinking Christian's holyday. Christmas is all warm and fuzzy and baby cutsie. So if anyone asks me how or what I feel about Christmas, I'll answer simply "Yes."

Northern Exposure

The little woman and I just returned from a short vacation to Quebec to see if we could find any of my long-lost cousins. Man, what I did find! I discovered that those French Canadians actually catch, cook, and eat possum, raccoons, frogs, and what they call "craw fish." They make and eat some kind of spicy rice sausage which they term "boo-din," which they often have with a Coke as breakfast too. Their music is dominated by---can you imagine in this day and age: the accordion?---and by the violin, music which features many depressive waltzes. They play this stuff late into the night mostly at houses at which couples bring their young children or grandchildren---at performances they call "fais do-do"---and allow---get this---the children to sleep in the corners while the couples dance. And their English? Whew. I know it's French Canada, but come on, the whole industrialized world speaks English, not this choppy non-European French. And, I think, they frequently perform in private and in public what looks like mini-voodoo rituals.

Quebec! I just hope those French Canadians never move south. As for me, I think I'll remain in Seine.

A Strange Little Dude

Remember when my neighbor, Emory, recently called the local funeral home to ask "What's playing?" Well, when the mortuary director finally understood Emory and told him whose bodies were on view, Emory became excited. "Come on," said Emory, "Warren is on display. We gotta see him!"

When we arrived at the funeral home, we found Warren's room. His body strangely was half in his coffin and half out, arms dangling down. "What's with this?" I nervously asked Emory.

"Ah, that's Warren," he replied. "He always saw himself as thinking outside the box."

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Suffer the Fools

"Fences make good neighbors"? Well, there's no fence between my farm and that of loony neighbor Emory, so you can imagine what happens. For example, he bought two tickets for the fights in Dover, walked across to my front yard and invited me to accompany him. "Seats are in the nosebleed section," he said, but I didn't care because I love boxing. Turned out the seats were two chairs placed right inside the boxing ring.

Then today I said to him, "I wonder if anyone we know has died lately."

"Let's just call the funeral home and ask," Emory says. So he phones and says, "What's playing today?"


Saturday, December 11, 2010

'Tis the Season

It's said that Santa knows if you've been naughty or nice. So be worried---be very worried.

Wonderful, Wacky World of Sightings

So the Catholic Church officially has approved the three apparitions of the heavenly Mary to a young immigrant woman in Champion, Wisconsin near Green Bay in the 1800s, the only appearance of Mary in the U.S. That's a surprise---I never had heard of those events at that place. I guess that Mary, after bearing the "majestic" titles of Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Fatima, etc., won't mind being called Our Lady of Champion. I can just imagine some commercial sponsors having a field day with that with the tourists there.

Rumors a few years ago were that Mary was appearing in a field at Tickfaw, Louisiana near Baton Rouge. But as I said then, I was certain that her apparitions weren't real, because I couldn't imagine her tolerating being called Our Lady of Tickfaw.

As far as I know, the only place in the U.S. where the Church has approved of an apparition by a saint (not Mary) is in the bucolic backwoods of Grand Coteau, also in Louisiana and also in the 1800s. There St. John Berchmann, who was an Englishman (of all things, not a Frenchman to match the Cajun French culture of that region), is said to have appeared to a dying nun. I said "dying," not "flying."

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Wasn't That Church Exciting Enough for Ingmar Bergman?

From "The Onion" another headline: "Lutheran minister arrested for boring young children."

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Fruitcake and Moonshine

Did you know Alabama was the first state to declare Christmas a legal holiday? Go figure. God bless dem rednecks.

Book Him

Seine is a small town, and its police aren't exactly Sherlock Holmes. So when I reported my car stolen from the mall because I couldn't find it, in turn because I forgot I had parked it on the opposite-side parking lot, the police quickly found it. Unfortunately, however, they charged me with auto theft because, they said, "You're fingerprints are all over it."

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Re Quest

It's that time of year again, boys and girls. I again yearn for good fruitcake and figgy pudding. Please mail me some before or just after Christmas to:

Ye Old Gargoyle
200 Old Farms Rd.
Seine, DE 19901

And May the Lord throw all kinds of good blessings on you!

The Eyes Have It

Neighbor Emory suddenly has his bags packed for travel. "Why the bags?" I asked him.

He replied that he was motivated by reading in an issue of "National Geographic" the old saying, "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed is king."

"So where are you headed?" I persisted.

"I'm not sure," he said, "but I'll keep an eye out, and I'll know once I'm there."

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Name of the Game

The world's richest man, worth about $50 billion, was interviewed this week on the "Larry King Show." He's Carlos Slim of Mexico. He has everything which money can buy except apparently an impressive name. Can't he afford to have it changed to Carlos von Slim or Carlos de Slimoroff or something like that?

Friday, December 3, 2010

A Fractured Mind

Even though, when I was a young man in Quebec, I was their captive for a few days, the local forest Indians allowed me quite a bit of freedom. I could walk about freely, make my own meals, and even throw large rocks at their heads. It was only later that I discovered they were not Indians at all but dirty-clothes hampers.

His and Hers

It seems that more women ran for public offices across the nation in this recent election. It could reach the point in a few years that two women (Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin) will be the top two nominees for U.S. President. Meanwhile, Catholic women still aren't allowed to become simple deacons, let alone priests, in their church.

A Simple Birthday

Today's my late mother's birthday. I remember when I was 8 or 9 years old. I didn't know much what to give her, so I went to what was called Reese's Five-and-Dime Store downtown. There I bought a packet of bobby pins, a comb, a powder puff, and a small bowl into which to put them. She was happy to receive this gift from me. What she didn't know is that earlier, when she wasn't looking, I had raided her purse for the money to buy it.