Let Your Little Light Shine

Lord, have mercy! This past summer and now late autumn have presented the roughest storms, floods, and even hurricanes here in the Northeast. The latest hurricane-strength wind devastated houses and my own farm along with our poor beets, squash, and pumpkin crops. Neighbor Emory also was wiped out.

The public and private shelters are full, so the little woman and I have had to move into about the only place which will take us: the dampy basement of the old lighthouse on the ocean front. So our temporary (we hope) address is, for those of you who want to help:

Basement
Owl's Eye Lighthouse
Beachfront
Ocean City, DE 21840

Emory was placed into the tight-squeeze top room of the lighthouse, where the giant, bright light is. He has borrowed or swiped my three pairs of sunglasses.

I Should've Been Wearing a Necktie

I was lounging in my easy chair watching tv when the doorbell rang. Jonka answered it to find two young women holding notepads, and I barely could hear the conversation of the three of them.

"Jehovah's Witnesses?" I asked Jonka after they departed, knowing that, because they were women and not men, they weren't Mormons.

"No," she said, "they're from a national magazine, and when they saw you, they said, 'It's not him.'"

"Yeah, well," I replied, "they should've used correct grammar and said, 'It's not he.' Anyway, what did they mean by that?"

"They're searching for the sexiest man alive."

Listen to Mom

"What is a friend? A friend is someone in whose presence you can fart." --Mother Theresa, "Reflections on Friendship"

Home Sweet Home

This trend of young college graduates returning home to live with their parents is becoming ridiculous. Yesterday as I was short-cutting from my Hoarders Anonymous meeting and through the city cemetery, my attention was caught by two different, large mausoleums there. Sitting in a folding chair on the front step of each mausoleum was a young man. "Hey, what are you guys doing here?" I asked both.

"What do you think?" replied one, "we've had to return home to live with our parents."

Elite Membership

The Vatican now says that the Simpson family (Homer, Bart, etc.) on tv's "The Simpsons" are actually Catholic. Right. And I baptized my parrot, Holy Ghost, as a Pentecostal.

Delaware Diversification

I'm not a witch. I'm just a gargoyle.

Well Grounded

You know what you don't want? You don't want to have a neighbor who both sees the current movie, "Buried Alive," and who reads the news that it'll take a decade for our nation to make its economic recovery. Why not? Because then you'll find yourself spending about four hours digging into the ground to remove the neighbor from having buried himself in a homemade time capsule designed to be opened in ten years after the recession. Believe me. Took exactly three hours and forty-five minutes for Emory.

Celebs

Paris Hilton is, I think, like Mexico: hot and boring. I liked Bono before he turned pro. And I liked his sister, Pasta, before she became an ante.

Hollow Men

The little woman doesn't want to go trick-or-treating for Halloween. "That's for kids---we'd look like idiots," she says.

So nutty neighbor Emory and I will do the venture on October 31. Because we're both short on cash to spend on costumes, Emory suggests that we wear our 40-year-old old suits and neckties hanging in our closets since the 1960s. Great idea. We'll go as tv "Mad Men"'s Don Draper and Roger Sterling. You can guess who will be who.

I just hope other neighbors don't recognize us through our disguise. Then we'd really look like idiots. And I hope we don't encounter the hotly talked about new witch who is roaming our state of Delaware: Christine O'Connell.

Just Blowin' Smoke

Why don't cigarette packs carry the standard "Use Only As Directed" warning? Because tobacco is the only product which, if used as directed, kills you.

The Competitor

As I mentioned, my crop of beets and squash was poor this summer. But now I'm told by neighbor Emory that his own crop was even worse. Of course, that knucklehead tried to grow what he thought were boneless bananas and hairless grapes.

Holy Trinity

Well, I've finally found someone to match Oprah Winfrey and Rosie O'Donnell. That is to say, if I were to be tied to a chair and forced for a week to watch videos of Oprah or Rosie or this third person, I surely would be driven clinically insane. The third person is tv evangelist Reverend Joel Olsteen.

Genus and Species

So wolves are to be found in a pack, but lions are found in a pride---thus "a pride of lions." I think we also can find an augmentation of Hollywood actresses, a spoilage of oil company executives, a concussion of football players, a duplicity of politicians, a ditzy of Sarah Palin supporters, a bloodline of serial killers, a memory of Alzheimer patients, and an emory of knuckleheads.

Hide the Broom

So what does Lady Gaga wear for Halloween---regular street clothes?

Whitewash

I'm confused. The report on the recent national census doesn't say that at least fifty percent of American citizens are of Scandanavian descent. Then why do three-fourths of the women I see in public places have blond hair?

Woe Is Me

With the cold weather approaching, I had to quit my parttime newspaper route with the Dover Post. I was lucky to land another parttime gig as a chimney sweep here in town, but then my mad-cow disease kicked back in. And with a poor beets and squash season ending, it's gonna be one harsh winter for me and the little woman.