Month: March 2018

Let’s Get Ready to Stumble

Here’s the level to which political discourse has sunk in this country.  Two septuagenarians, one the former Vice President of the United States, and one the sitting US President, are now arguing with each other in public about which could have and/or would have kicked the other one’s ass in high school.

When I was in high school, I was the fat kid.  I’d like to sit on both.

Maybe Vince McMahon can promote this ass-kicking contest as a pay-per-view, once Trump leaves office, provided they both Biden and Trump are still alive then.

Elsewhere on the political discourse front, actress Cynthia Nixon has announced she’ll mount a Democratic primary challenge to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.  Christine Quinn, former President of the New York City Council, called Nixon “an unqualified lesbian.”  If she’s saying Nixon isn’t qualified to be governor, she may have a point.  As far as I know, Ms. Nixon has never run for public office and never run any large organization.  If she’s saying Nixon isn’t qualified to be a lesbian, first, what has that got to do with being Governor, and second, how exactly does one become a qualified lesbian?  Ms. Quinn has apparently reconsidered, and apologized for her remarks, saying sexual orientation should have no bearing on anyone’s qualifications for public office.  So Christine Quinn and I do agree at least on one thing.

Things I Know

It’s hard for me to believe I’ve been writing this nonsense for ten years now.

I had a colonoscopy recently.  They put you to sleep for the procedure, but the anesthesiologist laughed, and conceded I had a point when I told him they should give anesthesia during preparation for the test.  The protocol my doctor told me to follow to prepare involved taking two-weeks’ worth of laxatives in two hours.  Ugh.

Lesson learned:  ethylene glycol is poison, but polyethylene glycol is a laxative.

Still, I’d rather have a colonoscopy than colon cancer, so I took the test as an outpatient at the local hospital.  Two days later, I got a clean bill of health, and a thank you note.  Who sends a thank you note to a patient who just had a colonoscopy?  New management I guess.  My wife had inpatient surgery at that hospital in 2016 and 2017.  We got bills for those, but no thank you notes.

I never thought the comic strip Beetle Bailey was funny before I served in the Army.  Once I did, I became a fan.  I just learned that Mort Walker, Beetle’s creator, died in January at the age of 94.  RIP Mort Walker.  Did anyone play Taps?

We’re going through a nor’easter here.  Not the worst one we’ve seen.  Concurrently, they’re going absolutely nuts about the “Beast from the East” over in the United Kingdom.  I heard that -10 C is the coldest it’s been in Wales at this time of year since 2001.  For our friends in Minnesota, that’s 23 F, plus 23!  Someplace, I believe in Scotland, got half-a-meter of snow.  For our friends in Oswego NY, and Truckee CA, that’s about 20 inches.

Look it up on a map.  You’ll be surprised how far north London is.  They say Britain doesn’t usually experience that kind of weather because it’s warmed by the Gulf Stream.  Fine.  But Long Island is warmed by the Gulf Stream before England is, and we got 15 inches earlier this year.  While that kind of snow doesn’t happen every year on the US East Coast, it’s hardly unusual.

Our son found a postcard on line that includes a picture of our home, circa 1915.  The house has changed surprisingly little.  103 years ago, the road was unpaved, the trees looked just planted, and there were no utility poles.  When the weather eases up, I’m going to try to take another picture from the same vantage point.