As part of a family discussion, my mom names the three members of our extended family whom she considers to be nuts.
My sister adds two more people to the list, including my dad.
“No, Dad is not nuts,” my mom says, “although he gets along well with the nuts.”
My dad says to me, “That’s the best compliment I’ve ever had from this family.”
“That you’re not nuts?” I ask.
“That’s right.”
My dad was telling me about a recent trip he took to the wilds of Ecuador. From the airport, it was a three-hour truck ride, followed by two hours in a motorized canoe to get to the lodge he was staying at.
“That doesn’t sound good,” I said. “What if you have a medical emergency?”
“There’s a shaman at the village,” he said. “And what the shamans do is they take peyote or whatever the local hallucinogen is, they hallucinate about a drug, then they go into the forest, come back with the drug and give it to you.”
“Are they board certified?”
“No. And the other thing they do is they blow smoke on you.”
“I hate that. What kind of smoke is it?”
“I think the guy has a pack of Marlboros. But if you have a heart attack or something, that’s all you’re gonna get.”
My dad is of the opinion that cats are “smarter” than dogs. Not coincidentally, he and my mom own a couple of cats, one of which was sitting next to his chair at Thanksgiving dinner.
Dad decided to share some turkey with the cat. He stood up with a piece of turkey, showed it to the cat, than walked out to the kitchen and dropped it in the cat’s food dish. When he returned to his chair, the cat was still sitting there. Never moved.
“That is one stupid cat,” I said.
“Well, he’s three-quarters blind,” my dad said, although he didn’t say how he could possibly know that.
“If my dog was here, he would have jumped up and eaten your whole dinner the second you left the room.”
My dad’s holding a bottle of wine as he says, “Who wants straws?”
“Are you asking me,” I say, “if I want to drink wine through a straw?“
As it turns out, what he actually said was “Who wants Shiraz?”
My son’s team won the tournament, my wife gave blood, and I bought 3 snickerdoodle cookies for $5 at the charity booth and ate them.
All in all, a triumphant day for the whole family . . .
Norway tops U.N. quality-of-life list; U.S. is 13th, while Niger finishes last
Well, here we go again . . .
As I’ve said before, my brother and his family used to live in Norway. He says when the sun is shining, it’s the most beautiful place in the world.
The other 335 days of the year, it’s not so great . . .
We had good seats at the USC game today — Section 13, Row 1, right next to the field.
Now you might say, like my son did, that they would have been better on the 50-yard-line, but there are a couple of good things about those seats.
One is that they’re right next to the tunnel where the players come on and off the field, as do the song girls, the band and Traveler, so you get to interact with people — talk to the girls, high-five the guy on the horse, etc.
The other good thing is that the Trojans scored 6 out of 8 touchdowns in the west end zone right in front of us.
That’s my wife, me and a kid who looks a lot like my son except that he’s smiling. If you’re wondering about all the empty seats, the photo was taken near the end of the fourth quarter of a 56-3 game when a lot of people had already left.
It occurred to him that what had seemed perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to defend.
“But if that is so,” he said to himself, “and I am leaving this life with the consciousness that I have lost all that was given me and it is impossible to rectify it — what then?”
I called my son to wish him a Happy 16th Birthday. His birthday is actually tomorrow but he’s in Australia visiting his cousins for a couple of weeks and in Australia, it’s tomorrow already.
When I called, he was at a train station with his cousin Lizzie — well, I’ve always called her Lizzie but she’s 19 now and may prefer Liz. They were waiting for the train to go to Bondi Beach for the day.
Happy birthday kid. Miss you . . .
Our son’s flying to Australia for a couple weeks to visit his cousins . . .
I’m talking to people at LAX in a fake Australian accent. My Australian accent is not all that tight except on words with a long “a” sound, which I replace with a long “i” sound, e.g., “mate” becomes “mite.”
“Sorry, mite,” I say, as I roll a suitcase over a gentleman’s foot.
“Did you just say what I thought you said?” my son asks.
“When you travel,” I explain, “you can be a whole different person.”
We take the bags over to the baggage scanner. I know we don’t have to wait for them but since “wait” has a long “a” sound, I ask the woman, “Do I ‘ave to white?”
“No,” she says.
“Jus’ drope i’ oaf then?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says.
We’re dropping our 15-year-old son off at LAX. He’s flying to Australia for a couple weeks to visit his cousins.
He’s explaining his theory of international cuisine, which is that there’s not going to be any Mexican food in Australia because there are no Mexicans in Australia. On the other hand, they probably have New Zealand food that those of us in the States have never heard about.
“That’s why it’s important to travel,” I say, “so you can learn about things like that. Or you could just stay home and watch the Travel Channel.”
I saw my brother for the first time in years this past weekend. He’s been living in Utah but he’s now on his way to Alaska to escape the coming Armageddon.
Canada and Mexico will be invading the United States from the top and bottom . . . I’ve forgotten the details, but it’s going to be bad. I don’t know why he was informed about this and I wasn’t.
I’m not moving to Alaska though. I’m not a cold-weather person. They can kill me right here in a pair of shorts . . .
This has been making the rounds of my Facebook friends so I thought I’d repost my answers here:
A – Age: Extremely late 30s
B – Bed Size: Procrustean
C – Chore You Hate? If it’s a chore, I hate it
D – Dogs Name? Lightning
E – Essential Daily Items? Nothing is essential
F – Favorite Color? Blue. No, yell– AUUUUUUUUGH!
G – Gold Or Silver? Whatever
H – Height? 6-0, give or take
I – Instruments You Play? Drums and piano, both poorly
J – Job Title? Lord of Logic
K – Kids? Son, age 15
L – Living Arrangements? Wife, kid and dog, in a rapidly depreciating house
M – Mom’s Name? Good question…I only knew her as “Mom”
N – Nicknames? Like Charlie Brown, I always wanted to be called “Flash”
O – Overnight hospital stay other than birth? Burst fracture, L1 (i.e. broken back); laparascopic cholecystectomy (i.e. gall bladder out)
P – Pet Peeves? Other people and their pet peeves
Q – Quote From A Movie? “I am letting you into the secret of all secrets, mirrors are gates through which death comes and goes. Moreover if you see your whole life in a mirror you will see death at work as you see bees behind the glass in a hive.” — Jean Cocteau, Orphée
R – Right Or Left Handed? Right
S – Siblings? One sister, two brothers, and two more sisters
T – Time You Wake Up? Weekdays 5 AM, weekends whenever
U – Underwear? To paraphrase the Dos Equis guy, “I don’t always wear underwear, but when I do, I prefer boxer briefs.”
V – Vegetable You Dislike? “Sex is good, but not as good as fresh, sweet corn.” — Garrison Keillor. Oh wait, DIS-like? Are yams a vegetable? If not, lima beans or squash.
W – Ways You Run Late? Spending too much time on the Internet
X – X-Rays You’ve Had? Dental, foot, wrist, back, head, finger, blah blah blah…do MRIs count too?
Y – Yummy Food You Make? Bourbon and coke. Is that a food? Sometimes I combine two kinds of cereal and it comes out really good.
Z – Zoo Favorites? Meerkats probably
One of my in-laws says to me, “I enjoy reading your Facebook updates.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I enjoy reading yours too. When I’m having trouble sleeping.”
I got my first passport yesterday. I can go anywhere! The world is my oyster!
Although I really don’t like to travel . . .
Some people get annoyed with me when I say that, including members of my own family. It doesn’t make sense to them. My mom, for example, has been to like 30 countries. Maybe 50, I can’t keep track.
For me, I start out thinking I’d be happier somewhere else but after I’ve spent all the time and money to get there, I realize I’m still the same person with the same problems I had at home.
Not to mention the possibility of being drugged, robbed and killed, or hit by a tsunami.
I’m not saying there’s nothing positive about travel. It’s just not worth the investment . . .
If you’re not on LinkedIn this isn’t going to be funny but I got this email today from my brother:
I’m going through a social media epiphany…so “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.”
We’re having an extended family holiday get-together today, including a gift exchange.
My wife did the gift shopping. She’s passive-aggressive about it because she really believes that other family members, especially my mom, use the holidays to clean unwanted items out of their closets, wrap them up and give them to us as Christmas presents.
I’ve explained to her that these people simply don’t have any style or taste, so even those these are items that you would stuff in the back of a closet, they actually see them as pretty nice gifts.
Here’s a rundown on what she bought this year: My ex-sister-in-law is getting a box of Harry & David pears, normally $40 but obtained at a deep discount. My great uncle is getting a box of pears. My parents and my sister’s family — a box of pears.
“And the best thing,” she says, “is it says $39.99 right on the box.”
“I assume you’re going to take that off.”
“I don’t think I can. It’s right on the box.”
“Uh . . .”
“Don’t complain. Lucky enough they’re getting anything in this economy.”
A family member was explaining to me that she is “good in a crisis.”
I have to say that’s true, that this person is in fact at her best in a crisis, which explains why, in times of tranquility, she’s always looking for some way to escalate things into a crisis.
