Category: Uncategorized

$50 LESSON
I recently asked my friends’ little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President of the United States .
Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there. So I asked her, “If you were President, what would be the first thing you would do?” She replied, “I’d give food and houses to all the homeless people…
Her parents proudly beamed. “Wow…what a worthy goal,” I told her. “But you don’t have to wait until you’re President to do that. Tell you what – you can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my driveway, and I’ll pay you $50. Then I’ll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house. How about doing something wonderful like that?”
She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, “Why doesn’t the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?”
I said, “Welcome to the Republican Party.”
Her parents still aren’t speaking to me.

Thank you for coming.

Thanks to those of you who knew our mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, mother-in-law, and loved her as we did.

And thanks to those of you who have come to provide us strength and support as we mourn, and as we celebrate not only her life among us, but her passing on to the next glorious and mysterious adventure.

We knew mom as a wife, as a singer, as an artist, as a friend.

Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren knew her as their wonderful “Amama”.

But my sisters and brother and I knew her as our mother.

You often worry, at times like these, that you will dwell on the angry times, the bad memories. But God has a way of cleansing our hearts and minds, of sweeping away the sorrow and guilt and bitterness, so that only the good, sweet memories remain.

Memories of a mother who supported us in all things. A mother who was a gracious hostess, and who always welcomed our friends into our home.

Carol remembers that all of her boyfriends loved our mother.

Mary remembers how non-judgmental our mother was of her children.

When our brother was alive, he used to tell people that our mother was just like June Cleaver, doing her housework in a dress and wearing pearls. That probably wasn’t too far from the truth.

One of my fondest memories of mom is the two of us sitting at the piano singing songs from Broadway musicals; those of you who know me will not find that at all surprising.

But the best memory I have is of Valentines Day in 1964, a week after the Beatles had arrived in the United States. My brother and I came to the breakfast table and each of us had a Beatles album at our place. It was typical of our mother to think of something like that.

Our mother was very intelligent; very good with crossword puzzles and words. So it is not surprising that on the morning of the last day of her life, when I went into mom’s hospital room, I found her giving a speech to an imaginary audience, using words and phrases beyond belief. For much of her hospital stay, she had been speaking in a low, sometimes slurred voice. But that morning she was speaking loudly and clearly. Many of you have heard the recordings I made of her “lecture”. It is truly amazing stuff, and I suspect the only reason much of it sounds a bit jumbled and incoherent to us is that we are not yet privileged enough to gain the insights that she had in the last hours of her life.

The wisest thing she said that day was this: “Just when you get your life all settled down, everything goes boom and there is your dog and his friends looking at you.”

Most of her life was well settled, but occasionally there were booms which she overcame with courage and grace, with or without our dogs and their friends.

And so after leaving us with this final bit of wisdom, she has moved on to heaven, where everlasting life is rich and filled with joy;
where no question goes unanswered;
where no pains go unrelieved;
where no opportunities are denied;
where no dreams go unfulfilled.

A place where her singing voice is so clear and melodious, that even the angels pause to listen.

And while we take solace in knowing that we will see her again, each in our own turn, we can be equally comforted knowing that she is with her beloved mother and sister, her loving husband and son, both of whom left us much too soon.
She is becoming reacquainted with the earthly father that she never had a chance to know.
And she is with her heavenly father who she has known and loved all her life.
Not a bad ending to 86 years, 363 days on earth.

These are the voice recordings I made of Amama on the last day she was alive. It seems she thought she was giving a speech in a lecture hall. I only wish I had recorded more.
First
Second
Third
Fourth
Fifth

Dear Santa: I wud like a kool toy space ranjur fer Xms. Iv ben a gud boy all yeer.
Yer Frend, BiLLy
Dear Billy, Nice spelling. You’re on your way to a career in lawn care.
How about I send you a frigging book called a dictionary so you can learn to read and write? I’m giving your older brother the space ranger. At least HE can spell!
Santa
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Dear Santa: I have been a good girl all year, and the only thing I ask for is Peace and Joy in the world for everybody!
Love, Sarah
Dear Sarah, Your parents smoked pot when they had you, didn’t they?
Santa
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Dear Santa: I don’t know if you can do this, but for Christmas I’d like for my Mommy and Daddy to get back together. Please see what you can do.
Love, Teddy
Dear Teddy, Look, your dad’s banging the baby-sitter like a screen door in a hurricane. Do you think he’s gonna give that up to come back to your frigid mom, who rides his ass constantly? It’s time to give up that dream. You’re getting Legos instead.
Santa
——————————————————————
Dear Santa: I want a new bike, a Playstation, a train, some G.I.
Joe’s, a dog, a drum kit, a pony and a tuba.
Love, Francis
Dear Francis, Who names their kid ‘Francis’ nowadays? I bet you’re gay. Barbie dream house it is!
Santa
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Dear Santa: I left milk and cookies for you under the tree, and I left carrots for your reindeer outside the back door.
Love, Susan
Dear Susan, Milk gives me the runs, and carrots make the deer fart in my face when riding in the sleigh. You want to do me a favor? Leave me a bottle of scotch.
Santa
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Dear Santa: What do you do the other 364 days of the year? Are you busy making toys?
Your friend, Thomas
Dear Thomas, All the toys are made in China . I have a condo in Vegas, where I spend most of my time making low-budget porno films. I unwind by drinking myself silly and squeezing the asses of cocktail waitresses while losing money at the craps table. Hey, you wanted to know.
Santa
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Dear Santa: Do you see us when we’re sleeping, do you really know when we’re awake, like in the song? Love, Jessica
Dear Jessica, Are you really that gullible? Good luck in whatever you do. I’m skipping your house. Santa
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Dear Santa: I really really want a puppy this year. Please please please PLEASE PLEASE could I have one?
Timmy
Timmy, That whiney begging shit may work with your folks, but that crap doesn’t work with me. You’re getting a sweater…. Again!
Santa
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Dearest Santa: We don’t have a chimney in our house so how do you get in?
Love, Marky
Mark, First, stop calling yourself ‘Marky’! That’s why you’re getting your ass whipped at school. Second, you don’t live in a house, you live in a low-rent apartment complex. Third, I get inside your pad just like all the burglars do, through your bedroom window.
Sweet Dreams, Santa

A Little Christmas Story

When four of Santa’s elves got sick, the trainee elves did not produce toys as fast as the regular ones, and Santa began to feel the Pre-Christmas pressure.
Then Mrs. Claus told Santa her Mother was coming to visit, which stressed Santa even more.
When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two others had jumped the fence and were out, Heaven knows where.
Then when he began to load the sleigh, one of the floorboards cracked, the toy bag fell to the ground and all the toys were scattered.
Frustrated, Santa went in the house for a cup of apple cider and a shot of rum. When he went to the cupboard, he discovered the elves had drunk all the cider and hidden the liquor.. In his frustration, he accidentally dropped the cider jug, and it broke into hundreds of little glass pieces all over the kitchen floor. He went to get the broom and found the mice had eaten all the straw off the end of the broom.
Just then the doorbell rang, and an irritated Santa marched to the door, yanked it open, and there stood a little angel with a great big Christmas tree.
The angel said very cheerfully, ‘Merry Christmas, Santa. Isn’t this a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Where would you like me to stick it?’

And so began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree.

Not a lot of people know this.

I am so royally pissed off at Bank of the West – where I bank – that I just want to scream!
For months, now BoW has been tantalizing us with the exciting changes coming to their online home banking site. Changes that would make things easier, go faster, etc.
Tonight the site went live! I was so very excited. (Yes, little things like this excite me a lot.)
And then I was pissed!!! PISSED!!!
You see, with BoW, when you enter in your payees, the people you pay bills to, you have an option of giving them nicknames. So my Chase Amazon Visa, becomes “Chase Amazon”. My Chase Paypal Visa, becomes “Chase PayPal”. My Chase United Miles Visa, is “Chase United”. So that even though they are all paid to Chase – too complicated to explain why I have three, actually four, cards with Chase – they showed up by their nicknames, in alphabetical order. I have other payees that are separate accounts with the same company, and because I also do my mom’s banking with BoW, there are many more on her accounts. This all worked out great! When you selected a bill pay page it gave you an alphabetized list of payees, by nickname if they were assigned one or by actual name if they were not. You then put a dollar figure next to the ones you were paying and hit one button. All sorted nice and neat the way I want them.
Now, because BoW wanted to make their site “better”, they have created drop down menus to select payees you want to pay. The drop down menus show the payees names, not the nicknames, so I now have a list that shows four Chase payees, with nothing to tell me which is which!!! Now, on their main bill pay page, they have all the payees listed, but now it is alphabetized by payee, not by nickname, so there is really no point in having nicknames! Idiots!
Now, it gets worse! If you want to edit any of the payee information, you have to select the payee from a drop-down list. This list does also show the last few digits of the account number, but since I never paid attention to them before, I have to click on each one to see if that is the one I want to edit.
And the worst thing is, I bet not enough people to complain for those idiots to fix this!
Oh, and before you suggest that I change banks, forget it! While it would be relatively easy for me to change, it would be almost impossible for my mother’s accounts to be moved.

It occurred to me tonight as I looked at the limited number of posts I have made to my blog and to the even more limited subject matter, that I really do not have shit to say. Well, perhaps more accurately, I have not used my blog to say what is really on my mind.
So do I just continue to add posts as big events occur in my life, or should I start on a new course, and begin blogging about whatever useless drivel comes into my brain?
Yes, that was a rhetorical question. I have already made my decision. I am going to open my thoughts – well most of them – to the world. Some of them may be politically or scatalogically offensive, but that is just the way it is going to be.
Starting tomorrow.
Heheheh!

This is funny. Well, I think so.
First, some background. My pillows usually have three pillow cases on them. And outer one, that just slips on. The next one is a zippered cotton pillow case. These two cases are removed each laundry day and washed. The third, most inward, case is a kind of silky thing that usually stays on the pillow. About once every 6 months I remove it and wash it; doesn’t need more than that.
So anyway, today – laundry day – I remove the first and second layers from one of my pillows, and notice under the thin fabric of the third case, towards the bottom, is something dark and paperish. I think at first that it is the pillow tag, but as I look at it more closely, I notice that it has a bit of green and black, and is really not in the position for it to be a tag. And…is that writing and big numbers on it?
So now I have to explore further. I unzip the case and slide my hand in and already by the touch I know that this has to be money. Is it real money? Fake money? A British pound note from one of my London trips?
Slowly I slide it out and discover, to my delight, that it is indeed a REAL, USA $20 bill!
I do not know how long it has been there. At least 6 months. Nor do I know how it got in there except it must have been in the wash from one of my shirt or pants pockets – or from my mom’s or someone else in the family who was doing laundry.
Or was it…………….THE TOOTH FAIRY???!!! Paying up, with interest, on some long forgotten tooth!!

(Incidentally, this could not have come at a more opportune time, as I had absolutely no cash in my wallet and did not really want to stop at the ATM today!)

Cookies by Douglas Adams (author: “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”)

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person was me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I’d gotten the time of the train wrong.

I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table.

I want you to picture the scene. It’s very important that you get this very clear in your mind.

Here’s the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There’s a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase.

It didn’t look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.

Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies.

You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know. . . But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn’t do anything, and thought, what am I going to do?

In the end I thought, nothing for it, I’ll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, that settled him. But it hadn’t because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie.

Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice . . .” I mean, it doesn’t really work.

We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away.

Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back. A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my [packet of] cookies.

The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who’s had the same exact story, only he doesn’t have the punch line.

(Excerpted from “The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time” by Douglas Adams)

In September 1960, I woke up one morning with six hungry babies and just 75 cents in my pocket.
Their father was gone.

The boys ranged from three months to seven years; their sister was two.

Their Dad had never been much more than a presence they feared.

Whenever they heard his tires crunch on the gravel driveway they would scramble to hide under their beds.
Continue reading “A Nice Christmas Story”