Geezer, Coot, or Codger?

I heard someone say, “Age is only a number.” While that’s true, let’s not forget that it is the number of years since your birth. Is your library card older than the librarian? When you leave the house, how many times do you pat your pocket to make sure you have your keys? Are there moments when you find yourself thinking that velcro shoes might not be such a bad idea after all? Okay. Someday you too may look up from the sink and ask yourself, “Who is this jowly bald-headed old fart and why am I flossing his teeth?”

marsupial alert

I don’t know how to break this to you without delivering an unpleasant shock, so I’ll just spit it out. Unless you live in Wisconsin, South Carolina, or West Virginia, it’s probably illegal for you to own a kangaroo. Okay, in 10 states you can have one if you qualify for a special kangaroo permit but everywhere else it’s just flat-out prohibited. It’s easier in this country to acquire a semiautomatic weapon or a bag of really good weed than a simple kangaroo. What does that tell the world about our priorities? What example are we giving to our children?

Bullshit

The terms “shit job” and “bullshit job” are not interchangeable. I’ll explain. If you are employed to tear old shingles off a roof, wash dishes in a restaurant kitchen, or pump out septic systems, you have a shit job. That’s something nobody wants to do but it needs to get done. A bullshit job usually doesn’t need to get done at all. People with bullshit jobs spend a lot of their time reassuring one another that their jobs aren’t bullshit. A bullshit job is if you’re a tenured poet, an advertising copywriter, or a United States senator. Bullshit pays better.

The case for retreads.

Did you ever have your crappy old car finally suffer some terminal failure and you’re about to junk it and you think, “Dang. I just filled the tank, too.” That’s a good reason to keep running on fumes. Forget about actually completing any task; it’s gotten so even the act of adding a project to the to-do list is more effort than I’m willing to invest in the future. Live for the moment, that’s my motto. A bottle of Chilean Merlot will leave you with a headache tomorrow morning but a ball-peen hammer to the skull will hurt right now.

Them Changes

As of this year, “I Got Rhythm” is in the public domain, so no more making up a funny new name when you record it. What else is in the public domain (since 2020) is everything Tom Lehrer ever wrote, which he did on purpose. A friend was contrasting that with Bob Dylan’s selling his back catalog to Sony for maybe 200 million dollars but I stepped up and defended Dylan. I said, “Look, Lehrer had the advantage of a math professor’s pension while Dylan has to scrape by on a folk singer’s wages.” That pretty much ended the conversation.

get with the program

In 1804 a French guy named Joseph Marie Jacquard patented a machine that when attached to a loom allowed the automated weaving of complex patterns by storing the commands for changing colors of thread on a stack of cards with holes punched in them. That’s the same concept that was used later on to make the rolls for player pianos, and even later the IBM cards that provided early computer data storage. Every once in a great while a new technology comes along that profoundly changes our culture in the same way that holograms, quadraphonic sound, and VR goggles haven’t.

Or Golf Digest

Why would they give you a 10 o’clock appointment and then send you an email advising that you should plan on arriving 15 minutes early? Doesn’t that effectively change it to 9:45 appointment? Possibly they’re simply phrasing it wrong, and what they mean to say is, “Your appointment is at 9:45. Please be punctual and plan on sitting in a plastic chair for at least a quarter hour leafing through back issues of US and last year’s Harry & David catalog.” And this: If you want an accurate blood pressure reading, don’t put Fox News on the waiting room television.