Trigger warning, bad grammar ahead! MJE has folded like a cheap suitcase under the strain of trying to placate the myriad of sexual prefix preferences, it is just too exhausting to constantly try to be inclusive of all of the variables. So, although it pains me no end to bend to the current application of “they” as a replacement pronoun, especially when it does not agree with the verb, I cry uncle/aunt/auncle. MJE hopes that you tender gender grammar ignoramusi are pleased with yourselves. One more brick in the wall of linguistic literacy knocked loose.
As a courtesy to my readers I have deliberately refrained from either political or actual personal family topics* in my first post of the new year, but don’t expect that to last.
A new year looms , but before MJE can throw 2023 into the dustbin, I feel compelled to drag myself through the pile of dreaded annual holiday letters the OB&C and I receive, under the misapprehension that we give a rat’s ass about any of it. First off, we don’t want to hear that your daughter has been accepted at harvard, stanford and brown but is in an existential quandary about which to choose. If the author of this over-long self involved missive, who is purportedly a long time friend of ours, really cared they would be aware that the our second child was recently thrown out of louisiana state in lafayette, fondly referred to as U La La, for setting his dorm room on fire while trying to cook up a batch of meth. Our third kid is already in rehab, for the second time, and painting stripes on the county road as part of their public service requirement. We now have to sell our house to pay for the extremely expensive, yet wildly unsuccessful rehabilitation programs, but with interest rates and the housing market as it is, we have had no takers. However, the IRS is not overly sensitive to taxpayer’s woes, therefore we also had to sell off half of our retirement savings, at a substantial loss, in order to satisfy the tax man before additional interest and penalties accrued.
Reading the excruciating details of every mile that was conquered, foot of elevation gained and nightly sumptuous feasts enjoyed during the author’s family’s fabulous biking trip though the alps was riveting. Unfortunately it is unlikely that we will be able to delight in those activities, financially or physically, as our necessary knee and hip replacements are not forthcoming since we lost our health insurance when the OB&C’s lifetime career in science was made redundant and he was replaced by an AI generated professor emeritus that does not require any prodding to crank out fake, but damned believable, peer reviewed papers or wants two days a week off to go fishing. The spouse, moi, who has spent a lifetime holding the rather tenuous bonds of marriage and family together and therefore has no “work” experience is awaiting an offer for a position on the graveyard shift as greeter at walmart.
And although we appreciate the author’s tedious recitation of all of the extraordinary adventures of their family’s past year, we felt that perhaps the christmas card photo of the lovely family group beaming in front of the gates of dachau may have been a bit insensitive, considering that possibly, although highly unlikely, one of our grand parents might have been holocaust survivors. But the we feel certain that all of author’s family members learned a great deal from the experience and probably made a generous contribution to the reform of the germanic bent toward facism, in the gift shop. After all it’s not everywhere that one can find tchotchkes like blown glass ss insignia or swastika christmas tree ornaments, or mein kampf in a graphic novel format!
But now it’s out with old and in with the new year, and I’m guessing that it’s gonna be a doozy. So, in the immortal, somewhat altered words of bette davis, “buckle up it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”
*None of the persons or circumstances set forth above have any relation to reality. For chrissake, do you really think MJE reads any of that crap. If so, you have definitely not been paying attention.
my jaundiced eye 