things i hate

As MJE gets older, creakier and crankier I have decided that I have every right, now in my dotage, to declare loud and proud all the things I hate. I don’t have to to be decorous anymore, I don’t have to “make nice” with people I don’t want to, go to events I don’t enjoy, eat avocados (disgusting in every imaginable way: color, taste and consistency, and that was before tariffs) mussels (I used to love them but sadly my once fervent desire has fizzled) or lobster (literally the only expensive food I don’t like).

But the #1 thing I really do hate is gravity. What a pain in the ass. It is the bane of my existence. It’s the reason I fall down, well that and a few too many pops. It’s why I am overweight, literally “lighten up already,” it’s why when you drop something it immediately hits the ground and finds the deepest, darkest corner to land, pills are peculiarly adept at this. It’s why planes crash, bombs fall, and christmas trees and old people keel over.

I think I’ll itemize from here:

Whistling. I (and Winston Churchill) loathe the sound of whistling. Sadly, the OB&C fancies himself the world’s greatest whistler, laments that there isn’t some sort of international competition (which he would certainly win) and will launch into all four movements of beethoven’s ninth symphony unprovoked. And trust me the whistling doesn’t stop until he gets to the last note of the third movement when he draws a breath (he’s particularly proud of the fact that he can whistle while inhaling and exhaling, which means you never get a break) pauses and launches into ode to joy in faux german. Eine kleina nicht en hernia…etc. He also believes he has a voice to rival pavarotti and will burst into song whenever there is a slight gap in ongoing conversations. Otherwise he is a cowering introvert, he swears.

People drinking something while chewing food. It’s is totally repulsive, why do they do it. As it says in the bible, there is a time to eat and a time to drink, but not both at once, for god’s sake.

Dirty ears. Once you see it, that person will forever after be remembered solely for his/her dirty ears. Look, I know doctors say you’re not supposed to put anything smaller than an elbow in your ears, but, why would god make q-tips if that were true. Think about it.

People who “reach out” to me. What the hell does that mean, are you in a lifeboat and I’m drowning in the ocean? Whatever happened to call, email, text, write, telegraph, smoke signal…English has been bastardized enough (see “like” between every other word) no need to dumb it down any further.

Running out of staples, the excruciating sound of the click of an empty stapler is like fingernails on a blackboard. Even though I know any supply of staples is not infinite, it still infuriates me. It’s a minor thing, but one day it’s staples, the next thing it’s light bulbs, then batteries, printer paper, it all adds up. I guess that’s what people refer to as making a mountain out of a mole hill. Also I hate moles.

People who ride your bumper on mountain roads. Don’t you want to jam on your brakes and make them rear end you and have to pay for the damage. Conversely, people who drive 20 miles an hour on mountain roads, and, not to paint an entire state with a broad brush but most of them are from a place that starts with fl….and ends with da. Look if you decided that you couldn’t stand michigan winters and chose to move to somewhere sunny and warm, like the aforementioned state, then stay there! Don’t come creeping back up north. But if you do, #1 driving tip: if there are three cars behind you, pull over doofus and let them pass. It’s common mountain courtesy. Sheesh.

Sauvignon blanc. If I want to drink grapefruit juice, I will gladly do it with a shot of vodka, but don’t pour it in a bottle and call it wine.

Cuticles. Seriously, what is their purpose?

Badly behaved dogs. It’s not their fault, it’s their owners. And when some huge, out of control beast slams into your knees, the owner says he’s really sweet just high energy. Or, he’s never done that before, or one bites the shit out of your hand and the owner pats the the dog and quietly says, now killer, that’s not how we treat guests, is it?

Waiter/esses who come to the table and ask if “we” are still enjoying our meal. What’s with the we stuff, you’re not sitting at the table are you? And by the way I don’t give a crap what your name is, where you were born, went to college, or what your major was, however I would like to know why a sterling college grad such as yourself is waiting tables. Bet your parents are proud as punch at what their hundreds of thousand of dollars bought.

Speaking of college, I hate it when people casually drop the name of their ivy alma mater into an otherwise unrelated conversation. Not to name names but I find princetonians to be particularly prone to this. I seldom mention that I received a fine arts degree from a below average cow college even though it’s a really interesting factoid.

Well, obviously I could go on and on but another thing I hate is when people don’t know when to shut up.

I tried oh lord I tried

MJE feels oddly at peace today, probably much like someone in hospice who gets the the last big morphine hit and is ready to descend to the depths of hell where he/she belongs, and frankly, where all the fun people go. I guess it’s just a relief from the pre-election tension as well as gratitude that I will no longer receive 50 requests for money in my daily emails for candidates I have never heard of in states I couldn’t point to on a map. Whatever the cause I am grateful for this calm before Jan 26 when the caca hits el ventilador.

Enough politics already, my new great grandchild, henri-henri, is growing more adorable by the day, which is saying something, as everyone knows MJE really doesn’t like babies, at least not my own. His favorite activities at six weeks old are staring at potted plants and lying down. Obviously a genius botanist in the making. Philodendron seems to lead the pack for now but I suspect that the asparagus fern might be a dark horse in the race. I remember when alhambra, our former daughter in law (cannot imagine how she survived 17 years married to our son knut, but I am leaving her $ for each year as justly deserved hazard pay), had me babysit apricot, her two year old first born. If social services had gotten wind of that, alhambra would have been hauled off to the clink for child abuse or neglect pronto. Anywho, I decided I would be a good mudder in law and spruce up their garden as a bonus. So I strapped apricot into her astronaut car seat and off we went to home depot for some flowers. All went well until I was loading the car and turned around to see apricot happily munching on a salvia plant. Yikes!!! I pried her mouth open and extracted whatever greenery I could see and hoped to god she didn’t croak before I hit the road outta town. Fortunately it wasn’t the hallucinogenic variety cause I would have had real hard time explaining to her parents why she was tripping like timothy leary.

Henri-henri is the first child of our grand daughter bandoleira-saturnalia, child of our daughter albatross. Albatross was an unhappy creature from the get go as is evident in every snapshot we have of her as a child. She was like wednesday addams but more deadpan. She literally never smiled, ever. I remember introducing an acquaintance to her and she looked at him like she was gauging how much weight she would need to drown him. He literally stepped back and commented that she certainly was a “somber” looking child and backed out of the room.

It wasn’t for lack of trying to be a good mother. My maternal model was auntie mame, she loved children once they were old enough to make her a dry martini. Fortunately those were the days, in the south, when most families who could afford paying a maid 50c an hour, had someone in the house to pick up the slack. And we had nez, saint of saints, who taught me how to wash my hair and wipe my bottom, came to every mayday extravaganza at my little school and stood outside the fence with all of the other maids to watch. Saw dust on the playground, mist provided by dry ice, I think it was always variations on the theme of fairies, wearing gold spray painted ballet shoes and goofy streaming costumes, we whirled around for awhile and then went home.

So I decided I would be uber mother, into every activity, classroom mother (why were there never classroom fathers?), girl scout leader, yada yada. And for what, all albatross wanted was to shove me off the nearest cliff. She stopped going to school, but because we were “enlightened” (give us a break, it was the seventies) parents, we signed a contract (as opposed to giving her the keys to a bmw as is done now) with her that if she chose not to go to school she could come to my office and file stuff. Well that lasted about 2 days, I guess we could have sued her for breach of contract, but frankly we wanted to deal with her about as much as she wanted to deal with us. The kicker was when she stole my credit card, bought a complete set of samsonite and went to the airport with her partner in crime, meanie, to buy two one way tickets to LA (we lived in Seattle then). Fortunately the airline agent suspected something just might be amiss when two fifteen year old girls dressed like madonna showed up with a credit card in someone else’s name. So we got a phone call and schelped off to the airport to haul in the miscreants. It was downhill from there.

We tried “family therapy.” The first thing the therapist asked was, who do you think has all the power in this family. Holy mother of pearl, obviously the sulking teen in the corner with her arms crossed giving us all the stink eye. Was that really supposed to be a serious question? WE KNOW WHO HAS ALL THE GODDAM POWER YOU CRETIN, THE QUESTION IS HOW DO WE GET IT BACK. After numerous sessions which only reinforced albatross’s control but also made the rest of us feel like shit, including the therapist, we gave up.

We moved away from seattle, but of course, albatross had no intention of remaining part of the family unit. She never got a high school diploma but we coached her through the ged exam which she passed by a very slim margin, got her an apartment, enrolled her in the community college cosmetology program, not to be confused with the cosmology program. bought her all of the course requirements: styrofoam heads, curlers, wigs, combs, brushes, etc. and hit the road for new orleans. She didn’t last a week, she withdrew, pocketed our tuition payment, returned her professional equipment to sally’s beauty supply, and abandoned her dreams of being a stylist to the stars.

You can’t say we didn’t give it the old school try. But albatross wanted to find her own meaning in life. Her destiny! So, how’d that work out you might wonder…all will be revealed. This is ample material to make you run to find your prilosec and perhaps count your lucky stars.

bad moon rising

Out of the still warm ashes of our democracy MJE is rising. In these dark days we need to look for the shining light on the hill. Unfortunately that light is a forest fire that is burning down everything in its path, lit by the combined fury of millions of americans who couldn’t stand the thought of a non-white woman as president and were willingly sucked into the vortex of a man-child who voiced all of their grievances in middle school bully parlance. He denigrated immigrants, ridiculed his detractors, and ensured his supporters that he would kick ass from day one. He made people feel that they were special, that their prejudices and worst instincts were not only acceptable, but admirable. People basked in the warmth of his animus.

Trying to understand the what or why this could have happened will tie your brain in knots. Why would latino voters support a man who wants to deport them in the millions. Why would arab americans support a man who installed a muslim ban. Why would women support a man who was convicted of sexual assault and boasted that he could grab them by their vulvas just because he could. Why would law abiding americans vote for a man who was convicted of scores of felonies. Why would patriotic americans vote for a man who stole top secret documents and has an open bromance with putin. And does no one remember the scores of people who died of covid because of trump’s moronic and lethargic response to the epidemic.

I have heard talking heads chaulk this up to the fact that college educated democrats and independents looked down on the trump supporters as stupid dopes. That is unfair, MJE knows a number of college educated trump supporters that are stupid dopes. In fact there are a few in my family, our son knut for example, did receive what should have been a good college education, proudly asserts that he learned absolutely nothing. It is incredible and painful to believe, but his contention, after his costly (but totally fun) college experience, is that the only reason to go to college is to make contacts. MAKE CONTACTS?????? For chrissake, if all he wanted to do was make contacts he could have joined the goddamed rotary!!

And now, several days hence the blame game begins in earnest: kamala was too left wing, nope she was too centrist, she didn’t differentiate herself from biden enough, she stabbed biden in the back, she didn’t court young men enough, she picked a guy from minnesota as her running mate instead of the guy from pennsylvania, she was too happy, she laughed too much, she wore shoulder pads and pussy bow blouses, she wasn’t supportive enough of israel, nope she didn’t champion the gazans enough. Frankly, she ran a good campaign but the american voters clearly did not want what she was selling.

The majority of american voters apparently wanted a big bad ass who would shit kick anyone who got in his way, someone who would he would protect them, especially women. He moaned “I love women” in a way that sent a chill down my spine and continued “whether they like it or not” which is most definitely not comforting coming from the mouth of a convicted sexual assailant. They were happy to have a dictator who would break all the rules and get rid of all those pesky laws like those that protect the environment (epa, you’re outta here), provide free public schooling (bye, bye department of education), mandate vaccinations (so long cdc). Fuck the constitution, fuck democracy, we want a killer in charge.

It’s morning in america folks, overcast with drought and forest fires raging in the west, hurricanes devastating the south and violent tornadoes ravaging the mid west. But once we get rid of noaa, we can just sit back and relax, ignorance is bliss y’all. We’ll never know what hit us. Should tragedy strike, we americans are resilient people, we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, we don’t need the federal government coming in and taking care of us, we sure don’t need any stinking fema workers meddling in our devastation. But we will take the check, thanks.

The one thing we really and truly do not want is to have a bunch of middle aged men rummaging through our lady parts and deciding what we should do with them. That’s one step over the line sweet jesus. So back off buster, it’s none of your bidness.

Tommy Jeff is quoted as saying “People elect the government they deserve.” Ouch. Winston Churchill is purported to have said “Americans can be counted on to do the right thing after they have exhausted all other possibilities.” Better but not great.

MJE chooses to remain in a state of shock rather than in my state of residence, to float above reality like an opium smoker on his pallet. I intellectually understand what the future holds for americans, I am fortunate enough not to be a long time resident, hard working, yet undocumented immigrant who faces the very real possibility that he or she may well be rounded up, separated from their children and returned to a country from which they fled for fear of their lives. I also do not rely on federal assistance to feed or insure myself and my family in case of medical emergencies. Hell I can even afford a brita water filter so I don’t have to consume lead with every sip. Truth be told MJE does not drink water, but what about the ice cubes in my bourbon…?? It is indeed a very sad world where the cubes in your drink are more toxic than the booze.

Continue reading “bad moon rising”

golden corral

The OB&C and MJE, like human glaciers are inexorably crumbling toward our “past due” dates. As my readers may remember, we have a home in Ancient Oaks, a community for overactive seniors. It’s located in the “low country” of the usa, which means most of it is below sea level and will be under water within a few years, but what do we care, we’ll be even further below sea level by then. AO offers every sort of activity or “amenity” that anyone of any age could want. MJE eschews participation in organized activities unless I am the one doing the organizing. In point of fact, I find sitting inside by myself, drinking a nice white bourdeaux, with the occasional interruption by the OB&C to be the perfect day. MJE is obviously a rather unsophisticated elderly person, as I always thought of amenities as the little bottles of shampoo and body lotion you swipe from a hotel, but it is apparently a far broader category than I imagined, and a very big deal when hawking an old folks place.

The OB&C’s younger brother jank and his wife marmalade have just chosen their very own final nesting place, in a cob webb planned community in cheese whiz, texas. It is promoted as a 55+ colony, although plus what is left to the imagination of the buyer. They want to have a place closer to their son jank jr. and their first grandchild, lil janky. Jank jr.’s wife, gelatina, has all the trademark traits of a fertile brood mare and is in fact about to deliver another foal. They’ll have a barnful of young uns on their hands before long, yee haw.

Jank and marmalade’s new homestead is in a planned codger town called echo chambers creek which, according to their promotional materials is both active and “amenitized,” which I didn’t know was a verb, but offers “resort style” amenities and a full time “lifestyle coordinator.” It seems to me that by the time you are 55+ you already have a pretty good idea about what your lifestyle is, but for those who have resisted committing, there is someone there to decide for you. Among the resort style amenities, there is a nine hole golf course (half a golf course does not scream resort to me, but it’s probably plenty for the average +), a marina on a lagoon, a vineyard of their exclusive “crimson cobernet” grapes, a dog park, lots of safely paved trails that are easily maneuvered with a walker, an electric jitney or a golf cart, and of course pickle ball courts to literally die for.

Echo chambers creek makes most of your important decisions for you so that you can just sit back and enjoy your internment. It limits the housing designs to five approved layouts in either their “scenic series”, or the “distinctive series”: Alpine, which is counter intuitive since it sits in the hottest and flattest landscape imaginable, Pulmonary, an excellent choice for those who require supplemental oxygen, Hallmark, for the romantics among us, Compass, for those who have difficulty remembering where they live and finally Prestige, for those who haven’t quite given up on the notion that they are richer and more successful than their neighbors 20′ away. Jank and marmalade chose a model called ‘deadly nightshade’, so named for the somewhat limited protection from the oppressive heat and scalding sun provided by the three 20′ ilex vomitoria, colloquially known as yaupon, or cheap junk trees gracing the lot line.

The layout of the housing plan is a dizzying series of winding streets with names like vista ridge court, which like Alpine is flat as a pancake and the nearest ridge is in arkansas, and monarch cove, which must be the high rent district where the Prestige homes are located but is miles from the nearest quazi-natural body of water, also in arkansas, all ending in inescapable cul de sacs. Residents are provided with residence locator devices, part of the resort style amenities package no doubt, otherwise god knows who would end up where and with whom…in fact statistics show the highest incidence of std’s is in retirement facilities! Geezers gone wild.

I am impressed by the number of ways that echo chambers creek promoters have been able to reduce unwanted input from future homeowners. They offer for sale all of the furniture in their model homes to simplify any personal decorating decisions one may foolishly consider making. They also offer their own mortgage options, as “completing mortgage applications can be confusing”. They highly encourage virtual home buying, however should you insist on actually being present, they do offer four opportunities to do so: 1. an introduction to your construction manager, 2. a pre-closing tour of your prospective new home, 3. a pre-drywall walk through and 4. CELEBRATION! after your home is complete and before it starts to fall apart. Does anyone really need anything more? Cob webb suggests not, having decades of experience throwing up ticky tack houses in record time, without the unwelcome and costly interruptions of prospective residents.

Jank proudly pointed out that is is a gated community, which might be impressive to elderly bougies who just fell off the turnip truck but not to the connoisseur codgers among us. Gates do not even begin to cut the artisanal dijon mustard these days. True upscale communities require far more elaborate and impressive security measures. Moats are now la mode, alligators are an optional upgrade, but truth be told they are a must to attract the discerning senior prospect.

duck!

“Living in the moment”, first cousin once removed of meditation is another one of those notions I don’t fully buy. Live in the moment just a tad too long and you could get hit by a bus. That said, there have been a few times when I truly did live in the moment, like it or not.

The OB&C is a dedicated duck hunter and back in the day, once a season he would drag me out to experience the thrill of getting up at 2am, dressing for the antarctic in camo, loading up the truck, driving an hour to god knows where downriver from new orleans, hauling the skiff out of the boat shed, loading it up with a bag of decoys large enough to make santa’s sack look like a kelly bag, one very excited retriever, several guns, a shell bucket and enough shotgun shells to decimate every duck in the central flyway, paddles, a thermos of something to take the chill off (preferably 90 proof), life preservers (although frankly if I fell into that water, life preserver or not, I’d expire tout de suite from hypothermia and sheer terror), then jockeying for position at the launch, getting the thing into the water, and very slowly motoring through the marsh in total darkness in a dinky boat equipped with a motor called a go devil that looks like something a blind person assembled in his garage. After about half an hour, frozen to near death, we then pull into a clump of marsh grass wherein lies the duck blind. Depending on the tide, the wind or the weather, it’s either a few inches under water or a foot or more. Here we disembark, unload the gear onto whatever area is driest, if any. I am tasked with arranging the gear, guns, wet dog, etc. in the blind while the OB&C heads out to set the decoys. Sunrise is not to be seen. He returns, hides the boat and as the poem says, “we sit and shake and shiver waiting for the flight to start.” Well I’ll tell you one thing I was definitely living in every single one of those goddam moments.

And if the flight should appear, we crouch down hoping the the decoys lure them in and they set their wings and he blasts away. Our retriever is whimpering in anticipation, and at the signal, marks the location of the downed duck and launches into the water, living her best day ever. I, on the other hand, am slumped in a corner of the blind, certain that today of all days, dawn will never fully break and I will end my life, sodden, in unattractive and ill-fitting camouflage, clutching a thermos of everclear.

But back in the heyday of gentlemen’s hunting in louisiana, the OB&C’s father would take us to one of several exclusive hunting clubs around the marshes of south louisiana to which he was invited. He was an exceptionally charming man, an academic dean beloved by both the wealthy and the hoi polloi. At the time I really did not fully appreciate the experience. I had never hunted ducks and assumed that a well appointed camp, and a staff of servers, cooks and guides were de rigueur. What a fool I was, what a silly little fool. We were ferried to the camp the night before the hunt, where we were assigned bedrooms and given time to “dress” for dinner. After dinner was a poker game, and I stayed and played with our host and the other guests. I think they were somewhat surprised to see a very young woman in their midst, but it has been my experience that there’s nothing more old horndogs enjoy than a feisty young woman in the mix, especially one who knows nothing about poker and needs a good bit of “hands on” instruction.

Come time to hunt, we were awakened by a servant with demitasse cups of black coffee and chicory and assigned our boats and guides. We were then transported to our blinds where the decoys had been set out and once we were settled, the guide called in the ducks. After we shot our limit we were carted back to the club house where a beautiful breakfast was served. As we left we were given a sack of plucked and cleaned ducks. Honey chile, if mama’s gonna hunt ducks that’s how I want to do it.

Ah, those were the glory days, but little did we know it. Ducks may not be the brightest creatures on earth but they know enough that if it’s like miami beach in manitoba they don’t need to fly a thousand miles south to stay warm. Now no matter the level of genteel extravagance of the hunting clubs, they ain’t no ducks. The washing away of the marsh and the changing salinity of the water from saltwater diversion canals and hurricanes has made south louisiana a less than desirable destination for both ducks and duck hunters.

Addendum: south louisianians have their own names for various duck species: french duck, black duck, smiling mallard, d’eau gris, grey duck, and poule d’eau…hunters out there, you figure it out.

woo hoo houthis

I don’t know about you but I am having a hard time keeping all of the terrorist groups straight. First off, is it a rule in the terrorist handbook that if you decide to start a new terrorist group, or an off shoot of an existing one, that the name has to begin with an h? It seems like a pretty petty rule plus it makes all of us non terrorists get you all mixed up.

I get hamas, it was first out of the box with its invasion of israel, a move absolutely guaranteed to propel any group to a spot on the nyt front page above the fold. First off, as far as I can figure out hamas was duly elected in 2007 to govern the gaza strip, admittedly just a fraction of gazans voted, but the ones who did gave the thumbs up to hamas. So, just as in the ole us of a, minority of people voted in the winner of the election. Dems the breaks. However, despite gaza being an “independent” entity, israel effectively controls it and the u.n. considers gaza to be an occupied territory. Israel controls its air space, territorial waters, as well as the movement of gazans in and out of the territory. Israel is not what anyone would consider to be a friendly landlord, and treats the gazans like crap. Since israel controls the borders above ground, the gazans simply went underground and built a massive network of tunnels. Israel then decided to put the almighty retaliatory kibosh on gaza and bomb the living shit out of it, seemingly indiscriminately targeting schools and hospitals and killing lots and lots of everyday joe gazans. At this point I suspect israel is up to at least a ten to one kill rate with no sign of stopping. Their excuse for targeting civilian locations is that there are tunnels underneath. For god’s sake, there are tunnels under virtually every square inch of gaza and it’s only a matter of time before it just collapses. Sheesh israel, kick it old testament, be patient, remember job. Oyvey.

Hezbollah is a shia islamist terrorist group working out of lebanon. Frankly I am confused about why the hell the shias and the sunnis can’t get along. It sounds like a spat over who got more of mom’s silver. Who cares if the prophet died intestate or whether he wanted his 2nd cousin once removed to sit on the family pouf. Give it up, it’s a stupid argument, go fight some unrelated religion.

Then you’ve got the huthis in yemen who popped up again, probably feeling left out of the terrorist group grab ass going on. Their story is kind of like rinse and repeat. The huthis apparently are also not overly fond of the sunnis in their hood and keep a side hustle going with them. But primarily they use the same old playbook, hate the u.s. (boring) but they are also seen as a front for the Iran-Saudi Arabia proxy war. However, they have now started to take pot shots at ships in the red sea which pisses everybody off. Talk about punching above your weight!

So many wars and so little space. Is it any wonder that every once in a while a stray missile hits some other unrelated bitchfest? But try telling that to the people who got blown to bits. All of these groups are basically religious/tribal who have no interest in being part of, or faithful to any arbitrary territory imposed upon the region by some distant power.

Why do the world powers not seem to get the message? The terrorists have done everything but fly over the big shot countries with a plane trailing a banner that says “Mind your own business, your politics are a fucking mess, how about you sort that out before you stick your nose into ours.”

2023: write it off

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.

st. george

Mje totally understands the outrage and confusion regarding st. george’s resume, but what the general public doesn’t understand is that rather than inflating his accomplishments, st. g greatly down played them in order to be more relatable to ordinary people.

For instance, he stated that he attended baruch college. Far from it my friends, st. g has an undergraduate degree from tsinghua university in bejing where he earned double bachelor’s degrees in business and science, majoring in world economics and quantum physics, in chinese. Feeling that perhaps his education was not rounded enough he earned a second undergraduate degree from from the university of arkansas majoring in homeopathic medicine and cross dressing fashion design.

During his undergraduate studies in china his extracurricular activities included martial arts, in which he earned a black belt and was known on campus at the karate kid. Additionally he pursued his passion for floral arranging and won first place at the chelsea flower show. But perhaps he is best known for his mastery of water ballet, the only (fe) male to be invited to compete in the olympics in beijing, where the chinese team won gold for the first time. Then, at the university of arkansas, selected because, as he said in his memoir, “alone in the world, a holocaust orphan,” he wanted to be closer to his ancestral home in sao paulo or belguim.

At u-ark st. g walked on as a true freshman on both the football and foosball teams, became an esteemed member of the mud wrestling team and won the title of barbeque pit master going on to beat bobby flay in his throw down competition. Go razorbacks!

Recruited by both the london school of economics and the university of louisiana at lafayette, know colloquially as oo-la-la, he instead intended to pursue his master’s degree in teaching at sweetbriar college, which unfortunately closed down abruptly after the endowment fund was lost in a ponzi scheme, of which he had no knowledge but was nevertheless falsely charged, and finally exonerated of all charges.

Feeling as though he needed more real world experience he was immediately snapped up by space x and although not widely known, accompanied elon, on his first mission into semi-outer space, in the baggage hold. Impressed with his endurance, elon tapped him to oversee facebook and twitter which, due to circumstances beyond his control began hemorrhaging money and since his tenure, has had to lay off thousands of employees. St.g however, due to his dramatic work ethic and ability to survive a g-force of approximately 3g’s, wearing a g string instead of the recommended g-suit, was rewarded with a $700,000 bonus.

But being the man he is, st. g, felt it was time to give back to the community, so he left the business world and entered politics. He was totally unprepared for the rough and tumble political environment, but continued to give it his all, including his bonus from facebook and twitter and several friends’ go fund me charitable campaigns. He tried to understate his achievements, but was instead mocked and derided by the left wing press. In the end, he was, as usual, successful and now sits in the us house of representatives as a republican congressman from ny. His resume, although wildly understated, and only mildly embellished, was accepted without question and his singular relationship with truth and honor earned him seats on two of the most powerful congressional committees.

oyvey-ish

Bottoms up

So a few weeks into 2023 and the world hasn’t imploded yet, well except for poor ukraine, which jumped the gun, so to speak, with an assist from rootin’ tootin’ putin, the world’s worst person, next to elon muskellunge. While here on the home front, we might as well throw in kevin mcarthy who in his quest for the worst job in the world, finally managed to negotiate a price for his soul that was so low it’s like you’re in a TJ Maxx and there is something so cheap that even though you don’t want it you just buy it anyway.

I try to give equal time to skewering politicians and family members so as to appear “fair and balanced” I’ll shift to to the latter. The OB&C and I hosted our NYD party to force feed our northern friends the southern new year’s good luck elixir of black eyed peas and greens to ensure good fortune and wealth in the new year. No matter how bad a year is, I always figure that without bep and cabbage it certainly would have been so much worse.

However, one of us made a bit too merry and had a rather restless night, with comings and goings to the necessary. After one such visit, on the return voyage to the bedroom, there was a massive thud in the closet followed by some unintelligible mutterings and expletives. What now says I to myself, and dragged myself out of bed to find the OB&C splayed in an open suitcase (still unpacked from a christmas vacay) with his feet stuck inside one leg of his underpants, and his ass firmly planted in my roller bag, struggling to right himself like a turtle on its back. He was solidly wedged into that thing and he ain’t no featherweight. It’s times like these when the fact that you haven’t lifted anything heavier than a glass of chardonnay for quite a while comes home to roost, also where the lug in luggage comes from. Holy frijole, without even the benefit of a good stretch I finally maneuvered his extraction . Baggage handlers around the world I salute you.

As if that weren’t sufficient nocturnal high jinx, a few nights later, groping around my nightstand in the dark for cough syrup, I managed to grab a bottle of eucerine intensive repair lotion which I proceeded to pour into my mouth. I levitated off the bed and flew into the bathroom to expel as much as possible, spitting like a hillbilly with a mouth full of tobacco juice. Seriously, how much can one person take, more literally, how much eucerine lotion can one person ingest? My only hope is that if it’s labelled intensive repair, that perhaps it might apply to a couple of my internal organs which seem to have suffered a bit under the heavy load of a lifetime of metabolizing large quantities of ethyl alcohol.

Bottoms up all around.

miracle on 34th gate

First off, I must apologize for my extended absence, which I hope someone noticed. I was frankly exhausted by the insurrection (which btw, upstaged my goddam birthday!) and the congressional weasels who folded like cheap suitcases after they’d changed their soiled underwear, not to mention my being extremely disappointed in the incredible short sightedness of our founding fathers in not anticipating that some day an egomaniacal, immoral, sadistic, very unattractive grifter might just come along and run for president and worse, that millions of god fearing patriotic americans would actually fall for his bullshit and elect him. Maga my ass, miasma’s more like it.

So I took a break to reflect on what’s fabulous about absolutely everything in my life, however that didn’t take very long, so I had to come up with another stall tactic. Got it: self care. Apparently it’s very au courant. I have no idea what it actually means other being completely self absorbed, which is not exactly a revolutionary notion, nor one to which I am opposed, so I thought if it’s good enough for gwyneth then it’s good enough for me ! I started with mindfulness, and being in the moment, which is a conundrum. If you are forcing yourself to be conscious of each and every fucking moment then you are obviously not actually in the moment. 

So, to accelerate my rehabilitation, a very merry holiday seemed in order, which the materfamilia (moi) pulled off by basically moving mountains (of cash) to get eight member of our distended family together for a hallmark vacay that would have put ole norman rockwell himself into a diabetic coma. However, on the return, MJE managed to book the OB&C and myself on separate flights. Now, aside from possibly being a freudian slip, it proved to be major headache, and you can bet your buttons I was in the goddam moment then. Despite my best imitation of a distraught, unhinged, befuddled old lady, the airline “help” agent wasn’t buying it and remained unmoved, instead handing me a slip of paper for a standby seat on the OB&C’s flight, tenth in line on a full flight. Tenth! I’ve never been tenth in anything, except when I was on the swim team and finally finished after everyone had gotten dressed and gone home, including my mother. Bowed but unbroken, I staggered over to the gate agent dragging my suitcase and coat, and again pled my case. It’s obviously been a rough week for airline personnel and their hearts have gone full on titanium, hence tenth I was and tenth I remained. I posted myself slumped against a pillar within his peripheral vision, found a crumpled cocktail napkin to dab my eyes and waited, eyeing with unbridled resentment as one after another clearly inferior standby passenger was waived aboard. Finally, when I had almost given in to despair, intensified by the fact that the crown room was closed because the pipes burst, my name was called and I was miraculously transformed from a barely conscious shell of a human being into an olympiad racing down the jetway, with the theme of chariots of fire ringing in my ears.

So, home again, refreshed (read: completely exhausted, mentally and financially, from a relaxing holiday) and ready to meet 2023 head on. So watch out, MJE’s back and badder than ever!

Happy new year!