my jaundiced eye

chewey, phooey, kaflooey and how

What is it with the conald and his attorneys, he hires them, goon shakes their hands for the cameras, and in a matter of months he just wants them to pick up their goddam clothes and hair products and get the hell out. Where is he finding these guys, tinder? He seems to vet his mouthpieces with the same care with which he vets his cabinet nominees. He probably overheard some yo yo bragging about how his great lawyer got him out of a speeding ticket and slam bam thank you mam, he’s the next rookie drafted by team tump. Just recently yet another one of his lawyers ran for the hills and was replaced with not one but two more. One is a new face on the scene, poor mr. flud who looks like he unwittingly wandered out of a brooks brothers catalogue. Not long for the rough and tumble of trump world, I suspect. But what ho! the conald’s also brought on chewliani the reptilian hunchback as his chief defensive tackle and attack dog.

Wouldn’t you love to be a dung beetle on the wall when meuller starts questioning the conald with that pit bull chewliani scowling and growling at his side, baring his prodigious gums in anticipation of the rumble ahead.

Looming across the table sits zen master mewler patiently waiting for the games to begin. He poses his first question:

“Mr. president who…”

Chewey cuts him off, snarling that his question is way outside of the authorized scope of his investigation and the president will not respond.

“Mr. president what…”

Chewey interrupts and growls that that question too is outside of the authorized scope of the investigation and the president will not respond.

“Mr. president where…”

Chewey hurriedly shambles to his feet, slams his fist on the table and bellows that he is fast losing his patience with this area of questioning and will not tolerate it, warning that he will remove his client from the room and discontinue any further queries if it continues.

“Mr. president when…”

At this, chewey’s cranium seems to detonate, forcing his thyroid eyes so far out of his cadaverous face that they push his trifocals off the end of his beak onto the conference table. His face turns the color of a bowl of borscht and he begins furiously sputtering in righteous indignation, his histrionics amplifying his speech impediment, reducing his frenetic rant to a series of spittle-laden squawks.

“Mr. presi….”

Finally chewey’s head literally begins to spin around. He collapses under the table, madly crab walks around the floor, and furiously scuttles out of the deposition room leaving the conald alone, directly across the table from the preternaturally placid mr. mewler. The unperturbed prosecutor quietly asks if the president would care to continue in the absence of his attorney.

The conald can feel the force within him grow, his ego and narcissism coalescing into a palpable sensation of incandescence. He is on fire. He is invincible. No one can get the best of him. He is smarter than anyone else. He always wins. He will wipe the filthy spit covered floor with this ridiculous bureaucratic hack just like he did with the losers who tried to get paid for the shoddy work they did on his condos and casino.

Like a gladiator in the arena, he can’t wait for the chute to open, the lions released and the battle joined. With absolute confidence in his infallibility, the conald crosses his arms, smirks and says, sure, why not. The hint of a smile crosses mr. mewler’s poker face as he begins the questions anew.

unlocked and unloaded

MJE just read the announcement that amazon prime members may now have orders delivered directly to their cars!

As I interpret it, you download an app onto your cell phone and when the delivery man is within 2 blocks of your car he opens “the trunk” and drops your stuff right in there. He then relocks your car. You get constant updates of course. What could possibly go wrong?

How about this scenario? My old heap doesn’t technically have a trunk and if you open its notatrunk the whole car unlocks. What if I should have, say left valuables in the area of the car that’s notatrunk and later return to my hoopdy to discover that, YES!!!! my bottle of 50,000 kirkland antacid tabs are there! However, my passport, the passwords to everything (in code of course I’m not that stupid) and the $1000 I keep in a ditch bag (should I need to hastily flee the country) that were hidden in my console are not. Just as I grab my phone to howl at amazon I notice 35 alerts from my bank, investment account, visa, american express, ebay and amazon warning me that it sure looks like I just had my identity stolen. All accounts have been drained dry and every credit card maxed out but they do hope I am enjoying myself in istanbul.

To whom do I address a complaint? Well obviously to the fine customer support department at amazon, however it must be in the form of a chat session, which takes about an hour to exchange a handful of communications, half of which are introductions and greetings. But I am assured by the ether agent that my complaint will be thoroughly investigated and I will have a resolution within 2-3 business days. Good bye and bon voyage.

Ergo, for the convenience of speedy delivery of a gallon of antacid tablets (all of which I now need) I have gone to rack and ruin, all within a span of 120 minutes.

Could this possibly happen? If MJE is any example, amazon has clearly figured out algorithms that are able to stimulate the human brain and induce you to purchase things you don’t need and then to forget that you already have the things you didn’t need and buy them again. It is engineered to keep your mind in a state of unquenchable desire to possess everything. But the question at hand is has amazon figured out how to deprogram their delivery personnel and ensure that they stick to the trunk the whole trunk and nothing but the trunk.

charm offensive

I know MJE constantly whines about customer service agents, but this time I am giving kudos to not only whoever penned this beauty but also the poor souls who are required to answer incoming calls with this greeting…

Agent: How may I charm you today?

MJE: Huh?

Agent: How may I charm you today?

That briefly stalled my rant and I was actually speechless for a few seconds, which is rare. However I quickly snapped back into bitch mode and railed on about whatever gripe I happened to have that day.

After the call, I started to give that offer some further thought. How might this young woman charm me today? …perhaps she could:

Clean my dog’s teeth.

Take my colonoscopy for me.

Find my sunglasses.

Explain what kombucha is.

Adopt my daughter albatross.

Crunch my abs.

Donate half of tom cotton’s neck to mitch mcconnell.

Make it 2020.

Charmed I’m sure.

medicare/rx sux

I just received, via the failing us postal service, my most recent medicare/rx supplemental insurance statement which shows that my plan has paid precisely zero toward any of my prescriptions this year. Yet this coverage is, according to the incessant anxiety inducing advertisements, the only thing standing between me and the monstrous vortex of the dreaded “prescription donut hole” that will suck my bank account dry and leave me lying destitute and infirm on the side of the road clutching a tattered cardboard sign that reads “will work for plavix if I don’t stroke out first.”

So, I pay about $600 a year in premiums, with a $405 annual deductible…so just from the get go MJE is out a cool thousand bucks. As any typical overmedicated boomer, I ingest at least five prescription meds daily, as well as a few almost certainly useless nutritional supplements primarily to offset the results of ingrained unhealthy lifestyle choices, which I have no intention of changing.

So in order to try to sort out the vexing question of why am I spending money on supplemental insurance, which does not appear to supplement anything, I went in search of some answers, However, the federal government, which administers medicare has, in the interest of cutting government spending, deleted customer service entirely. This move, in addition to reducing governmental employee salaries and benefits, offers the added benefit of hastening the demise of legions of doddering lowlifes living off the government’s pharmaceutical tit. But my third party insurance provider, recommended by none other than the esteemed aarp, still employs customer service agents who do ultimately pick up the phone, but not before subjecting callers to a muzak loop obviously intended to force them to hang up and speed dial dr kevorkian instead.

However, MJE don’t scare that easy…I finally got connected to j joey who assured me most heartily that he could without a doubt answer any and all of my questions to my full and complete satisfaction. And true to his word he provided a lengthy and intricate explanation of exactly how each perceived expense had actually been a benefit that actively reduced my deductible, which currently stands at $35.97 thanks to my having spent $369.03 in cold hard cash. I then got an unsolicited tutorial on the pricing tiers of various medications should the elusive deductible ever be realized: tier 1 for example would only cost $1 for a 30 day supply, tier 2 would cost $3 for a 30 day supply and so forth. As the tiers get higher the formulas revert to random percentage coverages, which are then sliced into tranches, bundled with other medication pricing structures and sold as derivatives on the big pharma futures markets.

So according to the gospel of joey, two of my meds are tier 1, (theoretically cheap), one med was tier 2 (less cheap theoretically) should I ever meet my deductible, which unfortunately lies somewhere between the end of the rainbow and my shallow grave. My three other widely prescribed medications are not covered at all. The good news is that the pharmacy I use is not a preferred vendor so my costs are much higher. Why is that good news…because in the through the looking glass reality of insuranceland the more expensive the drug the faster I will be able to claw my way to the top of mount deductible!

When I suggested that perhaps I should look for another rx supplement provider, joey patronizingly advised me to simply take different meds. Well, that was the pill that broke this camel’s back. MJE’s response was as follows, “You sound as though you are about 22 years old and since you’re working the graveyard shift (in whatever your time zone is) at an insurance company customer service desk I’m gonna guess that you haven’t been to either pharmacy or medical school. And furthermore you are most likely not suffering from high blood pressure, high cholesterol, anxiety, depression, arthritis, bursitis, fallen arches, bleeding gums, tingling in your hands and feet, dry skin, memory loss, or swollen ankles, just to name a few common afflictions of your client base. So please leave the prescribing to the professionals and stick to convincing your pathetic geriatric medicare dependent customers that they are not being taken to the cleaners by your employer, you little prick.”

To which he replied “Thank you ma’am for that excellent feedback which I will certainly pass on to my supervisor, and have a wonderful rest of your day.”

lunch meat madness

What is it with old geezers who seem to think they, and the rest of us, have all the time in the world when they dodder over to the grocery store. And puhleeze, don’t get on your high horses about the dignity of our elders and how MJE should be respectful. First off, have these fossils looked in a mirror lately? The grim reaper doesn’t take a number at the deli counter my friends. We’ve all been at the mercy of geriatrics who stand in the lunch meat line clutching their paper numbers, peering into the case with an intensity usually reserved for members of the bomb disposal squad trying to figure out which wire to clip. Even after reaching the head of the line they remain maddeningly indecisive, weighing the relative merits of olive loaf vs hogs head cheese, liverwurst vs bologna, etc. At long last they cautiously settle on a preference. Then the weary hair netted clerk embarks upon the hunt for the buyer’s selection, rummaging half heartedly among logs of salami, hunks of ham and slabs of pastrami. However, more often than not, the selected item cannot be found and the clerk shuffles off into the meat locker for the remainder of his shift.

A new meat monger eventually appears on the scene and the entire process begins anew. Finally, we reach the point where a choice has been finalized, and we enter into phase two of the process. The all important taste test. I may be overly suspicious but I’m pretty sure this isn’t the pensioner’s first rodeo in the cold cut corral. And I will further surmise that he or she has a pretty good idea what that slice of compressed meat tastes like. Yet one can’t be too sure, so a tranche is gently laid upon a square of wax paper and offered to the potential buyer like the krupp diamond upon a velvet pillow. It gets a good once over, a sniff and then is masticated slowly and deliberately. Our senior gives the appearance of a master sommelier thoughtfully pinpointing the terroir of a fine vintage, assessing the bouquet and savoring fruit forward notes of cherry or kombucha followed by a clean mineral finish. The buyer hesitates, the throng in line behind him shuffles restlessly, hopeful for a swift and positive judgment; he hesitates, then offers a nod of approval. The crowd goes wild! No it doesn’t because by now all of the other geezers in line have had to dash off in search of the bathroom.

However there is one final hurdle: the intensely subjective preferred proportions of the slice. The deli meister carves a sliver and holds it up for approval. If it should get a thumbs up, then the full order of 1/16 of a pound will slide over the counter, however should it receive a thumbs down, off the scrap goes into the trash bin. And it often takes several attempts before the ideal slice is achieved, with each imperfect pass tossed onto the garbage heap.

For god’s sake america, half of ethiopia could subsist for weeks or even months on one grocery’s single day’s cast off bits of deli meat. But then those poor people would all develop hypertension and high cholesterol and drop dead of stroke or heart attack before they had a chance to starve to death.

family tree

Politics, gun violence, russia and porn stars have worn me out so I will turn to another soul deadening topic, family. MJE tends to roam alone with the OB&C as an occasional traveling companion. Perfection. However, once a year I am burdened with one of the fragments of flotsam floating in my familial gene pool in the form of my half-sister, astrozeneca. Many years ago she abandoned her perky nineteen fifties given name and was reborn a self-proclaimed sufi, purportedly ascetic and mystical. Well if asceticism means that she limits herself to herbal tea infusions, comfy shoes, voluminous stretch pants and injesting only those foodstuffs prepared by others and which require no effort on her part, then I guess she’s ascetic. As far as mystical, that’s a mighty grey area. According to merriam webster, mystical means “inspiring a sense of spiritual mystery, fascination and awe.” Well it’s a mystery to me how we could possibly be related. And in point of fact, she does inspire a profound fascination with the thought of putting my head in an unlit oven. Awesome.

Siblings aside, MJE and the OB&C have two offspring with whom my loyal readers will be familiar, daughter albatross and son knot, neither of whom displays a single intellectual or cultural trait of ours, good or bad. Albatross is easing comfortably into her late forties having conned us into paying her freight since birth by producing two grand children. She supplements our generous contributions by taking full advantage of the largesse of the united states of america, the state of california, the county of alameda, and the city of oakland. We suspect she is also a grifter of some success as exhibited by her elaborate and presumably expensive head to toe tatts. We were able to pry loose her elder child bandoliera early on and she has miraculously grown into a wonderful young woman unscathed by her early childhood brush with her mother’s narcissistic personality disorder. But in a surprise move, albatross issued forth a second child, jesus! one day shy of bandoliera’s 17^th birthday. A miracle baby, apparently the result of a virgin birth as any human paternal being has thus far failed to materialize, at least to us. We have every confidence that she’s got her financials covered in that regard, although the notion of birthing a child in order to guarantee an income stream is deeply perverted to say the very least

Then we have son knot and his long-suffering wife, alhambra. Knot is a graduate of the university of georgia, but is of the opinion that college is a complete waste of time. According to him, success in life boils down to having the right contacts. Wish we’d known that before we went into the poor house to put him through four years of wasted education when we might have simply signed him up for the rotary club. In fact he states with some pride that he never learned a damned thing in college. We could not agree more.

Knot and Alhambra have three little moppets in their clutch; apricot, seymour and the ear-splitting caboose decibelle. They are as different from one another as avocados are to armadillos. Apricot is a pile driver, unwise to get in her way. Destined to be the big boss. Seymour is the thoughtful and kind one, also apparently something of a savant, a whiz with numbers, especially sports stats. Destined to be a very successful bookie or a hedge fund manager. Decibelle is the wild card, a vegan from birth she subsists on pasta and strawberries. She is destined for something beyond our current realm of knowledge; discovering the source of dark matter, figuring out what sketchy stuff sarah huckabee sanders has in her past that keeps her from getting security clearance, or perhaps she’ll hop aboard the astral plane with astrozeneca. We’ll be watching from the other side.

bang, you’re dead

Do you really want your kid’s teacher packing in the classroom? Really? Boy oh boy I am neither a sociologist nor an education or behavioral expert but even MJE can see the (literal) fatal flaws in this idiotic idea. The conald has revised his blanket suggestion that all teachers be armed to a vague recommendation that only teachers that are “adept” with guns should carry. Hmmmm. Adept, does that mean someone who can hit a target in the protected confines of a gun range? Or someone who is a pretty good deer hunter? Or maybe someone who is terrific on his or her playstation shooting up all the aliens?

Proficiency with a gun is obviously vital, but what about the psychological ability of an educator to actually shoot another human being, even in a relatively calm situation of danger. Never mind in a chaotic atmosphere of panicked students and staff members wildly running amidst a hail of gunfire? What are the chances that the armed teacher would remain icy calm, take accurate aim at the gunman and hit him (I just say him because virtually all mass shooters are men…another good topic to explore) without harming any innocents? I imagine those odds are pretty slim.

I think perhaps a far more likely scenario might be a student who gets pissed off at another student or his teacher and advances on the teacher, overwhelms him or her, takes the gun or gets the key to the drawer where it is locked and is so pumped up that he just starts shooting. Or say a troublemaker kid starts towards the teacher in a menacing manner, does that teacher have the psychological capacity to take out a gun and shoot the unarmed student? Without the availability of a gun there might instead be a fist fight in the hall or a melee on the playground, leaving some bruises, black eyes and detention slips when it’s all over. No one is dead or mortally wounded and there are no traumatized and heart broken survivors.

And what are the consequences for the armed teacher who may commit murder or inflict grave injury on an unarmed student? Censure, suspension, criminal charges? Even without any punishment, would that teacher ever be able to face going back to teach her students as though nothing had ever happened. I suspect that he or she would be damaged forever from the terrible guilt.

And now we have the news that the armed and trained broward county deputy charged with protecting the students from harm at parkland simply stayed outside the building “in a defensive posture” as he heard the gunfire inside. He couldn’t bring himself to do what he was actually trained and hired for. When the gunfire stopped and the bodies lay dead on the floor he finally summoned the courage to enter. Which begs the question, if this experienced person could not handle the situation, why in the world would anyone expect mr peplum in the department of fashion design and teacher of the wildly popular ap class “from the bustle to the hustle” or mrs cruller in the cafeteria, who can serve up 500 lunches, tray to trash, in under 30 minutes, to be more effective in such harrowing circumstances. The idea is absurd on its face and its being put forth by the president is the highest form of crass political gamesmanship. He glibly throws this red meat to his base, knowing full well that it has absolutely no chance of going anywhere. Then when the next school shooting happens, and it will, he will puff himself up in righteous indignation saying if they’d only listened to me those kids would be alive today. Using dead children to promote oneself politically is truly the vilest form of indecency I know of.

empathizer in chief? SAD!

If our president cannot display heartfelt compassion and empathy after a tragedy like that which took place in parkland florida last week what the hell could possibly move him? Wait I know, getting impeached and or indicted for conspiring with the russians and money laundering, bet that would get him good and choked up.

The speech he gave to the nation after the massacre was almost painful to listen to. It was so patently obvious that he didn’t give two figs about those kids and he just did it because the president is expected to say something. The only thing missing from his tepid remarks was a plug for mar-a-lago. I suspect the wordsmith for this bit of synthetic pathos was none other than stephen ‘lead lids’ miller. It had all the hallmarks of his typical homilies and his own personal style of delivery; plodding, pedantic, condescending, and completely and utterly devoid of any human feeling. It was almost laughably hypocritical, “answer hate with love,answer cruelty with kindness” telling the audience how important it is to “make deep human connections”, uhhh, haven’t seen any sign that the conald follows that sage advice in his own life. He then addressed the children directly saying “you may feel lost, alone, confused or even scared.” Gee ya think? Yet another nut case sauntered into a school and gunned down seventeen people and wounded a score more with an easily (legally) acquired automatic weapon and kids might be feeling scared? Wow, how perceptive conald, you really nailed that one.

From then on it was a laundry list of the officials he was to meet with which I suppose was meant to demonstrate the depth of his concern to the grieving parents and schoolmates. Maybe it’s just me, but if my child had just been killed in his or her classroom I don’t think having the president meet with the nations governors and attorneys general (at what was without doubt a previously planned confab) would provide too much balm for my broken heart. Unless of course if gun control might be on the agenda which it almost certainly will not.

Perhaps the fact that he and melanoma delayed their weekend getaway at mar-a-lago by a couple of hours (and a round of golf) to zip over to parkland offered them the solace they need from their president. Or not.

be still thy beating heart

MJE and the OB&C keep an apartment in the big sleazy for reasons that are 1000% legit.business. First off, the apartment is the registered worldwide headquarters of our small intestinal bug biz. It’s location is entirely unrelated to the fact that louisiana has one of the lowest state income tax rates in the country as well as a well documented laissez faire attitude when it comes to regulating potentially hazardous materials. In summary: an excellent business environment for us.

We are located in the lower half of a duplex building in the uptown area of new orleans. Conveniently situated close to a large park, which provides relaxation and exercise opportunities so critical to the mental and physical health and well being of our employees, including the corporate canine. The proximity to excellent restaurants, venues for our many, many company team building get-togethers, is crucial. Our policy is to offer the finest food and drink to our hard working employees and in particular to our board members to encourage and reward their dedication and hard work.

There is however one major drawback to the building: the tenants occupying the upper space. They are a couple, one is a teacher and aspiring base player, the other some sort of environmental “consultant,” although what exactly she does is about as clear as the water that flows down the mississippi and right out of our taps. One thing we know for sure is that her home “office space” is a mere 12′ above our heads and that she heavily and constantly stomps about in bare feet. Her footfalls are so loud they sound like a forking budweiser clydesdale. And we are all now doubly blessed as she just issued forth a new baby! Not sure what the colt’s name is but understand it’s a stud. Too much joy for sure!!!

Those of you who have procreated understand that newborns are needy and require a good bit of attention. In the dark ages of MJE’s early motherhood we put our babies to sleep on their stomachs, transported them on the floor of the car so they wouldn’t fall off the seat, toted them in cheap carriers made of lead based chinese plastic, fed them food filled with additives, surrounded them with choking hazards and pushed them around in flimsy cloth strollers that folded into something that could fit in a fly rod case, and yet they survived. Some less well than others (see: albatross) but that’s a story for another post.

Today’s new mothers, including the aforementioned clydesdale, are far more aware of the perils of the world and how difficult it is for a recently hatched being to adapt to the less than comfortable environment outside the womb. In an effort to ease this transition some new parents resort to devices that mimic the mother’s heartbeat in utero. And that my friend is exactly what roused us this morning, after the clydesdale’s 4 am milking. Duh, dum…duh, dum…duh, dum…hum, for almost two hours. As we all know, the OB&C is deaf as a forking post and even HE heard it. At first we thought it was rain dripping from the gutter or a plumbing pipe but then it dawned on me, no man, it was big momma’s virtual heartbeat that woke us up, pissed us off and creeped us out all at once. What it did not do was lull us to sleep nor calm us down, in fact quite the opposite. It took all the restraint I could muster not to climb a ladder and pound on the ceiling screaming foul obscenities at mother and babe alike.

If the clydesdale could do either of the following it would immensely improve my quality of life.

Get a pair of really plush cushiony slippers or a pair of running shoes, and wear them all the time. No exceptions. A few nice thick rugs couldn’t hurt. Send us the bill.

Stop your goddam heart. Are you going to play that thing forever, say until he hits adolescence because that’s a pretty stressful time, or takes the SAT’s or goes off to college, or maybe after he graduates and can’t get a job. Or when he gets married and realizes that it’s not nearly as much fun as bar hopping and frat parties with his old girl friend. Or when he has his first kid and it won’t sleep…

But with my luck I’ll be like the narrator in poe’s tell tale heart, doomed to hear that heartbeat unto eternity regardless.

it’s carnival time, again

Good mardi gras to all. It is particularly welcome this time around as an excuse to stay blind drunk until the stock market settles its stomach and we get a new president. MJE and the OB&C have long since stopped walking the avenue mardi gras morning, although I do miss running into many of the neighborhood marching clubs that meander through the streets. And there is the occasional creative family lot who all dress as crawfish, or hotdogs or I suspect this year one of the conald’s wives, but sadly the tradition of dressing up is, like the louisiana marsh, slowly disappearing from the planet.

This mardi gras, as in years past, family and friends whom you rarely see and care about even less, appear out of nowhere suddenly dying to reconnect. This year the atlanta circus opted out of the annual visitation based on the lousy weather forecast. Just as well, feeling very old every time I look at the 3 ton wooden ladder and child’s parade seat, so glad not to be dragging that behemoth back and forth from parade routes. Not to mention the requirement to provide and keep ice cold (or piping hot), multiple beverage types (no light beer! lots of sauvignon blanc!), food items (no nuts! and no lucky dogs, decibelle is a vegetarian) and the attendant assorted paraphernalia required to feed a crowd on the run. Happy to hop to it when someone decides to pay me a caterer’s wage but this gratis (and generally unappreciated) business is definitely on its way out.

But we weren’t entirely solo, OB&C’s niece mike and her wife loosy along with their immaculately conceived toddler whom they call cheeto (truly) showed up with two other gals, the married margies plus another woman whose leanings remain obscure. The OB&C and I were definitely, and in his case literally, odd men out. Let me be perfectly clear, the sexual practices of my fellow human beings holds no interest whatsoever for me, in fact the less I can think about it the better. Turtles and giraffes okay but people, no.

So on we march toward tuesday’s bacchanalia of the fatted calf and even fatter population after the ceaseless eating and drinking involved. God I hate that. And apparently so does she because the hammer’s coming down hard on wednesday. Ashes, ashes, they all fall down, which is pretty much what most of the populace will be doing. The good news, and this is not fake I swear, there is a now a drive through option to get your forehead smeared with holy ashes to show off your piety. But if you never leave the car or hang up your cell phone are you truly redeemed?

Hmmmmm……….