Category Archives: funny things

‘Splaining to Do

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“Lucy! You got some ‘splaining to do!”

It was one of Ricky Ricardo’s most memorable lines. But nowadays, Lucy doesn’t get to do the ‘splaining. That’s because the latest trend is mansplaining. (It isn’t really a new trend. It’s been around since Og tried to teach Raquel how to build a fire. But I digress.)

Mansplaining is really simple. It assumes that women are really simple, and that a man knows better than they do – about everything, but especially about highly intellectual subjects like politics, technology, history, economics, sports, and fire-starting. He talks down to her – sometimes literally, as it’s not uncommon for him to mansplain while standing over her. The thing is, the woman already knows the topic well and didn’t ask for any ‘splanation.

“Actually” is the signal that introduces an episode of mansplaining. “Actually, Christopher Columbus never landed in America.” “Actually, Big Ben is not the clock.” “Actually, you have to rub the two sticks together.” The mansplainer is at the same time authoritative and condescending. He may really think he’s helping, but the effect is demeaning.

The classic tale of mansplaining is that, at some kind of conference, a man lectured a woman about the subject, saying that she had got whatever-it-was all wrong. “You need to read McCarthy, et al.,” he pontificated. She pointed to her nametag. “I am McCarthy, et al.,” she replied.

Nor is mansplaining the only gaucherie that men have been accused of. Manspreading is another. Notice how men often sit with their legs wide apart. It takes up more space than necessary, which leaves less room for someone else (i.e., women). (Men say that they have to sit that way because it’s the only way they can be comfortable, but I think it’s really because they want to take the opportunity to display their package. But I digress again.)

Now, though, it seems there’s a whole lot of ‘splaining going on. The latest trend I’ve heard of is “richsplaining” – when well-off people try to tell less-well-off people how to save money. “Cut out Starbucks.” “Buy cheap sneakers.” (As if there are any!) “Eat only beans and rice.” “Go to fire sales.”

I haven’t heard of it being official yet, but I’d like to introduce the word “sanesplaining” – when people with no emotional problems lecture those who have them about the best route to proper mental health. “Take vitamins.” “Try yoga.” “Choose happiness.” “Don’t be so depressed.” “Own the fire.”

Related to that is medsplaining. Avid Googlers who “do their own research” have all the answers and are all too eager to share them with friends, relatives, and even strangers – sometimes even their doctors. “Apple cider vinegar is all you need.” “Slug slime is a magic age-eraser.” (I’ve actually seen that product.) “Blueberries/kale/kohlrabi/quinoa/chia seeds are superfoods.” “Firewalking will cure what ails you.”

Then there’s momsplaining. Everyone seems to know better how to raise children than actual mothers do. “Teach them manners.” “Teach them phonics.” “Don’t let them read comics.” (That’s “graphic novels,” boomer.) “Don’t let them set the cat on fire.”

(Come to think of it, I’m a boomer and I know what graphic novels are. Have I just invented selfsplaining? But I digress yet again.)

When Ricky asked Lucy for a ‘splanation, he wanted her to account for her own behavior. Let’s get back to that instead of spouting off “wisdom” to people who don’t want or need it. And unless you’re stranded in the Arctic with someone, don’t offer advice on fires.

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The Sport of Cooking

cooking, etc., food, funny things, humor, television, , , , ,

Food has become a sport. Personally, I blame Guy Fieri.

There are plenty of cooking competitions these days – and eating competitions, too, which make me feel queasy just watching them, so I don’t.

But recently, sporting events for chefs seem to have taken over the streaming channels. And they come with all the unwelcome accouterments of regular sports competitions.

There are some, such as Chopped, that avoid the worst of sports talk, other than the inspirational “I want to teach my children that they can go for their dreams” and “If you try your best, you haven’t really lost” and “Either you win or you learn something,” which, now that I think of it, are more common in parents watching or coaching kids’ sports than in adult sports.

What Guy Fieri has done, though, is to infuse cooking competitions with the worst aspects of sports. I suppose it could have been done by the powers that be at The Food Network, but the examples all seem to have his personal stamp on them.

The most sports-like is Tournament of Champions, which has just completed its fourth season and is already gearing up for a fifth.

Just from the title, you can tell it’s based on sports. Then there’s the format. The competition is based on brackets like a basketball tournament, with seed rankings like a tennis tournament (or Robot Wars, which does not feature cooking robots but does have the format of a cage match. But I digress.) (Beat Bobby Flay also somewhat resembles a cage match, but that’s not emphasized. I keep digressing.)

As a host, Guy Fieri projects a pro wrestling vibe. He bellows the names of the contestants as they enter from opposite sides of the arena, and he has nicknames for everyone – The Jetster for Jet Tila, Bee-Dub for Brooke Williamson, and Superchef for Darnell Ferguson (about whom more in a moment). There are even commentators, who also have nicknames – Justin Warner (Wolfman (or Wild Card)) and Simon Majumdar (Scoop). Guy’s son Hunter interviews the contestants after the match is over. It’s clear that Hunter is the heir apparent to Guy’s Food Network empire.

It’s also clear that Guy is grooming Darnell “Superchef” Ferguson for Fieri-style success. Ferguson was a frequent contestant (and frequent winner) on Guy’s Grocery Games and now has his own show, Superchef Grudge Match. It’s structured as a boxing match, only without the nicknames for competitors. It’s kind of a junior Tournament of Champions. The contestants compete for prize money and bragging rights, but the winner also gets the loser’s favorite chef’s knife. (There is lots of trash talk and sometimes even side bets involving social media accolades, monogrammed aprons, and, in one memorable case, a tattoo of the winner’s name. But I digress yet again.)

For myself, I don’t do competitive cooking – or eating. (Once, when I was a kid, I had dinner at a friend’s house. Hers was a large family, and when the food was served, everyone competed to get their food, serving spoons and forks flying. I was stunned. In our house, dining was much calmer. But with so many people trying to get a fair share, it was normal for them. But I digress even more.) Sometimes, it’s all I can do to put together something edible. Trying to do it with a time constraint and an audience is simply beyond me.

I’ve got to admit, though, that I love watching someone else doing it. It’s appalling and fascinating at the same time. With actual sports, other than the Olympics, I just don’t get the fascination. Maybe if they had to prepare a dinner to celebrate their wins or console themselves for their losses, with medals for the best dishes…now that, I’d watch!

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Songs Around the Campfire

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I loved being a Girl Scout. I especially loved camping and sitting around the campfire singing. What I didn’t love were some of the songs they made us sing. (I also didn’t love wearing my uniform to school because our meeting was right afterward. I got called a “little green cookie pusher.” But I digress.)

There were good campfire songs, of course. Among our favorites were “Free to Be You and Me,” which was popular at the time, and “Let There Be Peace on Earth.” There were rounds such as “Make New Friends But Keep the Old,” “One Bottle of Pop,” and, of course, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” which I never quite got the hang of. There were songs that couldn’t be sung today (“The Poor Old Slave Has Gone to Rest”). And there were songs that were just plain fun or funny – “Ragtime Cowboy Joe” (the Chipmunks’ version) and, as we got older, “Seven Old Ladies Stuck in the Lavatory.” There were also folkish staples like “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” “If I Had a Hammer,” “Puff the Magic Dragon,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” “500 Miles” (not the Proclaimers version), “Today While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine,” and “The Ash Grove,” as well as classics like “Taps” and “This Land Is Your Land.”

There were also just plain idiotic ones like “On Top of Spaghetti,” “B-I-N-G-O,” and “Be Kind to Your Web-Footed Friends,” plus recursive song/chants like “There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea,” and “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly,” and memory test/games like “One Hen, Two Ducks” (which I actually sort of liked and can still remember most of).

What I didn’t like so much were the ones they made us do motions to. The old staples “Little Bunny Foo Foo” and “Kum Ba Yah” were among these. They were okay, I guess, if a bit predictable. Then there was “Gray Squirrel,” much less okay. The lyrics go “Gray Squirrel, gray squirrel/Swish your bushy tail/Wrinkle up your little nose/Put a nut between your toes/Gray squirrel, gray squirrel/Swish your bushy tail.” Not what I would call Grammy-quality lyrics, but hey, we were Girl Scouts. The motions that went with it were squinching up our noses, pantomiming putting a nut by our feet, and – you guessed it – waggling our asses. This wouldn’t have been quite so bad if we were five, but it continued into our tween years, when it was just embarrassing.

Even more embarrassing were the motions that went with “Running Bear,” that corny song of doomed Native American love (another one that’s almost certainly offensive these days). We mimed the lyrics as we sang – diving in the water, happy hunting ground, and so on. “Running Bear” (the male protagonist), unfortunately, was mimed as a homonym. We made a motion of running and then one of throwing open our shirts to expose our (or, in the context of the song, his) chest. It was stupid in the extreme, not to mention creepy. The thing is, I still can’t listen to the song without thinking of the motions. (Not that I listen to it often anymore. Or much. Or at all. But I digress again.)

Did they make Boy Scouts do this dopey kind of thing, acting out songs in pantomime? I don’t know. It could have been just us girls. I didn’t experience mixed-group camping until I was in college, when they took freshmen out, hoping to lose some of us in the woods and reduce overcrowding in the dorms. I managed to survive. And there was no singing. Or pantomime.

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Bye-Bye Nose! Bye-Bye Ear!

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I’m lucky that I still have an ear and a nose, without which my face would look unfinished. Or Cubist. It’s not because I had necrotizing fasciitis. (I’m ghostwriting a book right now about necrotizing fasciitis, leprosy, and other dreaded diseases, which is actually right up my alley as a devoted fan of Monsters Inside Me and Mystery Diagnosis. But I digress.)

My potential disfigurement was at the hands (well, not hands, exactly) of two wild animals. How I met them and how I escaped assault on my body parts is the real story here.

My nose almost left me during a journey in a drive-through zoo. (I didn’t know if they still existed until I asked Mr. Google. They do. Whether it’s a good idea, I’ll leave you to decide.)

One day, my husband and I visited the establishment in either Pennsylvania or New Jersey (exactly where it was is lost in the mists of time). The people who ran the place posted warnings about not trying to drive through any animals that blocked your path. They also warned you not to attempt the journey if you had a vinyl roof on your car. The car in front of us did have one and ignored the sign. They were quite alarmed when a troop of monkeys descended on their car. (Yes, a group of monkeys is called a troop. Mr. Google again.) We had an unobstructed view as they learned their lesson. The monkeys ripped holes in the vinyl top. Shredded it, really, which I don’t know if the occupants realized. The troop also pissed down the windshield, which they definitely did notice. From our vantage point, we could even see the look of disgust on the passenger’s face.

Our difficulty came a little later in the self-tour when we encountered a herd (yes, herd) of ostriches. A small herd, but still. They came very near the car, so we had a close-up view. As you can see from the photo, an ostrich close-up is pretty damn ugly. They don’t improve when the only thing separating you from one of them is a pane of glass.

That pane of glass – our car window – was the only thing that saved my face. I got to see one of the ostriches up close and personal. It strolled up to the car and peered curiously inside. I pressed my nose against the glass to see the ostrich better. It wanted to get closer to me, too. It took its hard, horny beak and tried to attack my nose. Peck! Peck! Peck! I could hear it striking the car window, which fortunately withstood the onslaught. Dan didn’t drive on, out of its reach. He was laughing too hard.

My other wild animal encounter came many years before that, when I was particularly young and stupid. It was at a local mall, where an area was set up that had baby animals. They were offering to take photos of customers with a baby animal. Being a cat lover, I chose the baby lion. The photo you see here is the result.

The attendant hefted the lion into my lap. As you can tell, even though it was a youngster, it was still quite heavy. I could barely hold it upright. I smiled like the idiot I was, and they snapped the picture.

Right after the picture was taken, the lion looked over at me, stuck out its huge, rough tongue, and slurped my ear. In less than a second, the attendant swooped in, snatched the lion out of my lap, and put it back in its pen. My theory (and theirs too) was that the lion was taking an exploratory taste test to see if my ear was worth snacking on.

(No, I don’t remember whether the attendant was the infamous Joe Exotic, but I kind of doubt it. I think I would have remembered his remarkable appearance. I do know that they don’t allow this kind of thing anymore, which I didn’t need Mr. Google to ascertain. (I did find out that it was legal until last year when Biden signed a ban.) But I digress again.)

Because of those incidents, I’ve learned my lesson. I have kept my interactions with animals limited to domesticated cats, semi-domesticated dogs, and the occasional garter snake that my husband sometimes catches. The cats, despite being domesticated, have damaged my skin with tooth and claw, though the wounds seldom get infected.

I haven’t lost any actual body parts yet. And I avoid ostriches and lions, not that they roam the countryside in Ohio. But I keep an eagle (sorry not sorry) eye out!

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Meijer Is My Frenemy

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I love Meijer. I hate Meijer. Call me conflicted. I’m so conflicted, in fact, I’ll probably give my brain whiplash.

On the one hand, Meijer is great. I particularly like this terrific thing called Flash Food. (I imagine other stores have it, too, but I learned about it through Meijer.) It’s grocery shopping for useless people. There’s an app that lets me survey the food that’s near, but not past, its expiration date. (There are always lots of baked goods available, so I have muffins for breakfast nearly every morning.) I think last year I saved nearly $1000 in food costs, plus the food didn’t go to waste.

(I used to work for a company that occasionally gave cocktail parties at business conventions, and there were always assorted hors d’oeuvres. They were never all eaten, and I worried some about the food waste. I learned, however, that if you signed a release form, the leftovers would be donated to a local shelter. I always liked to think of the homeless people being treated to mini-quiches and tiny beef Wellington amuse-bouches. But I digress.)

Meijer is also located within a mile and a half of our house, which is super-convenient, especially since my husband works there and doesn’t have a long commute. (His is still longer than mine, which consists of commuting from the bedroom upstairs to my study downstairs. It’s a quick trek, and I’ve never needed snow tires. But I digress again.)

I also love that Meijer gives him a regular paycheck, which is necessary to maintain our essential supply of cat food. It’s also handy that he works there, since he can do all the shopping and pick up the Flash Food and I don’t have to ha ha ha ha ha!

On the other hand, Meijer pisses me off. First, I object on principle to stores where you can buy both milk and lawn furniture. It’s simply wrong. The store is too large as well, and they keep rearranging it. I’m afraid that I’ll wander for hours through the freezer section and die of exposure. When Dan and I shop together, we need to use our cell phones to keep track of each other. “I’m in the pet section. Where are you?” “Cheap meat.”

(I do like the cheap meat section. Once when we were shopping, I ran into a mutual friend. I towed him over to where Dan was mulling over the varieties of pudding available. “Look what I found in cheap meat!” I said. But I digress yet again.)

I don’t love Dan’s schedule. He has Sundays and Mondays off, which is okay. He can join me on bank-and-post-office-type errands that have to be done on a weekday. But he has to be at work several days a week at 6:00 a.m. Until my sleep habits went wonky this winter, I couldn’t get up to have tea with Dan in the mornings. But wonky waking means that now I get up at the same (way too early) time Dan does, and I can have my muffins and tea while he eats his hard-boiled eggs and toaster waffles.

All in all, though, I can’t stay mad at Meijer. What we thought would be a short chapter in our lives has turned into a ten-year narrative. What might to some seem like a lowly job as a greeter has meant for Dan an ideal antidote to burnout and a position where he gets to smile and chat with people all day.

And what it means for me is whiplash. I’ll ask Dan to bring me home an icebag. And lemon muffins, while he’s at it.

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Bliss, Interrupted

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My husband and I booked a couples massage this week at Gravity Spa, which is called that because they also have floatation tanks. Those actually sounded good, but I no longer own a bathing suit and didn’t want to float in my underwear or sweats, so they weren’t an option for me. When it comes to dressing for the occasion, wearing a brand-new pair of underpants is about the limit of my ability to plan, and that was all that I really needed for a massage.

Both of us have had massages before, so the process wasn’t new to us. (During one of my previous massages, my left foot went into spasm while the masseuse was working on it. She apologized profusely, but there was really no need. I have some nerve damage in my toes due to a back operation. If that sounds odd, well, it did to me too, but there you have it. I’m just lucky that nothing in between was affected. But I digress.)

We showed up at the spa all ready for our sensuous experience and were conducted into the massage room, which (of course) featured low lighting, soothing decor, and gentle music. It was all a little genteel for me. I prefer my physical pummeling rough and tough. If it doesn’t cause me to moan, whimper, and make sounds that could be mistaken for erotic fulfillment, I’m not being sufficiently rubbed down. A.J., my masseur, obliged. (I had inquired about the various levels of pressure involved and was told that a standard massage was considered a Level One, a Swedish massage a Level Two, and a deep tissue massage a Level Three. That’s what I chose. There’s also something called a hot stone massage, but I didn’t like the sound of that. My skin is tender, even if my muscles aren’t. But I digress again.)

A.J. started in on me with a suitable amount of pressure and pleasantly scented oil. I tried to restrain my cries of pleasure for fear of making the other workers and clients of the spa think that there was something untoward going on.

Suddenly, the pressure diminished. A.J. said that he had to step out for a moment because his right arm was going numb. After a few minutes, Katie, Dan’s masseuse, stepped out to check on him. “I hope he’s not having a heart attack,” I said.

“No,” she said. “That would be his left arm. His right arm could indicate a stroke.” This did not reassure me in the slightest. I thought I had maimed my masseur for life – or perhaps even killed him.

Katie returned and said that A.J. would be unable to continue. We could both leave, I could go into the lobby and wait there for Dan’s massage to be done, or I could stay in the room while Dan’s massage was going on. The warming table and fluffy blanket made up my mind. I burrowed into them, wrapped myself up like a burrito, and stayed to watch. It was interesting. When Katie worked on Dan’s hips, she really braced herself and leaned into it. I guess she had to.

When the massages were over, we were informed that we wouldn’t have to pay for them because our experience was interrupted. (We were also advised that we might not want to leave the spa just then because it was pouring down rain and tornado warnings (or watches, whichever) were being talked about. We chose to leave and drive the mile and a half home. We thought it would be safer, despite the fact that our house was destroyed by a tornado three years ago. But I digress again.)

And that, dear friends, is how I arrived home, looking like a wet dog, with half my back smelling like coconut.

(The dog in the photo is just there for visual interest. No dogs were soaked or massaged in the writing of this post.)

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The Care and Feeding of a Writer

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So you’ve got a writer in the family – and, like many or even most writers, they act peculiar. They can bite your head off one day and be clingy the next, go for days without eating or sleeping, or zoom back and forth between elation and depression. What’s a family member to do? Is there anything you can do that won’t get your head bitten off?

I’m here to tell you that, although you’ll likely never change a writer’s behavior unless they give up writing, there are ways you can live successfully together. It won’t be happily all the time – I can’t guarantee that. Just think of your writer as you would a tropical fish. They need a certain amount of care and attention, food, and a filter, but they can be a focal point for a room. (If you keep the door closed, that is. Writers are notoriously cranky, and guests and young children maybe shouldn’t be exposed to that. And not having a filter is a problem (not just for writers, but for people in general). So perhaps they’re not like tropical fish at all, except for maybe a triggerfish or a lionfish. But I digress.)

Care and Attention

There are times when a writer doesn’t need attention – or even interaction. There is a stage of writing called “prewriting.” It looks an awful lot like lying on the couch, doing nothing. The creative brain is churning nonetheless and doesn’t take kindly to being interrupted. This is especially true if the writer doesn’t have a room of their own, which many don’t. The corner of a room is more likely to be the writer’s habitat. But a door that will open and close is a definite asset if you expect your writer to actually produce anything.

In fact, a writer will need a fair amount of alone time. When they’re actively writing (as opposed to prewriting), they won’t want to be interrupted – short of fire or death. Death (other than the death of the writer) may even be ignored and so will any fire not directly threatening the writer’s computer.

Feeding

When the writer is on a roll, they won’t want to stop to eat. At the most, they will pause for long enough to down a yogurt. If you realize they haven’t eaten in quite a while, you can offer a sandwich, but it’s best to poke it through the door with a stick, the way you would offer food to a large bear. (Personally, I’m lucky. I have a small refrigerator in my writing room, stocked with easy edibles like cheddar and American cheese, yogurt, applesauce, and things that are spreadable on crackers (cream cheese, apple butter, peanut butter). But I digress again.)

Rejection

This is a fact of life for writers, at least if they write for publication and not for the desk drawer or computer desktop folder. If they’re new at putting their work out there into the wild, this can cause distress, desolation, or just generally hopelessness. There is not much you can really do about this, except a generous application of “there, there,” which doesn’t actually help but sounds sympathetic. You can try reminding them of famous writers like J.K. Rowling whose works were rejected multiple times before they were published. This will either rev your writer up with dreams of becoming a multimillionaire (which are, let’s face it, bound to be dashed) or make them feel worse because of the likelihood of having to endure the many, many rejections.

Unless you yourself are a professional editor (which you probably aren’t, or shouldn’t have married a writer if you are), don’t offer suggestions unless asked for them. Even then, you should probably bow out more or less gracefully – “I don’t know. You’re the writer. I could never presume to give you advice.” Most writers won’t even listen to suggestions from their writers’ group or editor, should they be so lucky as to find one.

You and Your Writer

Maybe you married or live with a writer knowing what you were getting into. Maybe it came as a surprise later, when they announced a desire to express themselves in writing. Whatever your situation, rest assured that living with a writer is possible. You just have to have unfailing patience and supportiveness – and a job to bring in income if they’re a “full-time writer.”

Does it seem like you have to sacrifice a lot (and then listen to the writer in your life complain about the sacrifices they make for their art)? I won’t deny it. Just ask my husband. He lives with a writer. And I appreciate it – every time he pokes a sandwich through the door and then I close it, or when I zone out while we’re watching TV and can’t catch him up on the plot if he leaves the room for a moment. I live a writer’s life – and I couldn’t do it without my husband. I try to remember that. He puts up with a lot in the process of caring for and feeding me.

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Monthly, Forever

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It’s not that I’m a stranger to subscriptions. I started getting magazine subscriptions when I was a teen and began receiving them for Christmas presents when our family finances were impacted by my father’s illness. I chose astronomy and science fiction magazines. My parents didn’t subscribe to magazines much, except for Reader’s Digest and their condensed books.

I also dabbled in record subscriptions, back in the day when they sent actual vinyl records that had every chance of arriving with scratches and warps. (I don’t know if music subscriptions went to tapes, 8-tracks, CDs, or downloads after that. I do have a couple of subscriptions on Patreon and at least one of them supplies me with music every month, but otherwise, I get all my music via the internet. Not that I download much. I already have nearly 670 albums stored on my music app (formerly called iTunes). But I digress.)

Later on, once I was married, I found a pet store in town that offered a “Fish of the Month” club. (For some unknown reason, we referred to it as “Fish ala Month,” although they weren’t, of course, edible. Another digression.) Dan had a fish tank at the time and enjoyed going to the store every month to see what new species of fish was on offer that month. I kept up the subscription until the pet store went out of business. This was back in the days when there were still locally owned pet shops.

Since that time, the idea of subscriptions has blossomed. You can now get blossoms that arrive every month and can be given as gifts. Not just flowers, either. I once gave my therapist a small succulent as a gift and have ever after been pursued to upgrade to a succulent subscription.

Nor are plants the only subscriptions on offer. You can get quarterly subscriptions to goods from Ireland, including food, snacks, and jewelry. You can subscribe to puzzles, either jigsaws or more elaborate ones that require solving a mystery. Other “surprise” subscriptions where you don’t know what you’re getting are for children’s toys (or dog toys), foods from different regions of the country, rare coffees, discount wines, Asian snacks, cocktail mixers (and liquor, if you choose that option), cheese of the month or charcuterie kits (including vegan and gluten-free), cookie dough, pasta, spices or hot sauces, candy, tea, beauty items or perfumes, detox products, vacation souvenirs, earrings or necklaces, socks-of-the-month, replicas of historical documents, dried flower arrangements, candles, and pet foods and supplies.

Some of the subscriptions available leave me befuddled. One is underwear. I buy new bras and panties when my old ones are no longer serviceable. But I don’t subscribe. I go to Jockey, Fruit of the Loom, or another source and order what I need. I can’t imagine avidly anticipating the arrival of three new panties or bra-and-panties sets every month. (Besides, I never wear matching bras and panties. Every victim of a serial killer you see on TV shows is wearing matching lacy undergarments. I figure I’m a lot safer if I were a purple-polka-dot bra and simple green panties. But I digress some more.)

Other subscriptions I don’t understand are oysters-of-the-month (ick!) and monthly sex toys and books (although if they’re delivered in plain brown wrappers, they will spare you embarrassment and make a visit to the local sex shop unnecessary).

The really strange subscription I came across during my research for this post was playable musical postcards, something previously unimaginable to me. Evidently, the postcards from different lands are made of vinyl and can be played on a turntable. (There is an option to receive only a postcard and an online download of a song if you don’t possess a turntable.) The tunes are from indie artists, so you don’t need to worry about getting Mariah Carey in your December mail.

Will I get another subscription to something-or-other? I think not. I already have subscriptions to TV streaming channels. I have Patreon subscriptions to support my friends’ art. I have subscriptions to Archaeology and Smithsonian magazines (offline versions) for my husband. I subscribe to the New York Times crossword puzzles. I probably have a few other subscriptions that I’ve forgotten about and ought to cancel.

But I am tempted by the solve-a-mystery and cheese-of-the-month subscription, though only if I can specify cheeses that don’t advertise the fact that they’re made of mold. I figure that anything the postal workers can smell is a bad idea, even if it’s only once a month.

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Dan’s Upgrade

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My husband has at last entered the 21st century! After literally decades of resistance, he has moved up from the flip-phone to the smartphone.

Of course, when we first got cell phones, all of them were flip-phones. And we thought we might be the last people on earth to get even those. A few misunderstandings that led to shouting and accusations of discourtesy meant that we needed to enter the digital age. After one particularly loud and angry … discussion, we decided to take the plunge. Dan in particular was reluctant to get a mobile device, since he didn’t want to be “tied to his phone” and perpetually available. But he had to admit that cell phones had their uses.

His compromise with his own Luddite leanings was never to figure out how to use the thing. While he eventually figured out how to record a voicemail message and even to leave a message on my phone, he never learned how to retrieve voicemail left for him. Instead, he let it pile up until the phone always reported that his voicemail was full, making it useless. (I recently deleted his voicemail and the messages there were all from January of a year ago, and most of them were from his mother. But I digress.)

Once smartphones became available, I opted for one when my flip-phone crapped out. Dan kept replacing his with another flip-phone when it was out of order or he lost it so thoroughly that it was likely in a different state, or maybe another country. I thought it might be because he wanted a phone that was most like a Star Trek communicator.

But when I got a smartphone (not that I was among the first to do so either), he looked askance at it. “I don’t want a phone that’s smarter than I am,” he said, which I suppose was meant as a joke, though I really couldn’t tell. I tried to convince him that the added features – the easy availability of news and weather and GPS, for example – made it worthwhile, but still he resisted. He said he didn’t want to be one of “those people” who had their eyes perpetually glued to a screen. (He once asked me what people did before they could stare at their cellphones. “Read books,” I said. “Not while they’re walking,” he replied. I had to tell him that when I was in high school I did indeed read books while walking from one class to the next. But I digress again.)

Then I started getting apps on my phone that I knew Dan or I would want or need. The prize among them was PictureThis, an app that let you take pictures of plants, then would identify them and provide other useful and interesting information about them, such as whether your plant looked sick or whether that species had been mentioned in a poem. It even provided the poem for you. This led to Dan dashing into the house, shouting, “Give me your phone,” and bringing it back with dirty smudges on it. When Dan got a tablet, I downloaded this app for him so he wouldn’t have to borrow my phone. I also downloaded some music and video apps onto the tablet when he was going to be visiting his mother. He hates her taste in TV.

Dan’s entry into the modern era was a consequence of a different app, though. Where he works, people clocked in and out using their smartphones. Dan couldn’t, and that meant he had to walk farther to do so. In a sense, it was laziness that turned the tide.

Of course, it wasn’t as easy as that. The way his coworkers scanned in was using a QR code. Dan didn’t know what those were. So I had to download him a QR reader and show him how to use it. I don’t think he’s actually used it yet, but at least now he has the option when he’s too tired to make the long trudge.

I know he still mourns the death of his flip-phone, but even he had to admit that our phone provider didn’t really support them anymore. And the first night he had the smartphone I caught him with his nose pointed at the screen, watching YouTube videos.

He doesn’t love it yet, but I figure it’s just a matter of time. He’s no longer comparing its intelligence to his.

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What Does Friday Even Mean?

Christmas, etc., funny things, holidays, humor, , , , , ,

Today is Sunday, but in a way, it’s still Friday. The whole month has been nothing but Fridays, in fact.

We used to have Black Friday. It was the day after Thanksgiving, when the turkey-bloated got their exercise by standing in checkout lines in stores, trying to get a jump on their Christmas shopping. To lure in the many still suffering from postprandial torpor, many stores began offering special sales and deals on that day.

(Okay, I’m showing off. “Postprandial torpor” is the technical name for “food coma.” But I digress.)

Tech geeks got their shop on on Cyber Monday, when computers and other paraphernalia were offered at Low, Low, Bargain Prices!

Those were the days when Friday and Monday actually meant something.

Now, we have Black Friday for the whole month of November. And I don’t mean just four Fridays, either. Thirty days of Friday. And the Cyber Monday people have given up on Mondays altogether. They’ve succumbed to Black Friday fever as well; they just toss in the towel and lower their prices all month long.

Of course, I have a tendency to ignore sales. I know that there are people who haunt the sales. They refuse to buy anything that isn’t at least 10% off. I’m more inclined to whimsical shopping, buying things whenever whimsy strikes me. Fortunately, that means anything I buy in November has a good chance of being on sale anyway.

Maybe subconsciously I’m observing Black November (that doesn’t sound right), because I’ve already done all my Christmas shopping. In fact, everything I’ve ordered has already been delivered and is sheltering in place in my study closet, safe from marauding cats and an inquisitive husband.

Every day is Cyber Monday to me, since I do all my shopping online. For that matter, I do my banking and bill-paying online, too. I feel like a supervillain, coordinating all my plans from my keyboard. Of course, I can’t wrap presents online (and I refuse to pay extra to have my purchases wrapped by the assorted vendor-elves). So, I really hope my husband finds ripping open Tyvek bags to be suitably festive.

(I do have one tiny gift bag decorated with butterflies that was included with a pair of earrings I ordered for myself. I suppose I could put the SD card I bought for hubby’s camera in it, although butterflies aren’t really Christmas-y in this part of the world. The camera itself will be in a plain brown box. But I digress again.)

It’s pointless for me to complain, though. After all, the Fourth of July only occurs on the Fourth anymore when it falls on a Saturday. Hardly any holidays stay put. Thanksgiving is reserved for Thursdays, but it can be anything from the 22nd to the 28th. Easter bobs and weaves, refusing to settle on a single date. You know it’s a Sunday, but you have to be a mathematician or a priest to figure out which one. (Or look it up online like I do.)

Christmas is always December 25th, but it can fall on any day of the week. So the day after Christmas doesn’t get a spiffy name like “Exchange Your Presents Tuesday” or “Discount Candy Cane Wednesday.”

The next thing we need to do is make sure that “Giving Tuesday” isn’t relegated to a single day when all the selling gets whole weeks and months. Maybe some useless – I mean, generous – billionaire could match donations to charitable organizations. I can think of a few who could use a little good karma. So, if there are any billionaires reading this, step right up! Giving November can use you – I mean, will appreciate your philanthropy!