Calendar Check

During a shopping episode in the beginning of July, when the outdoor temps hovered around 104 degrees, you were able to find the much in-demand Halloween costumes on the store shelves.

The first week in October was when those same stores switched their Halloween outfits off the shelves in favor of Thanksgiving business.  Ceramic turkeys, tablecloths adorned with leaves, and orange and brown oven mitts were everywhere.  Until the week before Thanksgiving, that is.

My sainted wife and I were desperately searching for accoutrements for a Thanksgiving Day dinner we were hosting.

For the New Jerseyites in the gallery, accoutrements are odds and ends, bits and pieces that are used to accessorize.  You’re welcome.

Although we own several calendars, we were slow on the uptake for when that infamous Thursday in November really occurred.  And it was much sooner than we thought.

Sure, we had the frozen turkey, potatoes, green beans, corn bread stuffing, plus the kind I like – good stuffing, haymans, chestnuts, and cranberry business.  But, we needed cardboard plates, turkey-adorned napkins, and other stuff – accoutrements – that we were going to summarily throw away after dinner.

On the Monday before Thanksgiving, all the stores proudly had on display, you guessed it, Christmas trees!

After systematically parading up one aisle and down another, we finally found a clerk who wasn’t busy on their cellular phone.  I politely asked where the Thanksgiving accoutrements were.

Yes, I had to explain to them the definition, too.  After their bewildered look vanished, they uttered, “We put that stuff away last week; ain’t got none.”

Alas, we were nearly forced to exit this establishment empty-handed but for the grace of God.  Tucked away in the clearance section were two packs of cardboard dinner plates, one package of napkins, and what appeared to be cardboard serving bowls.  Not terribly classy, but out company wasn’t either.

We made our way to the checkout counter to pay for our blessed supply of paper products only to find a clerk substituting Christmas candy for Valentine’s Day chocolates.

Adjacent to the cash register was a display of calendars for the upcoming year.  I quickly grabbed one and thumbed through it to ensure the pages were in the correct order and no dates were rearranged to put holidays out of order.

It seems as though merchants are so anxious to make the big bucks during the Christmas season, they begin thee season weeks earlier and earlier each year.  That may be good for the merchants but, not for people like me.

I like to buy my snow tires in the winter, not July.  And if I’m going to the beach in August, I want to be able to buy swim trunks in August, not February.

So, if you need St. Patrick’s Day hats, shamrocks, and other accoutrements, get busy buying it now before December ends, lest you’ll be out of luck.  Get it?

Obit Rules for All

Every day of mine begins with a cup of muscular coffee and a scrutiny of the obituaries.  This has become a habit since I entered that age vicinity where my confidants, family, friends, and enemies begin to finally gain notoriety by finally getting their names listed in the newspaper.

I said “finally,” because most of my associates are law-abiding citizens who would never commit a crime.  And that’s a good thing.  But, I digress.

In today’s age, every living being – including Smokey the cat – has a cellular phone with a camera, and they all use them to excess.

You can’t swing a dead opossum without hitting some amateur, phone videographer/photographer snapping everything and everyone within a cold radius.

I invented the term “cold radius” because that is the miniscule distance from which a person is able to contract a cold from another person of the unwell variety.  You’re welcome.

In any case, today, much like the past six-plus decades, is a winner for me.  My name did not appear in the obits making me more fortunate than those whose name did appear therein.

And here is where the rub lies.

We recently celebrated Veteran’s Day.  Veteran’s Day is a national holiday that is something a non-veteran termed “floating holiday.”  This crazy term is applied to holidays many Americans feel are passé.

Veteran’s Day, Columbus Day, and National Pizza Day, are all considered floating holidays because the anointed among us feel those days represent distasteful events or honors.  By the way, Pizza Day is frowned upon because of the meat and gluten.  But I digress, again.

On Veteran’s Day, family members and friends post photos of deceased service personnel in the ‘remembrance’ section of the obituaries.  Looking dapper and freshly pressed and ready for action, many of these photos harken back to World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and Middle East battles.  For those youngsters in the audience, the above reference is to World War two, not 11.

But on ordinary, non-holidays, a smattering of photos of the deceased loved ones appears above the actual final notice.

People possess varying degrees of photogenic qualities.  Personally, I have none.  But I know that as a fact.

So it is with that I would like to make a suggestion.

If your loved one was born during the days of the Great North American Buffalo Hunts, and died last week, please note the vintage of that photo.  You’re not fooling anyone by posting a picture of them posing with President Lincoln during their high school graduation.

And lastly, if the decedent wore a wide-brimmed white hat with a leisure suit in 1979, with aviator sunglasses, please re-think added that photo in the obit.  Unless they were a professional pimp, that is.

Bye-bye!

After roughly two years of political haggling, America has a new president.  This person, very much like Barack Hussein Obama, just made history.

The country desperately wanted a clean start after nearly eight years of painful lying about Iran nuclear deals, paying ransom money to Iran, keeping your own doctors under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), giving 900+ hardened criminals pardons, avoided prosecutions of Wall Street executives, saving $2500 per family on the ACA, and lowering the unemployment rate, so it voted for someone for which they could be proud.

Loud voices chanted “Hillary” in the hopes of numbing the minds of undecided citizens with boloney about Hillary’s accomplishments.  Soon it was clear her biggest undertakings dwarfed those of President Obama.

She lied about Benghazi, Libya, about erasing her computer hard drive, sending classified e-mails, using her political position as Secretary of State to further exercising her methods of extortion for the Clinton Foundation, and perhaps that she even lives as a white woman.

America felt it was time to elect a non-political person to keep the United States of America free.  As such, it elected Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is a non-political person but, he appears to have tremendous business savvy.  He has been buying real estate, and developing it, for years, successfully.

He identified numerous problems with the country to include illegal aliens sucking the financial blood from the working class, liberals spending money like a drunken sailor (my apologies to drunken sailors,) freebies for everyone and anyone, draconian ACA plans with severe financial penalties, and lack of jobs.

Many people liked what he said.  Others, however, did not.

As a result, we have some breaking news.  Select airports across North America are likely slammed with actors, actresses, and supposed musical artists, leaving the country.

The likes of Barbra Streisand, Cher, Katy Perry, Amy Schumer, Alec Baldwin, and Jon Stewart, are probably packing as I write.  Chelsea Handler, Neve Campbell, Lena Dunham, Keegan-Michael Key, Al Sharpton, Natasha Lyonne, Eddie Griffin, Spike Lee, Amber Rose, Samuel L. Jackson, and George Lopez, expressed an interest to head out of the country for their own safety, too.

Not Samuel L. Jackson

Let’s not forget Raven Symoné, Whoopie Goldberg, Miley Cyrus, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who also feel they are more astute and intelligent to select the leader of the United States.  Forget all those hard-working folks who actually get their hands dirty for a living, along with people who drive old cars and live in mobile homes.

So I see this new presidential opportunity as a win-win situation.  We get new blood with new ideas, while getting rid of the trash who look down their noses at the rest of us.

Please stay gone.

Post-Presidential Election Assistance

In order to provide an election safe space, please take a few moments on this website.  Breathe easily, close your eyes, and count to ten.

Now get back to reality you whiney losers!

Really?

Just when I think I’ve seen and heard it all I find myself corrected.  It is said that if everyone was the same, life would be boring.  It takes all kinds, is another saying.  I’d like to offer one of my own: Get a life and leave me alone.

Way back when, America had three pronouns to identify the two sexes – Mr. was to identify men, Mrs. was used to identify married and previously married women, and Miss to signify an unmarried woman.  And all was well.

Then in the 1980’s some of those liberated, divorced women felt it necessary to display their extreme hate for men by creating a special pronoun for themselves, Ms.

Ms. was devised to stick female fingers in the eyes of non-caring society to identify themselves as divorced.  After all, a divorced woman wants to prove herself empowered enough to run a household, raise a family, and climb social ladders with a gleam in the eye of the beholder.

It wasn’t long before the Mrs. and Ms. of America felt left out.  They felt they were being left behind and demanded they, too, be called Ms.

So we went from three to two identifying pronouns in a few short months, and that is pretty efficient.

It is quite rare when one finds monikers being condensed rather than expanded.  You see, I am aging and have trouble remembering so many different titles and words.

Then, two weeks ago I knew and used pronouns such as he, she, it, and they.  Today, however, I am told to use newly-invented pronouns ne, ve, ze, and xe.  No lie.

Someone with too much time on their idle hands insist we stop being so exclusive and simply changing the language so as to prevent the easily offended from being so easily offended.

Once upon a time, there was an Olympic track star who, as a man, broke a world record in the 1976 Olympics.  He was held up as an American icon and a role model for track and field athletes for decades.  Then, Bruce Jenner decided he was a she.

Much of America cringed; the rest of it applauded his/her decision to alter God’s work.  Soon thereafter, Jenner, with aliases Ms. Caitlin Jenner, and Mr. Bruce Kardashian, began making seemingly endless television appearances about why he wanted to lop off the family jewels.

Frankly, I didn’t really care, anymore than Ms. Kim Kardashian likely did.  In any case, so much of America did for some unknown reason.

Fast forward to today.  If you use stupid pronouns such as ne, ve, ze, and xe, you can summarily disguise the sex of the subject.  I’m not sure why you would want to, though.

You see, the perpetually undecided want to specifically identify themselves as transgender, bisexual, gay, undecided…

Hi!  This is Uncle Paul’s sainted wife.  He asked me to finish up as his hair suddenly caught on fire while in the process of writing this essay.  All this is pretty odd and counter-inclusive.  I say just be what you are, and if you want to be something else, leave us out of it. 

Now I had better get the fire extinguisher and find Uncle Paul.  Thanks. 

Colored What?

It was a day to pick up provisions in the big city when I espied something worth a story.  You see, here on The Eastern Shore, one must drive roughly twelve miles, one way, to buy anything except illegal drugs.  Those can easily be had four doors away.

To prevent embarrassment to the store, we’ll cleverly change its name and simply refer to it as Tallmart.

Preparing to leave Tallmart for the twelve mile trek back home, my sainted wife needed to make the ride more comfortable by using their bathroom.

I waited near the Tallmart Vision Center where I met a five-and-a-half foot tall cardboard display sign touting colored contact lenses.

This display woman model was attractive but, she had two different colored eyes; one hazel, the other blue.

Since I had time on my hands I examined this display closely and desperately tried to make sense of it.

It seems as though Eastern Shore women – those with four kids out of wedlock, pink-dyed stringy and greasy hair, no teeth, driving a rusted Ford Pinto with cardboard duct-taped to at least one window, need only a pair of colored contact lenses to make them more attractive.

That extra step would likely garner them at least one more out-of-wedlock child.  Yeah!

Forget the fact the death trap they’re driving has bald tires and is started with a screwdriver.  Colored contact lenses are a must.

Much like those 70” UHDTVs, with the curved screens, satellite receivers, and the newest cell phones, these corrective lenses are advertised as a must.

This is what people like I call “misplaced priorities.”  People who can least afford them are the ones that buy them.  The young’uns don’t have the funds to buy diapers and formula, while the old relic retirees who have been saving money for decades don’t really need them.

So who is buying these colored contact lenses?

I have been wearing spectacles since I was a little kid and still have trouble putting drops in my eyes, much less contact lenses.  Besides, I really have no need to alter the color of my eyes because I’m not vain and I have my priorities in order.  Period.

After contemplating this scenario for days I realized that the schools are teaching kids the wrong things.  They can’t balance a checkbook, follow no-texting-while-driving laws, understand why children shouldn’t have children, and comprehend why drugs are bad.

Good for Tallmart being able to try and sell these non-critical items to the masses.  But just as the government geniuses place age limits on the purchase of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, they should place a bank account minimum balance on purchasing such frivolous niceties.

In my humble opinion, that is.

Paperwork, Please

Once again, a newspaper article caught my attention.  In Salisbury, Maryland, a fellow was arrested for “allegedly” stealing $22 and a pack of Newport cigarettes while beating someone.  Yup.

To protect this “alleged” criminal’s identity, we’ll call him Charles “Chuck” Becker instead of his real name, Ecker.

Mr. Becker allegedly approached an employee behind the Quick Mart in Salisbury, and punched him in the face.  He then allegedly kicked the worker while on the ground.  Becker then stole $22 from the hard working Quick Mart employee.

It seems that the surveillance cameras in the mini-mart were working and caught these alleged deeds on video.

Becker, you see, is a gang member affiliated with the Dead Man Inc [sic] prison gang.

Back in 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, in the Gulf of Mexico, was discovered to have a leak on the gulf floor.  Oil was spewing out of the ground and polluting the waters causing angst to the nth degree.

Rights organizations were quickly established to sue British Petroleum for the projected losses from the seafood that was allegedly tainted and permanently ruined as a result.

Countless watermen wearing those white rubber boots lined up to put in their claim for the billions of dollars being squeezed out of BP to make these watermen whole.

Unfortunately, in the Gulf of Mexico, much like on The Eastern Shore, the area watermen work under-the-table.  For our New Jersey readers, that means they pay nothing in taxes, insurance, social security, or anything else that would benefit their American bothers and sisters economically.

Herein lays the rub.  Upon reaching the front of the claim line, these cash-only workers were asked for their tax returns from the past three years.  Of course there were none because they never filed taxes, allegedly.

Departing with heads hung low, these scofflaws found themselves in quite a pickle.  You see, these guys who overcharge you for a bushel of crabs, a peck of oysters, and a 100 count of clams, are the same ones who laugh at those who are able to pay for these commodities.

There is nothing alleged about that previous paragraph.  But these guys allegedly skirt the law for decades until it’s time for benefit collection, at which they feign knowledge or personal responsibility.

Back to the alleged Mr. Becker.  I’m not very familiar with Dead Man Inc and its inner mechanics.  The words “prison gang” however, brings to mind an alleged organization offering some activities for the unfortunately incarcerated to wile away their time.

Parcheesi, checkers, card games, making shanks, and River Dancing, are what activities I imagine these inmates are engaged.

Now the hard question.  Does Dead Man Inc have a retirement plan or offer some sort of IRA?  There has to be some gang members that reach retirement age.  After all, Becker is 37-years old, and the day this alleged gang member is no longer able to commit meaningful crimes, allegedly, is rapidly approaching.  I would think that’s a little long in the tooth for a gang member.

Will he need to show tax returns for his alleged criminal years or is that an estimated calculation to collect Social Security?

If you know, please write to me.  Thanks.