Catch Me If You Can

Did you know there’s a city in New Zealand named Christchurch? How non-denominational! What d’ya suppose its major industry is? . . . One of the challenges of trying to tell jokes when you’re sixty is : Am I still current? So from my good bud Blake Mackey, age 28, this Q & A: “Q. What do you call a black guy who flies a plane? A. A pilot, ya freakin’ racist!” . . . Ah, these kids today, with their weird clothes and that crazy music . . . So Donald Trump is throwing his wig into the presidential ring. Sorry, not with my vote. Trump slaps up risky hotels faster than an autistic kid at a monopoly board. If I want to vote for an offensive, ugly political whore, there’s always Palin . . . Fellow is sitting at a bar quietly enjoying his adult beverage when a young lady sits down next to him. “Sir, this is your lucky day,” she asserts. “For two hundred dollars I’ll do anything you want.” “Anything?” the guy asks incredulously. “Whatever your little heart desires.” He thinks it over for a minute, reaches into his wallet and hands over ten Jackson, which she accepts. “Okay, sweetheart”, she purrs, “what’ll it be?” Comes the reply : “I’d like you to paint my house.” . . . Have I adequately offended damn near all of you? If not, please read on.

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OUT OF MY MIND: Attn: Rush Limbaugh: Now-Sen. Al Franken was wrong. Unlike the title of his book, you are NOT a big, fat, idiot. Well, it does appear you have a fairly serious glandular disorder. But in no way do you suffer from any shortage in the IQ dept. You are exceptionally well informed on political and social issues in real time. You are enormously entertaining. Your sense of humor is second to none. And let’s face it—you’re right. Far right, but never the less right. Here’s my quandary with you and others of your ilk: Why all the hate talk? Why did you feel compelled to say, almost immediately after Mr. Obama’s inauguration, “I want this president to fail.”? What kind of an American would say that? And what’s with Newt Gingster, Huckleberry Fibb and the other birthers who assert that the president isn’t really one of us, having been born and raised in Kenya. We have this little requirement in our constitution, maybe you’ve heard about it. It was written by our founding fathers and says that only natural born citizens can be president. Seems to me the INS and/or FBI would have noticed if Mr. Obama’s papers weren’t in order. And he’s a Muslim? This would come as quite a shock to the members of his Christian church. Then we have congressperson Michelle Bachman. What a piece of work she is! According to her, the founding fathers settled the slavery issue. Move over, Abe Lincoln! Lexington and Concord, by the way, are in NEW HAMPSHIRE, not Massachussets,  like we all learned in grade school. I guess the state borders got re-drawn somewhere along the line and they forgot to tell the rest of us. If you’re going to serve in Congress, shouldn’t you know the basics of U.S. History? I console myself with the knowledge that these folks are nothing new. Most of us know about Sen. Joe McCarthy, the red-baiting demagogue of the 1950’s. The crows came home to roost for him, didn’t they? And let’s not forget newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, who was not averse to writing front page editorials full of bile and venom against FDR, arguably the greatest president of the 20^th century. As Harry Truman once said (he was talking about a fellow named Richard Nixon) : “The American people can always spot a phony. It may take a while but they can always do it.” Since I’ve already dated myself, I’ll finish with a quote from songwriter and satirist Tom Lehrer, talking in 1965 about an event we used to observe called National Brotherhood Week: “There are people in this country who do not love their fellow human beings, and I HATE people like that!”

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HOLY MOTHER OF PEARL, Who plugged this guy in today? He ought to call it “Snipe Remarks”. Maybe I should switch to decaf . . . So let’s lighten up. I don’t merely love my daily newspaper, I buy two copies every day --- In case there’s an article I want to read twice . . . If Queen Elizabeth married Steve McQueen, (granted this would be difficult since he is currently dead, but bear with me) would her name then be Queen McQueen? . . . I call my gal pal my Credit Card Lover. Why? Because when it comes to romance, she has no interest until January of next year . . . San Francisco Chronicle gossip columnist Leah Garchick (best one of her breed in the country, I think) reports that NASA contractor Thom Stone said to a friend: “Of course there’s intelligent life in the rest of the universe.” His rationalle? “They haven’t tried to contact us, have they? . . . Media Update: The magazines Commentary and Dissent have merged. The new publication will be called Dissentary.

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AND FINALLY, from the late, great and much-missed George Carlin: “If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.”