We ninja up in the morning
slipping out at dawn
masks tight on our face
racing past icy lawns.
Visiting the grocery store
has sure become an task
but it beats the alternative
of being dead sick on our ass.
Family Lore
I woke up thinking about Mom and being snowed in. I’d already sent her a quick, kidding message about having enough food on hand. It’s an ongoing joke that Mom always has a great deal of food on hand — especially desserts and treats. Besides, my three sisters and four adult grandchildren live in the area. They’re always checking in on her to ensure she has food. Mom’s boyfriend lives with her. His family also checks in on them. Food won’t be an issue.
Mom enjoys telling stories, and being snowed in reminded me of one. A retired nurse, she was a recurring baby-sitter for my grandniece, Amy. Once, when Amy was six (she’s graduating from college next year), Mom was driving her through a slippery Pittsburgh snowstorm on one of the back roads around Penn Hills and Monroeville. As the car began spinning and swerving, Amy shouted, “Grandma, don’t kill us!”
The car ended up off road, but a young man witnessed it and got her out in short order. However, the sentence, “Grandma, don’t kill us!” is enshrined in family lore.
The Healthy Stuff
Sickening, you know?
I was grocery shopping in a store during the ‘vulnerable hours’. Walking down the frozen food aisle as my wife shopped for baking supplies, I spied ‘healthy’ meals. You probably know of these. They proudly proclaim, ‘Organic!’ ‘Low Fat’ (or Lo Fat). ‘Gluten Free’. They like to tell about how little sugar they have and how much protein they have.
That’s all great. Checking out the sodium levels on the nutrition panels always leaves me shaking my head. Rare is the one that lists sodium levels that are in the twenty-thirty percent range of the recommended daily levels. Most are forty to fifty percent. That’s because sodium is not just for flavor, but is also a stabilizing and binding influence, and also helps extend the shelf life.
Well, how is it healthy?
We know that it isn’t don’t we? But, here in the United States, we play these games about what is healthy and safe, what’s a ‘good value’, and what’s nutritional. It’s been going on (and escalating) for decades. Remember when ketchup was classified as a vegetable under the Reagan Administration back in the 1980s?
Just a mid-morning mini-rant. Sorry. Do carry on. We’ll now return to our normal activities already in progress.
The Waiting
December is upon us as I wait
for spring to begin (it might come late).
Winter is nigh, as I dig in,
waiting for summer to come and begin.
The year is closing as I start this day,
hoping for change, trying to make a play.
December is upon us, and I never knew
the full strength of the sun
in July and June.
Coffee Time
Our bodies are worn
Our minds are weary
Our eyes are tired
Our vision bleary
Our muscles are strained
Our backs are bent
Our knees give out
Our energy is spent
Our memories fade
Our thoughts will wander
Time for coffee
To sit and ponder
Alexa, Stop
My wife is arguing with Alexa again.
Alexa is the persona ’employed’ by Amazon Echo. My wife and the machine often argue. Usually it’s about the weather.
“Alexa, what will the temperature be at eleven?”
“Here’s information that might answer your question. Band members turn their speakers up to eleven in the 1984 mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap.”
“No, Alexa.” Alexa is still talking. “Alexa, stop. What will the temperature be in Ashland at eleven?”
“The temperature in Ashland, Montana — “
“No, Alexa, stop. What will be the temperature at eleven AM in Ashland, Oregon, today?”
We don’t understand why Alexa will suddenly shift states on us. Alexa’s been with us for a few years. She knows that we live in Ashland, Oregon. We suspect she’s bored and messing with us.
Today’s argument is about music. My wife likes belly-dancing. George Abdo is one of her favorite performers for belly-dancing music. She plays the music almost every day, sometimes several times a day. It’s quite catchy. I sometimes find myself hearing it and belly-dancing. Well, that’s what I call it. My wife doesn’t agree.
“Alexa, play music by George Abdo.”
“Playing music by George Straight.”
“No! Alexa, stop! Alexa, play music by George Abdo.” She carefully enunciates the last name.
“Playing music by Paula Abdul.”
“No, Alexa, fucking stop. What’s wrong with you? You JUST PLAYED IT AN HOUR AGO.”
Alexa doesn’t answer.
“Alexa, play music by George Abdo.”
“Here’s information that — “
“Alexa, stop. Just forget it.”
Just Sayin’
I think some people miss the point behind cutting the cable.
Cutting the cable has been around for a while. It’s an expression used when you decide to terminate cable service. That would’ve once been unthinkable. When I was a child — yeah, here we go.
I’m a boomer, in my sixties. I’ve seen the rise of the microwave and electronics. Cable television came to my neighborhood while I was in high school. Before cable, we were dependent on ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS. One of those networks had two channels in our area.
Reruns were the norm. “Bonanza”, “Gunsmoke”, “Gilligan’s Island”, and “Perry Mason” came on throughout the day, along with every version of a Lucille Ball’s offerings, game shows like “Jeopardy” and “Password”, and talks shows like “The Merv Griffin Show”. As this was a rural, churchy area, so we also had a lot of gospel music sang off-key with with a twang, and plenty of Bible thumping.
Cable, then, expanded our ability to watch different reruns on other channels. We had, I think, thirty-two channels and we paid about twenty dollars a month. None were ‘premium’ channels; HBO, Showtime, and offerings like that were just being thought of and begun in those days. It didn’t come to my area until I’d left the area in 1974.
Still, cable offered us more. That was the point. Then, the point became, cable is offering the same thing over and over, or offering us things that doesn’t interest us. Upon returning to the United States after some overseas assignment, my wife and I subscribed to cable television. It was pretty good for a while. A&E was delivering fresh BBC television shows like “Ballykissangel” and “Doctor Who”. TBS provided reruns. “Original” programming was still a number of years away, along with reality shows.
Off we went to somewhere else outside the U.S. This time, upon returning, we signed up for cable, with some premium offerings.
It was no longer a sweet deal. The price had jumped to over fifty dollars a month. Pausing to put that into perspective, my income was about twenty-five thousand. Our new sports car cost fifteen thousand. Our phone bill (cell phones weren’t on the scene yet) was about twenty-five dollars a month. So fifty a month was a chunk.
Back to cable. Premium movies had already been seen, so I was paying for movie reruns, and they showed them over and over and over. The cable company boasted that we had one hundred channels. Our point was, there was nothing on that we wanted to watch.
That trend worsened, in my mind. We went to a hundred and forty plus channels, two hundred channels, dozens of premium offerings. Prices climbed, but nothing was on. By the time I cut the cable, we’d curtailed the premium offerings. No reason to subscribe because they offered so little. By then, we could rent videos, and then discs at Blockbusters and other places. Eventually, Netflix evolved.
We cut the cable ten years ago. I went with Roku and subscribed to Netflix. I remain a Netflix subscriber. I also subscribe to Hulu basic and Amazon Prime. Others come and go, usually for a month at a time. I’m not the demographic target, though; I have no interest in watching television on my phone.
I monitor streaming offerings, and frequently try them out on a trial basis. They’ve become bloated and useless. Let’s talk SlingTV as an example. They’re offering over a hundred channels for just $65 a month. But looking at them, I know that I’ll end up watching very little of that.
The same happens with countless offerings. They think signing on to more channels is a big deal. It’s not; it goes back to the same problem that plagued us when we had four channels: nothing was on that we wanted to watch.
Original programming helps the situation these days. So does stealing ideas from other countries or importing television series and movies from other countries. As we discovered with A&E, and then BBC America, the rest of the world has fantastic stuff. In example, one show that’s currently doing well in the U.S. in “The Masked Singer”. Just as “Survivor” was an import, so is “The Masked Singer”; it came from Korea.
In the end, this is another rant, innit? Just an aging American musing about the ways that the world does and doesn’t change.
At least with remotes, it’s easier to change the channel. You know what we had to do when I was in high school?
Jeezaloo
Somewhere out shopping this weekend, the expession “Jeezalou” struck.
I was probably looking at the price of something. Or maybe the sodium levels. You ever check out the sodium levels in processed foods? Some of them offer eighty percent of the recommended daily intake in one small serving. Jeezalou. Likewise some sugars levels. Holy Jeezalou.
Voices and personalities are stuck to the term. A previous boss and dear friend, Laura D, used it often. A co-worker, Paul, also used it. Both were from New Jersey, almost the same neighborhood. I wondered if it was a local thing.
I also wondered about its origins. Also, it’s correct spelling. After wondering these things, I know; I’ll do a search on the net.
Clever me, right? Sure.
Initial sources suggest it’s ‘loo’ and not ‘lou’. No sources told where it came from. Some people wonder if it’s Canadian, because they’ve heard Canadians use it. I do remember it being used on Canadian television shows, but also the show, Everybody Loves Raymond.
I speculate it’s related to people exclaiming, “Jesus.” That’s frowned upon for religious reasons in some places and times, so it was flavored to be non-religious by adding the ‘aloo’ part. Just speculation.
My wife agreed with that idea. She remembers using “I swear” and being chastised by religious relatives. She then switched to “I swain”, which also drew criticism.
Jeezaloo, those were gentler times, weren’t they?
The Swat
I’m on my knees, typing at my desk.
The cat is asleep on my chair.
It wasn’t so planned. I’d been typing when I raised my coffee cup to my lips and discovered it empty and dry.
No coffee.
But I had plans, and they included coffee.
Damnation.
I got up and went into the coffee to make more. When I returned, the cat had taken my chair. Curled up, he looked asleep.
Could that be right? I’d been gone two minutes. He’d taken over the chair and gone to sleep in two minutes? Yes, I was suspicious.
He’s done this before, so I know the routine. I moved the chair out of my way (the cat didn’t move anything during this — not a whisker, not an ear, not even a tail twitch), dropped to my knees, and resumed my activities.
When at last I was did, I stood and stretched. Now I needed water. Turning sideways, I slipped past the sleeping cat on the chair, my back to him.
That’s when I farted.
It wasn’t anything dramatic, just a loud burping noise.
That’s when the cat swatted me.
I stared down at him. “Did you just swat me?”
He was looking up at me. I swear that he looked defiant. I thought, he’s been planning this. He’s been thinking, I’ve had enough. The next time that he farts in front of me, I’m going to swat him.
I glared at him. “I don’t fart that often.”
Rearranging his paws, he lowered his head and closed his eyes.
I think he looked smug.
Michael Seidel, writer 