Tag Archives: sleep

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One-Liner Facts

Inevitable facts….
….Death, Taxes, Shipping and Handling

You can mix many things with alcohol….
….Drunk Facebook posting should not be one of them.

The space between my ladder rungs has increased….
….due to climb-it change.

I’m not good with tech….
….How do I disconnect my wife’s auto-correct function?

I have a trickle-down economics joke….
….but 99% of you wouldn’t get it

I just checked my account balance at the ATM….
….and it printed me a coupon for Ramen noodles.

I finally got eight hours of sleep….
….It took me three nights but…. whatever.

To make a long story short….
….there’s nothing like having the boss walk in.

Tips on falling asleep in a living room chair….
….#1 – Be old  #2 – Sit in a chair  #3 (optional) Recline

If your phone autocorrects F**K to duck….
….that’s still fowl language.

An optimist is the guy who invented the airplane….
….A pessimist is the guy who invented the parachute.

Don’t put words in my mouth….
….That’s where bacon goes.

Onion rings??….
….I’m answering.

I tried to use that face-aging app…
….It just said, Nah, you’re good.

I started out feeling Bold….
….then I lost my ‘B.’

I bought a new boomerang….
….How do I throw the old one out?

I’m not a perfectionist….
….My parents were, though.

I wrote a golf joke….
….but it’s a little under-par.

My boss said that I had poor communication skills….
….I was speechless.

 

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Contest Without Rules

Echoing Pensitivity101’s Three Things posts, I am issuing a challenge. Below are three words.  I would like you to create a composition using one, two, or all three of the words.  It can be prose, or poetry, even blank verse.  It can be 33 words, 50 words, 100 words, or any other random number.

Download it directly into my comments section, or leave a comment with a link, so that others can read it.  Erickson could probably do this in his sleep.  Any attempt I make would look like I did it in my sleep.  If anyone other than me has fun with this, I may repeat it.  Be warned.  Be creative.

DISC
CAKE
RULES

I’ll be back, next week, with my first attempt.

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SSSHHHhh

ARCHON is napping.
I need all the beauty sleep I can get.
I received a letter of complaint from Medusa.
Please don’t clomp noisily around the blog-site.
Leave all comments and compliments quietly.

Feel free to pet the cat.
Lint/hair rollers issued separately.
You may feed, or give him treats, if you know where I store them.
If not, he will be happy to show you.
If a handsome prince kisses me, I should be awake by Friday.
CU then.

😉   😎

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Blog Prompt: Do You Have Any Collections?

OH BROTHER, DO I EVER!!

This getting old shit is not for the faint of heart.  I have often whined said that I had to retire, just to have the time to drive the wife and I to all our medical appointments.  With all the medical advancements, she and I are working on accumulating a complete set of medical practitioners to keep us alive and mostly pain-free, if not exactly happy and healthy.

She and I have different GP’s, because our family doctor fired her because she was too needy, and the MD who took over the practice would not accept her back.  She and I have a common Chiropractor, and an Osteopath..  She and the daughter share the same Podiatrist.  She and I have the same dentist, but I have to drive the handicapped daughter across town, because our clinic will not deal with Government-funded clients.

I am on the client list of an Orthopedic surgeon, who installed my bionic shoulder, after I fell off my motorcycle.  He also replaced both the wife’s knees.  I have a thoracic surgeon who is monitoring my navel hernia.  I have a Urologist who monitors and prescribes for my swollen prostate.  The wife has a Nephrologist (kidney specialist) who monitors her under-functioning kidneys.  She must have lit a fire under the wife’s laissez-faire GP.  Suddenly, she was referred to the Stroke Detection and Prevention Clinic, a vascular clinic, and she got an echocardiogram at the same Cardiac clinic, but a month earlier than I was seen for my angina.  To chase ongoing, mild anemia, she was also referred to a Hematology clinic.

I’m still on the books, but I doubt that I will ever again see the neurologist who diagnosed my eye problem, some years ago.  He pulled a Bill Cosby, and is currently on trial for molesting 50+ young females.  He referred me to an Ocular surgeon at the eye hospital in London, Ontario, who did a retina tack.  Soon after, a local Ophthalmologist replaced my left lens.  Later, she replaced both the wife’s lenses, and recently, my right one.  The wife and daughter and I all attend the same Optometrist.  The wife still (occasionally) wears her hearing aids, but I gave mine up.  The better to ignore you with, my dear.

The wife used to visit a Physiatrist – a pain-management specialist – but he says he’s done all he can.  A local Gastroenterologist diagnosed the wife’s duodenal polyp, and referred her to another GI guy in Toronto to remove it endoscopically.  He passed the task off to yet another, young, female endo-surgeon at a different hospital.  Along the way, we’ve made the acquaintance of a smattering of anesthetists.

Twice, the wife has spent overnight at a sleep-study clinic for her apnea, so that the Government would fund a CPAP machine.  We have a firm which provides, maintains, and electronically monitors it, notifying her doctor if any serious change is noted.  After the wife’s fall, a medical supply firm came to the house and installed a bed-rail, and get-up arms on the toilet.  I installed a handicap rail on the adjacent wall.

Damn!  Ignoring the psychiatric section – perhaps not much longer – there are not many medical fields that we don’t cover.  Still, it beats the alternative.  Excelsior!  😀

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Fibbing Friday Older Than Me

Pensitivity101 says that these are recycled questions from Teresa Grabs who was the Fibbing Friday originator:

1. Jonah wasn’t swallowed by a whale…he was swallowed by an ____. Unceasing, never-ending, monsoon of useless, feel-good, corporate regulations, since Wendy Woke became head of H.R.

2. Who (or what) could make even the fiercest pirate quake in his boots?  Not ants in his pant, but termites in his wooden leg.

3. What did Huckleberry Finn have to really paint?  He had to paint over the fact that it was really Tom Sawyer, and that it was really whitewash, not paint.

4. What is the best food that can be paired with red wine?  Uber Eats.

5. What are you wearing in the sun?  Just a smile and a Jantzen.  I tried to join the local nudist colony, and just wear the smile, but management said that could cause a heart attack – mine – or someone else’s.

6. Why do dogs chase after cars?  I took my dog duck-hunting, but I couldn’t toss him high enough.  At least with cars, he thinks he has a chance to catch one.

7. What did the cat say to its kitten about the humans?  Meow, meow, meow, meow!  Meow, meow, meow, meow!  Translation here.

8. Goldfish are not fish. What are they?

Little crackers – until they get soggy.  Then they’re real fish food.

9. What would you rather do instead of sleeping?  Wanna hear a joke about sleeping?  Eight hours.  Yeah, I don’t get it either.  Jeff Foxworthy says that, when you’re young, and you have a choice between sleep and sex, you choose sex.  When you get older, and married, and have kids, you choose sleep, and just hope to have a dream about sex.  As an ever-aging senior with a wife whose CPAP machine is devil-possessed, and my own broken sleep cycle, I’d just like to have a dream about sleeping.

10. The Phantom didn’t haunt the Opera House…he haunted the ____  Super Bowl stadium to get a Taylor Swift autograph.  Personally, I don’t watch football, so I don’t know who this Taylor Swift is, but he sounds fast.

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TILWROT IV

Don’t ask how I did it, but, while researching the name “Buccari,” I came upon the name Prester.  It was linked to the name Prester John.  Prester John is a 1910 adventure novel by the Scottish author John Buchan. It tells the story of a young Scotsman named David Crawfurd and his adventures in South Africa, where a Zulu uprising under the charismatic black minister John Laputa is tied to the medieval legend of Prester John.

Prester John (Latin: Presbyter Johannes) was a legendary Christian patriarch, presbyter, and king. Stories popular in Europe in the 12th to the 17th centuries told of a Nestorian patriarch and king who was said to rule over a Christian nation lost amid the pagans and Muslims in the Orient.

As you may guess, Prester is a diminutive of Presbyter – which means an older man – a (Church) Elder.

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Something slapped me awake from my afternoon nap.  I soon discovered that it was the word/name Waring.  It took a minute or so to attach it to the word ‘blender,’ one of many kitchen appliances manufactured by Waring Commercial Products.

Always eager to fill my head with useless trivia, I wondered at the name’s meaning.  Did it refer to the manufacture and/or sale of goods and merchandise – “wares?”  It turns out that it is a verb/gerund that means protecting or guarding – the basis for words like ‘wary,’ or ‘beware,’ as we protect and guard ourselves from harm.

The name Mainwaring does not refer to the biggest fort, or the strongest vault, but was given to people from the property or estate of a Waring family.

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A Horse Is A Horse, Of Course, Of Course

A dobbin is always a horse – but in England, it also used to be a cup, mug, or similar drinking vessel capable of holding a gill, or half a cup.  In New Zealand, it may still be, a trolley to transport sheared fleece from the shearing shed, to the processing plant – from the dobbin, to the bobbin.

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Oh, don’t be such a pussy.

A misogynistic 80% of people who hear or use that term, think that it refers to a female sex-organ.  The remaining, cat-hating 20% think that it refers to small felines.  100% of them are wrong.

I published a post where I showed that the English language was becoming shorter, tighter, and the grandiose words of the 19th Century were being left by the wayside.  Until the 1920s/’30s, the upper crust might have used the word pusillanimous – lacking courage or resolution; cowardly; faint-hearted; timid. proceeding from or indicating a cowardly spirit. characterized by a lack of courage or determination.

First, it shrank until part of it was pronounced pyew-zee, like doozy – for the Duisenberg car.  Then the minds and mouths of the masses further mutated it to pussy.  A descriptive adjective became an offensive noun.

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Adventures In Insomnia

On the first night of our expedition into the deepest, darkest jungles of Central America Ohio, I suffered traveler’s sleeplessness.  It wasn’t my idea!  After eight hours of driving, and a warm filling meal at Arby’s, I was asleep by 11:00 PM, while the wife was still watching TV.

At about 1 AM, I came awake enough to know that I was awake.  I thought that I had heard an odd sound outside our exterior door – a high-pitched yipping noise, as from a small animal – someone’s little dog??  I was willing to snuggle back down into the warm, comfy bed, and the embrace of sleep – until some throttle-jockey with a semi-load of gravel, got caught at a red light, up on the highway, and Jake-braked his way down through 4 or 5 gears.  Thuubb….THUUUBBB….THHUUU-BB-BB….THHHUUUBBB-UUBB!!!  Well, I’m awake now.

With the wife now sleeping peacefully, I gently, quietly, crawled out of bed, and put my pants, shirt, and boots back on.  I ensured that I had my wallet and car keys, and softly opened the door.  Outside, I pulled it to, against the magnetic storm-seals, and considered.  If I pull it tight, the lock will CLICK, loudly in a quiet night, and possibly wake the wife.  However, if I just leave it like that, a wind-gust, or a passing person might push it open.

Just as I pull it closed, I realize that my key-card is on the bed-table.  Shit!  Shit!  Shit!  There is no overnight clerk in the lobby.  Perhaps I’ll sleep in the car – a decision for later.  I take the car to the nearby service station, and gas it up at $3.219/gal.  Two days later, I top the tank up again for the drive home, at $3.159.  After missing a turn on the way home, that cost me 100 extra miles, and almost two hours driving, I stopped on Grand Island in New York.  “Gotcha” price was $3.999/gal, but still cheaper than Canadian gas, just across the border.

Back to my sleepwalking.  I amble out to the cross-street, completely around the closed KFC and back.  I circumnavigate the Wendy’s on the side street, picking up 14 cents off the pavement below the drive-thru window.  The ‘Jerry’ who runs the restaurant in front of the motel, is not the same ‘Jerry’ who runs the used car lot directly behind it.

Beside the restaurant, is a very un-Canadian business.  It’s a fair-sized steel warehouse, surrounded by a 7-foot chain-link fence, topped with barbed wire, with two gates in it, identified as 922 Drive-Thru.  When the gates, and the business, are open, people drive into the warehouse, where soft drinks, beer, wine, cigarettes, vaping products, snuff, chewing tobacco, chopped tobacco leaves, and Ohio State Lottery tickets are brought, and placed in the vehicles.  They then drive through – hence the name – turn, and exit through a side gate.  Y’all got somethin’ like this where you live??

I decide to walk up to the highway, to see who the constant stream of heavy trucks are.  I walk a block or so out, along the paved shoulder, and turn back.  I’m the only one, fool enough to walk out here but, I spot a smooth, lemon-sized stone on the paving, and kick it into the grass.  A few steps further on, I notice another, golf-ball-sized one, and prepare to boot it, when it glints in the moonlight.  When I pick it up, it is an automobile lug-nut

When our hostess drove out to meet us yesterday, I noticed that a lug-nut was missing from one of her front wheels.  When she returns, later in the morning, I jokingly claim that I found her lost nut, and try to install it.  With all the possible diameters and thread pattern combinations – IT FITS!  Now she only needs a wrench to tighten it on.

Meanwhile, back at the motel…. I walk completely around it in the parking lot.  It’s 40 years old, but well-maintained.  I decide to climb to the second-floor balcony and walk around it up there, enjoying the magnificent view, and the now-brisk night air.  😉

As I approach one end, a large white cat runs from me – a feral cat?  Someone’s untethered pet?  It disappears around a corner, and I slowly, quietly, follow.  It’s now at the far corner.  As soon as it sees me, it dashes away again – but not smoothly, slinkily – Hippity-hop, with no tail.  😳  I almost followed Alice’s white rabbit on the second floor.

What woke me up?  Do rabbits make noise?  At 3 AM, I tapped on the door, and the wife reluctantly let me back in.  The next morning, I found the quill from my  Not In My Write Mind post in front of my car, and linked it back to my I Found A Feather post.  It’s a foot long.  Our hostess thought that it might be from a peahen.  Peafowl in Ohio??   I guess anything is possible in Weird Al Yankovic’s Amish Paradise, but I never heard any distinctive peacock calls.  Later, the daughter felt that it might be from a wild turkey. Does either make strange noises at night?  What do you amateur ornithologists think??

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Not In My Write Mind

That title is a lie!  I am a writer!  I am always a writer.  I am not sometimes a writer.  I am a writer 24/7/365-1/4.

I am not an author.  My well of inspiration is not deep enough, nor my attention span long enough, but I am a writer.  I have been one almost all my life.  I kept a diary when I was 12.  I have a thick file with Op-Ed letters, and opinion-piece essays that have been submitted to at least three newspapers, a couple of magazines, and various politicians and public figures.

Over the years, I sent hundreds of hand-written and typed, newsy, gossipy letters to family, friends, and neighbors, recounting personal experiences.  Then, finally, along came the internet, and the wife and daughter set me free in the verdant pastures of the blogosphere.  I was in Heaven.

Just because you don’t see me hunched over my keyboard, doesn’t mean that I am not writing.  I am a writer when I am consuming a breakfast of oatmeal and toast, and I’m mentally mulling various verb forms, and searching for alternate adjectives, so that my prose does not become repetitive.

I am a writer when I reluctantly slip back out of bed, after an hour of failed attempts to doze off, just so that I can key in at least the bare bones of a blog-theme idea I just had.  Some people are convinced that they have great ideas while they sleep, so they put a notepad and pen beside their bed to write them down.  Usually, the best they get is  “Mmmffap, bittensnarg klarn.” I wouldn’t even get that.  It seriously irks me to wake up, knowing that I had a great thought before I went to bed, but not be able to recall what it was.  I don’t really have a memory.  It’s more like a forgettery.  🙄

I am writing when I am peacefully reading my newspaper – including the comics, which are social commentary, and also while I solve the crossword puzzle, which provides all kinds of historical, geographical, political, scientific, and entertainment trivia.

I am writing when I am shopping in stores, or driving the streets (Just not with one hand on the steering wheel, and the other massaging a Smartphone or tablet.  I’m dumb, but I ain’t that dumb.) – anywhere I can people-watch and gather grist for my blog-mill.

The crossword puzzle definition of a blog is, an online diary.  In 65 years, I’ve come full circle.  Blessed are they who run around in circles, for they shall be called Big Wheels.  Circle back later for some Friday fun.

😀

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Alcoholic One-Liners

Scientists studied the effect on alcohol on walking….
….The results were staggering.

Why is ‘abbreviated’….
….such a long word?

I still have a full deck….
….I just shuffle slower.

If the world’s human population held hands around the equator….
….a significant portion of them would drown.

Wal-Mart is giving out free school supplies….
….to anyone who can outrun Security.

Schrödinger’s cat walks into a bar….
….and doesn’t.

Pavlov is having a beer at the pub when his phone rings….
….He jumps up and yells, “Shit!  I forgot to feed the dog.”

Entropy isn’t what it used to be.

To tell the difference between a chemist and a plumber….
….ask them to pronounce ‘unionized.’

Gravity is a myth….
….The Earth sucks.

Change is hard….
….Just try to bend a coin, you’ll see.

A man walks into a bar….
….and is disqualified at the limbo contest.

Beer doesn’t have many vitamins….
….so I drink several.

A day without beer is like….
….Just kidding.  I wouldn’t know.

How come 8 glasses of water a day is almost impossible….
….but 8 beers seems so easy?

People in Dubai don’t understand The Flintstones….
….but people in Abu Dhabi do.

I accidentally used the dog’s shampoo….
….Now I feel like such a good boy.

I believed that I could….
….but the cat was asleep on my lap, so I didn’t.

If 2022 was a drink….
….it would be a colonoscopy prep.

I told my suitcases, No vacation this year….
….now I’m dealing with emotional baggage.

Running feels great….
….unless you compare it to not running.

I don’t think it’s fair that only roosters….
….are allowed to start the day screaming.

If you love someone….
….let them nap.

If a black cat crosses your path….
….he probably has some important cat stuff to do.

The Black Eyed Peas can sing us a song….
….but the chick peas can only hummus one.

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Remaking Fibbing Friday

Pensitivity101 said it was Time For Hit Remakes this week.  Who could have recorded the following (your nominations do not have to be singers) or had it for their signature tune?

Cinderella Rockefella

The San Francisco Boys Marching Band, with special guest Elton John, appearing on the Ru-Paul Drag Race TV show.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

2.   I want it all

Vladimir Putin!  😳

3.   I’m just a forlorn boy

Axe Body Spray bought the rights, and used the first eight bars in a commercial.  I’m just a lonely boy…. and showed some Incel dork looking forlorn and dateless.  Then the video moved on to show him dousing overly-liberal spraying himself with their toxic chemical miasma concoction, and suddenly he’s surrounded by 6 good-looking chicks, none of whom seem to mind the presence of the other five.

That advert campaign came to a sudden halt when truthinadvertising.com released a spoof version.  It intercut portions of the original showing Young Reekie, the Axe-man, then it showed six hot females gasping for breath, and grasping for N95 COVID masks and running away, showing that they had a sense of smell, and a sense of taste – or distaste.  👿

4.   Here comes the night

The Silicon Valley Bank Senior Management Choir.  Then they do a Patreon PSA video, titled,
What Happens In LA – stays in our Golden Handshake accounts.

5.   All I have to do is dream

Any new parent, especially new mothers.  When the Terrible Twos Twins are simultaneously teething, the police are getting noise complaints from your neighbours – not about your dog, but because of the yowling young-‘uns.  They never seem to achieve unconsciousness at the same time, so sleep is just something that you read about in a book one time, long, LONG ago.

6.   Wand’rin’ Star

That was Edwin Starr, who had a hit back in ‘69 which asked, “What is the good of war?”  Putin recently sent him a text that just read, “Posterity Project.”

Then he sent me one that absolutely, positively denied that I saw a Russian ZIL that read KGB, in last week’s alphabet soup.  Good thing I don’t own a smart phone, and never got it.  🙄

I tried to listen to the Portishead version of it, but the Suicide Hotline called ME, and told me to turn it off.  😦

7.    Rock On

Tina Turner has redone this old song.  She’s 85!  With a big front veranda, (and her house has one, too) and a mint julep, it has taken on a brand new meaning.  😉

8.   Purple Rain

I have adopted this, at least temporarily, as my Life Motto.  I have absorbed so much COVID sanitizer that when I pee, I also clean the toilet.

9.   When will I see You Again?

This is the new anthem for Beijing.  Between COVID masks, and the worst air quality in the word, it’s creating a lot of identity confusion, and causing some people who want to telephone someone they think they met on the street, to Wing the Wong number.

10.  You can’t hurry love

It’s still $4.99 a minute, but when you get as old as me, sometimes you have to change the batteries in your hearing aids.
EH??  What am I wearing?  Depends!  On What??  On my crotch!  I don’t think I trust an adult incontinence product named Depends any more.  I want one called Fer Shur, or Boulder Dam.