Coffee heat rising

Annals of the Floored & Flabbergasted

My poor father!

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He would have been trying to save the equivalent of something over a million dollars in today’s money.

I doubt if he would have thought of it in those terms. He surely was aware that a hundred grand (his coveted goal) was a lot of money for a working-class guy. But a MILLION BUCKS’ worth? Probably not a concept that would have presented itself to him.

He did it, y’know. No kidding: He stashed a hundred thousand dollars in savings — that was his life’s savings goal — and then quit his job.

Shortly thereafter, the stock market crashed. 

So much for his hundred grand, eh?

Oh well. He went back to work for another couple years and then…soldiered on.

My mother died: the love of his life killed herself with tobacco sticks. He sent me through college. Then he quit his job, figuring at least to live ever after without having to work his a$$ off.

Frankly…I cannot imagine that he would have kept at his savings goal if he had thought of it as the equivalent of a million dollars. It would have been beyond his comprehension. But to tellya the truth, that is what the man accomplished in his lifetime.

He may have intuited that there was no way in Hell he could ever earn & save the inflation-adjusted equivalent of a million bucks. But I doubt if he actually knew it, at least not at a gut level.

I sure hope he didn’t.

That is what it amounted to, y’know. His goal of a hundred grand, by the time he retired, would have equated to just about a million dollars, in the change of his time.

Shhhh! Don’t tell him, though!

BREAK TIME!!!!!!!

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Okay, it’s time for Funny to take a little vacation. 😀

Seriously: I seem to have teetered off the Deep End and begun to write bizarre stuff in these posts. I’ve not been aware of the bizarritude, but when a friend brought a moment of Looney Toons to my attention, I thought…well…EGAD!!!!!

What on earth would lead me to write wack-sh!t posts containing putative suicide threats…that escapes me. I was not aware that quite so many marbles had rolled out my ears.

So…let’s build a little “platform” here from which to clarify matters and intentions, and then let’s have Funny take a li’l vacation.

Here we go…

I. THE PLATFORM

Folks, do know: I am not about to throw myself off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, to season my chocolate soda with arsenic, or to blow out my brains with my daddy’s pistol.

If I posted something — anything — that could be interpreted as a suicide threat, rest assured: THAT WAS NOT MY INTENTION. 

Nope. No. No way. Not about to exit stage left, now or any time in the foreseeable future.

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II. The AUTHORIAL WEIRDNESS

Overall, I happen to be contented and upbeat. Happy with my home. Delighted with my  friends. Awed by my son.  Entertained by my doggy pal. Endlessly amazed by the phalanxes of cop helicopters buzzing overhead ( 😀 Another copter is up there as we scribble!)

So: have no fear.

Do bear in mind that I have an eccentric sense of humor, one that easily drags me toward the Dark Side. But that indicates nothing more than that my sense of humor is warped, indeed.

Don’t be scared.

III. A PASSAGE OF PEACE

Okay, while we all calm down, let’s give Funny about Money a rest.

No, Funny is NOT going away. 

We’ll take a break of TWO WEEKS, starting tomorrow, July 16.

This means no narrative posts will appear at Funny-about-money.com between July 16 and July 29. That’s 14 days.

Don’t panic: we’ll be back! But over that two-week period — starting tomorrow — we’ll give it a rest.

  • It does not mean I don’t love you.
  • It does not mean I’m taking Funny down.
  • It does not mean I won’t be back. 

It just means we’re taking a li’l vacation. 

Sorry to do this, but it does look as though we need to cool down a bit. LOL! Especially on a 116-degree day!! 😀

{chortle!} In the Department of Wacksh!t…

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{chortle!!!}  Noooo, I am not taking Funny about Money off the air because some sensitive soul imagines one of its posts is…is…really????…is suicidal. 

No kidding.

The more I study it, the stupider it looks.

Seriously. WHERE in any of the posts that have appeared over the past three weeks is there any hint of suicidal ideation?

Let’s see what topics we’ve had of late..Maybe we can find a meditation on throwing oneself off the Golden Gate Bridge…

Morning in Aridzona.  Okay, here I do say I’d druther drop dead than rot away in an old folks’ home. Hmmmm… Does that lead you to believe I’m getting ready to throw myself off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon?

San Francisco: Take Me Home. A sentimental reminiscence of the time my parents and I lived in S.F. I was in junior high school at the time. Loved it. Not interested in throwing myself off the Bay Bridge.

Reeeel Estate! Sentimental reminiscing on how I loved living in San Francisco.

Hotter than the Hubs and Crazier than a Loon. Blah blah blah about kids and coreligionists I’ve (apparently) annoyed in various inscrutable ways.

On and on…dayum, but I do have other things to do that are more interesting than trying to unravel this silly little mystery. Sorry, folks…but I don’t think anything I’ve posted lately suggests I’ve gone raving suicidal. What IS the matter with people???????

😀

 

Morning in Aridzona…

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Brrrrr! It’s mighty cold out there come seven in the morning: just 89 degrees.

In fact, even for lovely uptown Phoenix, that’s hot and muggy. The air is so damp it’s practically squishy.

Ruby and the Human:  just back from circumnavigating the ‘Hood: over to the park, down the street that parallels the south side of the park, past the home (uhm…former home) of the folks who lost everything when their son got arrested for diddling some underage chippy, up the east side of the park: northerly, northerly into Upper Richistan.

Lovely neighborhood, that. The Richistans are occupied by folks who can afford acre-plus irrigated lots, big swell houses, and armies of workmen. Personally, I wouldn’t want to live there: been there, done that, don’t wanna do it again. Riding herd on 87 berjillion yard guys, maintenance guys, repairmen, cleaners…and on and on and on… Blech! Never again!

But still: it’s fun to eyeball other people’s overpriced, high-maintenance properties. 😀

The beloved Old Guy is no longer in evidence. He would hang out in a lawn chair parked on his front driveway, his coffee and his newspaper in hand, and greet all us passers-by. I do miss him.

With any luck, he will have dropped dead of a heart attack. More likely, though, this being Today’s Day & Age, he’s locked up in some old-folkerie, waiting for Death to come and get him.

That seems to be the fate of most of today’s denizens of the middle and upper classes. We don’t die in a timely way. We drag out dying, and drag it out and drag it out and drag it out…horribly, hideously. Parked in a dreary prison for old folks, where we rot away like so much unrefrigerated bacon.

Please, dear God: please, just let me drop dead on the sidewalk!

Y’know, before you croak over or end up in an old-folkerie, you should find out what your grown kids REALLY want you to do with your property.

You assume, quite reasonably in its antiquated way, that they will want to inherit your beloved home and its handsome yard and…all that. But consider: it ain’t necessarily so!

A lot of grown offspring have their own homes. Homes with which they’re quite satisfied. Homes they don’t want to move out of. Foist a $300,000 piece of property on them and now they’re burdened with something they’ve got to figure out what to do with. Something laden with emotional overtones that make them feel guilty when they go to sell the place.

If they can bring themselves to sell it, that is.

Now they’re stuck with it. What ARE they gonna do with it?

I’m pretty sure my son wants this house. But…before much longer, I do need to sit down with him and ask him whether he really does want it, or whether it would be better for me to sell it before I croak over and invest the proceeds in some cash instrument he can inherit and do with as he pleases. With minimal hassle, that is.

Of course, that’s one of those conversations none of us wants to have.

And as you know, we’re likely to put it off and put it off and put it off until…well…it’s too late.

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Speaking of selling or not selling the shack…

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ONE RINGY- DINGY! TWO RINGY-DINGIES! THREE….

No, I don’t recognize the caller’s number. That means chances are about nine out of ten that this is yet another goddamn nuisance phone solicitor.

Me: “And what would you be wanting?”

Her (after a brief, awkward pause: “Would you be interested in selling your house?”

Me: “GET OFF MY F*CKING PHONE AND STAY OFF MY F*CKING PHONE!!!!!!!!!

Gawd ALMIGHTY am I sick and tired of morons calling me on the phone to hustle me.

It should be illegal to call a phone number unless you have real, certifiable business with the number’s owner.

Heeeeeeee!  What d’you suppose would happen if, when an idiot phone solicitor gets you on the horn, you were to say, “Did you make an appointment to call me”?

Them: Duuuuhhhhh… Uhm…an appointment? 

You: Yeah. you need to have an appointment to call here. What’s your name and what is your appointment number?

{chortle!} Godlmighty, but I hate these people. Wish there was a better way to bug them than by blowing an air horn into the phone.

I wore out my air horn. Guess I should order another one from Amazon.

😀

Bastards.

Did you know that many of those folks — possibly most of them — are calling from inside prisons?

Phone solicitation is a prison industry. A substantial number of the jerks who pester you on the phone are more than jerks: they’re criminals. 

Hotter than the Hubs & Crazier than a Loon

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Actually, it’s relatively cool out there on the back porch: only 105° in the shade. Which is just NOT that hot.

My son is on his way over here — or soon will be — presumably to scold the bedoodles out of me. Again. Apparently I was rude to one of my coreligionists. Again. Gawd only knows what I said this time!

My mouth runs loose all the time — always has, ever since I was a little kid. And I really never know quite how I offend. Only that I do offend.

All.
The.
Time.

God only knows what I said this time. All M’jito says is that I offended the woman.

He has a pile of other issues to chide me about this afternoon…what those are, we shall soon hear. And hear. And hear.

See, my problem is that I’m fundamentally not a nice person. The upshot of that is that people tend not to like me. And I tend not to like people.

Result: hour after hour after hour of blogging. And other kinds of writing.

This, you see, is why I’m a writer. Because I can’t speak to my fellow humans without setting them off.

The issue only became noticeable in the first grade. We didn’t have kindergarten in Arabia, and so I had an extra whole year in which NOT to make little toddling enemies. But as soon as school started, I quickly had everyone hating me.

That’s OK. Who needs friends, anyway? F**k’em all, I say.

Actually….it began earlier than grade school. The first time I became aware that other kids hated me, I was a toddler. It was before we went to Arabia (I turned three years old when we arrived out there). My mother and I lived in Sausalito, California, while my father, a merchant mariner, went to sea. One day the two neighbor kids and I were playing in the sandbox in front of our house, there in California. We were about two years old at the time.

All of a sudden, out of the blue, the little girl (they were brother & sister) scooped up a shovelful of sand and….WHAM!!!!

She slammed it into my face. Shoveled that sand right into my eyes.

Ohhh GOD! How that hurt!!! I remember it to this minute — one of the only things I do remember from that age. I screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed. My poor mother came running outside, horrified and mystified.

That was, I guess, the first time I understood that other people hate me. 

Why they hate me: that usually escapes me. I have no idea what set that kid off. Only that she did what she could to hurt me the most she could in that moment.

And…well…that’s the way most people have acted, over the years.

You see where I find my affection for humanity, hm?

So: fast forward to 2025. 

I don’t know what I said to my coreligionist, but apparently it wasn’t nice.

Seriously: I cannot recall saying anything that I can imagine would be offensive. But apparently I did. And apparently it was bad enough that she reported it to my son.

Most of the time I have no clue what I say to offend these delicate flowers. But I sure as hell DO offend.

Welp…I imagine I’ll get an earful of it pretty quick. He hasn’t shown up yet. But he will.

He will.

For the Luvva Gawd

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Sooo…, I post a famous poem by Dylan Thomas, and some nincompoop calls my son and tells him I’m fukkin SUICIDAL????????

Holeeeeee shit! What IS the matter with people?

And why the HELL don’t high schools and universities require their idiot students to take at least one course in literature every semester? 

No, dear Reader. I am not contemplating suicide. Literature, yes. Death by self-garrotting (or whatever): not so much.

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This country has GOT to do something about our educational system!

[POEM] "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" – Dylan Thomas
byu/w0lvez71 inPoetry