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Sort of Lisping, Yet Short of Lisping

1. Physicist insists his wrist is twisted. “Nyet. It’s just a cyst that persists,” says fellow physicist Seth Sovich. “That’s the gist.”
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Lists I’d Like to See
1. A ship foundering at sea and listing heavily. Mostly Letterman Top 10 Lists and maybe a shopping list or To-Do list.
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Lisps I’d Like to Hear
1. I myth you (as said to any of the Greek Gods)
2. Q. What’s the differenths between a pith helmet and pith helmet?
     A. If you don’t know the difference, urine trouble.
3. ♫Itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini♫ is my favorite thong.
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And finally, a colleague of mine has ascended to the highest office in the land. Bernie Schwartz now works on the 108th floor of the Sears Tower. It’s the highest office in the land. Yeth it ith.

Highest Standard of Living in the World

These new Chryslers are the bomb. I managed to drive this baby right back to 1956. A simpler time where “I like Ike” and 🎶you ain’t nothing but a hound dog.🎶

Jesus FAQs

For those unfamiliar with the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth, I’ve provided some FAQs to help people reacquaint themself with the great Savior:

  1. Did Jesus ever get stoned? No, but many times he came close to getting stoned when he ran afoul of the Romans.
  2. Did Jesus write anything? Nope. All his gospels are “as told by.” Think of them as being ghost written – by the Holy Ghost.
  3. Did Jesus have dates? Yes. Hundreds of them. He loved dates and they were a very abundant and cheap food source in the greater Judea area.
  4. Did Jesus’s brother James, suffer from an inferiority complex? Yup. How could he not? His older brother was a light unto the world, whereas James once lit a manger on fire. Surprisingly though, James could change water into ice, but only if the temperature dropped below 32°.
  5. Does Jesus have the ability to integrate the content of all your applications into one seamless platform? Child please!
  6. Why doesn’t Jesus just return and shower the world in beatific love? He has. Several times, but most people are antagonistic toward this itinerant, long-haired hippie spouting off about doing unto others and loving thy neighbor. He’s had poor management of late – like Elvis did in the 1970s. Where’s an apostle when you need one.
  7. How dark was Jesus’ skin? Let’s put it this way – he wouldn’t exactly be welcomed in some of his churches today.
  8. If Jesus had a residency in Las Vegas, what would he perform? Well, he’d probably kickoff the show with Sermon on the Mount and maybe follow that up with a version of “Crocodile Rock.” He’d blow away illusionist David Copperfield’s disappearing spectacles. Instead of making an elephant vanish, Jesus would do the same with hate and anger. Great stuff. At the end of the show I’d envision a mic drop and then an ascension up through the proscenium arch.
  9. Did Jesus have any tattoos? Yes. One. It read: WWMD – What Would Moses Do.
  10. Did he throw a ball like a girl? No way. Not JC. In fact he could slingshot a rock better than David (not me, but the Biblical David,).
  11. Was Jesus musical? Kinda. He could play air versions of all the popular instruments back in the day: air drums, air flute and a mean air harp. And yet he was scrupulous about never putting on any airs.
  12. Who cut Jesus’s hair? A very young Barbara Walters.
  13. Was Jesus at Woodstock? Inconclusive. He would’ve blended in so well with the rest of the hippies, nobody would’ve noticed except maybe Crosby, Stills and Nash who referred to him in their song Woodstock, “Well I came upon the child of God, he was walking along the road…”
  14. Was Jesus aware of the dangers of asbestos? No…asbestos we can tell anyway.
  15. Did Jesus get along with his father? Yes, although he thought his dad was kind of an absentee father, who was there in spirit only.
  16. Do people still love Jesus today? Well yes, but people seem to love the “idea” of Jesus more than actually practicing his message of non-judgment, self-reflection, forgiveness and the Golden Rule. Many use his good name to fleece their flock of donations to buy mansions on the ground, instead of mansions in the sky.

 

“All Syracuse Public Schools are… Closed Due to Snow.”

“Holy holiday on ice, Batman,” exclaimed 9-year old David Hardiman, upon hearing the jolliest words of the holiday season. It was 6:30 in the morning and I’d waited breathlessly in paralytic anticipation next to the radio for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably about the time it takes for a snowflake to fall lazily to earth. This unexpected Snow Day electrified my body with ripples of sheer joy, causing me to shimmy down the hallway in a funky celebratory gyration – like the way Steph Curry does after swishing a spectacular trey.

 

Ode to Joy for this Snow Day – Well at Least Owed to Somebody I Suppose

That’s no day. I mean, that Snow Day!

For my snow day good fortune I felt a great debt of gratitude to somebody or something. This bonus day, this meteorological windfall, this unexpected gift of the Magi was way better than frankincense, myrrh or gold. It was the pinnacle of pre-pubescent happiness. And when I think of the small world I inhabited in the early 1970’s, I’m surprised I even fit into it. But fit I did, and some experiences were tailor made for me. Case in point: a sweet and dearly unearned school “snow day” – or as we called them back in the days of the Ice Capades, a “Holiday on Ice.”

 

When those cheery words “All Syracuse public schools are closed” were broadcast over the airwaves from on high, all public school pupils were elated, and all the pupils’ pupils were dilated. This eye-opening experience allowed us to see our way clear to a sensuous morning of deep, cozy hibernation nestled in our beds, followed by a strenuous afternoon of deep, snowy celebration sledding with our friends.

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As it was, we were already knee-deep in juvenile joy because the brawny forces of nature had defeated the bureaucratic powers of mandatory school attendance. Truant officers would have to find someone else to hassle today, because when afternoon came we’d be chest deep in snow drifts – and that’s no drift. I mean, and that snow drift was huge.

 

In my little 9-year-old way I realized that when mounds of the white stuff triggered a school closing, it was a kind of “white privilege” that everyone could share in equally. Snow: the equal opportunity precipitate.

 

My early Christmas present was given me by WNDR’s “Dandy” Dan Leonard – 1260 AM on your radio dial. His unctuous radio inflections are imprinted on me like a tattoo I can’t remove. The larger point however, was that there’d be no school on this fiercely-snowing, traffic-snarling Tuesday in the arctic tundra masquerading as the city of Syracuse, NY, and I couldn’t have been any happier if Marcia Brady had asked me to a sleepover. Read the rest of this entry »

“I Will Not Sleep, Until I Find a Cure for Insomnia”

Those are the words of Dr. Gershwin Fassbender, Director of the SIA (Slumber Institute of America). Like most of the employees at the Slumber Institute, Dr. Fassbender is woke. In fact maybe a little too woke and that’s what accounts for the insomnia.

 

The Problem: Nocturnal Adrenalizing

When cartoon figures suffer from insomnia it’s funny. But when it’s you, well that’s another story.

We will survey the career of Dr. Fassbender in due course, but first let us examine the disorder of insomnia. Insomnia is a pervasive national calamity responsible for grievous errors in judgment including leaving a tip at McDonald’s, watching Hee Haw or sending money to a Nigerian prince. Chronic insomnia dumbs us down, jitters us up and can leave us in a state of trivial speculation whereby one wonders if the employees at Yahoo! drink Yoo-hoo. I do. Do you?

 

The vicious circle of sleeplessness presents its ironic geometry when you lie awake all night worried that you won’t fall asleep. This self-fulfilling prophecy of not getting to sleep keeps you up at night, so during the day you shuffle about somnambulistically. And if we’ve learned anything from somnambulism (sleep-walking) is that it’s very hard to pronounce and even harder to spell.

 

The need for regular, replenishing sleep is a metabolic requirement providing normative homeostasis to an otherwise unregulated body. Despite what Big Pharma might have you think, there is no substitute for restorative, deep REM sleep. Big Pharma offers nothing but Ambien. Little Pharma has come up short on the matter and Medium Pharma has just stayed home on the Pharm. Let me illustrate this disconnect in another way; Ambien is to sleep as drinking ocean water is to thirst – it may solve your problem in the short run, but there’s hell to pay in the long run. And hell, I’m told, extends credit to no one.   Read the rest of this entry »

Become a Crematorium Operator. It’s the Undertaking of a Lifetime.

If you have a burning desire to relieve the anguish of bereaved families, consider a career as an Ignition Mortician. If you value hefty profits, nifty puns and lethal clichés explore a career where your goal is to fire people every day.

These days crematoriums are hip and cool-ish for the ghoulish who wish to perish anguish.  

Crematorium Franchise Bullet Points

  • Experience the job satisfaction of watching your best work go up in smoke
  • Job Burnout? Not a problem. In fact, it’s encouraged.
  • Job Security? Not a problem. In fact, you get to fire people regularly.
  • Urn while you Burn
  • Enjoy killer benefits and clients with smokin’ hot bodies 
  • Did you know you’re not supposed to cremate bodies in months that have “embers” in them?
  • Job interviews are very thorough, but don’t worry, you won’t be grilled

Crematoriums – They’re the toast of the town.

 

Consider the Crematorium Franchise that’s Your Best Match

 

  1. Return to Cinder – Is there a better way to say, “Elvis has left the building?” Than to say ♫Return to Cinder♫
  2. Bereaved, Bothered and Bewildered – Helps families to grieve against a backdrop of Cole Porter music. Reviewers say ♫It’s De-Lovely, It’s De-lightful♫
  3. Dust in the Wind Crematorium – Very popular in Kansas
  4. Good Humor Ice Crematorium – Maybe it’s in bad humor, but the cone-shaped urns are available in waffle or wafer
  5. Burning Man – Go out in a blaze of artistic self-expression in this final bonfire of the vanities. Ensure your funeral rite doesn’t go wrong by designing your own signifying pyre.
  6. Next of Kin-dling – Popular with kinfolk in Appalachia
  7. Don’t Ash, Don’t Tell – Have yourself anonymously cremated. What happens at Don’t Ash, Don’t Tell, stays at Don’t Ash, Don’t Tell.
  8. Char Ming – Dynastic Chinese families crematorium of choice. Cremains returned in a little to-go urn.
  9. Cremains of the Day – Designed to meet the funerary needs of literary aficionados
  10. Blackened Blue Fish – Designed to meet the funerary needs of fish afishionados who’ve lost a tropical pet fish
  11. The Uranus Society – Competes with the more established Neptune Society. As one might expect, the Uranus Society is a pain in the ash.

 

Don’t delay. Your future cremains to be seen.

If you’ve been carrying a torch for crematoriums, rekindle that old flame with a hot, new franchise. Again, in the words of Elvis: Crematoriums are Just a hunk-a-hunk-a burning love

Cremation: Think of it as a different kind of Tinder

We look forward to hearing from you (even though we haven’t mentioned how to get in touch with us).

We’ll keep a candle burning for you in the window.

An Excerpt from My Inner Dialogue

Someone’s Gotta Do This. And I Am that Someone.

Pandora’s Box. Go ahead and open it. You know you want to.

It is often said that to lead a happy life you should, “Dance like nobody’s watching.” I get that. But with a twist. What brings me joy is to, “Write like nobody’s reading.” And based upon my Google Analytics of late, that statement has never been truer. There’s no denying what brings us joy. The heart wants what the heart wants.

So as I bathe myself in literary pixie dust in preparation for a writer’s journey into rapture, I find myself in my element. I’ve got my backlit keyboard, my predatory imagination and I’ve just cracked open a fresh ginger-hibiscus kombucha. I’m not only in my element, I’ve become an element: Hardimanium – a rare psychoactive literary element consisting of Higgs bosons and a knowing smirk.

 

 

Now as I gently loosen the tethers mooring me to conventional and unspectacular wisdom, I feel the motivating presence of a million eyes not reading this. Such exquisite freedom. My gatekeepers have been put on administrative leave and in their absence no bureaucratic censor exists to burden my thoughts. The swirling excesses of my cerebral vortices are tamed only by the limits of the English language.

 

Yes, it’s the perfect literary storm and the NWS (No, not the National Weather Service, but the Narcotized Writers’ Sanctuary) is calling for a lacerating Category 5 hurricane once the literary storm travels up your optic nerve and saturates your consciousness. But please don’t evacuate yourself just yet. I promise to keep you securely within the eye of Hurricane David, at an observationally safe distance from its high-velocity humor and killer premises. You might get a little wet, but that’s only in keeping with the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who mused so eloquently: “Into each life some rain must fall.”

 

I thank you for the absence of your presence. How else can I write so uninhibitedly?

So let us open a Pandora’s Box of temptations. Pearls of Wisdom from a cultured oyster. English expressions of ephemeral ideas. A disgorgement of mental freneticism. A Hobson’s Choice to be sure.

 

Cutting and Pasting My Inner Dialogue:

1. What if the Pep Boys were Impressionists and not Auto Parts bobble heads? Instead of Manny, Moe and Jack, they’d be Manet, Monet and Jacques.
2. Are there boats that ship dead people to ports of final call? And if so, would that ship be a place where corpses are berthed? Cuz I would think it would be pretty difficult to berth a corpse…I mean the gestation period alone.
3. Amazing Feet: Marathoner wins race 7 years running.
4. So I guess “new train smell” is just something I’ll never experience.
5. Things not often thought about: At the height of his popularity Elvis was drafted into the Army. And he actually had to go. No dispensation for the King of Rock & Roll. Can anyone imagine Eminem or Jay-Z having had to serve a 2 year hitch in the Army? “Nope, I’m sorry Mr. Mathers you’ll need to guard an ammo dump at Fort Benning for a couple of years.” Or…”Tough luck Shawn Carter, these potatoes won’t peel themselves here at Camp Granada.”
6. I’m a Lightning Rod for Statically Electric Ideas, These Quips Seek Me Out, not Vice Versa
7. Have you ever put your iPhone in your pocket and then pulled it out a few minutes later after it has been rubbing against your leg, activating any number of functions. You look at the display and it shows the nuclear launch codes for the United States or some kind of portal to the Cosmic Architecture of the universe. You think, “Jesus, what did I do. I hope I can get it to revert to its default state.”
Well this is essentially the same hope I have for mankind.

A List of Better Known Marx Brothers:
Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Zeppo and Gummo

A List of the Lesser Known Marx Brothers:
  1. The Communist: Pinko
  2. The Master Mason: Stucco
  3. The Cowboy: Gaucho
  4. The Mexican: Taco
  5. The Snack Eater: Nabisco
  6. The African-American: Oprah…OK not quite, but Oprah backwards is Harpo. So there’s that.

This detonation of pent up verbal supply is only a tiny fraction of the real story. The rest is in Pandora’s hands for safekeeping.

Having Your Archaic and Eating It Too (Berry Good)

The golfer Lee Elder’s father was known as Elder the Elder. Lee was known as Elder the Younger.
Elder family legend indicates that Lee Elder’s grandfather (who was known as Elder the elder Elder) had hygiene issues. He had dingleberries so old they were elderberries.

I’m Just Another Grammar Cracker. If Oliver Cromwell was the Lord Protector of England, I am the Lord Enabler of English.

If Joe Namath Lived During the Time of Shakespeare, this confusion might arise at the Knights’ Induction Center. Let’s listen in:
Drill Instructor (DI): Welcometh all to thine Queen’s army. I shall requireth some information from each of thou before we begin drills.

Not your average Joe…Namath.

The DI then walks up to Broadway Joe and asks him, “Nameth?”

Joe Namath: Yes.
DI: What do you mean Yes? Your nameth is Yes.
Joe Namath: No. My Nameth is Namath.
DI: What?
Joe Namath: No. Watt’s the inventor of the Steam Engine.
DI: Huh. Who’s the inventor of the Steam Engine?
Joe Namath: No. Who’s the guy on first.
DI: Will you just telleth me thine nameth.
Joe Namath: My nameth is Namath.
DI: Yeah and my nameth is Queen Elizabeth
Joe Namath: Strange, you don’t look like royalty.
DI: Alright funny boy, to the stockade for you.

***All Hallows’ Eve Approaches and I Celebrate It in All Its Ghoulishness***

The offspring of a Smiley Face, a Pumpkin and a Kool-Aid pitcher participating in a ménage a trois.

1. Pumpkin Spice – The most seasonal of the Spice Girls

2. Maize Maze – What they call a corn maze on the reservation
3. Smell My Feet – The foul sequel to “Trick or Treat”
4. In Hungary Halloween is not ghoulish. It’s goulash. It’s a very goulash holiday. Of course in Hungary the get a lot of things ass backwards. They believe Buddha was a pest. Even named their Capitol after him.
5. Halloween is secretly supported by the American Dental Association where 5 out of 5 dentists surveyed recommend Halloween candy for their patients who are able to write a check.
6. My heart bursts with joy when a bewildered 3 year old, dressed in an oversized Spiderman costume and out on their first trick or treat escapade comes to my door with their pillow case open and just blankly stares at me until they finally turn to their parents and say, “Line?” And then the parents whisper, “Trick or Treat.” Priceless.