A POST-OP CALL ON DR. JOKES

No doubt you’ve heard the old aphorism that “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Nowadays, you don’t need apples to keep the doctor away, because doctors (as a general practice) don’t make house calls — except perhaps for horse doctors whom it behooves to call on horses in unstable condition.

Anyway, tomorrow is NATIONAL JOKE DAY, and who better than docs to probe for laughs?

What do you get when you ask a proctologist for a second opinion?
Two fingers.

Four surgeons were discussing their work on their coffee break. The first said, “I think accountants are the easiest to operate on. You open them up and everything inside is numbered.”
The second said, “I think librarians are the easiest to operate on. You open them up and everything inside is in alphabetical order.”
The third said, “I like to operate on electricians. You open them up and everything inside is color-coded.”
The fourth said, “I like to operate on Republicans. They’re heartless, spineless, gutless, and their heads and their asses are interchangeable.”

Doctors can really try your patience. You wait months for an appointment, and after he examines you, he says, “I wish you had come in sooner.”

A doctor husband told his wife one night, “You’re not that great in bed anymore.”
The wife went into the bedroom and returned dressed to go out.”
The husband: “Where are you going at this hour?”
The wife: “To get a second opinion.”

My doctor told me I’m overweight. I said I want a second opinion. He said, “OK, you’re ugly too.”

A bellyacher went to his doctor and was told he had acute appendicitis. He asked: “Compared to what?”

Woman: “My husband swallowed some aspirins by mistake? What do I do?”
Doctor: “Give him a headache now!”

Well, all good things and bad jokes must come to an end….but no post of mine would be complete without a song:

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL….SONGS?

I am. As every red-blooded American male knows, and lives and dies with his favorite team, the National Football League preseason is already underway….and the equally heart-pounding college football season is just around the coronary. This calls for some spirited football songs to get those of us who aren’t already in the spirit in the spirit. I’ll kick things off with this oldie:

Next, we double up with the fight songs of the University of Maine and Georgia Tech:

And we enter the end zone with a W (as in Wisconsin):

I’ll close with this quote about “sport’s central allure — the way it reduces messy existence to clear winners and losers, good guys and bad guys.” –S. L. Price, Sports Illustrated, 2014

NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT

After all the posts I’ve posted, I have finally come up with one that is NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT. It is also pretext for a nose-y question I’ve been itching to ask for y-ears: How LOUD do you sneeze? Whether you (like me) sneeze as loud as Sneezy, or soft as a summer breezy, I believe you should sneeze as loud or soft as you pleasey (provided, some would surely say, that your sneezin’ be within range of reason).

Some also say sneezing calls for a certain etiquette, the predicate for which is not unlike table manners:

When it comes to sneezing etiquette, my wife says I should always sneeze into my sleeve. In the first place, I don’t ALWAYS sneeze….and when I do, I don’t believe in letting my sleeves in for a wetting. Marrying germs would be a snotgun wetting, which is sure to get my sleeves up in arms.

As we all nose, sneezing is a very ticklish subject, and I have only touched the surface of the matter….so I will close on a more in depth note:

P.S. Thank you for your very kind attention!

SELECT QUOTES & POTENT QUOTABLES

I suppose it could be said I’m something of a ‘quote-aholic.’ When I come across a quote that grabs me, I grab a pen to copy it, or seek a scissors to clip it — but in the latter scenario, tattoos of quotes don’t make the cut. You might call it the case of the taboo tattoo (in any case, it’s no skin off my knows: tattoo quotes are only skin deep, which is an obvious case of substance abuse).

Speaking of tattoos as a body, have you met Lydia?

Now, where was I? Oh, yes — just as you can learn a lot from Lydia, so too can you learn a lot from quotidia — which is a word I made up to rhyme with Lydia, and a definition I’m making up to get us back to where we started: namely, SELECT QUOTES AND POTENT QUOTABLES. Sorry we got off track, but after all, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

Anyway, here’s a gallon of my favorite saved quotes, in no curricular order:

“Order leads to all the virtues, but what leads to order?” –G. C. Lichtenberg

“You date a facade, marry the truth, and divorce your mistake.” — Carolyn Hax

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” –Elie Wiesel

“Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything.” –Robert Rubin

Of course, there’s a lot more where those came from, but….

MORE THINGS ARE LOOKING UP (AND DOWN)

Welcome to Part 2, songs #3, 4, & 5, of THINGS ARE LOOKING UP (AND DOWN). Part 1, as you recall, ended with Fred Astaire singing song #2 (“Things Are Looking Up”) — therefour, it’s only fair two follow up by letting song #3 go directly opposite the way of song #2. So hold on four dear life: we’re going….

For our UP song, we’re going UP AMONG THE CHIMNEY POTS, composed in 1930 by the long-lived Kay Swift*, one of the finest female (or male) songwriters of a time when there were relatively few composers of her gender:

* http://www.kayswift.com/bio.html

We’ve all had our ups and downs (especially if you were an elevator operator back in the day), so before you get too high, remember this:

Happy landings!

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP (AND DOWN)

You — if I may use you to speak for I — never know where ideas for a post will come from. Some come when you’re not even looking for post ideas, as when you’re reading a book, or when you’re sleeping — awakening you with a start (whether a literal start, or a starting point for a post.

As for me, I’m reading a memoir by Wheeler McMillen titled OHIO FARM, recalling his boyhood on his father Lew’s farm many years ago. Chapter 3 ends with this anecdote about a tenant farmer named Marve, who worked on the farm for a year:

“Father enjoyed Marve’s tenure, both because he was reliable and could joke and take a joke. He had an extraordinary facility for finding objects — pocket knives, coins, arrowheads — that were turned up in the fields. He was slope-shouldered and habitually walked in a posture less than erect. One day Father, half serious and half jocular, asked “Marve, why don’t you stand up straight? Throw back your shoulders and stick out your chest. Why walk with your eyes on the ground all the time? Why don’t you look up instead of down?” Marve grinned as he answered. “Lew, I never found nothin’ yet when I was lookin’ up.”

So, now that you know from whence cometh the idea for this musical epistle about ups and downs, are you up to me getting down to business? But the deal is such that it’s too much for one post, so this will be but Part One, giving you something to look forward to (?) next time. I’ll close this part looking up:

WELCOME TO AUGUST

“The weather in the month of August shouldn’t happen to a dog.” –Bill Vaughn

Welcome, amigos, to August on the first day thereof. For this august occasion, what do you say we begin the new month with a fitting old song or three (or four).

These are, of course, the Dog Days of Summer here in the northern sphere, but do you know the origin of the term? Here, my fat feathered friends, is the skinny:

What Are the Dog Days of Summer?

Speaking of dog days and the skinny:

Fans of Ol’ Blue Eyes may remember this 1966 hit. I was going to post Sinatra’s version, but here’s a different treatment I found which didn’t blow me away, but still has appeal in a summer breeze kind of way:

As an August rule, I hope you’ll keep cool. It’s no time to be a fool.

THE LAST OF THE SNOW WEEKENDS

I’ve often stretched the limits of wordplay in my posts, but with the above title, Icy myself as having gone where (s)no(w) man has gone before. I feel so confident in saying this, I’m offering a free snowball to anyone who can guess what the title is wordplay on….and appear in person to claim the prize (unfortunately, I can’t guarantee the prize will last long enough after I remove it from my freezer to throw at you (it is July in America, after all).

Anyway, your time is up. The title is a play on THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, the famous novel by James Fenimore (or less) Cooper. If you’ve never heard of it, that’s no excuse. I only accept novels I’VE never heard of as an excuse.

In case you’re wondering (like me) what all this is leading up to, I’m about to try to explain. You see, my oldest daughter recently emailed me that she enjoyed my post of July 19 which included clips from a film she loves (SOMEWHERE IN TIME), as well as “time songs”….and she wondered if I was looking for songs with July in the title. I replied to the effect that (other than patriotic songs) I wasn’t sure there are enough good OLD July songs for a post.

Well, it turns out that there are a few….although, IMHO, this first song isn’t particularly good. But it is timely, the vocalist (Helen Forrest) is good, and, to be morbid about it, she died in July (1999), so it has that going for it:

I’ll close with what I think is a better tune (Academy Award nominated for best original song), sung by a pre-TV Dinah Shore:

And with that, my time is up (well, not literally, but a novel ending is the last thing I was shooting for).

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO WARP

Now that we have witnessed (thanks to the January 6 Committee) what the world according to warped American minds looks like, the rest of us Americans can only hope that some semblance of sanity, integrity and justice will prevail. Are our principles mere pieties, or (for example) is no one really above the law? In upcoming elections, who will win the lion’s share of offices: the lyin’ crazies, or men and women of character?

The answer, my friend, is….

IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN

Perhaps you have noticed a recent commercial on TV for a product called Crepe Erase, featuring actress Jane Seymour. Normally, I wouldn’t give the commercial the time of day, but something about her struck a chord….and then I remembered: she co-starred (with Christopher Reeve) forty-two years ago in a film I’m almost embarrassed to admit I liked very much at the time (and perhaps still would if I saw it again):

The reason I say “almost embarrassed” is not so much that it received mostly poor reviews, but it’s what some people would dismiss as a sappy romance (film critic Leonard Maltin called it a “superficial tearjerker”). So call me a sucker for sappy romances — which I ordinarily am not — but in this case, I fell for it….and so I plead guilty.

For the next offering in this sequel to my previous post (IT’S ABOUT TIME), I’m taking a cue-pid from SOMEWHERE IN TIME to deliver one of the most romantic old Time songs in my quiver:

And now, not wanting to push love beyond its limits, I’ll take leave. I hate to say goodbye, because….