Can you believe it?

Auntie Mame said (paraphrasing): "Life is a banquet, and yet some poor chumps are starving to death!"

This seems especially true to me when I observe the election activity this year. Negativity seems to be a new way of life, and I don't like it at all. We have always had some negative ads, but this is ridiculous. Elaine and I took advantage of early voting and have done our duty, but we still have two weeks to be subjected to mail, telephone, email and tv messages telling us how bad each of the opposite candidates is. (I know that no amount of bad-mouthing will influence my vote and I hope it doesn't influence yours.) So, I would say to these negative people: "Relax! Begin to enjoy this wonderful banquet of a life. Look around you at all the beauty. It's there. When all you do and say is negative, you miss out on so much."

01. Cold feet? The Greenland marathon was run yesterday and won by a lady from Stockholm. I believe the temperature was a balmy 19 degrees, I could be wrong. I heard that one year the race was run in minus ten degree weather. The runners have to be very careful to avoid hidden cracks and crevices and some wear spiked running shoes so they don't slip on the ice.

02. Country Living. We live in a rural county in Maryland where there are many old churches that provide Saturday food fests. For instance, a couple of weeks ago we got carry-out crab cakes from one church. I'm not an expert on crab cakes, but Elaine said they were some of the best she had ever had.

Yesterday, we got carry-out fried oysters from another old country church. They were wonderful.

Soon, bazaar season will be upon us and we will be able to do the rounds of the churches and sample all the goodies here is the "land of pleasant living."

As a person involved with several senior citizen organizations, I get to attend lots of funerals. I make it a point to eulogize many of these persons if I feel that they are not being served well in that regard by clergy or relatives. After these services, there usually is a luncheon put on by the "church ladies". The food is always yummy, and helps to keep sweet memories of the deceased stay with us.

03. Commandments. Recently, I finished listening to a book on tape that I highly recommend. The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs. AJ is an editor at Esquire magazine and is the author of several books, including The Know-It-All, where he recounts his "humble quest to become the smartest person in the world" by reading the Encyclopedia Britanica from A to Z.

I will not try to give a review of AJ's book on tape. My son, Chris, is an author and does much better than I could ever do at book reviews. Suffice it to say, I enjoyed the book on tape so much that I ordered a print copy of the book from Amazon so that I could get the full effect of AJ's scholarship.

Just imagine, finding all of the commandments and suggestions in both the new and old testaments of the Bible and trying to observe them for a whole year. Try the read.. you'll like it.

04. Goats? A book that I recently read was The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson and a helper that doesn't get mentioned in the copy of the book that I have. After some delay, the movie based on the book has finally been released. (Did it first have to get US Government approval?)

Since I was in a small way connected with Air Force people who acted similarly to those (real persons) mentioned in the book, I got completely absorbed in the book. Once again, I will not try to give a review of the book. I will tell you that I was able to use one of the techniques mentioned in the book to save my life when surrounded by drunken Army tank drivers in Nuremberg, Germany fifty years ago. Read my book about that one.

05. Happy seniors. Speaking of banquets.. last week, it was my privilege to help set up the induction ceremony for the 2010 members of the Maryland Senior Citizens Hall of Fame. Fifty seniors were honored for doing years of volunteer service to their communities. These inductees had been involved in all kinds of activity that helped their fellow citizens of all ages. It was indeed a happy occasion. No negativity there.

I want to mention one of the inductees and I don't think he would mind. His last name is Vaughn (without the "a"). He brought a group of cheering supporters with him.. 6 tables of them.. 59 ladies! Since we have (almost) the same last name, I asked him to take some of whatever he has that makes him so attractive to women and bottle it for me. (Only kidding, Elaine...)

06. Amazing. Simon Cowell's "Got Talent" franchise now broadcasts in over 30 countries, including China. In Shanghai, the winner was a 23 year old man who plays the piano with his toes! Liiu Wei lives in Beijing and lost his legs at age 10. Parents.. tell this to your reluctant piano playing kids.

07. Parlez-vous? The Associated Press reports that a woman in England speaks English with a French accent even though she has never been in France or studied French. She has a condition known as Foreign Accent Syndrome. There are only a few cases of this around the world. Supposedly, the syndrome appeared suddenly after she had a severe migraine attack.

08. Old friends. Recently, coming back from three weeks at the ocean, I tried to catch up on three weeks of newspapers... including some online from my Massachusetts hometown. Of course, the first thing I checked was the obituaries.

Baltimore Sun: I saw a memorial to the lady who was my secretary for several years at the Social Security Administration in Woodlawn, Maryland.

Letha Alston: a marvelous secretary and good friend who made a big impact on my life. She passed at the age of 66 in 2006..

Letha once gave me a birthday card that said: "You remind me of Chinese Food: Egg Foo Old!"

Letha also was a great supplier of jokes for my stand-up comedy routines: the one I remember best has the punchline: "that's nacho cheese!"

I miss Letha.

New Bedford Standard Times:

David Burr, who died on his 78th birthday.. September 30th, 2010. Dave was a friend at Rodman School in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He was a comedian type kid who always had a joke or a funny tale to tell. He was another influence on my life. RIP

09. Resurrection? Last week in Baltimore, an 89 year old lady was found on the floor of her bathroom. The policemen assumed that she was dead and contacted her son, who made arrangements to donate her body to science.

When the college worker came to get the body, he noticed that the body's arm moved. He checked her pulse, and sure-enough, she was alive.

Baltimore police will get a refresher course in what to check for when an apparently dead body is found. (read Edgar Allen Poe)

10. Another resurrection? A Michigan dog was "put down" by its owner because of a painful spinal condition. The owner put the corpse in the garage to be buried later. The next morning, he found the dog standing up and giving him a dirty look.

11. Stink bugs. Well, the invasion has finally come to Maryland. We have always had some stink bugs, but this is ridiculous. Open the door, they fly in. Squash them, they give off a pungent odor. Some people like the odor. Most don't. SuZee won't eat them. Elaine wants them thrown down the toilet. I usually just pick them up on a paper and throw them out.

The local orchard folks are very upset. These bugs destroy the looks of apples and nobody will buy them, including canners. Farmers can't use the chemicals that could kill them because of environmental hazards. Some want to import Japanese stink-bug predators, but that may become a problem ecologically also. Its a problem that needs to be addressed before next year's crop season.

12. Humor. Those who have XM radio have a great resource for humor. There is a "clean joke" channel. As I've mentioned before.. a true humorist does not have to resort to dirty jokes or cuss words to get a laugh. I am developing a blog for clean jokes that I have accumulated for almost fifty years... visit: http://joevaughansjokes.blogspot.com/

((I apologize, George Carlin!))

Enjoy the banquet!

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Odds and Ends

We'll be heading to Ocean City on Sunday, and I need to purge myself of some news comments that I have been saving up. You don't need to read this. I won't get mad.



01. Lester Young, "the President of Jazz" would have been 100 years old last week, if he had lived. He blew a very sweet sax. He died at age 49. (The army discharged him for using marijuana.. its just as well, because he refused to fire a gun and kill anyone.)



02. Somebody named "the great Zucchini" performed in DC last Saturday. What he did, I haven't the faintest idea.. but with a name like that it was probably wonderful.



03. Shoppers grocery shops in Maryland will no longer supply paper towels in their rest rooms. They feel this will help the environment. Instead, mechanical air blowers will dry your hands. Hey.. I've got news for you.. if you have ever been in a Men's Room you would know that men who don't see paper towels do not wash their hands. So, what would you rather have? A paperless environment or germ-infested hand shakes?

04. A company in Spain is making laptop holding bags that show front pages of newspapers as disguise. Urban camouflage!

05. An 87-year old is accused of killing a 91-year old fellow resident in a Columbia, Maryland senior citizen residence. The 87-year old beat the other to death with his fists. He was a former boxer.


My grandfather was forced to go into a nursing home when he was 86 years old, for his own protection. His children thought that he would burn his home down when he lit his pipe. The nursing home just happened to be in the house in which he was born.. in fact, his room was the room in which he was born. He liked to control TV in "his" common room in the building and another octogenarian resident didn't always like what he watched. He and my grandfather used to stand there arguing about TV, punching each other, like they used to do, 60 years earlier. Luckily, they were always stopped before they beat each other to death.


06. The Discovery Channel is starting a 5-year series called "Curiosity". Some of the episodes will be called: "Are we alone in the Universe?", "What is a virus?", "What is consciousness?", and other titles designed to bend our minds.


07. Cal Ripken, Jr's Number 8 is back at Camden Yards. Four guys had kidnapped it for a while.


08. Nicolas Sarkozy is getting ready to talk about a proposed carbon tax that would raise the cost of driving a car or heating a home in France. Will the French stand for more taxes? "Let them eat gas!"

09. A proposed tower building as tall as the Empire State Building has been circumcised in New York City. The City Planning Department ruled that 200 feet would have to be lopped off of the top of the building so that it would not upstage the city's long-reigning tallest building.


10. Bose has come out with the QuietComfort 15. It is a noise-cancellation headphone. Supposedly, for $300, you no longer have to hear "the rumble of the subway train, the rattle of the taxis..." as Stephen Williams of the New York Times reports.


11. Lang Lang, a 27-year old Chinese pianist is being called "Bang Bang" for his noisy rendition of one of Chopin's etudes.

12. A Republican candidate for governor of Idaho, Rex Rammell, heard someone talk about tags bought by hunters to allow them to shoot wolves. When that person also mentioned there should be tags for killing the President, Rammell said: "Obama tags? We'd buy some of those." He later told people that this was a joke.. and "besides, Idaho has no jurisdiction to issue tags in DC." Big joke, eh, Rex? What a jerk!

13. Along the same lines, the head of the Carroll County Republican Party has made it known that she is very upset that the name for September 11 was changed through Democratic efforts from Patriot's Day to A Day of Remembrance and Service. Huh?!

I am now an Independent and can look objectively at the utterances of both parties... but utterances like this one and the one before cause me to wonder what the devil is going on with the current members of the Party of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was a uniter and not a divider.

14. Katharine Q. Seelye wrote about some statements that independents believe and disbelieve about Health Care Reform:

Independents believe these.. says Katharine:

The Federal Government will become directly in involved in making personal health care decisions for the public. (MYTH)

Health care will be rationed. (DEBATABLE)

Taxpayers will be required to pay for abortions. (MYTH)

Independents do not believe these.. says Katharine:

The Government will make the elderly decide how and when to die. (MYTH)

A public option will put private insurance companies out of business. (MYTH)

Illegal immigrants will be covered. (MYTH)

Regardless of the comments made by Rep. Wilson of South Carolina and FOX news, the items labeled MYTH above, remain MYTHS.

15. After all this, I will finish with what is supposed to be a joke.. but is probably a real situation, experienced by many husbands:

One day, a mild-mannered man decides that he is tired of his wife always bossing him around, so he decides to put his foot down and let his wife know, once and for all, who is in charge.

When he comes home from work that night he tells her:

"From now on, I'm the man of this home, and my word is law! When I come home from work, I want my supper on the table. Also, I want you to press a shirt and pants for me to wear tonight, because I am going out drinking with the boys. After that, I want you to draw me a hot bath. And after my bath, guess who is going to dress me and comb my hair?"

His wife replies: "The Undertaker!"

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