Green and Bear It

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Although the honor was not sought, three months ago I received a field promotion (literally) to Head Gardener at the Jarlsberg Estate. This is a task for which I was entirely unprepared, although I'd done grunt work in the gardens for years under expert supervision.

I've been doing my best to tend to everything and I've been surprised and delighted at the number of bushes, grasses, and flowers that have bloomed and blossomed because Kathy knew to plant things that rather magically come back year after year even if an idiot is left in charge. 

Mind you, I don't know the names of almost any of these colorful visitors but bit by bit I'm learning about them. And while I've never been an enthusiastic gardener, I've always appreciated Kathy's landscaping...and darned if I'm not getting a bit of satisfaction (and sunlight and exercise) by trying to keep everything from going to hell.

So far, so good - and it cheers me every time I look out on all of these colors.

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Speaking of colors, we've all been seeing a lot of rainbows in popular media lately in honor of Pride Month. And hopefully to no one's surprise here, I'm fully supportive of the occasion and the folks this month is all about. As the cliche goes, some of my best friends (and best readers) are members of the LGBTQ+ community, and almost all of them have walked a hard road to get to where we are today.

To be clear, I'm not celebrating drag queens in kids' classrooms (although I'm a fan of drag queen / country music artist Trixie Mattel, who says his/her performances are only for the over-18 crowd) nor do I support making a public spectacle of private sexual behavior no matter what team you're playing for. 

But I'm pushing 70 and just lost the love of my life. And I think true commitment to another person, body and soul, is a rare and beautiful thing. So I just want everybody to be who they are, to love who they want, and to treat others with caring and respect. That's something anyone can be proud of during Pride Month.

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This week (Wednesday to be exact) sees another big change coming to the Jarlsberg household: I'm cutting the cable. Despite having NO premium channels, my most recent bill came in at $192 (and adding insult to injury, the provider is adding another $2.99/month charge to send your bill on paper).

I'm done watching network or cable news from anyone (I get my news from the Wall Street Journal and the Scott Adams podcast) and I haven't watched a network entertainment show in years. Kathy and I greatly enjoyed "Jeopardy!" because we turned it into a drinking game and exercise in improv comedy, but it would be sad just to watch by myself.

Mind you, I'm not going cold turkey on television - I've got subscriptions to Amazon Prime and Netflix, I've discovered that I get the various networks (and more) live and in high-def using a small indoor TV antenna, and while playing around with my "smart" LG television last night I discovered something called "LG channels" which supplies 179 streaming channels for free (albeit with commercials, like broadcast TV).

My new service package will keep my landline phone (yes, I'm the last holdout), increase my Internet speed by a factor of five, and save me about $120 a month. And if I'm unable to TIVO Democrat kangaroo court proceedings, well, I'll just have to live with it.

Word of the Daze

The cartoon above is funny because it's true, although there's just as great a likelihood that it's not funny because it's true.

All my days are difficult lately, but today was particularly hard. So while I wanted to do a post just to show that I'm still around, I couldn't come up with anything except gloom to share. So I went to a favorite clipart site to find a suitably depressing image and entered the word "hollow," expecting to find images of sad people with no more innards than a milk chocolate Easter bunny.

Instead, I got the image you see on the computer screen which would be more appropriate for a children's book called "A Funny, Sunny Day in Happy Hollow."

And it made me laugh at myself for being self-indulgent and self-pitying. So I decided that sharing the whole silly affair with you would be the most honest and accurate snapshot I can give you of how I'm doing.

And speaking of truth in cartooning...

This was Monday's "Johnny Optimism" cartoon and it was vaguely based on reality. Daughter J is now staying at her nearby apartment more frequently while moving in, and upon arriving with More Stuff on Sunday she discovered an abandoned parakeet in a feces-flecked birdcage sitting under an outdoor staircase.

This being Texas, that's a pretty effective way of making broiled parakeet - so she rescued the bird and took it to her apartment (after checking a variety of nearby doors to make sure no one belonged to the bird). 

Our guess was that a family was moving and had forgotten the bird ("Well I thought he was in your car!") and would be getting in touch with the apartment management. Only the office was closed and wouldn't be open again until Tuesday. So I had to gallop off to Walmart and buy parakeet food, while Daughter J placed an emergency order to Amazon to get a variety of birdy treats and toys ("It will help us build trust," she explained). 

That night, she discovered that her entire apartment was filling with the smell of moldy bird poo and asked if it could be kept in my house instead. I did not find the argument compelling and said "no." But first thing Monday morning, I headed out to a pet store to buy a replacement cage just so Daughter J wouldn't have to deal with stink while doing a good deed.

But before the bird could rent a little U-Haul and make the move, the owners (who had found a note left on their door) turned up full of apologies and promising to take better care of the bird. They were indeed in the process of moving and had put the bird outside while moving things around. And no, that didn't make sense to us either, but the people seemed decent enough so we gave them the bird, so to speak. And there were kids involved who were glad to see their chirpy little charge again.

So when it was time to put together a Johnny cartoon, I had birds on the brain. And while this particular parakeet didn't know the words and choreography of "YMCA," had it stayed in our family long enough we would have taught it.

Rhesus Pieces

REPORTER: Why is this outbreak happening now?

FAUCI: It's as close to November as we were able to time it.

REPORTER: Will we be seeing a lot more feces-flinging?

FAUCI: No, just the usual amount for an election year.

REPORTER: Can Monkeypox be transmitted by air?

FAUCI: We don't know yet, but if you hear a fart and smell bananas you should run.

REPORTER: What are the early signs of Monkeypox?

FAUCI: You get "Last Train to Clarksville" stuck in your head.

REPORTER: Why is a third-world disease breaking out in America?

FAUCI: Putin.

REPORTER: Putin?

FAUCI: Yeah, Putin your d*ck where it doesn't belong. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!!!

REPORTER: It's good to see you still have your puckish sense of humor, Doctor.

FAUCI: Well, the shots help.

REPORTER: There's a vaccine?!

FAUCI: There's tequila.