Tag archives: humor

There are those who believe that “Life is a test” and that, at the end, we all get a grade of H. Everything then depends on whether it’s an H-Plus, for Heaven, or an H-Minus, for Hellswhere. But there are enough hard tests along the way to make life often seem to be a little […]

It has been said (by me, in one of my Pot-Shots epigrams) that “Sometimes it seems all of life is a waiting room.” One of the “Beat” poets of the 1950s wrote a poem which consisted of nothing but the word “wait,” repeated hundreds of times, covering an entire page – except for the very […]

I have always been in favor of equal rights for women (although I admit that, in my lifetime, it has sometimes been unsettling to see women police, and women doing other work which was hitherto mainly or entirely the preserve of men.) It is sad to think of how many gifted women, in former times, […]

There is no statistical proof, but I would hazard a guess that, in most people’s lives, the pleasant surprises are outnumbered by the disappointments. My own life is a case in point. The big happy surprises can be counted on one hand. The disappointments would require all the fingers, and perhaps most of the toes.  […]

If you ever see a sundial inscribed with a Latin expression, it will probably say: HORAS NON NUMERO NISI SERENAS, which can be translated as “I count only the happy hours.” This is highly appropriate for a sundial, which tells the time only when the sun is shining.  But the idea of always “looking on […]

Every now and then (daily), a little voice in my head says: “Oh-oh, dude…”  This time we were on the Shinkansen, the 200-mile-per-hour Japanese bullet train that is so smooth you could probably give yourself an intricate tattoo without risk of injury. “Ow!” “What are you doing?” Pat asked. I pulled the tip of the […]

Embarrassment comes in many shapes and sizes – but what we all find particularly interesting are other people’s “most embarrassing moments.” I’m going to tell you mine – but first, some peripheral observations. Such stories usually seem to involve unexpected revelations of things we normally try to keep “private” – particularly if they have to […]

Until a fairly recently, there was no Mohs in my life. Now there are two of them. The first Mohs was a gift of Google; the second, of a crossword puzzle. Here’s what happened: My dermatologist, whom I’ll call Dr. O, told me that the hard bump which had developed on the back of my […]

That long-running sitcom All in the Family always began with Archie and Edith singing a sort of pseudo-nostalgic ditty, “Those Were The Days”, which included the line, “Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.” President Herbert Hoover was indeed emblematic of his time. In his four-year term (1929-33), he had the misfortune […]

One of the things I’m glad to have learned in high school physics was the explanation of why movies “move.” The fact is that those projected pictures don’t really move at all.  But, if your eye sees a number of still pictures in rapid sequence, and each one is only slightly different from the preceding […]

There are many ways to acknowledge defeat. Besides simply putting your hands in the air, probably the most universally recognized symbol is the white flag – which can also indicate a desire to parlay. You may remember a true episode in the movie Battleground, in which a representative from the Germans comes, under a white […]

Probably one of the most famous of all motivational slogans was first thought up in 1911 by Thomas J. Watson, the man who became head of IBM: His brain-wave was the single word: “Think.” But now that we have machines so “smart” that their ability to think is a matter for philosophical debate, we also […]

One idea that keeps cropping up in literature is the notion that our land – whichever land it happens to be – is at least in some way as holy as those far-off Biblical places we have been taught about since childhood.  Here are two fine examples: First, we have the mystical William Blake, whose […]

“Are you chewing gum?!” Pat asked. “Hai!” I said, using one of the many (three) Japanese words I knew. We were standing next to The Great Buddha of Kamakura “Daibutsu”, the largest outdoor Buddha in Japan. Built in 1252, the 44-foot-tall, 121-ton seated Buddha draws more tourists than the world’s largest ball of saved wire […]

I went through much of my life without being aware of this simple fact: One major problem faced by people all over the world is that of getting bitten in the night. And among the chief culprits, besides insects, or even vampires, are ordinary humans. And the humans are ourselves. Biting and grinding our teeth […]

Here’s a quiz question for you: What one famous piece of literature celebrates (1) a musical feline? (2) an athletic bovine? (3) an amused canine? (4) some amorous tableware? Stumped? Then I’ll have to remind you: Hey diddle diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle,The Cow jumped over the Moon.The little Dog laughed to see such […]

What is peace? Two millennia ago, the Roman historian Tacitus quoted an enemy leader as saying of the Romans, “They make a desert and call it peace.” But total destruction is not the preferred method of peacemaking, and various alternatives continue to be tried – one of which is mediation, whose success depends in part […]

Maybe you have heard the story of the man who went to see an eminent Viennese psychiatrist complaining that for some reason he felt sad all the time. After some discussion, the doctor said, “Let me suggest, as a first step, that you go to the theater tonight. The great clown Grimaldi is performing here […]

Here is a question for you: What is the southernmost point of Africa? If you answered “The Cape of Good Hope,” I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. The correct answer is Cape Agulhas, which is 150 km farther south. The “Good Hope” Cape was not even given that name originally. Its first European discoverer, Bartolomeu Dias, […]

I’m not sure how my bonsai trees talked me into it, but recently I spent $12.49 on something called Fish & Poop. Manufactured in Fresno, the city famous for its tasty raisins, Fish & Poop is listed as “a blend of fish-based nutrients and guano which forms a synergistic matrix that develops a cohesive partnership […]