Signs of the Times

“Hey Merry Christmas to I and ur family :)”

“Thank you the same to you but I don't know who you are.”

“Merry Christmas to u both! Enjoy fam. & friends. All the best for 2014. See u next year.”

“Who might you be?”

These text messages were taken directly from the screen of my wife's smart phone and are quite real. These are both outgoing and incoming texts. I'm sure they aren't the only examples of confused, wire-crossed, season's greetings bouncing around the expanding world of text messaging this joyous holiday season as traditional Christmas Cards go the way of horse-drawn carriages and gas lanterns. It's the modern way of sending Christmas cards and then forgetting to sign them.

Somebody knows our cellphone number and wants to send a Christmas greeting, but obviously their number isn't in our address book as our cellphone can't assign it to anyone we know. By not telling us their names, we are left in the ethereal dark. Why caller ID doesn't show the incoming name is curious, but it seems to be the case. If it isn't in our address book, caller's name doesn't show up. None of the messages we received were identified by caller ID, so we have no idea who called, or rather who texted. Going on-line and using reverse look-up is a waste of time unless you want to pay for every number you search as all the old free, look-up services have evaporated in our new corporate climate of pay, pay, pay.

At least we have an electronic trail, the calling telephone number, to follow back to the sender. Not quite as easy as recognizing a return address, but it is a way to contact and identify the mystery well-wisher. Unless, of course, it was a wrong number.

Rocky Mountain High - Humor

H. Ross Perot's famous sucking sound has come to pass, but it isn't what he envisioned. The neighborhood's almost empty! They started moving out yesterday and the place is just about cleaned out. There are a few of the old timers around who can't move, and a few who simply don't smoke pot, but most of our former neighbors are headed west, heading out at the break of day. Colorado will be so crowded you won't be able the buy a house with a front yard because, apparently, you can now sit there and smoke a joint legally.

Will it happen in Florida? Not as long as the liquor industry or their strange bedfellows, the religious right, or their highly paid lobbyists at any rate, have a strangle hold of the Florida legislature. Or maybe it's their relationship with the massive retirement communities that dominate God's waiting room, which, if you think about it, is really just as effective. The liquor industry having God on their side is a real oxymoron if you consider the war on alcohol that brought us the thirteen-year ban on alcohol in this country by way of the 18^th Amendment way back when, because the war on alcohol was supported mainly by the religiously driven anti-saloon league.

Will recreational pot ever be legal in Florida? Not likely! Unless, of course, they figure out a way to make selling pot legal, and add the sales tax revenues to Florida's tax rolls, at the para-mutual venues. You know, the horse tracks, Jai-Lai Frontons, and the Greyhound dog racing tracks, and maybe even the ever popular Native-American gambling casinos. 

They won't come up with a painting of pot being passed around at the last supper, but they'll figure out a way to mollify the religious opponents, and lo and behold, the angels will sing.  And when they do, I bet they'll sell munchies, too! 

Maybe someday, after the earth stops spinning, my neighbors will eventually move back to the land of fun and sun. 

But, don't hold your breath. Figuratively, of course.

Real Women - Humor

Real women clean their own fish. You know, the ones they catch themselves. Real women can pluck a chicken. And, they don't complain if they break a fingernail in the process. They can make soup, or soap, depending on how much chicken fat is left when they get done plucking the chicken, and they can shoot a chicken hawk out of the hen-house with a .22 rifle. Ah, let's see, how many other, selfish, self-serving traits can I use to create a barrier between myself and reality?

Let's see, perfect women don't cheat, lie, steal or flatulate – blow a raspberry – in bed. They don't ask to go out to dinner just because they have a need to be seen with new clothes or jewelry. In fact, they don't even want new clothes or jewelry. They would rather lounge around the bedroom, scantily dressed, with personal lubricant at hand, waiting to be tied to the bed.

Real women should be able to code HTML and update their own web site, and mine, too, while she's at it. Real women can change oil and tires on the car if needed, and be able to load the boat on the trailer single-handedly. Never should I have to interrupt watching a football game to tell her where the toilet plunger is.

Real women should be caring, sweet, rational, even-tempered, calm, and never say a foul or nasty word to anyone, especially not me. They understand the fundamentals of credit financing. Of course real women will always smell like summer fields of lavender, even after they finish mowing the lawn. No, make that charcoal smoke, you, know like what comes off the barbeque grill when you're cooking a really juicy T-bone steak. Cooking will of course be an art form real women follow in their spare time so I can entertain any of my friends, well, most of my friends, well, even just one of my friends! They aren't allowed in now, so let's see how can I change this ethereal dream-list into something that actually resembles reality.

It seems every time I log onto the Internet, I'm bombarded with lists of attributes American males must have to be considered as even semi-qualified to even associate with any American woman. I can only sit and wonder about the incredibly lucky, tanned, muscular, hairless-bodied, independently wealthy, doctorate-level college-educated men, all with marvelous heads of hair and smiles that looks like inlaid pearl, who will never be inattentive, interrupt, be late, get lost, and will never, never, talk out of turn. They will never lie, ever! They will never be aggravated, hungry or horny, always be cuddly romantic, ready to watch whatever video or movie his soul mate happens to pick, regardless of any NFL championship playoffs. He absolutely loves kittens and will never have an independent, uninvited thought. Tofu? Loves it! He will also have the uncanny ability to remember every conversation ever held in his presence verbatim, and even those he wasn't present to hear in the first place.

I realize that lacking any single one of these traits immediately casts me into the vast, bottomless cesspool of common, useless men, the ones that no American woman in her right man would associate with. Unless, of course, he rides a motorcycle and has a ponytail. In that case, American women don't need no stinkin' list.

Go figure!