Showing posts with label old age. Show all posts
Showing posts with label old age. Show all posts

Friday, March 17, 2023

Older, Not Necessarily Wiser

A quotable quotes column. 

Image by Brigitte Werner from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device 

"Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternative." -Maurice Chevalier


Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

Wisdom is alleged to be a side effect of old age. 

Oscar Wilde said that "With age comes wisdom, but..." (the writer emphasizes but, and then pauses for effect).

{But what?}

The second half of the quote is, but sometimes age comes alone. 

H.L. Mencken said, "The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom."

Kurt Vonnegut said, "True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country." 

I'm currently 69 (the new 39) years old and recently discovered that the average age of the members of the U.S. Senate is only 64, which means that many of them weren't even old enough to be freshmenpersons when I was a senior and everyone knows how uncool freshpersons are. 

However, I also discovered that 34 of 'em are older than I am and that a personal favorite of mine, Chuck Grassley, a friend of corn farmers everywhere, is 89 and tied for first place with Danne Feinstein. Ms. Feinstein, as you may have heard, was recently surprised to discover she was retiring. 

The average age of the members of the House is a youthful 57, which means that when I was a senior in high school, the average Congressperson was only in second grade. However, 87 are my age or older, 36 are 75 or older, and 12 range in age from 80 to 86.  
   
{What's your point?}

When I become king, Dana, I'm going to decree that 75 is the mandatory retirement age for congresspersons. If they wish to continue to serve the people they can always get jobs as lobbyists.

As of 2020, the average H. sapien was dead by the age of 73.7. Currently, there are 60 lucky members of the 118th Congress who are beating the odds. As of 1/23, the congressional approval rating stood at 21%. Your question answers itself. 


Sylvia Garcia, 72 (D.-Tx) who represents "much of eastern Houston" according to Wikipedia, has only been a congressperson since 2019 but has been a politician for roughly 40 years. Recently, she was (semi) famous for (almost) 15 minutes. 

Ms. Garcia is a member of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, details here if, unlike me, you have a life and find following politics and/or current events boring and would like a briefing. 

Bottom line: The Red team says The Fedrl Gummit has been stepping, treading if you will, on the rights of the people it's supposed to serve. The Blue Team says nuh-uh.  

Journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger were called in front of the committee to testify about their role in publishing the details of what appears to have been a, um, unhealthy relationship between Twitter and The Fedrl Gummit (TFG) prior to its purchase by Tony Stark, a.k.a. Elon Musk.  

If you're unfamiliar with that kerfuffle... take care, and I'll catch ya later. It would take a column or two to even begin to adequately explain that particular he said, she said, they said.
    

In the following YouTube clip, Congressperson Garcia is beating up on Messers. Taibbi and Shellenberger for refusing to reveal what she wants to know about the stuff they've published that reveals some shady connections between Twitter and TFG prior to Mr. Musk's purchase.  

While this would seem to prove that getting on the wrong side of TFG can get ya stepped on, Ms. Garcia, at 72, is as focused and relentless as Jack McCoy on Law & Order back in the day.


Until...

At about five minutes in she reveals that she doesn't know who Bari Weiss is. 

Ms. Weiss (apropos of nothing, a fellow former Yinzer) is a journalist who's had important jobs at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Nowadays, like Mr. Taibbi, she's gone out on her own, via Substack, in order to practice traditional (i.e. real) journalism, with no one to answer to but her readers.

Musk turned to her and Taibbi for that very reason. They have led the charge to get the story, stories (Pl) actually, out into the world. Congressperson Garcia, with a straight face, asks Mr. Shelleberger if he, Taibbi, and Weiss are "...in this as a threesome?"

Cue grins and suppressed laughter. 

Garcia, apparently oblivious, continues her attack as if nothing happened, instantly losing all credibility. The head of the committee, Congressman Jim Jordan, then provides a succinct epilogue to the performance. 
       
                                                The End 

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

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Friday, February 10, 2023

Ma, I Don't Feel Good

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.  

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like." -Jackie Mason


Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

I have a confession to make. As a kid and a callowyute, I regularly missed school by claiming to be sick when I wasn't.

{Gasp!}

My mum and I had an unspoken, unacknowledged agreement that as long as I didn't get carried away, as long as I was passing, this was acceptable. 

{Wait-wait-wait. If this arrangement was unspoken and unacknowledged how do you know what she...}

For the same reason I knew that if I did get carried away or I was failing that she wouldn't have hesitated to intervene, Dana.

{Huh. Ask a silly question. I'm going to go out on a limb here. You didn't much care for formal education, yes?}

It interfered with my reading, but that's not what I want to talk about.

{I'm shocked. May we, your humble gentlereaders, have a hint, pray tell?} 

Certainly, it's about how I felt about illness/injury/disease/etceterease as a kid and a callowyute as opposed to my take now that I'm a sexy senior citizen.


Even when my delayed adulthood finally arrived — when I was 32 and went from hippie with a job to a man with a chronically sick wife and a nine-year-old daughter (a tomboyperson still prone to self-injury decades later) virtually overnight — I took my good health for granted and assumed it would last forever. 

{Forever?}

In the sense that I didn't give it much thought. Having been blessed with what I now realize was excellent health I somehow assumed this was the way of things. Other people might be subject to health problems, but not me.

{That makes no sense. I suppose you thought you were going to live forever as well?}

Paradoxically, no. I've long assumed, to one degree or another, that we're all merely characters in a very vivid dream that God is having regardless of what's next. Since there's nothing to be done, what's all the fuss about?

For the record, I can't take any credit for this attitude any more than I can take credit for many decades of effortless good health (now gone), or any more than I can take credit for having no desire to live forever (which I suspect would be quite boring).

That's just how I roll, as they say, assuming they still say that. 

{You should ask them.}
 

Nowadays, I give a lot of attention to the state of my health for multiple reasons: 

- I'm in no hurry to be deleted. Watching Western Civilization attempting to commit suicide is fascinating. 

- I'm almost 70 and I've always thought that 70 and up means you're old. I'm now coping with various and sundry health problems, none life-threatening (that I know of), that started about five years ago and seem to be proliferating. 

- I know a lot of dead people who live on in my psyche.

- I've personally been directly involved with more than one H. sapien dying slowly, painfully, and not "well" (as they also say), and I know there are worse things than dying.     


Fortunately, unlike my mum and dad, who died 5 and 13 years prior to my current age, respectively, I've never been addicted to nicotine and I have effortless access to a world wide web of all knowledge.

Unfortunately, real, licensed, practicing highly trained docs frequently disagree with each other about any given malady. 

Note the word real and consider yourself warned because there's also no shortage of (technically) real doctors and licensed practitioners of this, that, and that other thing on the web, many of whom have thousands of "followers," and who claim to have the answer (or the product) you're looking for. 

There's also no shortage of quacks, blackguards, and ne'er-do-wells making a comfortable living legally selling snake oil in the Information Age by posting notices and warnings in the fine print. Preying on the sick and vulnerable might not be the world's oldest profession but it's on the top ten list. 

For some reason, George Noory, host of an extremely popular late-night radio show, comes to mind 

Wikipedia: "Coast to Coast AM is an American late-night radio talk show that deals with a variety of topics. Most frequently the topics relate to either the paranormal or conspiracy theories."

Helpfully, there's a website where you can easily access: 

"...EXCLUSIVE HAND-PICKED PRODUCTS FROM GEORGE NOORY'S SHOW! ONE-OF-A-KIND PRODUCTS, FOR LIVING AND LOOKING A HEALTHIER LIFE, ALL WITH A FREE GIFT AND FREE SHIPPING."

As Mr. Spock would say, may you live long and prosper. 

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day


Scroll down to share my work or access oldies. Buy an old crank a coffee? Extra content is available to members of Cranky's Coffee Club.    

Comments? Head on over to my Facebook page and love me, hate me, or try to have me canceled. Cranky don't tweet, but I'm considering it... Go Elon, go!