THE EDGE OF WEDGE

CAUGHT THIS DUFFER obliviously practicing his chip shot on the Franconia, NH gliderport runway.

Well, you have your flight path, and I have mine.

Soar!

Fore!

FARTHER TIME

LAST NOVEMBER 18th, my son Rory became a father with the arrival of Norah. Happy First Father's Day! Many, many more!

 (I know it doesn't seem possible now, but some day she'll be asking you for the car keys. Not too early to start getting your mind right for that....)

TO BEE OR NOT TO BEE

A FAVORITE MOMENT from the Montshire Museum of Science yesterday.  I was admiring the hive at the honeybee exhibit, when this lovely young lady poked me in the arm and quite seriously asked: "Why are you a man?"

So, I replied: "I guess for the same reason that a bee is a bee!"  That satisfied her, and off she went.

My fault for taking up all the space on the kid seat.

ARMS IN A SLANG

     

            Printed words are my business, and though they are often a poor way to communicate (I find that a well-timed forehead thwap at an opportune moment will accomplish far more than a mere adjective modifying an improper noun against a snooty verb), I must resort to using them here.

          That’s why, when I read that a celebrity couple recently announced their celebrity separation as a “conscious uncoupling” (thwap), I couldn’t sit idly by. I owe you that much. They unveiled this in public, celebrity-style, by telling everyone who'd listen on every talk show on every channel that it was a private matter and nobody’s business.

          That's how celebrities operate.

          The inverse-prone humorist half of my brain pricked up my ears when I heard it, and I had to say it out loud:

          Conscious uncoupling.

          This prompted the science half of my brain to take over, as Newton’s Third Law rushed in. As reason would have it, if we are now out there not ending, but rather “consciously uncoupling” our relationships, then it must be that somewhere along the way, we “unconsciously coupled.”

          All I could think of was that sobered-up morning aftershock & awe one suffers when one discovers an X-rated Yosemite Sam tattooed upon one’s thigh, and no idea how it got there. Or, when one wakes up to find one’s self married or enlisted in the French Foreign Legion.

          For every impaction, there is an equal and opposite extraction. My column. My physics. Sorry, Sir Isaac.

          I was then compelled, as I always am whenever faddish sanitizations of my beloved language thwap me on the forehead, to do a little research. Dangerous, because it makes the thing sillier than I thought possible, but humor is fraught with peril.

          Yep, there it is: an article on how we’ve socio-politically corrected the word “divorce.”

          “Say, did you hear that Jack and Jill were getting divorced?”

          “No, but I do know they were thinking of consciously uncoupling.”

          Anyone who thinks in terms like this should be required never to talk. Anyone who talks like this should be used as a pie-fight test dummy.

          The author then explained this new “conscious uncoupling” babblespeak, citing an essay written by a long-dead Russian esotericist, who described how millions of years ago, dragonflies had three-foot wingspans and look what happened to them.

          (I did warn you that research in the hands of an adept humorist was dangerous.)

          As I allowed my scientific researching half-brain to run amok, I found the next logical status quote abuse lurking in the lexicon. Yes, alas and alacrity, prepare thyselves, my dear readers, because there is a female blogger out there who is reporting her pending conscious uncoupling as a “marriage unengagement.”

          Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.

          There is also a psychotherapist in our midst with several hifalutin’ letters after her name who has now designed a 5-week seminar for the looming lovelorn entitled “The Art Of Conscious Completion.”

          Again, I can’t resist now presuming that a best-selling “The Science Of Unconscious Incompletion” is waiting in the wings. And, given the latest pop-obsession we have over dietary restrictions, it will no doubt come with a gluten-free dust jacket.

          This all started in the language, of course, when you bought that certified previously-owned vehicle and drove it to transport your trash to a transfer station recycling center. Don’t look now, but as a still-living American exotericist, I refuse to muddy-up how I arrange words and the spaces between them.

          Come Saturday, I’m still simple-slanging it and going to the dump in a used car.

          Let’s just hope that I at least unconsciously remember to completely couple my trailer. 

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Senior Wire News Service syndicated humor columnist B. Elwin Sherman writes from Bethlehem, NH. His new book, “Walk Tall And Carry A Big Watering Can,” is now available.  You may consciously contact him via his blog here at witbones.com. Copyright 2014. All rights reserved. Used here with permission.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Dear Mom:

            The earliest reference I find to Mother’s Day is 250 B.C., when a Roman religious festival honoring the Mother Goddess Cybele was held.  It lasted for three days, and was known as “Hilaria.”

            I’d wish you a Happy Hilaria, but let’s not provoke that look … the one I called “the hairy eyeball,” … the one you leveled in my direction whenever I acted up.  However, I do blame you for helping to set me upon this path.

            How do I love and link to thee?  Let us count the ways and means:

            ---  For taking untold hours to make my Good King Wenceslas costume for an elementary school Christmas play, only to have your terrified, speechless monarch outrun his cues and exit stage right, leaving the Feast Of Stephen uneaten and the peasants rolling in the aisles.

            ---  For not suffering an apoplectic fit (at least in my presence) when you came out to the clothesline, looked up and saw me sitting thirty feet above you on the end of the barn roof, straddling the peak and holding an open umbrella.

            ---  For making me believe that the square bowl and asymmetrical bookends I created in woodshop and bestowed upon you as Hilarian tributes were the maternal keepsake equivalents of Stradavarians.

            ---  For holding the bucket when I overdosed on Hostess Snowballs.

            ---  For not complaining about the laundry or calling me a meathead when I was convinced I’d broken my foot in a fall and hobbled around the house with a stick crutch, doing my best wounded Long John Silver impression and insisting upon wearing six colored socks secured with your nylon stocking in a simulated peg-leg.

            ---  For not laughing out loud when I announced that I wanted to be the first astronaut to juggle bowling pins in zero gravity.

            ---  For not crying out loud when I rehearsed this by juggling the good china in earth gravity.

            ---  For helping me get through the Great Pet Massacre, when the family dog got into the barn and chewed all my pet rabbits into furblivion.

            ---  For not selling me to Gypsies (I always believed this was a parental option Plan B) when you found out I’d been emptying Dad’s electric razor into the peppershaker.

          ---  For mending the fences, tending the fires, warming the cockles, baking the biscuits, planting the seeds, running the gauntlets, burying the bones, sewing the buttons, paying the pipers, fluffing the pillows, minding the P’s and Q’s ... and helping me become what I am today.

            Uh-oh.  Here comes that look again.

            Happy Hilaria, Mom.

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Senior Wire News Service syndicated humor columnist B. Elwin Sherman writes from Bethlehem, NH. His new book, “Walk Tall And Carry A Big Watering Can,” is now available.  You may contact him via his blog here at witbones.com. Copyright 2014. All rights reserved. Used here with permission.

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THE SHOCKING TRUTH ABOUT EVERYTHING

     Another birthday, and I always mark the occasion by reflecting on what was, what is, and what will be, with or without me. I do try to avoid my literal reflection in the mirror, because I can’t get past the feeling that I’m shaving my Dad’s face.

       I started with what is, and had a look at the day’s headlines. I knew this was a mistake when I quickly realized that I’d either lived too long or not long enough, because I no longer felt shockable. I was especially not shocked by any headline containing the word “shocking.” And, today, I found four of them:

       1. “The Shocking Truth About Nine Foods You Thought Were Vegetarian.”

        I was right. I read the story. I looked at the photos. I examined the evidence. I wasn’t shocked.

       True enough, I didn’t know that some bagels contained duck feathers, or that marshmallows came from pig bones, or that certain beer makers “clarified” their stouts with fish bladders. Yawn. We live in a country where deep-fried butter-on-a-stick is a favorite at state fairs, so you’ll have to do better than that. 

       2.  “Meet The Shocking Real-Life Barbie Doll.”

       It seems that a young Ukrainian woman has made it her life’s mission to re-shape herself, physically and mentally, into the iconic doll’s image. I so wanted to be shocked when she also announced that her goal is to become a “Breathairian” (someone who believes they can subsist solely on light and air), and that she’s undergoing hypnotherapy sessions “to help me become more brainless,” but I wasn’t.

       (Humorist disclaimer: Right about here, it’s always useful to remind you that I don’t have to invent this stuff. The easiest way to write a humor column is to simply report the truth.)

       3.  “The Shocking Evidence Of Alien Cow Abductions.”

       Yes, there it is, with that viral video of a cow being beamed up into a hidden spaceship from an English pasture.

       Newsworthy, maybe even hilarious, but shocking? Hardly. Bovine herders have been dealing with their beasts being skyjacked for some time now. Some have taken to camouflaging the cattle with fake grass blankets or attaching antlers to their heads in apparently futile attempts to thwart the extraterrestrial cow-nappings.

       Maybe it’s me, but I suspect that any little green beef-crazed creatures capable of inter-galactic exploration wouldn’t be hoodwinked by phony cow horns or artificial turf disguises. It’s also a fact that nearly four million people in this country have reported being personally visited by space travelers, but I can show you how that number closely relates to our Election Day results, so just move along. Nothing to be shocked by here.

       4.  “Identity Theft Is Shockingly High.”

       Not only is this not shocking, but it’s even less shocking that the billions lost in identity theft is offset by the billions we spend protecting ourselves from identity theft.

       I nipped this in the bud many birthdays ago, when my credit card company called and tried to sell me identity theft protection insurance. I told them: “Every day I hope that someone steals my identity. Then, you can send them my bills.”

       “Uh … that’s not the way it works, Mr. Sherman.”

       “Mr. Sherman? You’ve got the wrong guy.”

       Click.

       As for my reflections on birthdays long past, I’m feeling a bit nostalgic for my shockable boyhood years. I remember being shocked when I was told that male seahorses gave birth. This was about the same time I was shocked to learn that I’d been delivered here by Mother Pauline, not a stork dropping me on the doorstep because she’d put chocolate on the windowsill.

       Now, for the future? I am hoping that something, somewhere, should I make it through another birthday or two, restores my ability to be shocked, but I’m not optimistic.

       I’ve just not been shocked again by reading that a South Carolina man attempted to cash a trillion-dollar bill at a restaurant, an elected self-described devout “Pastafarian” was sworn-in to his new post on the Town Board in Pomfret, New York, while wearing a spaghetti strainer on his head, and a Russian man stabbed his friend as they argued over whether poetry was more important than prose.

       I’m reserving my shock for when they’re all abducted by an alien Barbie in a cow suit.

       Ho-hum. 

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Senior Wire News Service syndicated humor columnist B. Elwin Sherman writes from Bethlehem, NH. His new book, “Walk Tall And Carry A Big Watering Can,” is now available.  You may contact him via his blog here at witbones.com. Copyright 2014. All rights reserved. Used here with permission.

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JUDY WALLACE -- 7/9/46 --- 04/29/12