A COUPLE OF SUMMERS AGO I PUT TOGETHER SOME COMEDIC WORDS TO MAKE THE SEASON LIGHT.
I REPEAT IT HERE ON THE WEBSITE. THERE HAVE BEEN A FEW UPDATES IN THEM, TOO :
I’ll start with a Meme Board for my pic at a famous tourist destination. 1. “The Grand Canyon is just gorges.” 2. “Having a Grand time here.” 3. “Absolutely View-tiful!” 4. “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Altitudes.” 5. “I’m lost—I must have made a wrong turn in Alburquerqee!”
Summer time— here it is again! I couldn’t wait for Summer as a kid, because it meant that I had a long Memorial Day to Labor Day break from doing homework. That seemed to be a better deal even than hot dogs or baseball or beach trips or watermelon in the season! I mean—those were all great—but no homework for all that time?! What a great thing! I could turn my attention to playing games, doing scrapbooks, watching tv or listening to music, and in simple pondering of things natural, like: How do fireflies mate?
“Since we mentioned it: What’s the deal with homework? Why do we call it that? We are not working on our home!” We need more precise terms here!
While talking about words that don’t sound right which are used everyday in language. Here’s one: the so-called waiting room and patient’s room at the doctor’s office. Like I did just last week, I went to see a doctor and the reception folks had me sign in and told me I must first wait in the “waiting room.” Now I do so and I am there for 25 minutes. Waiting. Yet when I am called to go back to what they called the patient’s room, I go sit there for a quick weigh in and blood pressure check, and then they have me wait in there alone for another 13 minutes for the doctor or assistant to see me for my 1 p.m. appointment. At 1:38 p.m. they finally do so. But what that makes for is two waiting rooms. Waiting Room 1 with others. Waiting Room 2 with myself. The second place is not a patient’s room, but more of a Second Waiting Room. Unless, of course, it is spelled a “Patience Room.” Maybe that’s what they meant.
My doctor penalizes patients for coming in 10 minutes past their appointment, and YET, I think there’s never been a time when I haven’t been waiting at least 25 minutes to be seen. Why can’t we penalize THEM for THEIR lateness to get to US? “Doc, I am imitating your policy and penalizing you 20% off my bill. I’ve waited 28 minutes past our appointment.”
In a true story, my allergist Annie was working on her birthday in her office. I came in to see here for my shots and prescription re-fill, but suddenly her husband came by in surprise to her office, knocked on the door, got the ok to come in, and gave Annie a whole bunch of flowers for her 35th birthday, and accompanied it with a kiss, and then turned to me and said: “Hi Fr. Barry. ‘Sorry to walk in but I couldn’t wait to later to give her these at home!” I had an awkward look on my face, so he asked what was up. I said: “This IS an allergist’s office and patients in here like me might be ALLERGIC to flowers.” Oops, he realized it was better to bring them home for her!
The world has some confusing inventions and new innovations. My Tovala Food delivery sends me two meals a week, including fish and chicken and meat. That’s all normal, but they just have added a new line of Premium Dog Food to the Tovala home menu. Another guy said that he ordered and got the dog’s chicken meal to give to his pet, but he was curious and tried it out himself. He said the dogs’ Tovala food was pretty good, and might order it for himself at the cheaper price! It lacked seasoning and sides of yams and peas, but it was a deal! I don’t like that response by him at all—because the company might sneak in the dog’s chicken for my people’s chicken in an order. It might have me acting like a dog if I eat too much of it, like start barking at the mailman.
Why did they invent the shower radio? Can’t we have a few minutes of just the sound of fresh water refreshing our bodies? Did we need to be listening in there to songs?! Maybe there is one exception: The song “Shower the People with Love” by James Taylor kind of fits the situation. Or the song by Tierra Whack in 2024 does work: The Shower Song (Singin’ in the shower)….People are putting big Blue Tooth speakers in their showers and bathrooms, too. Did we really need that? Because there’s no better place to dance to the boogie than on a slick floor next to a glass door! Perhaps the latest and greatest add to our shower stalls in modern times has been the pope soap on a rope. It’s funny; it’s clean; it’s functional; and we don’t have to have to bend down anymore to pick up our slippery bars of soap!” I guess a new model of Pope Leo is out at the religious goods stores near the Vatican.
I was over to the Air and Space Museums at the Smithsonian Institution and Dulles’ one. They have all kinds of exhibits about the astronauts. They show you the food they ate and everything. They even had Neil Armstrong’s toothbrush on display in a glass case. Underneath it said, ‘On loan from Neil Armstrong.’ And I’m thinking, ‘Neil, why didn’t you just permanently give them the brush?’ I mean, they flew you to the moon. No charge. So then they asked you for your toothbrush and you say,”…I could lend it to you.’ Why not just let them have it gratis?
I was checking out some of the other Christian churches in the area, and some only do what are “river baptisms” for their people. That means going off to the Pax River or something—because Jesus was baptized in a river, the Jordan. So they think all baptisms have to be done that way. That’s got to be harder to do. Anyway, I heard a joke about that—An inebriated man is fishing at a riverside, when along comes a pastor who starts baptizing people in the river. This man proceeds to walk into the water over to him to say that they are chasing away the fish. The pastor responds to him by asking: “Sir, are you ready to find Jesus?” The drunken fellow answers, ‘I guess so. ‘ So the pastor grabs him and dunks him in the river. He pulls him up and asks the drunk, ‘Brother, have you found Jesus?’ The drunk replies, ‘No, I haven’t!’ The pastor, shocked at the answer, dunks him into the water again for a little longer this time. He again pulls him out of the water and asks again, ‘Have you found Jesus my brother?’ The drunk again answers, ‘No, I really haven’t!’ By this time the pastor is at his wits’ end and dunks the fellow in the river stream waters again–but this time holds him down a bit longer, and when the man starts kicking his arms and legs he pulls him up. The pastor again asks the drunk, ‘Finally my friend, have you found Jesus?’ The drunk wipes his eyes and catches his breath and says to the preacher, ‘Wait a second—is Jesus the name of the Fish? Are we looking for a big catfish or something? There are no fish down there, you’ve scared them away. If you are looking for Jesus down in this spot, then I can say I didn’t see Him underwater anywhere? But can you please stopping making me look?! Check it out yourself!'”
Wasn’t one of the original ideas of a coffee break in the morning part of a full eight hours of work to get a max performance? Now we’re now drinking eight hours of coffee and doing ten minutes of work! People can get their coffee on the way to work and school now, even though you can make it quickly in a K cup at home, and every new car has coffee cup holders for your tumblers! But home-made coffee is not usually from immediately ground beans. So the store’s stuff tastes better. If you DO grind beans at home, then it wakes the whole house and apartment building and neighborhood. It’s a 65 decibel grinding machine!
There are Starbucks literally everywhere. They just built a Starbucks inside of a Starbucks somewhere. I guess it’s Starbucks Plus. They say at Starbucks that some coffee comes a place called Arabica. Where is that? Near the Sahara Desert? Or is it rather near Jamoca—another made-up place? Or Never-Never Land Isles?! I usually get the Morning Joe and Breakfast Blend brand of coffee for K cup use at home—but how do they know it’s just for morning time? Do they put rooster’s calls or morning sunlight in the bean bag machine?…. Sometimes I have a cup or two of those in early afternoon, but I reason: It’s 9 a.m. somewhere!
What’s a caffeine drink alternative? The Five-hour energy drink. Five hours is a weird amount of time. Who’s working on a better one for six or eight? People are going to all kinds of coffee places, I suppose, for energy boosts, probably because they are dozing off from being up to 2:00 am on their phones and computers. You can get a drink of coffee in a 3-mile Burtonsville radius at all the following, so there’s no shortage of places for your fix: Target, Safeway, McDonalds, Burger King, Roy Rogers, Restaurant 198, Sidamo Café, Centrado Café, Dunkin’, Panera Bread, 7-11, Subway, Wawa, Royal Farms, most gas stations, and Starbucks. I just had an oil change last year at Jiffy Lube, and they said come back in the next 500 miles for a top-off or for free coffee in the lobby! Wow, all of these coffee places! BTW, why did Dunkin’ Donuts get rid of the word Donuts in their brand?! Are they phasing out the donuts? Or were too many people actually dunking their donuts and making a mess at the store?! Yet then—get rid of Dunkin’.
That reminds me of a Car Name that was a bad one. Honda put out the Honda Life Dunk. What was it to be—a car for big basketball stars? Or a car for pulling into the donut drive-thru? I guess a “life dunk” is a baptism, so if that’s true, then driving it begins your road to heaven adventure! ……Also, the Bronco Sport Outer Banks brand didn’t make me think “Outer Banks” at all, and I would bet not many of them have ever even been seen much driving on North Carolina’s shore roads! Now if it were named The LightHouse SUV and had a rotating Fresnel lens lamp atop it, and if it were sold only in black and white stripes—THEN I’d be all aboard with the Outer Banks connection. …. Hey, I once bought a Toyota Yaris. I had to keep repeating the name of it to people who asked what it was. A Boris? Is it Russian? A Parish? A Yarsh? Toyota explained that the name was a combo of Charis (like in charis-matic) and the ancient word for Yes or for God, which is Ya. Yeah, right! Far-fetched! I think the car could have been called the Teardrop, for the Yaris looked like a sideways tear on someone’s face. Well, I traded it in—for it was no divine ride for me! …Some vehicle brands have such bad shapes. I don’t like boxy styles, like the SUV Nissan Cube. I drove it as a rental once, and the vehicle felt like it was a package on wheels. It should have been called the Nissan Delivery. I hear some funeral homes used it. I suppose it looks like a coffin on wheels, too—and that’s what they had inside it often. The Nissan Coffin? Can you hear the aggressive Nissan car salesman at the dealership, “What can I do to help you leave in this Coffin today?” ,… Another thing about vehicle brands is that I don’t like some of their names. A Ford Probe is a bad name. The Daihatsu Naked just seems wrong. It sounds like the two were meant to be in a crash together. Another odd car name is the VW Tiguan. What’s a Tiguan? The Hyundai IONIQ 6 is unpronounceable and non-memorable, but it IS a mod-looking E-sedan! I admit to that! The 2025 Kia Telluride is a weird name. So is the Kia Carnival. What are we –at the circus now or a roadway? The 2025 Hyundai Kona sounds like a Korean-Hawaiian Coffee and not a vehicle. The Land Rover Defender shares a name with a championship football team in Washington. No, not the Commanders but the 2025 DC Defenders (did you know they even played and won their league?). The Golf R and Golf GTI by Volkswagon sound like golf carts, not cars. When you drive them, you have to call out “fore!” to anyone ahead of you. I hear those cars don’t do well in sand-traps or by ponds.