SHORTHAND AND TIGHT SWEATERS

Does anybody use Shorthand anymore? I learned it in high school but today I wouldn't know an ish from a chay. Never got proficient. I was the only male in the class and the girls in their tight sweaters were more interesting than all those squiggly symbols. No, that's not one of my Shorthand classmates over there. It's the notorious Bettie Page. I suppose Shorthand has been replaced by some kind of 21st century digital assistant. Gone the way of Morse Code. Do we even have secretaries taking dictation these days? I dare say the very thought raises the ire of the feminists still complaining about the demeaning days when getting coffee for the boss was part of the job. Moving right along, Whatever happened to Esperanto? I ran into a local fellow who's a member of the international Esperanto Society. Wikipedia says 2 million people still use it but what Wikipedia says ain't always necessarily so. So why did that universal language not catch on big time? Was it ahead of its time? Speaking of time ... do those of us who think about things like that have too much of it on our hands?

Happy 60th, Elton

Elton John is 60!!?? Then I must be at least a hundred. I would look up my birth certificate to see how old I am but I don't remember where I put it. Maybe they didn't even keep birth records back then. Yes, that must be it.

Overhead Terpsichore

My nurse fetish continues to be fed. How come nurses are such wondrous writers? I am now in love with one who calls her blog DANCING ON THE CEILING. http://dancingontheceiling.blogspot.com/ Some of her posts are so powerful that they give me goosebumps. But she has me going nuts wondering where she got that title. Rodgers and Hart? Fred Astaire? Lionel Ritchie? I'm guessing her age at around 50, so that puts her in the Motown era, of which Lionel Ritchie's title that he stole from Rodgers and Hart is said to be a classic. Put me in the Rodgers and Hart camp, all you youngsters who inhabit the blogosphere. A wonderful, torchy love song written in 1930, 19 years before Ritchie was born. Pure ear candy. Lovely melody, delicious chord progressions to delight the ear and lyrics well calculated to get you all mushy. "He dances overhead on the ceiling near my bed." Now that's romance. No rock 'n' roll for this old fart, thank you.

Funeral Business

The funeral industry is often attacked for allegedly charging too much for services we don't need. Jessica Mittford's "The American Way of Death" seriously skewered the friendly neighborhood Digger O'Dell. (For the young pups out there, that's a reference to the undertaker on an old time radio sitcom.) Do we need embalming to make it look like our loved one is just sleeping in a beautiful enclosure? Do we need a drive-through viewing station so we can pay our respects and be on our way? How about a professionally produced audio visual presentation of the departed one's life story? Do we need a ten thousand dollar bill from the mortuary when it's all over? Well maybe we do. I can't seriously fault the mortician who says he's just giving us what we want. Ours is a materialistic society. We feel like we loved our departed one ten times more than the cheapskate who negotiated a thousand dollar cremation. Yes, prices are negotiable. But you must get past the guilt over haggling about the root of all evil at such an emotional time. Are there funeral people who will play on that guilt to extract more money from the grieving family? Of course. But the good ones won't.

OLD FARTS ANONYMOUS

I am pretty old. I will probably make it to the big eight-oh. If I do, the last thing I want to hear is "He's eighty years young." If there are guys who are truly young at advanced age, I admire them. But I don't envy them.

Shrinkology

I am probably at least as nutty as most other people and more so than some. But I don't think I will see a shrink. Two reasons: Number one, I am too cheap. Second of all, most shrinks are even nuttier than I am. So why should I pay them 200 an hour for their alleged wisdom and insights. All I need to do to feel pretty good about my own mental state is to watch Dr. Phil as he parades his unending collection of total looney toons nutcases before me each morning. Where does he get these people?? Do they really want help or are they going for an expense paid trip to Hollywood and ten minutes of fame on national TV.

Marriage Question

Would you want to be married to you? Why or why not??

Riverdale

In a flight of fancy for my profile, I made up the name "Riverdale" for my town. I forgot that's where Archie and Veronica and Jughead live. There's an online group of old time radio fans and performers that has regular posts from the fellow who played Jughead on the Archie Andrews
Saturday morning radio series.

Fox..... News?

Real Journalism. Fair and Balanced. That's was Fox News calls itself.

Mike Wallace asks Fox's Bill O'Reilly what he thinks of Rush Limbaugh. O'Reilly says Limbaugh is an entertainer. Wallace says "You're not?" O'Reilly says he's a journalist who is entertaining. That reminded me of a radio interview I did maybe 15 years ago with a writer for the local newspaper. I asked her what she thought of Paul Harvey. With what I interpreted as a bit of "real journalism" snobbery, she said, "He's not a newsman. He's an entertainer." I answered, "And a very good one." Paul's in his eighties, still on a bunch of radio stations.

Real Journalism? Fair and balanced? Give me a break. Just entertain me but don't call it journalism.