Leaving Your Dog

May 28, 2020

One of the silver linings of the pandemic and sheltering in place is that dog owners have been able to spend more time with their dogs. Unfortunately, owners will some day have to go back to work, and will experience separation anxiety from their dogs. There are plenty of ideas on how to transition dogs, but none on how to transition owners. Here are some ideas.

Install a videocam in your home so you can make visual contact anytime you want to see your dog. He can’t see you, but he is probably doing better than you.

Take a walk at lunchtime, and find someplace to go the bathroom…other than the curb.

Bring some toys to work, and try to get some of your colleagues to fetch. Maybe one of your colleagues would want his belly rubbed.

Reward yourself every time you do something well. Good boy!

Schedule a play date for yourself. You will probably need to relearn your socialization skills.

Have your dog take you to a people park. You can run free, and smell…never mind.

Schedule a few lunches with just you and the dog walker to get used to each other.

Masked Men

May 26, 2020

Donald Trump spent his Memorial Day weekend honoring those who died for our country, retweeting disgusting posts, and playing golf, all without a mask. He recently visited a Ford plant in Michigan without a mask, directly violating the company’s protocols. Joe Biden made a public appearance with his wife at a WW II monument, and both were wearing a mask.

What is it with Trump’s aversion to masks? He says it is not a good look, and he doesn’t want to give the media the pleasure of photographing him wearing a mask. He lampooned Joe Biden for doing as much. However, some of our greatest heroes wore masks. There was the original masked man, the Lone Ranger. He was a hero to many of us growing up in the fifties. Zorro would don a mask to fight for the rights of Mexicans suffering under Spanish rule. Holy Batman! Bruce Wayne would put on a mask to fight crime in Gotham City. The Flash, Wolverine, and Spider-Man all wore masks. Now our super heroes are our front line health workers, who wear masks. I guess Trump is no super hero.

Black Vote

May 25, 2020

Okay…so Joe Biden stepped in it with his wise guy comments about what it means to be black. It is not cool for people of Joe’s age (I am a fellow septuagenarian) to try and be Joe Cool. I assume Biden was reacting to a recent poll that said that only 3% of blacks supported Donald Trump. However, in a New York nanosecond, Trump reminded everyone why that favorability rating amongst blacks is so low. He retweeted comments calling Kamala Harris “Willie’s Ho,” comparing Stacey Harris to “Shamu,” and referring to Joy Reid as a “skank.” This was during a Memorial Day weekend when many Americans were spending an inordinate amount of time hitting the refresh button on the CDC website to see when we surpass the 100,000 death threshold.

Blacks are dying at a much higher rate than their presence in the population would indicate. Much of this has to do with chronically bad healthcare, malnutrition, and pre-existing conditions. So what would Trump like to do to ameliorate the situation. He wants to gut the Affordable Care Act, and cut food stamps. If you are black and vote for Trump, it doesn’t mean that you are not black. It just means that you are not paying attention.

You Might be a President if…

May 19, 2020

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, you might be a President if…

you take hydroxychloroquine to prevent COVID-19

you recommend ingesting/injecting Lysol

you recommend hitting your insides with UV light

you refuse to wear a mask

you don’t socially distance

you encourage right-wing, militarily-armed protesters

you attack the CDC, the WHO, FEMA, the VA, the intelligence community, and the NIH

you attack Governors

you spread conspiracy theories about Barack Obama and Joe Biden

you insult and attack reporters

you accuse Democrats of trying to extend the pandemic for political purposes.

you declare victory over the pandemic, and move on.

you fire Inspectors General in the middle of a crisis to deflect criticism

you brag about your ratings

you accept no responsibility and take no blame

Eating Out

May 21, 2020

There may be a silver lining in the pandemic. I was recently on a Zoom call (who hasn’t been?) with a bunch of college friends to discuss the challenges of aging athletes. In the spirit of full disclosure, I only qualify for the aging part. The call digressed into a discussion of the pandemic, and how everyone is handling it. One of the participants, a very successful restauranteur, described his experience as if his entire business had burned to the ground, and he had no insurance. Many of us our missing the socializing aspects of going out to it eat with friends and family, and enjoying the foods we can’t prepare at home. However, the restaurant owner, after three months of not eating restaurant food, has seen a dramatic lowering of his cholesterol and blood pressure levels.

For most chefs, salt, not sugar, is the secret ingredient, and salt is the silent killer. Everyone experiences huge amounts of water retention after eating out. I have always found that eating out is a two pound experience. Now that I am eating three squares a day at home with occasional take out, I am eating less and eating healthier. For many of us, this is the way we grew up. Restaurants were for special occasions…birthdays, graduations, anniversaries. It was a different world, but there was no pandemic of obesity. Donald Trump is our first morbidly obese President in generations. He is a national symbol for bad eating habits.

In “ Younger Next Year,” the authors point out that one of the secrets to aging well is to avoid eating crap. If there is any silver lining in all of us, more of us are eating less crap.

A Horse is a Horse

May 19, 2020

Horse analogies to the current President are getting reasonably popular. Comedian John Mulaney likens the current President to a horse loose in a hospital. He’s a horse, and he has never been in a hospital before. No one knows what the horse is going to do, not even the horse. However, the horse got into the pharmacy, and started taking hydroxychloroquine. What does he have to lose? What horse shit? Now I hear a political argument that says we should not change horses in the middle of a pandemic stream. The only reason to change horses is if the horse can’t make it across. The horse is obviously struggling under the weight of the President’s response to the pandemic. The actual weight of the presidency is a point of disagreement. We need a new horse because, after all, they shoot horses, don’t they?

Inferno

May 15, 2020

There is a time-tested strategy for dealing with problems that involves throwing shit against a wall. We now have the biggest shit thrower of all time throwing shit against a wall paid for by Americans, not Mexico. In rapid succession, Trump has thrown shit at China, Democrats, the media, the W.H.O., governors, Dr.’s Fauci and Bright, Vice President Biden, and now President Obama. According to the shit thrower in chief, we are supposed to be outraged about Obamagate,without any proof or explanation.

Dan Brown’s book, “Inferno,” is a thriller with Dante Alighieri’s writings as central theme. Brown cites Dante, writing “a hero in denial is the ultimate manifestation of hubris and pride. No man is more prideful than he who believes himself immune to the dangers of the world.” The pandemic is the inferno. Trump doesn’t wear a mask, and tempts the fates. If there is any justice, Trump will spend eternity throwing shit against a wall, and, like Sisyphus’ futile attempts to push a boulder up a hill, none of it will ever stick.