Not in Kansas Anymore

I heard last week on the radio about this old farmer in Kansas who sent a mask to New York City to help the hospital workers there. According to the story, the old farmer and his wife had five masks so they sent one to New York. The comment at the end of the story was something like “this reflects the attitude of Americans in this time of crisis”. Confusing.  I couldn’t tell if they were saying that the guy had a good attitude ‘cause he sent the mask to New York City, or if they were saying he had a bad attitude ‘cause he only sent one of his five masks to New York. I honestly could not tell.

Was he saving the other two masks for the livestock?

Hold That Tiger

A couple of weeks ago (maybe it was last week – these weeks are going kind of slow) we heard on the news that a tiger in New York (I assume it was in a zoo) tested positive for the virus. I feel bad for the tiger and I hope he or she is OK now. But wait, what? Are you telling me that this tiger got tested? Have you been tested? I haven’t been. There’s not enough test kits around for us to get tested, right? And yet there are enough test kits to test a tiger?

Do I have a better chance of getting tested at the vet? I love cats, but that tiger had better not get the vaccine before I do…

Happier Birthday

What good has come out of this virus thing? Where’s the silver lining, you ask? Well, this is what your Uncle Tommy does, finding silver linings in these types of situations. And I think we found one. So, yeah, what’s more disgusting than someone blowing out candles on a birthday cake? I’ve been bothered by this for years. You inevitably end up with pieces of saliva on the cake. Yuck! The cure for this would be to hold the cake outside the window and have the honoree blow through the screen. That’s a possibility. But a better solution would be for the blower to wear a mask and blow out the candles through the mask. In this scenario the mask acts as a screen, catching the saliva pieces that never reach the cake.    

If the mask catches fire you'll be on America's Funniest Video's no doubt. A win-win!

Touch Me in the Morning

They say the telling sign of this virus is you lose your senses of smell and taste. Well, my wife cooked some chicken last Sunday and it smelled real good. And I smelled a skunk the other day – it might have been weed. Whatever it was, it smelled bad. So I think I’m good with smelling…

I am a bit worried about my taste, though. I found myself listening to Neil Diamond music one night last week. And not only did I not turn it off – I may even have enjoyed it. So yeah, I’m worried about my taste…

Did you know Neil had an album called “Touching You, Touching Me”? Yeah, Sweet Caroline was on that album. I don’t recommend that one right now. ‘Cause it’s eight feet folks. Eight feet. I call it “The Octopus Rule”. Let’s hope there’s no “Centipede Rule”!      

Whistle Stop

There are two types of whistlers: those who whistle a tune and those who, like a tea kettle, whistle radom notes. Those of you who know me know that I’m a pretty good whistler. Heck, let’s not kid ourselves, I’m an elite whistler. I’m in tune, I’m loud and I pick good songs. When I’m in stores I will sometimes whistle along with the tune on their background music.

While at the store this week I was whistling “Theme from Laverne and Shirley” and I got a couple of mean looks from people. I get it: no matter how pretty the sound is, in this environment nobody wants to be around a guy blowing germs out of his mouth. Sad…

On second thought, maybe these people just don’t like Laverne and/or Shirley…

Model Behavior

I hear people on the news every day talking about relying on various models to predict when the virus is going to peak in various areas of the United States. One model says it’s going to peak tomorrow, another says it’s going to peak next week. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why we expect models to know these answers. I mean, yeah, Mrs. Trump was a model. Betty Ford was a model. There are some pretty smart models out there. But to expect them to predict when the virus will peak doesn’t seem realistic to me. A psychic could maybe predict a date, maybe, but not a model. 

I wonder if our local psychic Sylvia was ever a model…