The Little Blue Pill

The Little Blue Pill

One of the things Viagra has done very successfully is to build its own brand with the little blue pill. It's got so now when somebody shows you a little blue pill, you automatically think of Viagra, just like you think of Kleenex when you reach for a tissue to blow yer nose. An' it's all done by innuendo, leaving a lot to the imagination. Pretty cool strategy I'd say.

The thing is, when ya start to get up there in age, ya start to develop a certain sense o' humor about them sorts o' things, childish humor though it may be. The other thing about gettin' up there in age is that ya gotta start takin' all kinds o' supplements like multi vitamins, iron pills an' all sorts o' other junk. I'm not fussy on any o' that, but every mornin' the Missus sets out a little tray o' pills I gotta swallow. She calls it my breakfast dessert. By that time my mornin' coffee's cold anyways, so I grab them pills, throw 'em in my mouth, take a swig o' cold coffee an it's all gone for the day.

The other thing that happens when ya start to get up into that age is that ya start without any rhyme or reason to get kinda creaky with aches an' pains all over yer body. The other night I crawled into bed an' it seemed my hips didn't want to lay down an' shut up. I was still creakin' around the next mornin' when the Missus wants to know what my problem is. So I tell her the truth. I ALWAYS tell her the truth. So she says there's no need for me to be in such pain. She's got somethin' for me. It works for her so I should try it.

She marches off to her private medicine stash an comes back with a little blue pill. "WHAT THE H E DOUBLE HOCKEY STICKS IS THIS?" I say rather loudly. "Is this some sort of a joke?"

"Don't be a jackass," she says, "It's no joke. Just take it and you'll feel better."

Aside from always tellin' her the truth, I always do exactly as she tells me to, so I swallow the little blue pill an' hope for the best. Turns out it ain't Viagra at all. It's Advil which is an anti inflammatory medicine with some aspirin in it. So it's good for arthritis AND the heart all at the same time. An' by gum, it works. Who'da thought? The other thing that works is to shut up an' listen to the Missus an' don't complain. At least that's how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin'.

 

Ah, The Ides of March

Ah, The Ides of March

Wasn't that the day Julius Caesar was assassinated? Yep, it was. I just looked it up an' that was the day he went to the theatre when Brutus hauled out a knife an' stabbed him to death within the sight of about sixty or so senators. Well THAT sparked a civil war in the country an' turned it into turmoil. It wasn't more'n four years later that Caesar Augustus ordered some three hunnert senators to be butchered to do penance for Julie's death.

Well I don't really know the details o' the story 'cause I wasn't there but I kind'a like Wayne an' Shuster's version of it that I saw on You Tube so I'll stick with that. It's more entertainin' anyways. You can look it up if ya want. I remember Julie's Missus sayin' to him: "Julie, don't go." But he went anyways an' got stabbed in the heart. No one will ever really know if he was just gettin' outta the house to get away from the Missus' naggin' or he just wasn't payin' attention again.

Well the whole thing is an eerie reflection of what's happenin' in the U. S. these days. Not that any particular person is goin' to physically get a knife in his (or her) heart, but figuratively speakin', that's exactly the case. In the instance o' Rome though, it changed from being the Roman Republic to bein' the Roman Empire. That begs the question about the United States of America becomin' the Divided States of America. Could happen you know. They tried it once before an' after half a million people lay dead on American soil, they figured out it wouldn't work. Maybe enough time has passed so they've forgotten about the civil war - or they heard about that Jackass in the farmer's well an' figured they'd renew the whole republican party. Given the logos of the two parties, that wouldn't work out neither since the donkey emblem belongs to the democrats. HOLY CRACKERS! Does that mean the Republicans are goin' to turn into Democrats? Or does that mean they're all tarred with the same brush? Now THAT wouldn't surprise me one little bit.

To tell the truth, that whole Barnum an' Bailey show leaves me non-plussed. They're just a bunch o' Americans bangin' on their drums an' puttin' on a freak show. I wouldn't mind though if they pulled that off the television a little more an' let me watch golf, or see the grass grow or maybe even watch some paint dry. That'd be a whole lot more wholesome than them dad-ratted liars spinnin' their stupid tales an' coverin' up their real personalities. At least that's how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin'.

The Real American Fear

The Real American Fear

The Koch brothers still own the United States of America, at least the government anyways. Their network of companies contributing to lobbies and funding of politicians pretty well gives them control of anything the government does or doesn't do. So two brothers control the one percent that controls the other ninety-nine percent. It's a little like the DeBeers diamond game. Every once in a while the Russians put a whole slug o' diamonds on the market so DeBeers just buys 'em up an' the price stays the same. Them boys got deep pockets!

No, the Koch brothers ain't worried at all. They got a big enough pension to see 'em through whatever storms might come up. It's the government people an' the Congress an' the Senate people who are quakin' in their collective boots. It's no wonder they're startin' to get nervous. More an' more protests are croppin' up over treatment of black people, the water situation in Flint Michigan, police brutality, Aboriginal issues, ad infinitum. Until now, they've kinda got used to the rhetoric an' just keep swaggerin' around collectin' their inflated salaries an' whatever other perks come their way, hopin' it will all come to nothin'.

But the American public, misled as they appear to be, have said to H E Double Hockey Sticks with Washington an' the governmental establishment, now we got a business man NOT a politician who's gonna straighten them buggers out once an' for all! We want him an' the devil take the hindmost!

So all of a sudden you got all them politicians runnin' around buyin' up all the Depends diapers they can get their hands on an whalin' on Trump to get him to NOT be the Republican delegate for a run at the Presidency. The whole Republican Party has begun it's slide down the slippery slope into a black hole from which there is no return.

They might well take a lesson from the man who rescued his donkey that had fallen down a well. He had kept shovelin' dirt in it to fill it in an' the donkey kept steppin' up on the new dirt until it finally stepped out o' the well, good as new. Well you'd hope they'd accumulate enough brains to figure that out, but in the mean while, they've been Trumped! At least that's how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin'.

I Got My Own Security

I Got My Own Security 

"What a bunch o' dummies!" the Missus blurts out all of a sudden.

"What now?" I wanna know.

"Them bomb makers got absolutely no brains. Just look at that! They got all different colors o' wires for their bombs. It's easy as pie to disarm them."

We was watchin' an episode o' NCIS on the TV where they was disarmin' a bomb on a truck. They done it with about a minute to spare an saved the day for the good guys. Instead o' focussin' on the plot o' the story, the Missus is harpin' on the colored wires an' the stupidity o' the bomb makers.

Well so I figured out that if I was in a place like Syria or Afghanistan I wouldn't be afraid o' them suicide bombers as long as the Missus was with me, an' she had a pair o' side cutters an' could remember the colors o' the wires. An' that's just for starters.

The other day she goes to a gem store an' picks up a couple o' rocks that tickle her fancy. Among them is an amethyst that's gotta weigh five pounds easy. Of course, she's thinkin' about the beauty o' the stone with all its jagged edges an' how the light reflects off them. Me, I'm thinkin' somethin' altogether different. Ya couldn't really make a war club outta it but if ya held it in yer hand an' bashed it on the side o' somebody's head, it has enough weight to make a considerable impact. An' the sharp jagged corners in the stone can easy cause a lot o' brain leakage in that kinda situation with just one blow.

It would almost prompt a paraphrasing o' parts o' the twenty-third psalm in the bible to suit the situation. For example: "Yea though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I fear no evil for thou (the Missus) art with me and thy rod (side cutters) and thy staff (big amethyst rock) shall comfort me still.", or somethin' like that. Well that's what King David wrote anyways. For all I know he was talkin' about his Missus rather than about God. Lord knows he had enough o' them.

The lesson here is clearly that you wanna treat the Missus with a whole lot o' respect an' admiration. She could, if push comes to shove, save yer bacon. At least that's how it seems to me from up here on the top shelf.

Just sayin'.