Tag Archives: relatives

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Fibbing Friday #296

Pensitivity101’s questions last week were originally posted by Frank aka PCGuyIV in 2019 when he and she alternated as hosts.
His post is no longer available, but the questions are great so she recycled them. Thanks Frank.

1. Why was January chosen to be the first month of the year?

January was chosen because after the blinding hangover fades, it has to go uphill from here.

2. Why does the Chinese New Year not start until February?

The Shen Yun tour schedule isn’t complete until then.

3. What’s the point of eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day?

A lot of people imbibe a little ‘hair of the dog’ to take the edge off.  Eating something that looks like the dog threw up, reminds you why it’s necessary.

4. Why do we make New Year’s resolutions?

Because we are so gullible that we can fool ourselves into believing that we’ll actually change our bad habits.  Believing this is one of our bad habits.  Change is inevitable – just not from the break room vending machine.

5. What will Santa Claus be doing now that Christmas is over?

3 to 5!  😮  How do you think he got that ‘naughty’ list??  “He sees you when you’re sleeping.”

6. According to tradition, in the Twelve Days of Christmas, the 1st day is Christmas, itself. So what is the 12th day known as?

Rehab relapse

7. Why are so many of the gifts listed in the song, The 12 Days of Christmas, birds?

Because the redneck relatives keep arriving late, as they get bailed out of jail, and not one of them thinks to bring so much as some Cole slaw, or a butter bean casserole.

8. What earthly event marks when an angel gets its wings?

Distracted driving with a cell phone

9. What happens on the Winter Solstice?

The Election Monitor General sees his shadow, and we get four more years of Trump.

10. How did the tradition of the Yule log originate?

From a Charmin Ultra-Strong tissue TV advert

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Happy Birthday House – But Not Doctor

I want to wish a Happy 175th Birthday to the stuccoed, frame building that I was born in – before the advent of hospitals.  At about 2:00 AM, Thursday Sept. 21/1944, my Mother gave birth to me in the front (North) East bedroom.  We were given care and support by my Grandmother, and two aunts – and the house was already old, then.

The above number is an educated guess.  We had tax receipts from 1848, which read, Barn and sheds, and from 1852, which read, House and sheds.  Sometime in those four years, the barn was torn down, and the house erected.  1850, and 175 years old seems a reasonable assumption.  It may be the oldest, surviving building in the town.  It has endured a lot of modification.  It sat on the flatlands, up the hill from the lake, about half a mile from the commercial area

It was constructed by – or for – a well-to-do, gentleman farmer.  The rooms had towering, 12-foot ceilings, barely kept warm in the beginning by two pot-bellied stoves.  It was a bitch to heat, even after my Father added a forced-air gas furnace.  Room by room, year by year, he and a local handyman put in false ceilings, down to the tops of the windows – which were only 8’ 6”.  The steep stairway to the loft area was more like a ladder.

With apparent income from other sources, this was just a hobby farm for the first owner.  The property comprised a quarter of a square city block.  He had a few apple trees, some pear trees, some grapes, a small bed of asparagus, and room for plots of potatoes, peas, beans, carrots, and beets.  The three-foot thick fieldstone foundation was fabricated from rocks that were pulled from the soil, and support beams were Mountain Ash trees cleared from the property.

Reconstruction continues.  The current, long-term owner has added a dormer window, and finished living area in the loft at the top of The Stairs of Doom.  She’s a tired, but still impressive, old dowager.  I fondly remember her occasionally, but, except for possibly one last, quick, look; I don’t want to go back.

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Self-Rejection

I have been content to have been saddled with the second-most common – and boring – surname in the English language.  Others have not been so lucky, or accepting.

Many years ago, a young female co-worker had married a Lithuanian-Canadian named Butkevicius.  He felt that the name was too long – too complicated – too confusing to others – too…. European??  He wanted to change it to something shorter, easier.  In all naivety, and with no sense of irony, I suggested he change it to something like “Butkus.”  She replied, “That’s what his American cousin, the football player, did.”  They were related to Dick Butkus, but still hadn’t changed their surname, the last time I saw her.

I was hired to replace a man who had given his two-week notice.  His name was Scheibelhoffer, which, strangely, translates as someone hoping for discs.  Back in the days of paper checks, he complained that it took two, for him to sign his name.  He wanted to become simply ‘Hoffer,’ but found that government bureaucracy, with forms, and fees, and warrants, and applications, made it too expensive.  While accepted as a German name, it’s actually more likely to be Austrian, where polysyllabic names like Schwarzenegger and Lautenschlager are common.

A girl named King moved from Newfoundland to our German host city, and soon married a perpetual child named Detwiler.  Even after getting married, and siring a son, on most fair-weather weekends, he would be building and racing go-carts. She came home one Sunday evening, after a weekend visit to an aunt, to find a $3500, full-size, fully functional replica of Dr. Who’s Dalek in the living room.  The divorce could not come too soon.

She wanted to be separate, not only from him, but his name, and any impending bankruptcy, but, like the guy above, she found that going back to her maiden name through the courthouse, would cost $750.  She was already seeing a new man when she told me of her problem.  I suggested that the new romance might solve it.  Sure enough, just over two years from the divorce, she married a mature mechanical engineer who earned 2 or 3 times what we did, and got the new surname, Johnson, for the cost of a marriage license.

The German-Canadian family of a co-worker named Fischer, became an English-Canadian family named Fisher, during WW II – even here in a German city, once named Berlin.  😮

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’24 A To Z Challenge – K

Just back from observing a hillbilly family reunion, where 50% of the weddings were arranged on Ancestry.com.  The ‘hills’ might have been the Scottish highlands.  Here, with a slight lithp – uh, lisp, is this week’s phrase.  That’s right; you get two words actually, three for the usual cost of one.

KITH AND KIN

Hanging around since the early 1300s, this refers to more than a mere family reunion.  It’s more like a gathering of the clans –everybody and his cousin, the whole famn damily, in-laws and outlaws.

Kith originally meant the population of the entire country, but settled down to refer only to anyone and everyone who lived in your particular area.  Kin might also be kith, but were those who were more closely related to you by blood or marriage.  Of all my relations, I like sex the best.

Like several others in my alphabet challenge series, this post has no point.  It’s just another in the Seinfeld series.  My clan hasn’t held a family reunion since 1956.  We’re all too old, or passed on.  Some of the second, or third, generation may still do it.  Do any of you attend family reunions??  How large are they?  Do they qualify as kith and kin?

Blowing his brains out

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Fibbing Friday Cookies

Here’s a second batch of words from Pensitivity101’s blogging colleague Archon’s Den suggested site.
What would you say these mean?

1. Accismus

It’s a mathematical term to describe other people’s relative value to you.  An oil-rich Indian chief in early 20th Century Oklahoma could afford three wives.  To the two plain wives, he gave each a bison pelt.  To his special pretty wife, he gave an exotic animal skin from Africa.  The two bison-wives each had one child, but his favorite birthed twins….  So, the squaw on the hippopotamus is equal to the sum of the squaws on the other two hides.

2. Apocryphal

This is an Engineering nerd, with a stereotypical pocket protector, and a pronunciation problem.  When he takes that little plastic sleeping bag-thing, and fills it with three pens with different-coloured ink, a well-sharpened #2 Venus wooden pencil, a mechanical pencil, a fine-tip marker, a text Hi-Liter, and a somewhat antique, but still functional slide rule, and jams all that into his shirt, along with a Texas Instruments Scientific calculator, he really has apocryphal.

3. Bridewell

That’s where they found my great-uncle’s wife, after she became a Karen.  He said they started out with two hearts and a diamond, but he finally needed a club and a spade to deal with her.

4. Festinate

That’s what your finger will do, if you get a splinter, but don’t remove it soon enough.

5. Snool

This is the ego-soaked, self-important president of my local HOA Committee – a true legend in his own mind.  He has more rules than a Stanley tape-measure factory.

6. Rendling

This is how you tear apart a Costco roast chicken to consume it.  The wife saw me do it, and asked, “Are you going to eat that entire thing all alone?”  I replied, “No, I’m going to have some French fries with it.”

7. Fanfaronade

I noticed on my way home, that a budding capitalist kid on my street has a drink stand on the sidewalk.  I would appreciate a citrus beverage, and would like to help his enterprise, but he’s Wwwaaayyy… up the block.  Maybe I could get Uber-Eats to pick it up for me.

8. Bloviate

After eating most of a gourmet pizza last night, with cauliflower, capers, red onions, pineapple, and anchovies, I rolled out of bed this morning –literally – with a distended abdomen that looked like the fat guy in the Monty Python skit.  I raced to the hospital, and while the ER doctor is fetching the special catheter to release all my gas, I’m using my tablet to look up “Flummery.”

9. Pudibund

Three things don’t lie, drunks, small children – and yoga pants.  This is also known as camel toe.

10. Rebarbative

Porcupine quills are like tiny one-way arrows.  They go in, but you can’t get them out.  Take your dog to a strong veterinarian with pliers.  Let it hate him.

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Christian Privilege Run Amok

The Good Christian™ love and tolerance fairly flows from the following advice-column letter.
Through 40 years of marriage, my mother-in-law regularly wrote my husband critiques of me.  She always started with a prayer, then insulted and belittled me to become more like her daughters and daughters-in-law, who pray with her at their church, and have never worked because they ‘put their husbands and children first.’  Hardly judgmental or insulting at all!

The Canadian Armed Forces have issued a change in procedure to their chaplains.  Two local Op-Ed letters were published.  An ex-mayor said;
It is time for every serious-thinking Canadian to lament the latest directive by the government that military chaplains should no longer engage in ‘prayer’ or use the word ‘God,” but rather engage in ‘reflection.’

Does the Trudeau government know that in a 2019 national survey, 68% of Canadians reported having a religious affiliation?  To whom will Prime Minister Trudeau be “reflecting” at the National War Memorial on Remembrance Day, when he bows his head – The Tooth Fairy, Mickey Mouse, or The Easter Bunny?

I will be praying to God for the safety of those in uniform, thanking God for those who gave their lives in wars and disasters, and seeking comfort from my God for the Canada which no longer exists.

Mister Christie, you make good cookies – but truly shitty arguments.  Your “God” is not my “God”.   68% may have religious affiliation, but not all of them to your Christian faith.  Trudeau was reflecting to his Catholic God on Nov. 11, but those around him mentally sought Yahweh, Allah, Buddha, and others.  Your reference to cartoon and fairy-tale characters was insulting and disingenuous.  As a politician, the very mention of the 68% figure, means that you don’t give a shit about the other 32%.  Perhaps that’s why you’re an ex-mayor.

A local doctor of Polish descent insulted the Polish army, and our intelligence, when he said;
Military chaplains have been instructed by the Canadian government to remove words like “God,” and “Heavenly Father” at official events, under the pretext of inclusion, to avoid offending Atheists.

This shows that our Liberal government would rather offend God, pierce His heart with a dagger and remove His providential armor, as described in the book of Isaiah.  The Catholic Church urged Poles to beg for God’s protection from the Russian Communist Bolsheviks.

At the Battle of Warsaw in 1920, called the miracle over Wisla River, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared, and the Bolsheviks fled in fear.  Christ’s directive to us is simple.  “Give unto Caesar what is Caesars, and unto God what is God’s.”

The ‘Miracle at Wisla River’ was that the tiny Polish army repulsed the far larger Russian force.  They did it with dedication, grit, and home court advantage.  The official historical accounts make no mention of the appearance of the Virgin Mary.  The Poles won the day with patriotism, force of arms, better training and shorter supply lines – not with delusion and hallucinations.

The good doctor has both his dictionary and his prayer book in a knot.  The word ‘pretext’ means something that is put forward to conceal a true purpose or object.  There is no pretext that this was done for inclusion, and to prevent giving offence.  Neither the Prime Minister’s office, nor the Armed Forces, issued any statement naming Atheists.  Those not offended now include Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Shintoists, and others.

It is disturbing, but ironically amusing , that he offers the ‘give unto Caesar’ quote to justify his whine, when that is exactly what is being done.  The Christian God is not being removed from the Canadian Armed Forces, only the insistence of its monopolistic application to groups which include many non-Christians.

Oh, these poor oppressed majority Christians, they have had undue, unwarranted, unlimited, unquestioned privilege for so long, that the mere attempt by another individual or group to achieve some equality, just sends them into a religious tizzy.  They practice social martyrism.  They try to convince themselves that, the more hard-done-by they are, the more correct their stance, and the closer to salvation.   😮

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How Close To Death Were You?

The Quora website offers a bunch of interesting questions – and some fascinating answers.

Almost every one of us has had at least one time in their life when they narrowly escaped Death, unless they were raised like The Boy in the Bubble, or as a marshmallow, in a bag with other marshmallows – and even marshmallows are constantly under threat of being made into Rice Krispy Squares.

One would think that any brush with Death would be overt, obvious, noticeable, and memorable!  The big truck that ran the red light, and whistled by, inches from your car’s nose, instead of into your door, is unforgettable.  Certainly the time that my own cousin pushed me into eight feet of water before I could swim, as a joke, and then had to dive in and drag me out, has not been forgotten.  The time my brother put a hole in a wall, a foot from my head, with a shotgun, is still fresh in my memory.

The time that I was perhaps the closest to dying horrifically, while interesting, was so quiet and restrained that it was a long time after, before I realized just how close it had been.

When I first came to this burgh from my hometown for employment, half a century ago, I was only one of many.  Some of us quickly got jobs, and acquired cars.   Many of us didn’t.  If I wanted to go home for a weekend, I had a list of people that I could call.  One Sunday night, I got a ride back with two cousins, one who owned and drove an old car.

There were to be six of us in this sedan.  Already running late, the last was to be picked up in the next town to the south.  The East/West highway from there to our North/South route curved northward, around a bend in the river.  The other highway then curved back West, before turning south.  If we took a county road across the narrow bottom of a triangle, we could save five miles of driving, and five minutes of time.

Soon, we were humming along at 70/75 MPH.  Halfway across, there was an old cast-iron bridge over a narrow river tributary.  The Highway Department had decided that it needed replacing with a modern, concrete span.  They had bulldozed a gravel access road beside it, down the bank and across a pontoon bridge.

Our pilot  driver never even slowed down. He just cranked the steering wheel, and down we went.  Six passengers, each with some sort of luggage, this old vehicle was wallowing on its springs.

KA-THWUMP!

Up onto this floating monstrosity we went.  Before seatbelts, six heads made dents in the overhead roof-liner.  Annnndd….

KA-THWUMP!

Off we plunged.  And six sore tailbones were driven somewhere up near our shoulder blades!

A half a mile up the road, our chauffeur realized that he could watch the gas gauge unwind.  Something that we had smacked into, had punched a hole in our fuel tank, and we were spewing gasoline on the road behind us.  (Cue the exploding airplane scene from Diehard 2)

We were extremely lucky that whatever had poked the hole, had not also stuck a spark.  Even now, a hot exhaust pipe, or a cigarette, casually tossed from a passing car, could turn us into a hurtling mass of S’mores.  We continued at high speed back to his parents’ home, and got there with drops of fuel left.  He managed to borrow a car for a week, and we were all so glad that we would get back – late, but back – to the big city that night, that it was long after before I realized just how close our call had been.

Comment on your own adventure, or use this story as a prompt to write your own death-defying tale.  I’m going to put my asbestos underwear on, and check the fire extinguisher.  See you in a couple of days.  😳

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Bagged Fibbing Friday

Here we go then, with Pensitivity101’s mixed bag from last week……….

  1. What is boisterous?

That’s a group of young males having fun.  They can be loud.  They often shout and yell.  It’s the opposite of gurlsterous, where young females play together.  They screech and squeal in such high tones that neighbourhood dogs have their paws over their ears.

2. What is a womaniser?

That is Cerberus, the modern, three-headed Hellhound consisting of Woke society, and Presentism, aided and abetted by years of eating and drinking food from plastic containers, which leech out pseudo-estrogen, all contributing to Real Men™ becoming simpering wimps.

3. What is a faux pas?

It’s the front foot of the quick, red vulpine animal that jumped over the lazy, brown dog, which the nobility chase with horses – the unspeakable, pursuing the inedible.

4. Define plumber

A crack addict.

5. What is a sous-chef?

(S)He is a high-class victuals preparation expert, who does so using copious amounts of wine and various liqueurs.  Sometimes, they even put some in the food.

6. What is antisocial?

She is my Father’s younger sister, after she’s imbibed 5 or 6 “Medicinal toddies.’

7. Why did they call the wind Maria?

How do you solve a problem named Maria?  I thought they called the wind Mariah, but what do I know about music??  I can’t Carey a tune in a bucket.

8. Where would you find a kettle drum?

Underneath the big corn popper at the movie theater, or county fair.

9. What is a kango drill?

It is an Australian Military Band marching maneuver.

10. What makes bread rise?

Inflation!  😳  And petrol, and rent, and….

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Prehistoric Humor

A caveman is sitting by a creek, gnawing on a hunk of mastodon meat, enjoying the rare quiet. After a short time, the quiet is broken by a distant shriek and from the direction of his cave, his wife comes running. “Wog! Wog!” she screams, “Come quick! A saber-toothed tiger has just chased mother into the cave.” Wog looks up at his wife with mild annoyance, chews the final remaining piece of meat from the bone, and calmly says, “What do I care what happens to a saber-toothed tiger?”

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At a wedding ceremony, the priest asked if anyone had anything to say about the union of the bride and groom – it was their time to stand up and talk, or forever hold their peace.  The moment of utter silence was ended by a beautiful young woman, holding a small child.  She started walking toward the pastor.

Everything quickly turned to chaos.
The bride slapped the groom.
The groom’s mother fainted.
The groomsmen started giving each other looks, and wondering how to save the situation.

The priest asked the woman, “Can you tell us why you came forward?  What do you have to say?”
She replied, “We can’t hear at the back.”

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I recently called an old Engineering buddy of mine, and asked him what he was up to these days.
He replied that he was working on aqua-thermal treatment of ceramics, aluminum, and steel under a constrained environment.
I was really impressed, until further conversation revealed that he was washing dishes with hot water, because his wife had ordered him to.

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Me; Age 12
Fell off bike at high speed on a gravel road.  Rode home 5 miles.
Me; Today
Used the wrong pillow and was non-functional for 2 days.

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Who Says Men Don’t Remember?

A couple went Christmas shopping.  The shopping center was packed, and the wife was suddenly surprised to find that her husband was nowhere to be seen.  She was quite upset, because they had a lot to do, so she called him on her cell phone, to ask him where he was.
In a quiet voice he said, “Do you remember that jewelers that we went into about five years ago?  The one where you fell in love with that diamond bracelet that we couldn’t afford, but I told you I would get for you one day?”
The wife choked up and said, “Yes, I remember that shop.”
He replied, “Well, I’m in the pub next door.”

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When my wife caught me on the bathroom scale, sucking in my stomach, she laughed.  “That’s not going to help.”
“Sure it does.  That’s the only way I can read the numbers.”

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The difference between an introvert and an extrovert mathematician is: An introvert mathematician looks at his shoes while talking to you, an extrovert mathematician looks at your shoes.

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People Who Weren’t Really There

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Questions not asked – answers not learned.

Are nicknames still ‘a thing’?  They were in small-town Ontario, in the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s.  I knew a bunch of people by names other than the ones they were given.  Many of them, I never knew their real name.

In the 20 years I knew him, there was a grocer who my parents always referred to as ‘Pro’ Montgomery.  Did he have a Quaker mother who named him Prophet?  Or a Greek one who called him Prometheus?  As a grocer, did he sell produce?  Or was he just a professional proprietor??!  These, and many other worthless conjectures, are free with the price of admission to this post.

For some years, my Father worked with a man he only called Pru.  Again, thoughts of names like Prudent came to mind.  Years later, I discovered that it is the French(-Canadian) surname Proulx, whose spelling and pronunciation so confound many English-speakers, that I have seen it spelled Prolux.

Hubbie Masterson’s real name was Bill.  He was an aggressive Banty-rooster of a man who showed no signs of being hen-pecked.  His friend, another Bill, was known as Biscuit.  He was a Real Estate Broker whose office was right beside the town bakery, but I’m pretty sure that I heard him called ‘Biscuit,’ before he moved in.

The taxi owner’s son/driver became known as Chink, or Chinky, after the town got a Chinese restaurant, and he was seen there several times a week for meals and snacks.  I once knew his real name, but not 65 years later.  At least twice, my brother being one of them, young men got called Boomer.  Not nuclear-sub commanders, this name is applied to those whose level of conversation is just consistently too loud.  “Okay, boomer” now carries a different connotation.   😯

One of my schoolmates acquired the name Tack, one he still carries today.  It started as ‘Whack-A-Tack,’ because he seemed to have such a fixation on sex, and so little social control that he might be caught masturbating in public.

The town had a Ma Keyes.  This might not seem too unusual….except that there was no Pa Keyes, or any little Keyes kids running around, that she could be a Ma to.  One young fellow became Cobbie simply because one of his friends(?) felt that he needed a nickname, and mangled his last name of McCauley.  The same sort of thing happened when unfortunate Alec, became Ackie.  They tried to attach the nickname Smitty to me, but there wasn’t enough personality to hang it on.

There were two Shular families in town, unrelated to each other.  They each had a boy born in the same year, one, an only child, the other, the fifth of seven children.  They each named their son, Doug.  To keep them straight, we called the only child Boo, though to this day, I don’t know why.

One friend was one of a pair of identical twins, who quickly became un-identical as soon as they were born.  My buddy, Robert, became the bright, outgoing, social, rowdy, daredevil, soon named Butch – by his Mother, and everyone else.  It was so ingrained that I heard a teacher address him as Robert one day, and didn’t know who she was talking to.

Bud Helwig was the flower of his Mother’s eye, who probably had the same first name as his father, David, but if so, I never heard it.  I always knew the adult son next door as Mack.  It might actually have been Mack.  That is an acceptable name, but I’ve often wondered whether it was just Mac, because a Scottish mother gave him a Scottish maiden name – like MacTavish, or MacDougall – for a given name.

Wilfred, the harbor-master, was neither Will, nor Fred, but rather, Wiff.  Although, with his proximity to the fishing boats, perhaps it was Whiff.  My red-headed Scottish uncle became Rusty, even after he’d turned white, rather than the given name, Melvin, which he hated.

Another uncle was named Elmer.  He had 3 daughters, and 6 sons, one of whom he named Elmer also.  Both he and his namesake had the same pronunciation problem.  They could not enunciate the M in the word ‘I’m.’  Rather, they would say, ‘I’n (eye’n) goin’ downtown.’ So they each became known as Iney.  Another cousin with a childhood speech defect pronounced the word ‘snort’, as H-f-nort, and became Nort Brown for the rest of his life.

Three families at the edge of town constantly bred back and forth, cousin to cousin, until the average IQ dropped to about 90.  When my Father came to town, the dim-witted, oldest (boy) of one family was known as Mooney.  By the time I was old enough to encounter them, the Mooney title had passed to the youngest son, and his now 6’-6” oldest brother, with size 14 shoes (Strong like ox – almost as smart) was known as Boots.

Walter Rogers drove me to and from my summer job at a plywood plant every day.  Of course, he wasn’t known as Walter, or Walt, or Wally, but as Watt.  There was a co-worker at that plant who I had known as Seven Hearn for as long as I’d been aware of him – not Sven, mind you, but Seven.  Apparently he came to work on the short bus.

I asked Watt if he knew why everyone called him Seven.  Some years back, in the lunchroom one day, unprovoked, he suddenly declared that he was number seven to own/run this plant.  His reasoning (?) was – there was the General Manager, and the Assistant Manager, the Office Manager, the Plant Manager, the Department Foreman, and the line Lead Hand.  If all of them died in a van crash on their way to a curling bonspiel, as number seven, he’d be the ‘Big Boss’.   🙄

Our school bus driver in 1958/59 was nicknamed Kaw-Liga, after the 1953 Hank Williams song about a cigar-store wooden Indian.  He didn’t object much, because he was one of several males at that time named Beverly.  I don’t know if girls named Carolyn, Marilyn, and Jennifer, who became Cardi, Marnie, and Jeff, count.

One family in town was somewhat poorer than most.  Because of this, there were many things that they did not possess, things like – Protestant Work Ethic, regular employment and income, as well as respect for laws and others’ property rights.  The son, Carl, became quite famous…. For finding things before they were lost, and getting five-finger discounts at many of the local stores.  The kindly townsfolk felt so badly for Carl, that they finally gave him something – the nickname ‘Hooker,’ which, at that time meant, shoplifter, petty thief.