Question: What kind of shoes does an optometrist wear?

Answer: “Seeing eye” shoes. Really. This is what my optometrist was wearing at my appointment.

Back in September, the U.S. Marine Corps literally lost (as in couldn’t find) one of its aircraft in South Carolina. The F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter jet went missing after the pilot ejected. The plane flew about 60 miles without its pilot and then crashed into a wooded area. The Marine Corps ordered a two-day stand down while they searched for the jet.

According to CNN, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Caroline wrote on X “How in the hell do you lose an F-35? How is there not a tracking device and we’re asking the public to what, find a jet and turn it in?”

Here’s an idea from Walt Handelsman, a cartoonist.

For several months, workers have been laying cables for broadband throughout our county. One day, this truck was parked on our street. It’s hard to read in the photo, but right above the orange cone, it says “We’ll be at your house in a Gigabit.”

Hallowe’en was more than a month ago, but I think this display is worth posting.

This neighborhood sign encapsulates the issue with only a few words.

People everywhere have a great sense of humor and I enjoy finding evidence of that when we travel.  On Ted’s and my 2023 BT, I found lots of things to smile or laugh about.  Here are a few.

We visited several spice markets in Egypt.  (FYI, they smell really good!)  At a group dinner in a Cairo hotel, this sign had the wrong English homophone for the name of the spice.  Or maybe it was a cold powder.

Want a cup of coffee?  Stop at Squarebucks in Jerusalem.

Another “smile sign” was this one in Egypt for Kentucky Fried Camel–a local joke.

When we were at the Cairo airport for our flight to Istanbul, Ted saw this sign in the men’s room over a low urinal.  It’s important to accommodate children.

I saw this bus while we were walking around Istanbul.  The city is located on the Bosphorus Strait.  Get it?

Who could resist an oxymoron like this near Ephesus, Türkiye?

Wondering where to have lunch in Kotor, Montenegro?  This is the place.

After lunch, you might want to go shopping in the Old City of Kotor to buy a souvenir like this.

We saw these works of art (?) at an art exhibit in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

This statue of the Old Diviner was discovered in the excavation of Olympia, Greece.  The nickname for it is “Zeus Talking on His Cell Phone.”

It reminded me of the statue of Apollo that Ted and I saw in the Louvre in 2016.  In case you don’t recognize it, this is “Apollo Taking a Selfie.”

Yes, “Laughter is the closest distance between two people.”      –Victor Borge

The older I get, the more of a feminist I’m becoming. As I heard one commentator say a few days ago, “There seem to be a lot of old men telling women what they can do with their bodies.”

The holidays are over and my Aunt Ruth is back on the internet. She sent a few goodies recently.

BLFC stands for the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. The contest began in 1982 as the “misbegotten brainchild” of a professor at San Jose State University who was “sentenced” to write a seminar paper on a minor Victorian novelist. Contest entrants are challenged to compose “an atrocious opening sentence to the worst novel never written.” The sentence must be original and previously unpublished. There is no limit to the length of the sentence, but the panel of “undistinguised judges” suggests 50-60 words. Entries (usually on postcards) are accepted every day of the year and the winners (grand prize, winner, dishonorable mention) are announced in mid-August. The results are made public on national and international media. Here are some of the winners I enjoyed.

The Grand Prize winner receives an “absolute pittance–and bragging rights.”

This is a Children’s Literature winner.

This was a winner in the Romance category.

Here’s a Dishonorable Mention in the Adventure category, probably written by an English major.

This is another Adventure Dishonorable Mention.

And, finally, a Children’s Literature Dishonorable Mention.

You can find winning entries as far back as 1996 at www.bulwerlytton.com–where “www” means “wretched writers welcome.”

I love to read cartoons, especially political cartoons. I’m always amazed at what broad messages cartoonists can present in a single frame with minimal words.

Here are some cartoons I recently saw related to the controversy of banning books, especially in schools. The targeted books include full smudged pictures of our country’s history rather than only the rose-tinted versions. As an educator and a book lover, these cartoons struck a strong chord for me. I’ve read at least 17 of the banned books listed in the cartoon below, have seen movies of several others, and will probably read more of these in the future.

The cartoon below makes me wish I were a warrior librarian. Instead, I fight the “Let’s ban these books” culture war by getting a special thrill out of reading books on subjects that are currently under political attack in too many places. My current controversial read is The1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones. It’s well-told history, but it’s a deep and heavy read, so I’m doing it a chapter at a time.

Queen Elizabeth II died on September 30, 2022; Loretta Lynn died four days later on October 4, 2022. This cartoonist created a beautiful tribute to two strong women.

The media has recently presented numerous documentaries about the collapse of crypto, and I’ve watched several of them. This cartoonist has summarized all of those detailed documentaries in a single drawing and six words.

Aunt Ruth gave me some more good laughs.

This one’s for cat lovers.

The perils of technology.

The next theme: airline logic.

For the coffee lovers out there. (Thom? Katie? Have you tried this?)

For gardeners.

Father’s Day is coming up.

And finally . . . this one isn’t funny, but it’s too good not to share.

This spring, it seems like it’s always raining. Fifteen of the 30 days in April included rain, and May isn’t far behind that ratio. The same thing happened last year. Rain, rain, rain until July arrived. Then it seemed like the faucet was turned off until September. Still, I’d rather have too much water than too little like the Southwest is experiencing.

On the light side, severe drought affects certain populations in unusual ways.

I was cleaning out computer files and found these. I assume they’re from my Aunt Ruth, my usual source of humor. I have no idea how old or recent these signs are. The Indian Hills Community Center in Colorado apparently changes the sign regularly, since some pictures have grass and some have snow. Enjoy!

Jeff recently shared this photo. Can you see what’s wrong with the picture?

The photo shows King Faisal of Saudi Arabia signing the United Nations charter in San Francisco in 1945. It’s an important and historically significant picture. Just for fun, a 26-year-old Saudi Arabian student “edited” the photo. Unfortunately, the Ministry of Education mistakenly used the edited photo in Saudi Arabian social studies textbooks in 2017. The Ministry later apologized for its error.

One of Willie Nelson’s fans described him as (I’m paraphrasing) “a wonderful blanket, crocheted by your favorite relative, that you’ve had for 30 years–tattered corners, mended holes, and faded colors, . . . but all soft in the right places.”

Sort like a Muppet.

Ruth sent another batch of cartoons to keep me entertained. Sadly, it took me a few moments to “get” the first one. Ruth and I are both blondes, and we enjoy dumb blonde jokes–probably because neither of us is a dumb blonde. Thus, the last cartoon.

In early February 2020, Ted and I scheduled our next overseas vacation. Our plan was to arrive in South America on February 14, 2021 and to return home on March 16. Our first scheduled destination was a few days in Peru, including an excursion to Machu Picchu. After that, we were going to cruise our way around the continent, stopping in a variety of places in Chile (including Patagonia), Argentina, and Uruguay. Today, we would have been in Buenos Aires, and tomorrow we were scheduled to return to Patagonia for an additional five days in that area. Thanks to the pandemic, our travels this year were far more modest. The farthest we’ve been from home since we returned from Australia on January 15, 2020 was Kirksville, MO where we spent a day with Kathy and Annette in August.

This is beginning to look tempting.

I know this pain. The cure? Avoid reading book series; stick to stand-alone stories.

P.S. Once I read a book review that said something like “A new Jude Devereaux book is out. There’s a late night ahead.” Yes, I’ve done that, and not only with Jude Devereaux.

I’ve had both of my COVID vaccinations and Ted has had his first. We were lucky in scheduling our vaccinations. Our doctor’s health system contacted us and provided a number to call. When we called, we were scheduled within a few days and when we had our first inoculation, we were immediately scheduled for the second one to be administered in three weeks. From what I’ve been reading, the scenario below is more common.

This reminded me of how Ted and I felt last week when we wanted to go out to lunch.

Maybe federal regulation of utilities isn’t all bad. Texans suffered greatly during the recent winter storms, due in large part to planning and operational failures among Texas utility companies.

Yesterday, Hasbro announced that it is neutralizing Mr. Potato Head. Hasbro’s senior vice president and general manager announced, “The way the brand currently exists—with the ‘Mr.’ and ‘Mrs.’—is limiting when it comes to both gender identity and family structure.”

The outcry was loud:

Dr. D exclaimed, “For crying out loud–it’s a potato! It doesn’t have a gender!”

Media analyst Mark Dice tweeted, “It’s time for the Republican states to secede.”

Piers-Morgan tweeted, “Who was actually offended by Mr Potato Head being male? I want names. These woke imbeciles are destroying the world.”

Steven Colbert’s segment on Hasbro’s announcement asked, “What part of this do you see as gender-based?”

Sean Hannity tweeted, “MR POTATO HEAD 1953-2021, Hasbro: He Was ‘Limited When It Comes to Gender Identity’.” After Hasbro clarified that only the “Mr.” is being removed from the name and that Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head will be continue to be available as “just plain ‘Potato Head’,” Hannity responded, “Mr. Potato Head Lives!”

Long live non-gender potatoes!

Author’s note: When I was growing up, our Mr. Potato Head toy required actual potatoes; thus, the name of the toy. Complaints about rotten vegetables plus new government food safety rules prompted Hasbro to include a plastic potato body along with the facial parts in 1964.