Category: Humor

One More Guggle-Muggle for the Road

Like most families, the nostrums necessary to palliate childhood ills were administered by my mother and grandmother. One, however, came from my father, and until last night, I thought it was his invention.

Winter in Southern California is barely winter. But colds, coughs, and bad dreams can besiege a child in any clime.

I was six. My older brother was nine. Our baby brother was just months old. Dad came into the big boys’ bedroom to solve some medical or psychological problem. He carried two glasses of what appeared to be milk. My brother and I immediately noticed globules of melted butter floating on the surface of the warm liquid. We questioned.

“It’s a guggle-muggle,” Dad explained. “Drink.”

Continue reading “One More Guggle-Muggle for the Road”

Fashion Show–1972

Insouciant and unflapped, the 28-year-old father of two, too sexy for his shirt (and shoes!), does his little turn on the catwalk.

The shirt was chocolate. The tie was garish.

The suit, of blessed memory, was lemon and taupe.

Nuff sed.

Go Sue Yourself!

Perhaps based upon a well-known, anatomically difficult, consensual act, Wells Fargo has sued itself in a Florida foreclosure case reported by Business Insider earlier this month:

“Wells Fargo holds the first and second mortgages on a condominium….As holder of the first, Wells Fargo is suing all other lien holders, including the holder of the second, which is itself.”

Nice move, Wells Fargo. But I had that self-abusive idea first.

In 1989, while working for Montgomery Securities in San Francisco, I zapped a friend by hacking into our pre-internet business wire and generating this official-looking “news story.”

The hard-to-read original text in the sidebar is:

BROKER SUES SELF FOR CHURNING

San Francisco, Ca, April 5/PRNewswire/ — In an unprecedented legal maneuver, Montgomery Continue reading “Go Sue Yourself!”

The Prime Minister and the Supreme Court

Tonight’s true story.

An intelligent, worldly woman is leaning over her laptop late at night, paying almost no attention to the conversations behind her. She is startled out of her browsing by her sister’s voice.

“Is there any news about Golda Meir?”

She spins away from her laptop and demands, “What’s going on with Golda Meir?”

Three adults stare at her as if she’s grown a second head. Meir’s been dead for 31 years.

She persists, “Golda Meir. What’s the news?”

After several whats and huhs, she finally learns that her sister, bored with the non-stop, pan-media banality of Michael Jackson’s death reportage, had inquired about the latest Supreme Court nominee.

You read it here first: (Sonia) SOTO MAYOR will be the next prime minister of Israel.

A House Cat Murdered My Wife…That’s My Story

Treswick was a big cat, a bad cat. He was, his owners averred, tres wicked.

It was 1967. I was a first-year graduate student living in Peabody Terrace, the married students’ housing, a walking bridge across the river from Harvard Business School. These were tall, narrow buildings, four units to a floor, all sharing a long narrow balcony that looked east over the Charles River toward Boston. We had the uppermost balcony, a twentieth-floor apartment. When the weather was warm, all four apartments might be open to the balcony, on which rested only two heavy chairs, the frequent strong winds making predictable patio furniture a hazard to ground dwellers.

Treswick lived two apartments away and often walked the parapets, pacing the railing, three feet down on one side, 200 on the other. One evening, Continue reading “A House Cat Murdered My Wife…That’s My Story”

Bank of America’s Bad Marketing

Do they even come close to knowing what’s going on?

Today I mailed the letter below to Barbara Desoer, President of Bank of America Home Loans, in Charlotte, NC. According to Money magazine, she received $9.6 million in compensation in  2007, and was one of the 25 highest-paid women in America.

Dear Barbara:

I begin this letter with an intimate salutation, taking a cue from the letter I received from you today, addressed to me and my wife (Stephen and Ann).

I, a Bank of America retiree, was intrigued by the outside of the bright red envelope that contained your letter. “Welcome to Bank of America/Look inside for your new opportunities” it said. At first I thought it had something to do Continue reading “Bank of America’s Bad Marketing”