Herb Hoffman – Page 6 – HUMOR IS NO FUN UNLESS YOU LAUGH

At the Mercy

Many think that everything we do is predetermined. Churches preach that. Philosophers struggle with the problem of free will versus determinism. Many of us, however, will say that of course we have free will. We are Americans. We can do whatever. Try to stop us.

“Aha!” says modern Electronics. “Try using your phone when the battery is empty. Sure, you are free to load it or not to load it. But where does that get you? Admit it: you are at the mercy of Technology.”

You are writing an important treatise, something truly heretical. Having free will, you are entitled to do this. God will not stop you. But the word processing software will. It suddenly freezes. You cannot write another word. You are at the mercy of the Microsoft Corporation.

You go shopping for some imported black delicatessen pumpernickel. The store does not carry such. No surprise. You are at the mercy of supply and demand.

You order a book for your kindle-1 but it is sent to kindle-2. You are at the mercy of Amazon.

We are free to create or do what we want, but it may go wrong. The more pressing our plan, the more likely it is to go wrong. Maybe that is what Friedrich Nietzsche meant when he said that free will does not exist.

In sum, we may be free to be creative, to plan our luncheon on the grass with or without clothes, whatever. In the end, however, we are at the mercy of Murphy.

Burnt Offerings

Having read about the gruesome sacrificial rituals of the ancient Aztecs, I found it interesting to hear the why and wherefore of this practice, as suggested by recent anthropological research. It appears that people believed in beings they vaguely referred to as The Gods and that in the beginning of things those gods sacrificed themselves and by that act enabled the people to live and prosper. The “beginning of things” must have been a problem for the Aztecs. Apparently the gods did not create the Aztec world but owed allegiance to some higher power and their self-sacrifice was to honor that higher power, just as the Aztecs’ human sacrifices were a way to honor and thank the gods. The sacrificial victims were most likely voluntary martyrs submitting to a most honorable ritual that was still carried out in the sixteenth century.

It may all sound very absurd. The ruling Spanish friars thought so too and consequently accused the natives of carrying out cruel rituals. They apparently were blind to their own belief in a Christian god who went through the same steps, sacrificing himself for the good of the people. The friars’ instincts were right, however. Human sacrifices to please the gods were passé, even in the sixteenth century. The friars, however, had no trouble living in a world where heretics were burned to death to honor the Christian god.

There must have been quite a few black kettles in those accusers’ own eyes.

Discount Winery

I am not a wine connoisseur. Obviously. Because I buy my pleasant, harmless dry red at three bottles for ten dollars. If I go shopping on one of my thrifty days I buy six bottles and pocket the 10% bulk discount. I buy my fruit and my oatmeal and most everything else I eat at the local supermarket where there is always something “special” and on sale and where people are invited to enjoy the savings on Five-Dollar-Fridays. In other words, it is a humble neighborhood where residents are thrifty, hold on to their wallets, and redeem coupons.

I know, however, that they also like a little whisky or a glass of wine. The evidence I have are the two long aisles in the store devoted to wine, beer, and spirits. This should not surprise anyone. The days of the Prohibition are long gone. What I do find surprising is that this same humble supermarket recently added a glass enclosed walk-in cabinet devoted to the storage and display of the finer wines. There also is a tasting corner, complete with bar stools, separated from the crowds by red velvet ropes suspended from brass rings. Who, I asked myself, would patronize such luxury next to potatoes, bananas, Chlorox spray, and baby food?

It seems that I have totally misjudged my neighbors. I stopped to look at some of the wines on display. The price tags were unbelievable. Nothing under $100 for the 750ml- bottle. There were dozens of wines that sold for more than that. The one that hit the jackpot was priced at $220.00. I found it pathetically humorous that the bourgeois save-on-your-groceries mentality carried over even at this price range. If you buy six bottles, the helpful sign said, the price per bottle is reduced to $200, if you can believe such a bargain.

William Hogarth, the great eighteenth century English master of satirical engravings, is known among others for the picture of a tavern displaying a sign that says Drunk for a Penny, Dead Drunk for Twopence. Were he to come back, would he ever have to recalibrate his burin!

Shadows of Not Long Ago

If you listen to the current President of the United States of America, the Press is the enemy of the people, spreading “fake news”. That does not surprise me any more. But I learned early on how that plays out. I grew up in Nazi Germany. When the National Socialists took over the government in 1933, the first thing they did was to shut down all opposition papers to prevent them from spreading “Jewish lies”.

Beginning in January of 1945, however, three months before the end of the war in Europe, the American army reached Aachen and started the first post-war German newspaper.

The Army, incidentally, lost twenty thousand men in the struggle to get there. The absurdity is that those twenty thousand American citizens died fighting an enemy whose enemy was, as we now hear, the same as theirs, the free Press. That of course was a year before the current leader of this Nation was born and, if we stretch it a little, he can be excused for not knowing that in those days the American military administration was so old-fashioned that they actually thought the re-establishment of a free press was vital to the reeducation of us Germans.

But wait! I am both, one of those reeducated Germans as well as an American citizen. I am confused now. Which is the America we are making great again?

On Shipping Out

Meadowbrook Valley Park is a misnomer. It is not in a valley. It is on a hillside. But as cemeteries go the Park has one overriding advantage: it is close to my home. Within walking distance actually, yet all the fellows that have come to rest there were brought in by car and a few were carried up on the shoulders of six to eight sturdy sons and grandsons. So far none, I have been assured, availed themselves of the pedestrian access.

It is a nice, well-kept place. “Henry will have a beautiful view of the ocean,” I once overheard the widow exclaim during her husband’s funeral. To which the officiating Bishop replied: “Good luck!” But it is a nice place, don’t get me wrong. They recently had an advertisement in the local newspaper announcing their 2018 summer specials at zero interest for twelve months. If you could be sure of renaissance this might be a good deal, on a trial basis. Me, I would rather pass on this offer and stay where I am..

I was intrigued by their Personal Planning Guide. Not that I was planning to depart as yet. Only a desperate pseudo-existentialist would do such a thing. But it drove home to me that your death does indeed require some planning if you want to save your survivors a lot of trouble.

With the offer of the guide, and as a neat come-on symbolizing, I assume, your last supper, the Park also threw in a voucher for a local restaurant, valid while supplies last. I am the last person to refuse a free meal but in this case I fervently hope that they will run out. It would be a little too morbid for me.

I must admit, though, that all these musings made me pay attention to other reminders of the unavoidable. I saw a huge sign in a strip mall announcing a sale on coffins, for example. On first reading I thought it was coffee, but no, I had read it correctly. It is just that I had never heard of such an offer. Until I found out that you can buy your coffin even at Costco, except that they call them caskets. And being Costco they probably package them in twos. I could not help noticing that they have two kinds. One is called the Gardener casket at $900 each, the other is the President casket, priced a little lower than the gardener at $800, thus politicizing even my funeral. Shame on them. I also found out that it is legal to sell coffins, or caskets, made out of cardboard. The FTC is not worried about that except, neutral as any government organization should be, they have standardized the terminology and call all such vessels Containers. And if your brain is wired the same as mine you must now have visions of huge container ships. Are we ready to be shipped out in a container?

Is the Hun at the Gate?

In the days when Tsar Peter was ruling Russia and the Great Northern War was raging the invading Swedish forces lived off the land. Russian farmers would prepare for the Swedish soldiers’ raids by stashing away supplies in secret places and then pretending to have nothing. The Swedish soldiers, however, came upon a very simple and effective way to make the farmers give them the key: they took away the children. More recently, the Hitler government rounded up unwanted people. He had them separated into men, women, and children. I think I know what happened to the men and the women. I wish I did not know about the children. But the testimony of SS-Obersturmfuhrer Hafner is on record: “The children were brought in a tractor. The Wehrmacht had already dug a grave…” I am glad, though, to know that the surviving guilty members of the Nazi German government were hanged.

One of the four judges was an American. America was great then. He had a right to be righteous. But now America has its own problem with unwanted people. Granted, we have no King Charles, no Hitler, but we have made a start. We have a White House Chief of Staff who is determined to deter people from coming here by any means. Including the taking away of their children, as he admitted on camera.

It seems that taking their children is indeed a very effective way to get people’s attention. “Gotcha!”, as the Pied Piper of Hamelin said, pulling the kids behind him into the mountain.

On Silence

I am not one of those that hear the grass grow. Nor do I hear the squirrel’s heartbeat, to borrow another concept from George Eliot. But then I would not want to hear such things, anyway. I would settle for just hearing what those around me are saying. Not that I do not “hear” them – if anything, I am annoyed by the din, the constant roar that surrounds me – but I would also like to understand what people are saying. I find it very taxing to give a well-reasoned cohesive answer to a question I did not understand. I am not a reliable conversation partner. Folks may be put off when they discuss Macy’s sale of pots and pans and I respond that I don’t really need any socks, nor pants. The short of the story is that the family counsel came to the conclusion that I should have a hearing test.

This was done. Among other things they put earphones on me and I had to listen to words and then repeat them. The first one was the word “clarinet”. Then came the word “woods”. Hello, I thought, this is going to go my way. The next word was “reed”. Didn’t I guess that? This was fun, actually. The next word was “laughed” followed by the word “fest”. This test was music to my ears because I was thinking “Mozart”. Unfortunately the music was only in my head. I had the fest all wrong, and it was nothing to laugh at. It had not been clarinet but cabinet; goods, not woods; followed by “weed”, “graft”, and “west”. What a downer. There went Wolfgang Amadeus. I probably should look for a recording of the Concert in A for Clarinet while I can still hear. But I digress.

I came away with a chart showing what was normal hearing (in black) vs. what was me (in red). This explains a lot and people make allowances because they understand that old age and my deteriorating inner ear ganglion cells slow down my brain. Many are supportive, none more so than the Edison Company. When I call them to pay my bill the helpful voice on the recording always warns me: “While you are waiting you may hear silence!”

You can say that again, Sister.

NaCl Weaponized

If you are young and healthy you seldom see a physician. You do not think about blood pressure, salt, and heart attacks either. Your systolic blood pressure is about 120 mmHG. But then you get old and the situation changes. You go to the doctor more often than you would like, and you watch with apprehension when they measure your blood pressure. You also learn some Greek and start to talk about hypertension vs. hypotension. Both are bad news. One day, some years ago, the paramedics measured my blood pressure at about 79 mmHG and took me straight to the emergency room. I learned that day that low blood pressure can be deadly, depending on how hypo you go. My case, luckily, was not serious enough to worry. They sent me home again.

The real bugaboo, however, is hypertension. You do not want any of it. It could do damage to your heart, to your arteries, your kidneys, your brain, or all of those together. And it could interfere with your sex life or cause other similarly tragical dysfunctions. I have been lucky so far. I do not have hypertension. But my cardiologist put me on a low salt diet anyway, “to keep it that way,” as he warned me. One learns something every day. I learned then to stay away from sausages, soups, sauces, and other salty things, and that is also why I spend more time reading labels than actually shopping on my visits to the supermarket.

I have to admit that I spent almost a century now in total ignorance of the dangers of excess salt in everything we eat, although much of this, I suspect, was already known in the glory days of Gomorrah. We read in ancient scriptures that the Gomorreans were sinful. I suspect that they were a fun-loving crowd and that their sins included gluttony, meaning that they tended to eat more than was good for them, especially spicy food, and much more salt than the maximum daily amount their creator had carefully measured out for them, a warning they, being humans, blissfully disregarded. He was so upset with their irresponsible behavior that, as we would say today, he “nuked” them to oblivion. A few survivors ran away. “Get out!” he shouted after them. “And don’t you ever come back. Don’t even look back!”

He must have been a vengeful god, given to severity. When one of the women furtively glanced back he selected her as an example to others. She died. Of too much salt. So much, actually, that she turned into solid salt, one hundred per cent pure sodium chloride. Not much more has been published about the affair, other than the fact that this was her unfortunate lot.

Here you have it then, the untold story of Sodium and Gomorrah.

The Importance Of Scrolling Down

A Story, quasi monitum, or at least a warning.

I thought I was seeing a ghost. There was Charlie Hunter! Sitting on the bench in the bus stop kiosk. We had been neighbors some years ago. No, it couldn’t be Charlie. Impossible: I had just read his obituary in the Sunday Courier. A substantial write-up. Died peacefully in his sleep, the paragraph had concluded.

“You aren’t Charlie Hunter, aren’t you?” I addressed the man, somewhat haltingly. I mean, people do look alike sometimes.

“Oh Hi, Elmer!” he said as he turned his face up to see me. “Haven’t seen you in a while. How are you?”

For a moment I felt a little woozy. This was nothing if not eerie.
“What brings you to these parts?” I finally managed to say. Could not think of anything else to say to a person who isn’t any more.

“I’m on my way to the cardiologist,” he said. There was nothing ghostly in his speech. “The old ticker, you know, needs a little boost now and then. Nothing special, just get my routine annual checkup.”

I was still not quite sure if I was dreaming, losing my mind, or what.
“So,” — I was fishing for suitable words — “So you are really quite well then?”

“Oh yes,” he smiled. “I am still up on the world. Quit smoking, you know. Clears the mind and the pipes, I tell you. Sometimes I do feel my age, though. The modern world puzzles me. Everything seems to go so fast these days. Where is everybody going in such a hurry? And then the computer. I swear there lurks a dybbuk in that machine. Can’t tell you how many emails and things I have lost or messed up because I forgot to save or send, or because I clicked on the wrong confounded button.”

This was no time for chit-chat, I felt. I mean, how weird can you let a situation get? So I told him straight out that I had read his obituary in the paper, enumerating all his accomplishments, how his children respected him, and all the nice comments his co-workers had left. I was not prepared for his reply.

“Yea, I read it too”, he said. “I get the e-version of the paper. Made me feel really good about myself. I had no idea people liked me that much.”

“But don’t you understand? It said that you had died!”

“It said what?” he turned with a start. “Where did you see that?”

“At the very bottom of the obituary notice. ‘Died in his sleep’ it said.”

There was a long pause. Neither of us moved. Then he burst out laughing: “Oh for God’s sake, I done it again.”

“What?” I had to swallow. “What did you do again?”

“I have done this before. I read something, you know, a message, a letter maybe, and then I click on the ‘close’ button and go about my business.”

“Hold on, hold on,” I said, to myself, mostly. ” All this cannot be real?”

“It is, apparently.” Charlie said. “My fault, I guess,” he admitted, somewhat subdued. And after a pause, “Didn’t I say there is a dybbuk in that system? Seems that you never know what you miss if you don’t scroll down!”

On Driving While Young

When you are young, say fifteen or so, there is little that you don’t already know. You also can do just about anything. I was already seventeen when I thought I could ride a horse, for example. I just needed some practice. There was a riding school a block away. The instructor must have known I could not tell a horse from a mule, let alone tell either of them what to do. He assigned me to a slow old mare. Then we started off, all around the arena. All but my horse. Smart horse: I was still fishing for the stirrups and would have slid off the saddle, had she moved. The instructor came over, cursed the horse and smacked her. The horse reacted by starting off in a gallop, me holding on to saddle and mane. I do not remember how we eventually came to a stop. All I can say with assurance is that riding a horse came off my can-already-do list that afternoon. I forfeited the rest of the lessons.

But then, who needs to ride a horse, anyway. The way one got around in the twentieth century was by automobile. That, certainly, was within my capabilities. After all, I had once ridden a small two-cycle moped for about 200 yards on an empty stretch of rural highway. So when the American army officer parked his souvenir German army VW in the patch of woods next to where we were then billeted temptation bit me. The keys were in, nobody was home. Let’s see if we can move that thing! Ah, the adrenalin. I knew nothing about gears and how to shift. Which turned out to be embarrassing because the moment I turned the key “the thing” jerked forward. There was nothing in the way to stop it except a small tree. The tree performed flawlessly and the engine died. Amazingly enough there was no serious damage. I pushed the car back to where it had been and slid away.

Yet the dream never left me. One day, I just knew, I would have a car and I would of course know how to drive. I was in my early twenties when I bought my first car, a used British Triumph two-door. I had no driver’s license but I was smart, so who needs lessons? I thought it best to practice after dark when our residential neighborhood was quiet. I remember one night in particular. It was snowing. I did my best to steer in a straight line. As I came around the block on my second lap I could still see the impressions of my previous turn in the snow. It looked more like zig zag than straight line and my knees were shaking. I turned left, which was a mistake because it led me into a cul-de-sac. I had no idea how to back out of the situation and there were people, watching.

Eventually, however, I had to take the driver’s test. To do this I had to arrive at the motor vehicle office in the company of a licensed adult. I did not know anybody in Toronto. Someone advised me to hire an instructor for an hour who would accompany me there. I did that and he taught me a few important last minute details, such as parallel parking on a hillside, using clutch control. How glad I was because that is exactly what I had never thought of and what the examiner had me do. I passed with flying colors. Too bad cars do not have clutch pedals any more. I would be glad to demonstrate.

Then came the days of love and roses. We were newlyweds and we were young and foolish, or at least I was. Consequently I behaved flashily like, for example, driving along with a cigarette nonchalantly dangling from my lips. I found out, however, that this blasé gesture was not worth the cost. You have no idea how hot a burning cigarette is when you accidentally drop it between your legs while you are navigating your car during rush hour at the intersection of Bloor and Yonge in downtown Toronto!

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