Thoughts on an Inauguration

I could have gone to Washington, D.C. to the big inauguration, but my helicopter broke. It's in pieces on the kitchen floor.

I could have taken a train to Washington, D.C., but all the trains were full.

I could have danced and sung and waved a flag in Washington.D.C., but then I heard there were going to be two million people all mashed together singing and dancing and waving flags, and what if they knocked me down and stepped on me and stuck flag sticks in my eyes?

I'm careful about stuff like that because once I was standing in an open truck with Frank Sinatra in Hoboken where he was born and everybody liked him. So there was a big crowd of admirers, and most of them were trying to reach up over the panel at the back of the truck and touch him, and the ones that leaped high enough were yanking buttons off his shirt, and shoving pieces of paper at him to sign, and they were screaming, and I thought, I am going to be dragged off this truck, and trampled on, and killed.

Fortunately, because of my extreme carefulness (it consisted of hanging on to Frank's coat and whimpering) nothing bad happened.

Anyhow, President Obama managed to get himself inaugurated, and i hope he didn't notice that I never showed up.

Right now, it's freezing in New York city but that's okay because I'm wearing mittens and a hat with ear muffs while I make the bed. Hot or cold, the world moves on, and a good thing is that President Obama seems eager to move with it.

California is war, and Dood is better than Good

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to freeze I go, in New York City, my home town. In California, from which I have foolishly returned, they're eating lemons off the trees and wearing fur-trimmed shorts. Due to the fact that I haven't got a job, I am going to crawl under my blanket and not come out until April, or until the landlady gets testy.

In case you wondered why you -- my brave readers of whom there are already six or seven-- haven't had access to my blog for a month, it's because 1: I haven't written it. 2: I'm erratic and 3: California is dangerous. I kept falling down there. On one day, I managed to stumble over an angry vacuum cleaner, and also a ferocious driveway that was made of steel. Not really steel. Brick, I guess. Then there was a dog that tried to kill me with love. She was fond but foolish, and she stood on her long hind legs, and threw her long front legs around the shoulders of anyone who came close. Why, she's only a puppy, everyone said, but she was one strong puppy. And her wish was to slobber all over your face. The problem wasn't so much the slobbering, it was that while she was trying to kiss you, she was knocking you down.

And then, last Monday, my brother, the Nobel Prize winner, took me out for my birthday, and I was complaining about my broken foot, and he was not impressed. "At our age," he said, "most people are dead."

But enough of tragedy. I'm switching to comedy. How about this? My niece's three year old daughter, Lexie (the same one who said, "I have a idea") came through again. Somebody was talking about the excellence of cookies, and Lexie nodded her wise little head. "Yes," she said. "Tookies are dood." So I'm wishing you all a dood New Year.