Finally, the rebellion has begun!

Ed. here, again. I have received a communication ["bollocking" would be a better word. Poor Len] from Walt, who reminds me whose blog this is. "Take a look at the profile picture", he said. Errr... And I have been instructed that if I'm going to take Walt's place, then Poor Len Canayen will be deputed to take mine... even if he has to do it by remote from the Great No-longer-white North.

I am not counting on Poor Len's being preoccupied with the Canadiens-Penguins game tonight, so will mind my Ps and Qs and just post this meme, received from Agent 9, who says "Check out what she's standing on!"

We are all seniors here. Poor Len and I are both well past retirement age, but unlike Joe Biden, we recognize the limitations of our dotage. Walt, as is well known, is 187. So we all appreciate this. Thank you, 9!

Simple solution for problems housing seniors and criminals

As the corona virus continues to sweep across North America [mostly the part south of the 49th parallel. Ed.], it presents governments with problems particular to two groups of citizens who are forced to live in confined quarters where the virus spreads more rapidly, with deadly effect. I speak of senior citizens incarcerated in retirement homes, and criminals living rent-free in prisons where they enjoy benefits (like three squares, internet and TV) which many seniors don't get.

Thanks be, then, to Agent 9, who has forwarded a proposal from "Maxine" [Who she? Ed.] which, if implemented, would kill both birds with one stone. Hm. Maybe not a keen choice o' words. Let's just say our dilemma about what to do with seniors and criminals would be ended, if only our governments would let them... or make them... switch places!

Here ["Maxine" writes] is the way it should be: Let's put the seniors in jail and the criminals in nursing homes. This would correct two things at one:

Seniors would have access to showers, hobbies and walks.
They would receive unlimited free prescriptions, dental and Medical treatment, wheel chairs, etc.
They would receive money instead of having to pay it out.

They would have constant video monitoring, so they would be helped instantly if they fell or needed assistance.
Bedding would be washed twice a week and all clothing would be ironed and returned to them.
A guard would check on them every 20 minutes.

All meals and snacks would be brought to them.
They would have family visits in a suite built for that purpose.
They would have access to a library, weight/fitness room, spiritual counseling, a pool and education...and free admission to in-house concerts by nationally recognized entertainment artists.

Simple clothing – e.g. shoes, slippers, PJs – and legal aid would be free, upon request.
There would be private, secure rooms provided for all, with an outdoor exercise yard complete with gardens.
Each senior would have a PC, TV, phone and radio in their room at no cost.
They would receive daily phone calls.

There would be a board of directors to hear any complaints and the ACLU would fight for their rights and protection.
The guards would have a code of conduct to be strictly adhered to, with attorneys available, at no charge to protect the seniors and their families from abuse or neglect.
And they'd be living in a gated community!

As for the criminals:

They would receive cold food.
They would be left alone and unsupervised.
They would receive showers once a week.
They would live in tiny rooms, for which they would have to pay $5000 per month.
They would have no hope of ever getting out.

Sounds like justice to me!

The difference between Grandpas and Grandmas

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between Grandmothers and Grandfathers? Well, here it is:

There was this loving grandfather who always made a special effort to spend time with his son's family on weekends. Every Saturday morning he would take his 5-year-old granddaughter out for a drive in the car for some quality time -- pancakes, ice cream, candy-- just him and his granddaughter.

One particular Saturday, however, he had a terrible cold and could not get out of bed. He knew his granddaughter always looked forward to their drives and would be very disappointed. Luckily, his wife came to the rescue and said that she would take their granddaughter for her weekly drive and breakfast.

When they returned, the little girl anxiously ran upstairs to see her grandfather who was still in bed. "Well, did you enjoy your ride with Grandma?" he asked.

"Not really, Grandpa. It was boring. We didn't see a single asshole, queer, piece of shit, horse's ass, socialist left wing Obama-lover, blind bastard, dip shit, Muslim camel-humper, peckerhead or son-of-a-bitch anywhere we went. We just drove around and Grandma smiled at everyone she saw. I really didn't have any fun."

Thanks and a tip o' the toque to seldom-heard-from Agent 2.

You know you're "old school" when...

Poor Len `ere. Hed. asked if I could write a column and give Walt a break, since Walt is feeling under the weather. So here it is. But this is not about hockey. This is about getting old, which, to be honest, sucks.

Walt and I have been discussing we are really old (we have the same birthday) or just "old-school", meaning old(er) in our likes and habits, if not our bodies. [How about "both"? Ed.] We made a list of how to tell if you're "old school". Here it is. You know you're old school when...

You get your change back in bills and you put them all going the same direction.

You use the word "secretary" and not the phrase "administrative assistant".

You don't mind eating leftovers or wearing the same clothes for years.

You don't have any tattoos.

A "cents-off" coupon still motivates you to buy.

You still enjoy getting the paper off the driveway or porch and reading it.

You hand a child your phone and say "Would you fix this thing?"

You see value in food and items thrown away and remember your family's stories of the Great Depression.

"Budget" wasn't a bad word and "credit" was.

Duct tape was the handyman's secret weapon -- a fix for anything.

You squeeze every little bit out of the tube or keep the bottle upside down until it's empty.

You would rather go the office and drop off your résumé than post it online.

You thought a mouse was a rodent, a cloud was white and up in the sky, and Amazon was a river.

"Illegal" meant against the law, not an alien you're supposed to welcome as your neighbour.

It saddens you to keep seeing misspelled words, grammatical howlers and (especially) apostrophe errors in newspapers and magazines. (That one was for Ed.!)

You remember when real men played hockey without helmets and a hundred pounds of body armour. (That one's for me!)

You're browsing through the antique section of a resale shop and remember the days of LPs, 8-tracks, Coke bottles, and all those wonderful things that no-one makes any more.

Don't let anyone "age shame" you! There's nothing wrong with being "old school" or even just plain OLD! Everyone gets that way, sooner or later. Next time one of your kids makes fun of you for clinging to your old school ways [and values! Ed.], just smile and say "Just you wait..."

VIDEO: Inspiration for us "seniors" from Toby Keith

Talkin' `bout our generation... Agent 6 sent along a video to make me feel better about being older than dirt, and I want to share it with my fellow wrinklies. It's a little country song by Toby Keith, inspired by a conversation with Clint Eastwood. Running time: 4 minutes.



Feel better now? Many thanks to our good ole friend. "Don't let the old man in!"

VIDEO: Cleaning up the garage - a senior moment

Walt takes off his senior-style stocking cap to Agent 9. Many thanks.

VIDEO: A song for us oldies

Earlier this month, Walt posted two items specially written for us older folk: "'Why I like being retired': thoughts from the home" (WWW 8/9/17) and "'How it feels to be old': more thoughts from the home" (WWW 9/9/17). Thanks once again to Agent 9 for sending them along.

These pieces seem to have struck a chord with the blue-rinse and no-rinse (read: bald) set, so, in the spirit of giving readers what they want, here's a musical number forwarded by Agent 6. The singer/songwriter is Libby L. Allen and the song is called The Other Side of Fifty. Enjoy.

The old fart's last hours

Must be something about the approach of Christmas. People are sending me things that bring a smile to my face, which I duly pass on to you, dear reader. This little story comes from Agent 6.

Morris returns from the doctor and tells his wife that the doctor has told him that he has only 24 hours to live.
Given the prognosis, Morris asks his wife for sex.

Naturally, she agrees, so they make love.

About six hours later, he goes to his wife and says, "Honey, you know I now have only 18 hours to live. Could we please do it one more time?"
Of course, the wife agrees, and they do it again.

Later, as the man gets into bed, he looks at his watch and realizes that he now has only 8 hours left.
He touches his wife's shoulder and asks, "Honey, please... just one more time before I die."
She says, "Of course, dear," and they make love for the third time.

After this session, the wife rolls over and falls asleep. Morris, however, worried about his impending death, tosses and turns until he's down to 4 more hours. He taps his wife, who awakens. "Honey, I have only 4 more hours. Do you think we could..."

At this point the wife sits up and says, "Listen Morris, enough is enough... I have to get up in the morning, you don't!"

VIDEO: A great lady and her great car

Every now and then someone takes Walt to task for posting so much nasty stuff on WWW. Well, the world is a pretty nasty place nowadays. But every now and then I see -- or someone sends me -- a story that makes me smile and feel a bit better about things. Call it a candle in the darkness.

Agent 71 has forwarded this short (<3 minutes) YouTube video about a lady in MI who must be a car salesman's nightmare. She won't buy a new car until she's worn out her old one. It's still in good shape, and only 85 years old! The driver? She's 101! Check this out.

Senior trying to set a password

WINDOWS: Please enter your new password.

USER: cabbage

WINDOWS: Sorry, the password must be more than 8 characters.

USER: boiled cabbage

WINDOWS: Sorry, the password must contain 1 numerical character.

USER: 1 boiled cabbage

WINDOWS: Sorry, the password cannot have blank spaces.

USER: 50bloodyboiledcabbages

WINDOWS: Sorry, the password must contain at least one upper case character.

USER: 50BLOODYboiledcabbages

WINDOWS: Sorry, the password cannot use more than one upper case character consecutively.

USER: 50BoiledCabbagesShovedUpYourAssIfYouDon'tGiveMeAccessNow!

WINDOWS: Sorry, the password cannot contain punctuation.

USER: ReallyPissedOff50BloodyBoiledCabbagesShovedUpYourAssIfYouDontGiveMeAccessNow

WINDOWS: Sorry, that password is already in use.

Thanks to the seldom-sighted Agent 1 for a knowing chuckle.

No "retirement home" for us!

Every now and then some churl writes to suggest (often forcefully) that Walt and/or Len [and Ed. Ed.] belong in a "home" of some sort -- a place where we'll be safe from the world and the world will be safe from us. Memories of Where's Poppa? spring to our collective mind. But, dear reader, know this! It'll be a frosty Friday in hell before we go quietly into any such place of asylum. Certainly not while there's a better alternative, as described in this piece sent along by Agent 9.

No nursing home for us. We'll be checking into a Holiday Inn! With the average cost for a nursing home care costing $188.00 per day, there is a better way when we get old and too feeble.

I've already checked on reservations at the Holiday Inn. For a combined long term stay discount and senior discount, it's $59.23 per night. Breakfast is included, and some have happy hours in the afternoon. That leaves $128.77 a day for lunch and dinner in any restaurant we want, or room service, laundry, gratuities and special TV movies. Plus, they provide a spa, swimming pool, a workout room, a lounge and washer-dryer, etc. Most have free toothpaste and razors, and all have free shampoo and soap.

$5-worth of tips a day and you'll have the entire staff scrambling to help you. They treat you like a customer, not a patient. There's a city bus stop out front, and seniors ride free. The handicap bus will also pick you up (if you fake a decent limp). To meet other nice people, call a church bus on Sundays. For a change of scenery, take the airport shuttle bus and eat at one of the nice restaurants there.

It takes months to get into decent nursing homes. Holiday Inn will take your reservation today. And you're not stuck in one place forever -- you can move from Inn to Inn, or even from city to city. Want to see Hawaii? They have Holiday Inns there too. TV broken? Light bulbs need changing? Need a mattress replaced? No problem. They fix everything, and apologize for the inconvenience.

If you fall and break a hip, Medicare will pay for the hip, and Holiday Inn will upgrade you to a suite for the rest of your life. The Inn has a night security person and daily room service. The maid checks to see if you are OK. If not, they'll call an ambulance. Or the undertaker!

And no worries about visits from family. They will always be glad to find you, and probably check in for a few days mini-vacation. The grand-kids can use the pool. What more could I ask for?

So, when I reach that golden age, I'll face it with a grin.

Over-50s! You're still on the green side of the grass! VIDEO

Thanks to Agent 71 (nice to hear from you!) for passing along this "new comical (?) song about aging". Sound up.

Note from Ed.: Sincere apologies if you tried to play this but couldn't hear anything. We've been having problems linking to YouTube lately. Please try again, and if you still have no sound, click on the "watch on YouTube" icon at the bottom right corner of the screen.



This has already had well over 6,000,000 hits on YouTube, maybe because it speaks to all us geezers!

Stop being a computer-illiterate geezer! Reclaim your youth!

Listen up, fellow fogies! If you have the feeling that the world is passing you by, that you don't know what's going on any more, that you might as well get measured for your box... it doesn't have to be that way!

You'd never guess it from my picture [or maybe you would! Ed.] but Walt is a senior citizen. But I'm not going quietly into the Home. And I'm not going to live like a hermit here in my log cabin either. I don't get out as much as I used to physically, but I get out mentally more than I ever used to. And it's all thanks to joining the wired world.

I got dragged into the computer age kicking and screaming. As recently as 20 years ago I wrote nasty letters on my trusty IBM Selectric. (Mrs. Walt finally threw it out in 2005. It had been used as a doorstop until then.) And I still have a broad-nibbed fountain pen that uses real ink. But my implement of choice nowadays is definitely my desktop PC.

Don't bother looking for me on Facebook or LinkedIn or elsewhere, because I'm not into the anti-social media. But I do spend hours online, writing this blog, exchanging e-mails with my Agents, friends and acquaintances around the world, reading the mainstream and out-of-the-stream media, and just surfing. All this keeps me connected and keeps me young(ish).

And my computer helps me manage my life: do my banking, pay my taxes, claim my entitlements, keep three sets of books, catalogue my library and so on. I learned to use spreadsheet and word processing programmes, desktop publishing software, all kinds of other stuff. About the only thing I don't do on the computer is play games... Unless you count Solitaire! Oh, and Literati.

But there are people of our generation -- "senior citizens" is the PC term -- who aren't enjoying the benefits -- and coping with the frustrations -- of computers and the Internet. Why? Because they don't know how and are afraid to ask.

Many communities have programmes and courses to help us old folks become computer literate. Some of the courses are even free. [You said in today's earlier post that means paid for by someone else's tax dollars. Ed.] But you need to be able to get out of your house or the Home to attend the teaching sessions, right? Not any more!

Kathryn Harwood, one of Walt's old(ish) high school chums [They had high school, way back then? Ed.] has set up a little online business called Eldersurf.

In the privacy and comfort of your home, with your own computer, Kathryn will guide you through the steps and processes you need to know to do whatever you want to do. Her blog lists these possibilities: send and receive photos; get onto Facebook; do a spreadsheet; make your photos better; do a photo album; subscribe to a podcast; get into iTunes; see yourscreen better; organize your contacts; print documents; buy a book or reserve a library book, and many more. She'll even teach you how to sit at your desk properly, so your back doesn't hurt!

Kathryn evidently shares Walt's belief in working to get what you want, and getting what you pay for, so there's a reasonable charge for her service. And, if you know nothing about computers but want to keep up with Walt, I'd say it's a good investment. Highly recommended!

In Canada, better to be a refugee than a pensioner

If you come to Canada as a refugee, here's what you get from the federal government:

A monthly pension of : $1,890.00 (to a single refugee -- more if they have dependents)
Plus: 580.00 in social assistance
A grand total of : $2,470.00 every month
x 12 months comes to $28,920.00 annual income.

By comparison, the old age pension of a senior citizen who has contributed to the development of our beautiful country for 40 or 50 years cannot exceed more than:
$1,012.00 per month Canada Pension and Guaranteed Income Supplement
x 12 months gives Canadian seniors a not-so-grand total of $12,144.00 annual income.

The difference? $16,776.00 per year

The lesson? In Canada it's better to be a refugee than a senior citizen!

Just by coincidence, last night Walt saw an episode of South Park in which the old folks [seniors, surely! ed.] revolt and take over the town to demand better treatment. But that's only fiction.
And only in the USA. Canadian seniors wouldn't protest the incredible nonsense of refugees getting more than they do...would they?