Earthling Antics

City Council Ponders: Should We Give Ourselves a Raise?   It was a time of great soul searching for city-council members in the City of Alt Losses. Should they increase their stipends from $300 to $950 a month and triple their benefits to $11,000 a year—an increase that the state of California just allowed? A special meeting was called to consider this all important question (during a 49ers football game).    "The increase would cover the cost of gasoline (for the 2-to-3mile drive) to our bi-monthly meetings," they agreed. "It would pay for our printer cartridges." "We could attract more lower-income people to run against us," they reasoned self-righteously, "especially full-time working moms with lots of kids."   One council member asked, "Does the increased health-insurance benefit include free facelifts?" "Face lifts? Yes," Staff responded. "Free? No. There's a $20 copay."   "And how will this aff...

  Free Trials and Tribulations   How irresistible are these free trial offers that bombard us every day? Free delivery for just $5 a month.   Automatic refills and get the first order free. Buy a subscription to Life-on-Mars Magazine and get 13 other magazines, no charge. You know the allure and the drill.   My mom has a lifetime supply of toothpaste with more coming every month. If she brushed her teeth every hour—instead of just once a week—she still couldn't use it up.   My uncle, who is now over 90, has 200 bottles of The Horny Goatweed Guaranteed Cure for Erectile Dysfunction in his medicine chest—one of which was free. All of which are useless.   As for me, well, my free trials are bankrupting me. I can't keep track of what's on order or when to cancel it. My apartment looks like a landfill.   I now get hundreds of emails every day from hundreds of charities, addressed lovingly to dear Mickie. Some of these charities are real. ...

 

  If you ever agonized about what to call a female mailman in this age of political correctness, if you ever engaged in combat with Comcast, if you ever searched on match.com for a compatible kidney, if you ever wonder why circa 24,000 laws are passed each year by the states (no kidding), or why I got a sh*tload of traffic tickets when I was mayor of Menlo Park, stay tuned.   If you ever want to unload your worldly anxieties, then just imagine you are from the planet Zalaria observing the absurd and amusing antics of us Earthlings here on earth . Winkler's stint in politics  inspired her humor--and her conviction that there is no  intelligent life on earth . Enjoy!

  THE DOWNSIDE OF POWER “Hello madam mayor,” the policeman said with a smile. I got off my bicycle to return thegreeting and he said, “do you know what you just did? You just crossed thetracks after the gates were on the way down." " Usually,”  he continued, “I just give bikers a lecture, but I can make an exception for the Mayor.”  And he wrote me a ticket.  Crossing the tracks was not all I had done. I had voted against giving a precipitous salary increase to the police unit in our town. More dangerous than standing up to police was standing up to the framers of our heritage tree ordinance. I renamed this ordinance the “Heritage Twig ordinance“ for which I was accused of liking people more than trees.   There were the dog owners who wanted to use the fenced in Little-League field for a dog run when the field was not being used by the League. When I warned that the park would become known as Poop Park, the dog owners disowned me.   I was collecting ver...

  THE WATERING OF THE DECORATIVE TREE CONSTERNATION I overheard some friends at my house one night saying: "Her tree looks more real than ours."  Why was this innocent remark, even compliment, so upsetting? Why did it keep me awake that night? BACKGROUND About six months ago my husband and I decided we needed an indoor tree--for decorative value and to clean the air.  We went to The Nursery and picked out a leafy, oxygen-exchanging machine, which according to directions, “would thrive in conditions of semi-light with weekly watering,  at which time the tree should be turned.” And we rented a van large enough to bring the tree home unscathed. The tree looked beautiful. As the weeks passed, I did find it to have two unique characteristics. Firstly, after my husband watered the tree, which he did at 9:00 AM every Sunday, I had to take a syringe and suck up the excess water which just seemed to pool in the bottom of the plastic plate on which the tree sat. In my mind, ...