Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, April 15, 2023

15

OPINION

Mountain Views-News Saturday, April 15, 2023 

DINAH CHONG WATKINS

STUART TOLCHIN

RICH JOHNSON 

NOW THAT’S RICH

MOUNTAIN 
VIEWS

NEWS

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

PASADENA CITY 
EDITOR

Dean Lee 

PRODUCTION

SALES

Patricia Colonello

626-355-2737 

626-818-2698

WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

DISTRIBUTION

Peter Lamendola

CONTRIBUTORS

Stuart Tolchin 

Audrey Swanson

Meghan Malooley

Mary Lou Caldwell

Kevin McGuire

Chris Leclerc

Dinah Chong Watkins

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Rich Johnson

Lori Ann Harris

Rev. James Snyder

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Jeff Brown

Marc Garlett

Keely Toten

Dan Golden

Rebecca Wright

Hail Hamilton

Joan Schmidt

LaQuetta Shamblee

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS 
OF THE WRONG KIND

PUT THE LIGHTS ON


THE INVASION

USEFUL NEW 
WORDS AND THEIR 
MEANINGS

Mark Twain was quoted as saying: 
“The difference between the 
almost right word and the right 
word is really a large matter – it’s 
the difference between the lightning-
bug and the lightning.

Languages are not static parts of society and culture. 
They are fluid. Words come and go, find use and then 
are dropped as they become obsolete and vanish. 

Did you know the word “computer” is in the 1898 
Webster’s Dictionary? It is. I checked. Care to guess 
the definition of “computer” in 1898? Easy: “One who 
computes.”

Some suggestions for additions to our language have 
crossed my desk and I thought I would include them for 
your perusal. The ones we like we will try to include in 
the next edition of Webster’s. (Somebody please get me 
Webster’s email!)

Reintarnation n. Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

Sarchasm n. The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit 
and the person who doesn’t get it.

Cashtration n. The act of buying a house which renders 
the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period 
of time.

Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which 
lasts until you realize it was your money to begin with.

Shindig, n. The dent you leave when you walk into a 
piece of furniture.

Bozone, n. An invisible substance that surrounds stupid 
people stopping bright ideas from penetrating.

Cannibal, n. Someone who is fed up with people.

Portly, n. A left handed person in the Navy.

Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

Improper, n. Someone who ropes imps.

Inoculatte’: Taking coffee intravenously when you are 
running late.

Pantry, n. A place where you put pants.

Decaffalon, n. Getting through the day consuming only 
things that are good for you.

Glibido: All talk and no action

Dopeler Effect, The tendency of stupid ideas to seem 
smarter when they come at you quickly.

Beelzebug, n. Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets 
into your bedroom at 3am and cannot be cast out.

Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.

Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much 
weight one has gained.

Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat 
stomach.

Esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.

Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.

Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash

Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline.

Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.

Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.

Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with 
Yiddishisms.

Memorize this list. We will use it when the Apocalypse 
falls upon us and we congregate in the parking 
lot of Taylor’s in downtown Sierra Madre.

CLOSING TIME

Alarmingly, with regular occurrence, 
my high school 
Facebook page keeps posting 
obituaries. Teachers we expect, 
they were already a hundred 
years old when we attended school but more 
and more it’s fellow students - the ones we can 
actually remember - the football jocks (they 
seem to be the first to go), the cool kids (using 
their high school portrait in their obit is a 
dead give-away to how things took a downturn 
after graduation), and the kids who claimed the 
school bathrooms as their territory (many of us 
developed bladder infections those years). 

The arty-farty types, the ones who first pushed 
vegetarianism as a lifestyle (this ironically coincided 
with Burger King's “Where’s The Beef?” 
campaign), are tasked to writing the obituaries, 
often with an empathetic, gluten-free righteous 
tone.

Unlike the “forever” Costco $1.50 hot dog and 
soda special, life changes constantly like iOS 
updates. You first notice it when your network 
of doctors increase in numbers and decrease in 
age. Or when you overhear your buddies gabbing 
about “Slice, Falafel and Kitchen”, they’re 
not talking about the local gyro take-out but 
Pickleball. Once you graduate to a grandparent, 
your name suddenly changes to a double-
syllable word, like Nana or Geegaw. Bereft of 
your decades long individuality, now you’re 
known by the very limited speaking ability of 
a two year old. 

How to check - short-term memories aside, if 
you’ve entered that category of “Older”? If your 
personal email address ends with “yahoo.com”, 
“aol.com”, or the mothership - EarthLink.com, 
you know you’re AARP eligible. For those who's 
tag ends with “rocketmail.com”, your friends 
haven’t abandoned you, the service provider 
did. And for the sniggering Schadenfreude set, 
if you have a Gmail account that your grandchild 
set up for you, join the rest of us.

We assume aging is obvious but it creeps up on 
you like those pop-up ads on Google. The Early 
Bird Specials we used to laugh at for the Blue 
Rinse Set doesn’t look too bad in this economy 
and you can follow it 30 minutes later with 
Happy Hour. 

The burden of squatting down to retrieve heavy 
pots, decorative platters and packaged foods 
on the bottom shelves of the kitchen cabinets 
are an open invitation to the chiropractor. In 
my mind, I label those foods “ICE” - In Case 
of Emergency”. Throwing caution to the wind, 
I’ll grudgingly bend down and eat that food no 
matter the “Best Before” date only if my local 
Vons is closed due to fire (somewhat likely), 
floods (not likely), tornados (one so far) or rioting 
(annually, this is Los Angeles). 

Then finally, the common sense stage takes the 
driver’s seat when function supersedes design. 
In the era of Poise and Depends, wearing 4 button 
fly jeans is a denture fail waiting to happen. 
So we look to Costco - second only to God in 
knowing all our wishes and desires; from 12 
pack carrot muffins to 12 day Caribbean cruises, 
Costco shrewdly stocks for the Boomer set, 
Kirkland EZY Step In sneakers, for hands free, 
no bending comfort. It’s like wearing slippers 
but safer (don’t quote me on that). 

In the end (Costco also supplies 
that), we ruminate on our Bucket 
List; things we could’ve done, 
things we have done and things 
that “Why the heck did I want to 
do that?” As for that future date, 
when your high school Facebook 
obit post features you, now’s the 
time to take a good headshot and 
remember - photoshop the Kim 
Kardashian out of it.

Dinah Chong Watkins column appears 
every 1st and 3rd Saturday of 
the month.

 If you are able to 
read this article, it 
is already a victory. 
Facing seemingly almost 
insurmountable 
obstacles I have 
produced this article 
almost staying within 
my few allotted words 
and sending it off to the publisher before 
reaching Thursday’s noon deadline. First 
you must understand that having these 
weekly articles published and then picking 
up the paper on Saturday containing my 
article on some almost unlocateable backpage 
is the completion of a series of activities 
which is of utmost personal importance 
to me. An explanation of this phenomena 
is probably unnecessary, but to further explain, 
by the end of this month I will be a 79 
year old non-working retiree. I have few responsibilities, 
being supported by Social Security 
and by my wife providing for almost 
all of my basic needs. In my life I, much 
like you and almost everyone else I know, 
have had few notable accomplishments. I 
am most proud of the character of my children, 
which I may have had little to do with 
and am proud of the life filled with family 
connection that my wife, children, and new 
grandchild have created. (This 3 and ¾ year 
old grandchild claims to be everyone’s parents 
including our dogs.)

 Anyway, creating this article in a 
timely acceptable fashion is of the utmost 
importance to me. As usual I procrastinated 
until about 5 o’clock this morning 
and then sat down in front of our computer 
to actually compose the article. Alas, the 
computer would not cooperate. It sent me 
messages declaring that an additional unknown 
password was required. I tried to 
comply but could not. An unknown loud 
disagreeable voice issued out from the computer 
giving me indecipherable instructions. 
What to do? I could try and wake my 
wife begging for assistance but, my God, it’s 
five in the morning and she’s already sick of 
my continuing ineptitude.

 I imagined actually using a pen 
and paper to write the article hoping that 
when my wife awakened she would take 
control and start the computer so that the 
hand-written article could be retyped. Accordingly, 
I hunted up a pad of yellow lined 
paper and a ball point pen and attempted 
to hand write or hand print the article. I 
couldn’t do it. Somehow facing the computer 
monitor and struggling with the 
computer has become an integral part of 
my authorial process. I only use the computer 
and its keyboard once a week, generally 
early Thursday morning after taking 
out the trash and feeding the dog, and now 
my regular way of life had been stopped.

 My mind connected this interruption 
with the plight of the Native Americans 
subsequent to the arrival of the invading 
colonists. I had intended to create 
an article discussing the need for and the 
process of reparations. Originally I had intended 
to focus on the problems connected 
to the distribution of benefits to the non-
European descendants of the victims of European 
colonization. If we were taught anything 
at School we had learned that “In 1492 
Columbus had sailed the Ocean blue” and 
discovered America. Somewhere along the 
way somebody might have asked the teacher 
how could Columbus have “discovered” 
America when people, millions of people, 
were already living here? What did those 
people do? 

 Well, we all know a little about it. At 
first the Native Americans thought, notwithstanding 
the interruption, that they 
could just go on with their way of life and 
everything would be all right. They assisted 
the White Men who then reciprocated by 
giving the Native Americans diseased and 
germ infested blankets. (For more information 
read Gun, Germs, and Steel by Jared 
Diamond discussing how environmental 
factors, not biological differences, affected 
the historical development of the New 
World”).

 Well, if you have been able to read 
this far you realize that my wife awakened 
and restored the operation of the computer. 
Additionally, you and I must realize that in 
order to cope with this ever-changing technological 
world we must change our traditional 
complaisant way of living and acquire 
new necessary skills. Otherwise, our 
survival will be in the hands of others, the 
best of whom can have only limited mercy. 

Mountain Views News 
has been adjudicated as 
a newspaper of General 
Circulation for the County 
of Los Angeles in Court 
Case number GS004724: 
for the City of Sierra 
Madre; in Court Case 
GS005940 and for the 
City of Monrovia in Court 
Case No. GS006989 and 
is published every Saturday 
at 80 W. Sierra Madre 
Blvd., No. 327, Sierra 
Madre, California, 91024. 
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Views News and may 
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91024

Phone: 626-355-2737

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Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com