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This week’s puns are from a book, which (to my surprise) I found at West Marin Pharmacy, and gave Lynn for Christmas: Dad Jokes, the Good, The Bad, The Terrible, by Jimmy Niro. Most of this posting outlines the various minor calamities that have befallen this household of late. Also included are three amazing photos of wildlife.

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Yesterday a clown held the door open for me. I thought it was a nice jester.

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My wife Lynn was cooking Christmas dinner when our oven quit working. She had finished most of the meal but never got to bake any potatoes. Nor was there any baked turkey. None was available after Thanksgiving. Nor could she find fresh cranberries. Supply chain issues?

Having grown up in a Jewish household, Christmas was not part of her holidays. Lynn opted to cook eggnog-coated, breaded pork cutlets instead. Pork was a frequent meal in her childhood household, notwithstanding some stereotypes. The faux-kosher meal, which included previously baked yams and turkey stuffing sans turkey, was delicious.

After we ate, Lynn contacted large-appliance repairman David Brast of Inverness. She told him a section of the oven coil had gotten very bright, and a huge amount of steam had emerged from a stovetop coil. Then the oven stopped working. He said, “That wasn’t steam. That was smoke.” Brast quickly figured out the problem, sent away for parts, and agreed to come over and fix it this Thursday, which he did.

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The lady helping me at the bank has a big stain on her blouse. Should I teller?

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The day after Christmas my car developed its own problems. Dashboard lights started telling me to “check engine” and showed tires skidding. Monday when I took my 12-year-old Lexus to Cheda’s Garage, mechanic Tim Bunce quickly figured out the problem. Rats had gotten into the engine compartment, chewed on the wiring, and started to build a nest.

Cheda’s too had to send away for parts, but it turned out the rats had also damaged an injector harness for the engine’s computer. Now I have to take the car to Santa Rosa to get the harness replaced and the computer reprogrammed. Goddamn, it doesn’t sound cheap! Which raises the question….

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How does the Vatican pay bills? They use Papal.

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The car and oven breakdowns came on the heels of the smoke detector in Mitchell cabin starting to give off a bird-like chirp every minute or so when the air was cold. That has now been fixed, but I’m wondering what will go wrong next.

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“Dad, I’m cold,” his son said. “Go stand in the corner,” replied the father. “It’s 90 degrees.”

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There are times reality can be as humorous as puns. We’ve been hearing coyotes howl every night for months, so I was particularly intrigued by the “People’s Choice” award winner of this year’s Living with Wildlife photo contest sponsored by WildCare.

Photographer Janet Kessler managed to snap a shot of a coyote knocking down a “Don’t Feed Coyotes” sign.   

This photo of a peregrine falcon taken by Carlos Porrata of Inverness won the “Best in Show” award.

And this photo of a badger, which Porrata also submitted, was among the contest’s finalists.

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A doctor made it his regular habit to stop at a bar for a hazelnut daiquiri on his way home from work each night. The bartender knew of his habit and would alway have the drink waiting at precisely 5:03 p.m.

One afternoon, as the end of the workday approached, the bartender was dismayed to find that he was out of hazelnut extract. Thinking quickly, he threw together a daiquiri made with hickory nuts and set it on the bar.

The doctor came in at his regular time, took one sip of the drink, and exclaimed, “This isn’t a hazelnut daiquiri.”

“No, I’m sorry,” replied the bartender. “It’s a hickory daiquiri, Doc.”

Caveat lectorem: When readers submit comments, they are asked if they want to receive an email alert with a link to new postings on this blog. A number of people have said they do. Thank you. The link is created the moment a posting goes online. Readers who find their way here through that link can see an updated version by simply clicking on the headline above the posting.

Christmas week seems full of unlikely events ,especially this year. Winter begins on Tuesday, the longest night of the year, and Friday will be Christmas eve. Among the unlikely events at Mitchell cabin has been the debut of occasional chirps, such as a bird would make, every minute or so in the morning while my wife Lynn and I are still in bed. I thought nothing of the chirps, but they kept waking Lynn up.

Eventually she traced the chirps to a smoke alarm in the peak of the roof over our upstairs loft. I then noticed that the chirping stopped when I turned on our wall furnace or lit a fire in our woodstove. Clearly, the alarm was not warning of smoke but of cold air, which may interfere with the alarm’s batteries.

Lynn is in process of hiring a handyman to fix the problem, but he faces the problem of positioning a ladder to reach the smoke alarm since it’s directly over a steep staircase. Before we’re done we may have to build a temporary tower.

When I was a little boy living with my folks in Berkeley, I made a disappointing discovery regarding Christmas. On the morning of Dec. 26, I hurried down to the living room where our Christmas tree stood, but there was nothing new under it. “I guess Santa Claus just comes once,” my mother heard me sigh. No doubt she told me I’d have to wait a year for his return, but to a little boy a year might as well be forever.

Birds hunt and peck for birdseed among the Christmas lights on the railing of Mitchell cabin’s deck.

In a normal year, we’d attend or throw a Christmas Day dinner, but with people staying home because of the Covid pandemic, about our only preparation for the celebration has been to string Christmas lights on our deck railing and on our tannenbaum, which we bought at Toby’s Feed Barn. (By the way, the song “O Tannenbaum” is German for “O Fir Tree,” in case you didn’t know.)

One last unlikely event worth mentioning is Point Reyes Station’s noon moo. A loudspeaker above the Western Saloon blares mooing up and down Point Reyes Station’s main street at noon each day. The town a couple of decades back decided a noon moo would be less intrusive than a noon whistle, and so that’s what we got.

These days, the noon moo has become an 11:45 a.m. moo, which can be confusing. Radioman extraordinaire Richard Dillman awhile back corrected the timing, but it’s now slipped off schedule again. Another unlikely event this yuletide.

Caveat lectorem: When readers submit comments, they are asked if they want to receive an email alert with a link to new postings on this blog. A number of people have said they do. Thank you. The link is created the moment a posting goes online. Readers who find their way here through that link can see an updated version by simply clicking on the headline above the posting.

This week I’ll reprint a bit of the humor that’s been emailed to me in the past week, including a few unlikely photos.

A good looking man walked into an agent’s office in Hollywood and said, “I want to be a movie star.” Tall, handsome and with experience on Broadway, he had the right credentials. The agent asked, “What’s your name?”

The guy said, “My name is Penis van Lesbian.” The agent said, “Sir, I hate to tell you, but in order to get into Hollywood , you are going to have to change your name.”

Just a pinch

“I will NOT change my name!” the man replied. “The van Lesbian name is centuries old. I will not disrespect my grandfather by changing my name. Not ever.”

The agent said, “Sir, I have worked in Hollywood for years… You will NEVER go far in Hollywood with a name like Penis van Lesbian! I’m telling you, you will HAVE TO change your name or I will not be able to represent you.” The guy responded, “So be it! I guess we will not do business together,” and he abruptly left the agent’s office.

Five years later, the agent opens an envelope sent to his office. Inside the envelope is a letter and a check for $50,000. He reads the letter enclosed: “Dear Sir, Five years ago, I came into your office wanting to become an actor in Hollywood. You told me I needed to change my name. Determined to make it with my God-given birth name, I refused. You told me I would never make it in Hollywood with a name like Penis van Lesbian.

“After I left your office, I thought about what you said. I decided you were right. I had to change my name. I had too much pride to return to your office, so I signed with another agent. I would never have made it without changing my name, so the enclosed check is a token of my appreciation. Thank you for your advice.

“Sincerely, Dick van Dyke”

Praising the sun

CNN (click to read full story) Former President Donald Trump railed against his one-time close ally Benjamin Netanyahu in a new interview series, saying he felt betrayed by the then-prime minister of Israel’s video message to Joe Biden congratulating him on winning the presidency.

Caveat lectorem: When readers submit comments, they are asked if they want to receive an email alert with a link to new postings on this blog. A number of people have said they do. Thank you. The link is created the moment a posting goes online. Readers who find their way here through that link can see an updated version by simply clicking on the headline above the posting.

When my New Yorker arrives in the mail each week, the first thing it does is remind me that I’m more interested in humor than in more serious matters. And it’s only after I’ve thumbed my way through all the cartoons and jokes that I take time to check out what the main articles are.

This week’s posting is going to be kept short because I’m having troubles with my computer program. For example, there’s an unintended space between the fifth and the sixth jokes. Sorry.