The Old Coot Swallows the scam. Published 6/17/26 in Owego, NY

 The Old Coot explains FCMB&B.

By Merlin Lessler

In between the ambulance chasing lawyer ads, and prescription drug ads, that dominate the TV screen today, are ads for nutritional pills and supplements to extend your life and keep you healthy (without FDA scrutiny). Eat fruit and vegetables? Why bother, just take two pills with all the contents packed into little pills - a pile of beautiful looking vegetables and fruits condensed and crushed into a pill. Other ads focus on the digestive system. If you take all this stuff, can you live to 150?   

There are also ads for pills that focus on the brain, helping to avoid Alzheimer’s and a bunch of pricy salves, some made just for men, that eliminate bags under your eyes and wrinkles. The before and after pictures prove it. If you believe them.

 I try to go to the other end of the spectrum, and eat real fruit and vegetables. Then along comes an article in the Wall Street Journal, warning of the pesticides in tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, and other grocery store fruits and vegetables.  If you don’t take the pills and you can’t eat the store-bought fruits & vegetables, what are you to do?  

I try to relate today’s advertising world compared to what it was like when I was growing up and we got our first TV. My father put up an antenna and we received three channels, sort of. Often with a snowy picture on the screen. Many people had indoor, rabbit-ear antennas; they required frequent twisting and turning and were often decorated with pieces of tinfoil to improve reception. TV ads were few and far between. Usually at the beginning of a show, in the middle, and at the end. A thirty-minute time slot had 27 minutes of show. The average show today is 20 minutes long; you are forced to suffer through 10 minutes of ads.

Pills and the like were mildly advertised back then, but not prescription medicine. There were ads for Carter’s Little Liver Pills a tonic called Serutan (natures spelled backwards) and Geritol. That’s the only ones I remember. The rest of the ads were for cars, toys, kitchenware and other products and services. There was no big push to sue somebody or shove medicines down our throats. Except cereal. We were instructed by Mister Wizzard, on his weekly science show, to start our day with FCMB&B. Fruit, Cereal, Milk, Bread & Butter. A hoax imposed on us by the Kellog’s and Post cereal companies. It became ingrained in me. That’s because I’m an old coot with decades of FCMB&B under my belt.  

The Old Coot pans book jackets. (Published June 11,2026 in Owego, ny)

 The Old Coot dislikes book jackets.

By Merlin Lessler

Book Jackets? Boo! – Awful things -taken off immediately by me. Made for the bookshelf – to make the book look good. Take it off and the cover is naked, plain, no words, no pictures, just the title and author on the edge.

As I write this, I’m reading a book put together by the daughter of David McCullogh – a collection of his speeches, tributes, essays and interviews. David was a famous and gifted (hard working) historian who died in 2023.

The book I’m reading, “History Matters, has a plain cover under the jacket like the rest of them, but the inside cover, front and back, are far from plain. Each contains a watercolor painted by David. He was a top-notch artist in addition to being an important writer and historian.

What a wonderful surprise, perfectly placed. So different from the dull outside cover. Publishers take little pride in their product’s exterior, and leave the art work to a cover designer, probably now an A/I computer program. I bet the editor cringed when McCullogh’s daughter insisted on including his two watercolors.

I should put my money where my mouth is and strip the jackets off the books in my personal, modest library. I’m going to try it on one shelf as soon as I finish this essay and see what I see. It will be what a doctor sees when examining a patient, down to their bare essentials. A position most of us find uncomfortable. We can’t wait to get back into our “jackets.”

Comments? Send to – mlessler7@gmail.com

The old coot is"unyoung."

 The Old Coot is unyoung.

By Merlin Lessler

I just noticed that the official media, TV and radio have started referring to homeless people as “Unhoused.” It might have been going on for some time, but I’m slow to notice changes in language by the politically correct crowd.

Unhoused? If those “experts” who correct our vocabulary considered homeless to be a cruel term, then why not force on us a nicer designation: CAMPERS! TRAVELERS! Not UNHOUSED.

I don’t get it. But there it is, a new change in language. It just makes me wonder, who is it that decides these things? Is it an organization? A secret cabal? A branch of the federal bureaucracy? Who?

I’m an old coot. I know it. I’ve been labeled as a Senior Citizen. But, call me what I am; an old man. I don’t know who came up with that one; it’s been around for decades. I find it insulting, like us elders are too fragile to be called what we are. And please, do not evolve the language into a new term, the UNYOUNG. Old geezer is better than that. It gives me a chuckle.

This politically correct policing has been going on for decades, getting more intense every year. Some of it was overdue, but these days it is taken to extremes. Like when listening to Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, defend spending $189,000,000 to provide internet enabled tablets for all the prisoners in California prisons. But he didn’t refer to them as prisoners; he referred to them as Justice Impacted Individuals for whom he was providing digital equity.     

I am fearful of this revisionist labeling because I have a balance problem, unfixable, but easy enough to deal with. If the bureau of political correctness took that on I would be called Unyoung and Unbalanced. Please, just call me Old Coot.

Comments? Complaints? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com