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11-2-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

What do you think of the Teletubbies? My 3-year-old is fascinated with them.

--Fan in Faneuil

Dear Fan:

We get a real kick out of them here at the Home since they share so many of the endearing qualities of the residents, like repeating everything twice and falling down a lot.

As a matter of fact I was going to write to the producers of the show suggesting that they create a new series for homes like Living Dead "R" Us, aimed at the incontinent. There would be these four shriveled up elderly characters with Depends dispensers in their tummies: Whoopsie, Tinkle-Winkle, Uh-Oh and Poo.

They could call them the Portapotties. I think it would be a gold mine. And remember you heard it here first. 

11-3-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I have appreciated graffiti appearing in various settings for quite some time. It seems to be a young person's art form and I am disappointed that so little of it is done by the senior citizen. What are your favorite graffiti moments in history? And what's the best thing you yourself ever wrote on a wall?

--Tagger Wannabe in Tupelo 

Dear Tagger:

Well, you realize that graffiti has existed as long as there have been people, walls, literacy and spray paint. For instance, in the Lascaux caves in France there's the famous, "Ur is a Neanderthal."

On the side of the Sphinx in Egypt there are ancient political scribblings like, "I'm a slave and I vote!" and "Isis! Isis! Ra! Ra! Ra!"

One of the Children of Israel scrawled on the side of a cave wall: "Moses was a schmuck-- if he'd turned right instead of left we'd have the oil and they'd have the sand!"

On the walls of Pompeii you can still make out traces of "For a great piece of ash call Vesuvius."

In my own time I've seen some doozies, like "Friends don't let friends vote Whig," and "I'm 100 proof for General Grant."

More recently I've seen, "Werner Heisenberg may or may not have slept here,"
"Dyslexics have more fnu," and "Slow down! The second mouse always gets the cheese."

As for myself, I managed to leave a lasting memento on the wall of the girl's school down the street: "Grow your own dope. Plant a man."

11-4-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

How do you choose who you're going to vote for in this hotly-contested election?

--Pollster in Poughkeepsie

Dear Pollster:

Over the years I've learned the one true method of separating the political wheat from the chaff. I ask all the candidates one simple question, and their answer perfectly determines who is the most capable for the job. The question is, "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

Here are this year's answers:

AL GORE "As the inventor of the road I can assure you that I will not rest until every chicken has full and free access to the road, or the "gallinaceous superhighway," to use a phrase I coined."

GEORGE W. BUSH "It's a concern I have, it's important for us to explain to our nation that chickens are important. It's not only the life of the baby chickens, or eggs, even, but it's life of all chickens, pullets especially, living in, you know, the dark dungeons by the side of the road."

RALPH NADER "The dilemma of the chicken reflects under-investment in urban schools and communities to prevent suburban roads from encroaching on agricultural lands; massive investment in roads and highways at the expense of public transit; local and state corporate tax welfare that encourages road development in undeveloped areas, and federal subsidies for suburban roads. These factors and others intermix in a complicated dynamic that produces sprawling metropolitan areas that leave everyone unhappy -- especially chickens."

PAT BUCHANAN "Because the Ten Commandments were not clearly posted at every intersection! Years ago, when there was still a strong moral Christian force alive in this country, you never saw chickens roaming the streets at all hours. They were either in church, in school or in the bosom of their loving intact traditional family units. And chickens originated in Asia! Isn't this just another reason to slam the door on open immigration?"

So it's perfectly obvious who's getting my vote, right? 

11-5-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I am considering undergoing past life regression therapy, since it seems a lot less bruising than Rolfing. Do you believe in reincarnation? Am I ready for Nirvana?

--Spaced Out in Spokane

Dear Spaced:

I'm afraid I don't put much stock in reincarnation. It stands to reason that if there are lots more people in the world now than there were a thousand years ago, an awful lot of people would come up short in the recycle cycle, wouldn't they?

Reincarnation was a big hit when I was a girl back in Redbone during the spiritualism craze. I was at a party once with four reincarnated Cleopatras, three reincarnated kings, eight queens, two emperors, one Pope and the late Millard Fillmore. Not a single peasant in the lot. No shoe salesmen, turnip farmers, post office clerks or bathhouse attendants, either.

Later on in the evening when the strange gin was flowing we all gathered round the Ouija board and tried to hustle up some action on the afterlife without much luck. Then one of the local mediums tried to get up a séance. ("They're called mediums because their performances are neither rare nor well done," according to the local wit.)

Anyway, after a lot of table thumping and ectoplasm the medium looked right at me and told me in a moany kind of voice that I was the reincarnation of -- are you ready?-- Cleopatra! That made five of us in the same room! I thought it was so funny I was rolling on the floor laughing my asp off.... 

11-6-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

When I'm busy at work playing Minesweeper or Solitaire, how can I quickly turn everything off when my boss comes around?

--Surreptitious in Surrey

Dear Surreptitious:

So instead of saving your screen you want to save your butt, eh? Ha!

Well, lucky for you there are screen savers on the market that have a so-called "hot corner" feature. When you slide the cursor to the lower right something else pops up on the screen immediately. For bonus points use a photo of your boss as the pop-up screen. Not, however, the one from the Xmas party where he's demonstrating the "naked Heimlich maneuver" to the blonde receptionist in the supply closet.

11-7-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Is it dangerous to drink and browse?

--Wasted in Washougal

Dear Wasted:

Oh, my, yes! I recall an incident from back in Redbone, just after we had invented the keyboard. (Ford Maddox Chrysler drove his pet steamroller over my Smith-Corona.)

Now, back in those days we didn't have these sophisticated chips and motherboards that run on battery voltage. No, sir! We used pure, unfiltered 880-volt zippy juice fresh from the Arkansas Power Company's pole, delivered through a set of cables that positively squirmed with electricity.

Ford's little brother Chevy Maddox was the unfortunate first victim, and it was Ford himself who later went on to found BADASS, or Brothers Against Drunk And Stupid Surfers.

What happened was this. Chevy had logged onto a porn game site down at the brothers' Esso gas station, and he was sitting there in a steel chair trying to maneuver the donkey on top of the nun while sipping away at his favorite concoction, moonshine and sauerkraut juice. Suddenly there was a power failure. Now Chevy wasn't the strongest spring in the clock as we used to say, and the first thing he did was put his drink on top of the monitor so he could reach over to the fusebox. Of course, as he was pushing the penny back into place the power came back on and Chevy lit up like a Budweiser sign. As he jerked around he knocked the sauerkraut cocktail over onto his lap, and the monitor went with it.

Well, now, as we all know, sauerkraut juice is brine, and brine is highly conductive. And moonshine is so flammable it's outlawed by NASCAR as a racing fuel. And then there was the matter of the steel chair, which grounded him perfectly against the dirt floor of the garage.

The upshot was that the short shorted his shorts and the spilled 'shine shot up his shirt and spread, which sparked the store. Of course the gas tanks went up immediately. All they ever found of old Chevy was his teeth fillings and his good luck charm.

So let this be a warning to you: If you're going to surf, don't spill. 

11-8-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Do you ever have a chance to get out of "Living Dead "R" Us? Most wrinkle ranches have outings or day trips or shopping expeditions and things for their inmates. Do you? Where do you go?

--Mobile in Mobile 

Dear Mobile:

Oh, Lord, you mentioned the "o" word. Nothing strikes fear into the heart of an elderly recluse like the threat of an "outing." I've mentioned before the battles we wage against these 19-year-old perky types who have job titles like "Enablement Facilitator" and whose lives are dedicated to making existence intolerable for older folks.

And yes, we are forced out into the outside world on occasion and it's always a disaster. Next week we're scheduled to go to a casino, one of those Indian places which have been set up to revive the old custom of scalping white folks.

The last one was a "memory tour" that was set up by Ashleigh, the perky "Recreational Therapist." The idea was that they would pile us into a bus and drive us around all the old neighborhoods that we'd known and loved. It backfired gloriously, of course, as did the bus and as did my seatmate, the "Petrified Lecher" as the ladies here call him. (He's stiff in all the joints but one.) The man should either swear off cabbage or donate frequently at the natural gas reserve.

Anyway, we set off down Main Street, which used to be the role model for small towns once upon a time, with its barber shop and hardware store and ice cream shop. Alas, that was a long time ago, and progress has taken its toll. Picturesque Main Street is now Route #69, seventeen miles of unbroken sleaze that stretches from the bowels of downtown Catbox to the great porcelain bathroom bowl of Rebate. (Motto: "Death is better in Rebate!") Ashleigh took one look and knew she was doomed. She retreated behind her copy of Mirabella and that was the last we saw of her for the duration.

Route #69 has been several times nominated as the ugliest place in the Ozarks, which is sort of like losing a beauty contest in a leper colony. Mile after mile of muffler shops, burger joints, discount stores and great swathes of destruction where there used to be muffler shops, burger joints and discount stores. It's a sight for sore eyes, and I suspect that only the blind can appreciate it fully..

And the stores! (I have been advised by my proofreader that the expression "invaded by foreign devils" has fallen out of favor and should be replaced by the phrase "diversity is well represented." So much for freedom of speech.)

There was "Hacienda el Cheapo," "Bombay Is Bargain Blowout," and "Ng's Ngspensive Thngs," side by side by side. Then came 18 Thai restaurants in a row, a Starbucks and a franchised yogurt factory. Oh, it was Memory Lane all right. Yes sirree-- especially those of us for whom reality is an option. I heard one dear soul asking where all the horses and buggies had gone to. She was one of the lucky ones.

Now I have just been informed by Nurse Ratched that it's Light's Out here at the Home, when they drug us into insensibility so that they can spirit the dead bodies out under the cover of darkness without fear of discovery. I will continue this in our next episode.

11-9-2000

Nettie continues the "Memory Tour" from yesterday....

Now, where was I....

Oh, yes. So there we were, the Feeble People, packed into a bus and doing Ashleigh's "Memory Tour" down what remained of Main Street.

Now, I noticed a new marketing trend on Route #69, which I can only describe as Psychiatric Selling.

This had its start during the '50s, when Daffy Dan (Motto: "He's a CRAZY man!") opened his first store. Daffy was soon followed by Crazy Eddie, Insane Irving, Out-of-It Otto and Schizoid Sam (Motto: "Both of us are nuts!"). Soon there was Multiple Personality Melinda ( "We're ALL here to save you money!") and Delusional Dave ( "Our prices are UNREAL!").

Nowadays this trend has gotten entirely out of hand. Now there's Depressive Don (Motto: "Just take the stuff--it doesn't matter."), Homicidal Harry ("Buy here or I'll kill you!"), Manic-Depressive Martha's ("Buy High, Sell Low!) and Catatonic Charlie (Motto:           ).

And what on earth do you suppose they sell at Nymphomanic Nancy ("Service that just won't quit!")?

Then it was time for the Bus Dump, the part of an outing where we have to pretend we're real people again to keep the tour director happy. That meant going into the stores and pretending we wanted to buy something. First we went to Attention Deficit Disorder Doreen's but it was closed. At Dyslexic Dwayne's ( "Bargains More Always There You Here Find Are") the salespeople just couldn't get the order straight.

At the Masochistic Marketplace ("We cut prices till it hurts!") somebody actually found something he was looking for, and the clerk wrapped it all in razor wire and insisted that we run the bus over him a few times in lieu of a tip.

We passed over Sodomy Steve ("We bend over backwards for you!"), Obsessive Oswald "buybuybuybuybuybuybuybuybuybuybuybuybuybuy") and Bestiality Billy ("We work like a dog for ewe.").

Finally we reached the end of our journey in Rebate (Motto: "There Are Probably LOTS Worse Places To Live"), where there was a grand opening celebration for Jumping To Conclusions, Jack Kevorkian's new parachute-free sky-diving franchise (Motto: "You Only Go Around Once!").

From Rebate (Motto: "We Don't Deserve This, Really We Don't") it was home again, past the muffler shops, the burger joints and discount stores on the *east* side of Route #69. The one bright spot was passing a clean and shining place with Asian flags fluttering in the breeze, and pictures of cats and dogs interspersed with the crisp pictograms. Below in spotless cages were darling kittycats and precious puppydogs all lively and filled with fun and mischief. How nice, I thought. Obviously sponsored by an Asian humane society. But even this brief ray of hope was extinguished as we got closer to the building. It was an ethnic restaurant.

Back at the Home that night all of us requested the veggie plate.

11-10-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

My computer was infected with a virus, and I put the virus in quarantine, then deleted it. How long do I have to wait until I can safely surf the hot chat rooms? Also, is there such a thing a virtual condom so this won't happen again?

--STD'd in Schenectady

Dear STD'd:

Well, I'm certainly glad some of you young bucks are developing a sense of responsibility. I know there are moral watchdogs like "Syphilis" Schlafley who insist that abstinence is the only solution, but that's like suggesting not breathing as a preventative for head colds. Get real!

Fortunately, in this world of instantaneous gratification, as soon as you've run your pointing device through a proper course of pixelated prophylaxis, you can swing on over to your favorite chat room without a care in the world.

And yes, there are virtual condoms, which are freely available at http://www.vcondoms.com/ 

Don't leave your home page without one. 

11-11-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

What are "bat" files? I spotted a few on my computer and am a little concerned. Are they the kind that eat fruit or drink blood?

--Zooey in Zimbabwe

Dear Zooey:

Not to worry. These files have nothing to with nocturnal flying mammals of the order Chiroptera. "Bat" is short for "batty," and this suffix identifies files which are computer-generated pranks that you can play on your friends.

All of these are good-natured jokes that very realistically imitate major computer breakdowns to put the victim into a real tizzy until you explain that it's just a joke and you can both have a good laugh over it after you get back from the emergency room.

One of my favorites involves a fake reformatting sequence. When you load it onto an associate's PC, it displays a highly realistic disk formatting box that shows the user's C:\ drive being formatted and all the files erased! When your friend tries to close the program, an error message about a missing operating system pops up. A laugh riot!

We snuck this onto the finance manager's computer here at the Home, and you should have heard him shriek when it kicked in! It looked like all his spreadsheets were gone in a second!

Of course we might have been more circumspect if we had known about the gun he kept in his desk drawer. His widow was not at all amused. 

11-13-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

You must watch a lot of TV there at the home. What are your favorite programs?

--Videophile in Vidalia

Dear Videophile:

You're certainly right about that. Television, or "the opium of the asses" pretty much runs our lives here. It goes on at dawn and doesn't go off as long as there's a single bleary eye left to watch it.

We don't have favorite programs. The TV has been locked on a single channel since the middle of the century and we just sit there and sop it up. But for your edification I've recorded a full day of programming. Read it and weep.

7:00a.m.-- I Love Lucy. Strange, but I seem to have seen this episode. It was on at the same time as the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954.

7:30a.m.-- Bozo and the Oaf. Hilarious sitcom about two incompetents running for the presidency. May also have been a news program.

8:00a.m.-- How Big Is Your Bladder? Game show.

8:30a.m.-- Olympic Hopscotch Trials. Sports show.

9:00a.m.-- Nzpzrzko Novnya. Latvian news. Minute-by-minute coverage of the assistant plumbing inspector runoff election in the village of Pznk.

9:30a.m.-- Take It And Stick It. Game show for the profoundly clueless. Contestants try to match game pieces with simple geometric shapes.

10:00a.m.-- Proper Fitting of Overlay Dentures for Dairy Cattle. Documentary from the New Jersey School of Veterinary Dentistry.

10:30a.m.-- Stootz and the Mung. Kiddie Cartoon 

11:00a.m.-- The Lard Lady. Cooking program.

11:30a.m.-- A Chipmunk Passover. Rerun. Alvin is high cantor and his friends do backup vocals.

12:00 noon-- This Old Appliance Carton. Fix-up and interior decorating tips for the homeless.

12:30p.m.-- Aggie and the Spratz. Kiddie cartoon.

1:00p.m.-- As My Children's Hospital Days Turn. Detergent drama. Belinda discovers that her mother is actually her grandfather. Trevor and SuziJo decide to have the siamese twins reattached to keep peace in the family. The Archbishop elopes with a cocker spaniel.

1:30p.m.-- La Luna Lunatica. Interviews with Spanish vampires 

2:00p.m.-- The Prostate Years. Sequel to The Wonder Years. Growing old and dying miserably in 1950s New York 

2:30p.m.-- Wee-Wee's Playhouse. Fun and games for the incontinent.

3:00p.m. One Restless Bold Hospital Life. Stephanie discovers she is not Gregory's mother, but her own grandfather. Space aliens kidnap Brenda and Steve's swine. Intensive sex therapy breaks through Wendy's amnesia, and she realizes that she's the Pope. Lucy switches heroin suppliers.

3:30p.m.-- Air Dance. Old home movies of death by hanging.

4:00p.m.-- The Vendetta Show. Viewers send in the names of people they would like to have killed.

4:30p.m.-- Pneumatic Workshop. Replacing the seals on a steam calliope. Important lubrication points in lift cylinders.

5:00p.m.-- Oral Swaggert. Religion. Oral miraculously turns donated money into a new Rolls-Royce.

5:30p.m.-- Power Tennis for the Blind. Handicap sports. Braille Blazers vs. Helen Keller Hellraisers.

6:00p.m.-- National News. Special Report-- Arkansas: Is There Hope?

6:30p.m.-- World News. Special Report-- Bangladesh: Is There Hope?

7:00p.m.-- Galactic News. Special Report-- NGC786009b: Is There Hope?

7:30p.m.-- Talking with Twits. Talk show. Conversations with Cretins. Discussions with Dorks.

8:00p.m.-- The Ex-Files. One man's uncanny adventures with his former wives.

8:30p.m.-- America's Funniest Most Wanted. Hilarious home movies of murderers, gangsters and serial killers.

9:00p.m.-- NYPDQ. Adventures of a rapid bicycle messenger in New York City.

9:30p.m.-- The Simpsons. Comedy. O.J. threatens Nicole with a chain saw. (repeat)

10.00p.m.-- Boobie and the Thong. Adult cartoon.

10:30p.m.-- Revenge of Gilligan's Island. Horror/Comedy. The entire cast dies of old age 15 minutes before they're finally rescued.

11:00p.m.-- News Wrap. Making exciting household objects through newspaper origami.

11:30p.m.-- La Hora Insomnia. Spanish late-night programming.

12:00 midnight-- Late movie. "I Married an Icebox" (1936) Domestic comedy. Lance Esterhazy, Jean Ann Beltzer. Man accidentally weds a Kelvinator model #811 with overhead freezer compartment. PG (graphic portrayal of frostbite)

Well, I'm sure you'll agree that was certainly a day well spent. 

11-14-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

You've mentioned some of your favorite computer- and Internet-related books and movies. What about music? Has there been that much music written about this field?

--Tuneful in Tuscaloosa

Dear Tuneful:

There certainly has! And it goes back a lot further than you think. Stephen Foster was so impressed with Redbone's early Internet and Georgie Intel's computer chips that he wrote a special tribute to us called "Code Folks at Home."

As years went by there were many others:

On the eve of World War I there was the famous "Kernel Buggy" march, which later became the theme of the movie "Bridge on the River GUI."

"JPEG o' My Heart" was also popular around the same time.

Right after the War everyone was singing "A Pretty URL Is Like a Melody."

Just before the Big Wall Street Crash George Gershwin wrote "Strike Up the Bandwidth."

During the Depression, "Brother Can You Spare a DIMM?" became the anthem of unemployed programmers everywhere.

During World War II it was "AOL or Nothing at All," which expressed the frustrations with wartime rationing.

In the 1950s there was a sudden surge in computer and Internet show tunes, everything from "Thoroughly Modem Millie" and "A Phone E-thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" to 'Auntie MIME," "Guys and DLLs," and "My Fair LED."

The '60s brought the British Invasion, led by the Beatles, of course, with such classics as "When I'm 64-bit," "Let it BeOS," and "C Came in Through the Backdoor Windows."

After the '60s I sort of lost interest in popular music. Maybe it was the hearing aid, but suddenly everything started sounding like a cat being pulled backward through a Mixmaster. 

11-15-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

The current impasse over votes in the Presidential election leads me to believe that the time has come for the Anarchist Revolution, where all laws are scrapped and people live by their wits alone. Will you rally 'round the black flag?

--Anarchist in Anacortes

Dear Anarchist:

No, I'll pass on this one. Laws are important to the proper function of the society, and should never be disrespected. Of course there are time when you wonder just what people were thinking of when they established particular laws.

For instance, in Carrizozo New Mexico, it's illegal for a woman to appear unshaven in a public.

In Florida, men may not wear a strapless evening gown on a public street.

In Nogales, Alaska, it's against the law to wear suspenders.

In California, it's illegal to remove your clothes in a bathhouse.

In Marion, Ohio it's forbidden to walk backwards while eating a donut, whereas the good folks in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania prohibit walking backwards and eating peanuts simultaneously.

In Alabama, you may not carry an ice cream cone in your back pocket at any time.

In Marshalltown, Iowa you may be fined if you let your horse eat a fire hydrant.

It is still illegal in Ohio to drive a horseless carriage more than 10 miles an hour unless you are preceded by a man carrying a red flag.

But the sage lawgivers of Kentucky really take the cake. It is still illegal there for a woman to wear a bathing suit while walking on a highway, unless she is accompanied by 2 policemen, or she is armed with a club. (The statute clearly states that the law does not apply to any woman weighing less than 90 pounds or more than 200 pounds.) 

11-16-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Is there such a thing as a perfect contraceptive?

--Cautious in Caulfield

Dear Cautious:

Not since they did away with eunuchs. However I understand from an article in the Dissociated Press that help is on the way:


BEIJING (DP) -- It is the size of a pager, fits in a man's underwear and emits electronic pulses -- and it is a new male contraceptive developed in China.

The device patented by a researcher in the central city of Xi'an emits 150,000-volt shocks that can render a man uninterested in sex for up to a month, the official Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.

"The gadget can be placed in the user's underwear, where it transmits electric shocks into the body to autonomic nerves whenever a woman presses a button on the remote control." Xinhua said.

Turning the device on the target area for three seconds was enough to cause men in the test group to develop an intense interest in gardening, reading, or long, solitary walks, it quoted inventor Yang Xiyong as saying.

The contraceptive will soon be available in stores, and Xinhua hinted marketers may be eyeing overseas buyers. It "tends to be easily accepted by women of various cultural backgrounds," the agency said.

Inventor Yang Xiyong is reportedly working on other applications of the device, including one to diminish interest in TV sports and another to reduce beer consumption and encourage housework.

11-17-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I have to do a history report on the topic "an overlooked event in American history." I also have to do a biology report on snails. Since you've been around for such a long time I thought you could help me with the first one.

--Studious in Syracuse

Dear Studious:

Not only can I help you with the first one, I can give you enough pure and unvarnished truth on both subjects so that you can do a single paper, thereby saving wear and tear on your brain.

Almost no one today remembers the terrible Snail War of 1877 that devastated parts of rural Arkansas.

Back in those days herds of giant snails still roamed the prairies unmolested. Indian tribes depended on them for meat, cooking vessels and headgear, and followed the herds through their seasonal migrations year in and year out.

However, with the coming of the railroad and the opening of the West all this changed rapidly, to the detriment of the snails. Their range was increasingly limited, and the transcontinental railway cut off access to their summer grazing grounds. The formerly docile beasts became increasingly savage. There were growing reports of snail attacks on settlements and small towns, and in August of 1877 the entire snail population rose as one and, determined to recapture their ancestral territories, threw themselves upon the human population with unprecedented fury.

Men, women and children fell in heaps before the pulsating, slime-trailed, raging and bloodthirsty creatures. In one week, almost 100,100 Arkansonians perished. The Ouachapi River was so filled with corpses that for many months no fish were eaten, and in the valley of the Grand Sluice, wolves came down from the hills to feel upon the decaying bodies of the citizens, most of whom had been rasped to death by the snails' deadly diamondlike teeth, or trampled by their treadlike feet . The list of the maimed and brutalized was as endless as the list of the dead.

Only quick action by the military prevented the catastrophe from spreading further. Salt mines were planted to destroy the foe in huge numbers, and Brig. Gen. Eustace "Slug Death" Maronsett, hero of the Conch and Indian Wars, was called out of retirement to lead a brilliant counterattack. In a few days the plains between Redbone and Catbox were littered with the bodies of the dead. Maronsett made his famous "a small stomp for a man, a great crunch for mankind, " rallying speech on the steps of the Redbone courthouse before sending in his fiendishly clever tactical device of massed iron-wheeled steam tractors to finish off the remaining brutes.

Only a few thousand survivors were found, and all of these were sent to France for the cruelest of deaths in hot butter and garlic.

References:

"War is Shell: The Survivors' True History of the 1877 Arkansas Snail War" Edw. Stanhope, Ed. (Bartleby & Spence, 1881)
"Mollusk Against Man: Post-traumatic stress among survivors of the Arkansas Snail War" S. Freud (Berlin, 1883)
"God, Guns and Gastropods: Memoirs of a Battlefield Chaplain" Rev. Lucius Ragthorne (Ex Libris Press, 1894)

So there you have it-- the perfect report on both subjects rolled into one. Your teachers will be so impressed. 

11-18-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

What's your favorite fast food?

--Speedy in St. Petersburg

Dear 

Speedy:

Well, now, thereby hangs a tale, as we used to say. The speediest food that ever was was the shmoo.

Oh, I know what you junior-grade old-timers are going to say-- that the shmoo was a mythical beast created by the late cartoonist Al Capp for his strip "Li'l Abner."

HA! The truth is that shmoon-- that's the plural-- really existed in a hidden valley just about halfway between Redbone and Chinaman's Chance back in the Ozarks. Al Capp spent a lot of time in the Ozarks doing background research for his comic strip, and naturally enough spent a lot of time in Redbone, where I blush to admit he used early photos of yours truly as a basis for the "Li'l Abner" character Stupefyin' Jones. He dined on shmoo many times, as did we all.

Now the shmoo was one of the strangest creatures that ever walked God's green earth. It was shaped like a beach toy and had no bones at all. The females laid eggs, and provided milk, cheese and chocolate on command. The oddest part was that shmoon loved to be eaten, and that the males tasted like whatever you wanted them to taste like. Fried shmoo tasted like chicken, broiled shmoo tasted like steak and baked shmoo tasted just like sugar-cured Virginia ham.

Now when I say fast food, I'm not talking Burger King. All you had to do was fire up the old kitchen stove and the shmoon would come from miles around at a dead run to beg to be thrown in the oven or skillet. There was no waste because the shmoo was all meat all the way through. As a special treat on Thanksgiving, the shmoon would gobble down spices and breadcrumbs and cranberries and come out of the oven tasting just like succulent turkey-- pre-stuffed!

Unfortunately some city people got wind of this state of affairs and immediately formed People for Ethical Shmoo Treatment (PEST), which rounded up all the shmoon to protect them from being consumed. This, of course, deprived the shmoon of their greatest joy and reason for living, and they all died of broken hearts.

The PEST people put up a bronze plaque, I believe.

11-19-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Having trouble with the new computer here, and tech support wants me to type in stuff with a lot of backlashes, and I just think that's so sick.

-- Not Kinky in Northern Kansas 

Dear Not:

You should realize that there's a long and respected history connected with self-flagellation, going all the way back to the saints of the early church, who believed literally in the old saying, "When in doubt, whip it out" as a cure for unbelief.

During the time of the Black Plague in Europe you'd see entire villages marching along, pausing to whack themselves with a cat o' nine tails on the right, then stepping to the left and whacking themselves again, then stepping backwards and giving themselves one to grow on. It was later refined and became the basis for the Macarena.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch revived this sport during the 19th Century, and it is to honor him that somebody coined the word "masochist," meaning somebody who takes a licking and keeps on dick....

Ahem! Aunt Nettie has been pulling too hard on her vodka and prune juice and almost slipped the bounds of good taste. I beg the pardon of any sensitive souls out there.

In any case, you just follow the advice of that upstanding tech support person and don't hold back. Give yourself a couple for dear Aunt Nettie, too-- "whip one for the gimper," in other words.

11-20-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I want to improve my memory, but the guy at Radio Shack® advised that I get DIMM. Geesh... my memory's bad enough without getting DIMMER. Isn't there any other way?

--No Dimwit in Denton 

Dear No:

I'm hearing this lament more and more since Radio Shack was apparently acquired by the Unification Church of Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Sales clerks are now encouraging customers to let go, to become One with their electronics, rather than maintain an adversarial or controlling electrical relationship. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with DIMMness:  DIMM is not dumb. The old saying "ignorance is bliss" is at heart one of the guiding principles of this movement. Followers are encouraged to give up rational thought altogether in order to attain the highest spiritual levels.

If you take the Radio Shack combined catalog and personality inventory you can clearly see which of these self-defeating categories you fall into.

A Resistor is one who actively defies union with the Great Vacuity.

There is more hope for a Variable Resistor, who has begun to doubt his actions.

A Condenser is someone who attempts to achieve vacuity by shortcuts, perhaps through the use of Cliff's Notes.

A Socket is a punisher.

A Semiconductor is one who is alternately enthusiastic about and indifferent to the Great Vacuity.

A Transformer is one who can not only attain personal vacuity, but who can assemble Resistors, Condensers, Semiconductors and others and allow them to channel their efforts by tuning into and receiving the Message.

Cherish your DIMMness; and while you're at it, why not send a large check to Aunt Nettie so she can help spread the word among other DIMM people....

11-21-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

What's a "Hot Key" and will I need oven mitts to use it?

--Alternating Control and Delete in Chicago

Dear AC DC:

"Hot Keys" were developed to give you instant access to porn sites on the World Wide Web.

For instance, pressing Shift, N and ^ will bring you right to the Britney Spears Fantasy site. Pressing N and ^ again will bring up the animation with the German Shepherds.

Pressing Tab-F9-V brings you to Monica the Bag Lady's site. Press Insert and watch what happens to the Presidential peccadillo.

If you press F12-*-SysRq you'll get Congressional Jell-O Wrestling on C-SPAN.

Press $-!-NumLock for the nude Bay Buchanan Reform Party fundraising site. Use the arrow keys to see what Jesse Ventura does with the feather boa.

This is, of course, merely a sampler. For the full list please send $50 to the Aunt Nettie Personal Righteousness Foundation. No checks. please.

11-22-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Do you consider yourself superstitious?

--Triskaidekaphobic in Trenton

Dear Triskawhatever:

My only superstition is that I will never walk under a black cat while carrying a ladder.

Call me a silly old woman if you will, but you never saw what happened to Redbone's town drunk 'Arry Spindlefinger when he tried to do that. 'Arry had the habit of finding things that he hadn't lost, if you know what I mean. One day he "found" an extension ladder leaning against the side of the feed and grain store around 3 in the morning when he was trying to navigate home from the Suds an' Brew tavern. Well, 'Arry decided that the ladder was lost and immediately adopted it as his very own.

Staggering up the hill to his hovel with the ladder balanced on his shoulder, he was surprised to see a huge black cat blocking the crumbling steps to his shack. Not thinking too clearly, of course, he decided that it would be easier to go under the cat than over or around it. Unfortunately, as he was dragging the ladder under the beast he woke it up.

Turned out it wasn't a cat after all, but the Angus family's prize black stud bull, which had escaped the pasture and was having a lovely dream involving Elsie Borden in a compromising position when he felt someone dragging a ladder across his moneymaker. This is not the way to make friends with a 1,300 pound champion sire nicknamed The Violator.

In a trice 'Arry found himself running far faster than he would have thought he was capable of under those conditions, still carrying the ladder, with The Violator in hot pursuit. It was really no contest, and the bull took a mighty swipe with his horns at one end of the ladder, spinning 'Arry around like a top and screwing him into the ground up to his knees. On the second pass at the ladder The Violator managed to screw him in up to his hips, and so it went, until the poor man was clean out of sight before the bull tired of the game and left for greener pastures, if you will.

It took several members of the railway crew to get poor 'Arry out of the ground, and the only way they could do it was by filing his skull into a hexagon and, using a 6-7/8" steamfitter's socket wrench, unscrew him slowly from the earth, using a span of mules as the power source.

Ever since that day I have strenuously avoided walking under a black cat while carrying a ladder.

11-23-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Thanksgiving approaches. Life sucks. What do YOU have to be thankful for?

--Miserable in Missouri 

Dear Miserable:

I am thankful for the sunshiny days and the starry nights, for the sound of children's laughter, for the smell of autumn leaves in the crisp cool air, for the sight of speckle-bellied puppies pulling little red wagons... for... for...

Oh, tarnation, I'm no good at this inspirational crap!

I'm thankful I still have most of my mental faculties, that I have a fast computer and that my last roommate here at the Home obligingly died so I could have a bit of room and some privacy. I'm thankful that prune juice covers up the smell of gin and vodka. I'm thankful I had the foresight to invest in Microsoft 'way back when it was run by that skinny kid with the weird glasses. I'm thankful that I've outlived all of my enemies.

But most of all I'm thankful that there are so many people in the world who are worse off than I am.

11-24-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I have recently discovered the mystical powers of numerology. Are you aware of the tremendous impact of numbers in your life?

--Gematriated in Gemsboek

Dear Gematriated:

Only in the sense that I keep wondering when mine will come up.

Funny thing you should mention numbers, though. It brings to mind the struggles of one of Redbone's most unfortunate citizens, young Danforth Trump. He had a thing about numbers, too, probably from his job at the beer plant, where he was in charge of painting the "33" on all those Rolling Rock bottles.

Poor Danny was always trying to come up with a winning commercial product that would make him a millionaire. He was convinced that it had to have a lucky number on it, which is what he attributed the success of Rolling Rock to. Unfortunately he always gave up a tad too soon.

Working as he did in the beverage business, his first thought was for a light, fizzy drink he could sell to Temperance societies. Coca-Cola had just become popular, so Danny worked nights at various concoctions. After 5 tries he thought he had found the secret and began manufacturing "6-Up." Unfortunately the world just wasn't ready for a garlic-flavored soft drink, and he went bust.

Using the chemistry skills he had gained during his soda-pop experiments, he started over as a perfume manufacturer. This time, after only a few tries, he perfected Chanel No. 4, which he then tried to market to department stores. His theory was that young women who had grown up on farms before emigrating to the big cities would be nostalgic for the smells of home. Sadly, he discovered that the aroma of the barnyard on a hot summer's day was precisely the reason all these women had left the family homestead in the first place.

He was a persistent little devil, though, and I can recall how he drove his old Model "S" Ford up and down Route #65 in Redbone, trying to talk shopkeepers into carrying his "5-11" brand of insect repellent. "5-11" did a dandy job of repelling insects, but it attracted bears like a magnet. After several unfortunate incidents he was forced into bankruptcy by the lawsuits. And his "WD-39" never got off the ground due to his inability to find a container it wouldn't leak out of.

A broken, dispirited man, he scraped together a few remaining dollars and opened a small shop of his own featuring various convenience items like canned lettuce and mare's milk. This never caught on either, and passersby would see him standing behind the counter in his "6-Ten" store growing more miserable every day. One day he didn't show up at all, and the sheriff discovered he has taken his .37-caliber revolver and ended it all.

As a tribute, on the day of his funeral, the Redbone courthouse flew the flag at seven-sixteenths staff. 

11-25-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

You promised to tell us what happened on your field trip to the casino. Well? Inquiring minds want to know.

--Inquisitive in Inchcape

Dear Inquisitive:

Give an old lady a chance to recover! That was one of the worst experiences of my life, and I've had lots of 'em.

After the morning cattle call to see who had survived the night and might be able to survive breakfast, the herders rounded us up and we headed for the school buses that are used for troop transport here at Living Dead "R" Us. In the interests of economy these buses were purchased from the condemned lot of an auction house where they were being sold by scrap weight. That will give you some idea of their condition.

Also in the interests of economy they were not repainted, so we are hauled about under the guise of the New Grizzly Lutheran Ladies Seminary. Often when we pass a regular school bus filled with appropriately aged children you can see their eyes staring in horror at this cargo of lost souls alongside them. I like to think that we've taken on the aura of a phantom, like the "Flying Dutchman" in the days of sailing ships. Tales are no doubt told on playgrounds in hushed voices of the dreadful fate that overtook the very prim and proper girls of New Grizzly Lutheran Ladies Seminary, and how their bus was condemned to cruise forever the back country roads with its cargo of ancient and deteriorating flesh.

My seat companion on this trip was Lulubelle Stutz, who is about as far gone as a body can get without disintegrating in a pile of dust and safety pins. As soon as she realized it was a school bus she kept asking what we had to do for homework the previous night. Lulubelle is the last surviving splintered branch of the famous Stutz automobile company. In her youth she was a famous beauty, and appeared in much of the company's advertising. Unfortunately one day the photographer spiked her tea with railroad gin and came away with a photo of Lulubelle sprawled on the hood of a Stutz Bearcat, fondling the hood ornament and wearing nothing but a smile. When that picture got into circulation it led to what was known as the Onanism Crisis of 1922. Brought new meaning to the words "hand cranked," if you know what I mean.

Anyway, the goal of today's "outing," as our minders keep calling it, was the Whompadumkeg Indian reservation, which, thanks to the new casino, has gone from a cluster of trailers and tar paper shacks to one of the wealthiest communities in our fair state, with the highest per capita income anywhere. The signs of this renewal are everywhere. We saw an old man passed out by the side of the road, still clutching a bottle of Dom Perignon '63. One house had a brand new Rolls-Royce up on blocks in the front yard and a ragged pack of AKC Champion salukis living under the porch.

The casino itself is not very impressive by daylight. We of course went by daylight, since the casino has slack times like Tuesdays which it generously turns over to the local Senility Squads. It's supposed to be very glamorous at night, with huge moving signs depicting a Whompadumkeg warrior about to use his tomahawk on a very compliant pioneer girl.

Uh-oh, they flashed the lights twice in the wreck room, which means that, in the interests of economy, the management here at Living Dead "R" Us is about to shut down the power, heat and running water. More about the Great Casino Trip tomorrow.

11-26-2000

The Great Casino Adventure -  Part 2

Well, that was certainly an interesting breakfast. We can honestly say that the management of Living Dead "R" Us treats its residents like gods. At every meal they place a burnt offering in front of us.

Now where was I on the story of the "outing" to the casino? Oh, yes. The Whompadumkeg Casino is not much to look at on the outside, since they do their dirty work best at nights and inside. The building was designed to resemble a "hoagie," or Indian lodge, at least as close as they could get working in plate glass, concrete and neon. We were greeted at the door by two Indian braves in full regalia, Bashful Bandicoot and Oposturing Opossum.

At this point a tiny dim warning light went off in my addled brain, as I seemed to remember that the bandicoot was native to Australia, not Arkansas. As it happened my hearing aids were turned up to CIA level, and I heard the two speaking to each other after we had passed inside:

"Such alter kocker they schlep over on us Tuesdays, Myron."

"Don't kvetch, Sammy, their alter gelt is still good at the bank."

... which is the strangest Indian talk I've ever heard outside of a Mel Brooks movie.

Then we were being greeted by two Indian Princesses, Fainting Goat and Teacup Poodle, who handed each of us a pile of what looked like Monopoly money and wished us all "bonne chance" in fluent Whompadumkeg.

The full splendor of the casino pretty much takes your breath away, so it was fortunate that most of us had brought our own oxygen with us. Before we were allowed to wander off into the main hall, each of us was given a feeblebeeper, which is a device that lets the minders know where we are. It's a lot less conspicuous than the ear tags they used to use.

The main hall was divided up into roulette wheels, blackjack dealers, craps tables and suchlike. Fortunately someone stopped to explain what a craps table was to Lulubelle Stutz or we might have had an embarrassing incident. Then she saw the dice and realized that it was Parcheesi, so she settled down for a nice game.

Calvin "Mr. Denture Breath" Wysocki said that he allowed as how he'd show these whippersnappers how real poker was played. But the game had changed a lot since he was an old trail hand. Back then they didn't have topless dealers. He was completely off his game, and kept trying to beat, as he called it, "a stacked pair." After he lost all his money and his watch he tried to pawn his shoes to be able to get back to the table, and finally security had to take him back to the bus when he started drooling on the dealer's deck.

Gordon "Wanky" Killbrewster decided that his game was blackjack and ran into a different problem. In his case the old mental machinery has slowed down quite a bit, and it took him 15 minutes and a pencil and paper to add up to 21 each time. After a few hands he just handed over all the money he had on him and he and Princess Lolita played Go Fish until it was time for us to leave.

At noon Chief Flaming Duck invited us into the restaurant for lunch. He speaks a dialect of Whompadumkeg which I believe is called "French" in the outside world. Needless to say not a single thing on the menu was remotely digestible, so the good Chief whipped up what he called the "spécialité de la maison," described as Porridge d'Avoine au Lait Sucré. Oddly enough, it tasted exactly like the oatmeal we get at the Home.

And speaking of oatmeal, it's time for lunch here, so I shall continue anon.

    
   Lulubelle Stutz and Calvin Wysocki, just before being offloaded from the bus.
     (photo from Aunt Nettie's album)

11-27-2000:

The Great Casino Adventure -  Part 3

I still get the willies whenever a wheelchair goes clicketing by-- sounds just like a roulette wheel.

So there we were, scattered around the Whompadumkeg Indian Casino, feeblebeepers in hand, trying to spot the game that would let us turn our Social Security entitlements into a king's ransom. There were a lot of newfangled games I had never heard of before, all running on video screens. Games like Fortune Pie Gal, Let It Lay, and Spanish 210, which sounds like an advanced language course. It appears that the computer has raised swindling the naive to a whole new level. There were even pull-tabs and punch cards and suchlike that dated back to my youth, only these were all on screens. If we thought the old games were crooked, imagine what the new versions are like, with somebody from Microsoft in a back room calling the shots.

Hefty the Bag Lady ( we call her that because, even at 400 pounds dressed weight she insists on carrying half her belongings with her wherever she goes) decided that plain old slot machines were her cup of tea. She acquired a pile of quarters from a change machine and pretty soon had fed every last one of them into the infernal device without result, which set her off no end. She raised one of her Pillsbury dough arms and whomped the machine a good one. As luck would have it, at that very moment quarters began pouring out in a flood, and sirens went off and lights flashed and there was a grand foofaraw.

Shame it didn't happen on the machine Hefty was playing. All hers did was rock back and forth a few time, then keel over backwards like R2D2, and the security people took her back out to the bus to join Calvin Wysocki.

No, the big payoff was for the Home's bus driver, whose eyes got as big as saucers when he realized what had happened. He began jabbering in Pakistani, or whatever those people speak, the general drift of which was, "Ain't gonna drive no old people around in no condemned bus no more," so he flung down his bus driver hat and his bus driver jacket, vacuumed up his winnings and went off to open a restaurant someplace. It's so hard to find loyal help these days.

After that little distraction I decided it was time to throw caution to the winds and try my hand at the roulette table. This is a game of great skill and cunning that I used to be real good at back when Redbone was a wide-open frontier town with whiskey and gambling and prayer in the schools and so forth. As it turns out I haven't slowed down that much. Fortunately the roulette wheel makes a lot of noise and is a wonderful focus of attention so it's relatively easy to whisk $20 chips off the table and into the handbag while everyone is watching the bouncing ball. The only hard part is fooling the croupier, whose job it is to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen. Luckily the croupier, Laughing Dodo, was a pushover for senile old women and I managed to score 45 chips and a Rolex before anyone got suspicious. At that point I simply whispered to the croupier that I'd keep a sharp eye on the fella in the silk suit if I were him, stomped on the foot of Indian Princess Britney hard enough to make her yelp, stumbled into the roulette wheel and yelled " Oh, No! My colostomy bag!" in a loud voice, then vanished in the ensuing confusion.

I was circling the room looking for another game to try my skills on when I happened on Lulubelle Stutz. The poor soul was trying to move a shopping bag that was simply spilling over with quarters. Knowing that Lulubelle, bless her heart, dwells not in accepted reality most of the time, I asked her how she had managed to win such a haul. She winked conspiratorially and said it's all in picking the right machine. Then she pointed to the change machine on the wall behind her and said smugly, "Don't tell a soul, but that machine over there is broken. You put in a dollar bill and it pays off every time...."

At this point I am in desperate need of a nap before I continue the Great Casino Adventure and describe how we got back to The Home without a bus driver.

  
   HEFTY BEATS THE SLOTS 
    (from Nettie's album)
    

11-28-2000:  The Great Casino Adventure - Part 4

The worst part of waking up from a nap is realizing that you're still stuck in this vale of tears. And the fine food they serve here inspires the creepiest nightmares. The man of my dreams lately is Freddy Krueger.

Ah, yes, the casino trip.... so Lulubelle and I got one of the security people to haul her "winnings" out to the bus where she joined Calvin and Hefty in a round-robin discussion of the finer points of denture maintenance.

When I returned to the casino there was a great ruckus in the dining area. I mentioned that Hefty is at the Ample Queen size in the dress department, but she's Kate Moss next to Rotunda Lovelard, the Home's resident gourmand and terror of the truck scales at the State Police weighing station. Rotunda's gross tonnage has gotten her listed in the Guinness Book of Records, and she is still the only person in the USA who has been hospitalized to have a harpoon removed, after an unfortunate incident off the coast of Atlantic City.

It appears that Rotunda had cleaned out the casino's kitchen and was going into Distress mode, where she bellows "FOOOOOD!" at an increasing volume level until something is flung into her maw. I suggested to the maitre d', Weeping Gudgeon, that they sacrifice a snack machine before Rotunda did some serious structural damage to the place. Temporarily sated with candy bars, she was fork-lifted back to the school bus.

About this time our minders began realizing that this whole episode was another in a long series of outing fiascos, so they tracked us down by homing in on the feeblebeepers. Fortunately your Aunt Nettie had taken the precaution of dropping hers down a laundry chute, thereby setting off pandemonium among the minders and the casino staff. I filched a few more $20 chips, cashed out, sold the Rolex to Bashful Iguana and got back on the bus, passing the rescue squad as they ran in with the Jaws of Life to extricate some old biddy from a laundry chute.

When we were all aboard we discovered, of course, that we had no driver. Not to worry, we put our white-crowned heads together and decided that, although none of us had the requisite faculties to drive the bus alone, it could be done as a sort of team effort. Calvin Wysocki had been a school bus driver until that unfortunate accident involving the freight train he didn't notice, so he had an idea of how they operated. Now Calvin's eyesight is not the best, as the incident with the freight train pointed up. So Old Salt, a former Navy man with excellent vision was assigned to watch the road and report terrain conditions to Calvin, who would then operate the wheel and shifter and things. The fact that Old Salt still thinks it's 1944 was considered to be merely a cosmetic flaw in our grand plan. Bessie Sturgis, whose hearing is enviably sharp, was picked to handle the auditory end when she wasn't listening to The Voices. Lulubelle volunteered as tail gunner for some reason, which at least kept her away from the action. She sure does love those old Victory at Sea reruns, does Lulubelle. And Rotunda was assigned as Center of Gravity. With all stations manned and reporting Calvin fired up the engine in a cloud of oil smoke and we set forth on the road back to Living Dead "R" Us. Old Salt peered eagle-eyed from the front, barking occasional commands like "Take her down to 50 fathoms and rig for silent running," him being a veteran of the submarine service and all. Bessie Sturgis kept up a running commentary on how happy Jesus was to see us acting on our own as she listened for sirens and crossing bells.

The trip was relatively uneventful, and I'm sure that farmer will be able to get his tractor out of the ditch without too much trouble. The Amish man swore like a trooper when we bent his buggy, which surprised me, they allegedly being of the turn-the-other-cheek persuasion.

At last we mounted the hill and The Home was in plain view down in the valley and we all began to suck oxygen a little easier. This feeling passed quickly into alarm as our speed increased and Calvin reported that the brakes had given up the ghost and that the emergency brake had apparently been removed sometime in the 1950s. He had all he could do to keep the wreck on the road, and at one point there was a sharp *ping* as the speedometer needle hit the pin and snapped off. Oh, we were in a right pickle, let me tell you.

At this point Old Salt, dimly aware that something wasn't doing what it was supposed to do, shouted for Calvin to blow the ballast tanks and surface. Now the word "ballast" had only one association for me under the circumstances, and the dim little Edison Mazda light bulb went off in my head. I scooted back down the aisle to where Rotunda was finishing off the last handful of Mars Bars, released the brakes on her wheelchair and sent her rolling to the back of the bus, where her poundage flattened the bus fenders against the tires and slowed us down to the point where we were able to make the turn into the driveway of The Home without turning turtle. We came to a screeching, smoking, grinding halt right in front of the dining hall. Perfect timing, too, as Rotunda had just begun lowing "FOOOOOOOOOD!"

So that was the Great Casino Outing. When the minders returned a few hours later, fit to be tied, we collectively Alzheimered and denied that we had been anywhere that day. I used my winnings to buy a 3-D video card and a new joystick. Duchess of Doom, Queen of Quake, that's your old Aunt Nettie now.

   
    HEADING BACK TO LIVING DEAD "R" US
     (photo by irate motorist)

11-29-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

We have some turkey left over from the recent election, as well as some additional turkey (sans feathers) from Thanksgiving. Is there a way to wrap all this up neatly and dispose of it?

My children were definitely leery of turkey and eggs, and the Hot Fudge Turkey Sundae wasn't well-received either.

--Postprandial in Potsdam

Dear Postprandial:

Leftovers were never a problem back in Redbone, what with large families, lots of hard physical work to build up an appetite and the presence of wolves on the outskirts of town to threaten the children with if they didn't clean their plates at every meal.

So I was at a loss as to how to advise you when I realized that www.marthastewart.com was the perfect source of information for this sort of situation. Here are some of Martha's suggestions:

1. Leftover turkey can be popped into the Cuisinart at the Mulch setting, then blow-dried to make a perfect substitute for kapok in pillows.

2. Leftover stuffing can be packed into a vase and dried out at 250°F overnight until it's the perfect consistency for supporting long-stemmed roses.

3. Boil down leftover gravy to a thick mucilage-- perfect for sealing Christmas envelopes, with just a soupçon of aroma left to delight the recipient.

4. The turkey carcass can be stripped clean to the bones, sprayed black and used as a Darth Vader helmet Christmas present.

5. Turkey skin that's reversed, properly shaped and rubbed with cocoa butter makes an excellent condom.

6. No one ever knows what to do with baby onions in cream sauce after the holiday. Solution: take the summer popsicle molds out of storage and send the kiddies off to school with nutritious, creamy onionsicles.

7. Turkey skin if removed intact can be stitched up and inflated as an impromptu football, or inflated, varnished and used as a centerpiece with a few low-wattage candles inside.

8. Snap turkey legbones with a twisting motion that results in sharp, spearlike points. Scatter these about the neighborhood to control the dog population.

9. Wedges of gristle are perfect for dampening the hum and vibration in kitchen appliances.

Finally, puréed and strained cranberries are the ideal substitute for blood during school presentations of "Macbeth." 

11-30-2000

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I have an invention that I think would be of great use to the residents of The Home. It's a set of motorized dentures that makes short work of all foods, up to and including corn on the cob. I use my prototypes everywhere and, except at your classier restaurants, they're universally accepted. Would you and your fellow residents at LDRU like to be the test market for my Bite-O-Matic® brand electrical choppers?

--Edentulous in Edison

Dear Edentulous:

Well, first of all remember that here at The Home we are served nothing that is dentally challenging. The food can generally be divided into two categories: semisolid glop and liquid glop.

Secondly, you've been beat to the punch. Curious you should live in Edison, because it was young Thomas Edison who first introduced us to electric dentures long, long ago. He was working as a freelance railroad telegraph boy back then and spent some time in Redbone while Blind Tom, the usual telegrapher, went off on a sightseeing trip to Europe.

Young Tommy was quite the inventor even back then, and he happened to hear old "Graveyard" Gert Gooch complaining in the General Store about missing the Fourth of July picnic goodies, since she was toothless as a clam. Young Tommy took this as a personal challenge, and before you know it he had whipped up the neatest motorized mouthpiece anyone in those parts had ever seen. You just hitched up the batteries and the teeth would start a-chattering away, just like a beaver with his butt in a snowbank.

So Graveyard Gert was able to attend her 105th consecutive Fourth of July celebration, and because of her new teeth she was given the place of honor at the end of the banquet table. And did those teeth work! Gert made short work of the cracker and cheese appetizers. There was just a funny hum and they were ground down to swallowing size. Encouraged by this early success she tried an apple, and there was a slightly louder hum and it was gone, stem, seeds and all. She worked her way through the ham, the taters and the bean dishes the same way. As a matter of fact she did her best to sample everyone's cooking, praising it to the skies.

At last someone offered her the ultimate challenge, a piping hot ear of new-picked corn, dripping with creamery butter and glittering with salt. Now Gert worked up her courage and was about to take a chomp when young Tommy pointed out that the batteries were running down and that he should replace them so she wouldn't bog down in mid-mouthful. He hurried back with a new set of dry cells, but in his haste he reversed the connections.

Old Gert heard the motors winding up and went to take a big chomp of the corn. Unfortunately reversing the wires also reversed the motor, so instead of being in the consumption state, she was in regurgitation mode. Power regurgitation mode. There was an ugly sort of belching noise as Gert spewed forth like the gargoyle on the Civil War fountain down by the Post Office. Only the gargoyle hadn't spent an afternoon sampling everything from alewife pie to zucchini fritters. It was an amazing sight until young Tommy got the wires disconnected. He barely escaped town ahead of the tar and feather party.

The event was so traumatic for all concerned that for many years afterward the results of an episode of serious upchucking was referred to as a "Redbone picnic."

2004
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