5-1-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I have a silly question for you. Why is the cold water faucet on the right and the hot on the left?

--Hygienic in Hyannisport 

Dear Hygienic:

There are no silly questions. There are only silly answers.

Many people think that the C and the H on faucets stand for Cold and Hot. This is because the words accidentally happen to start with these letters in English. But the origin of the C and the H goes back much further than that. Indoor plumbing was first introduced in Mongolia in the 8th century. The "C" stands for "C'hopta," the right hand, in Old High Mongolian, and the "H" for Hu'opta, the left hand. It was customary in those days to wash the hands one at a time, rather than simultaneously as we do today. As the concept of indoor plumbing spread throughout the rest of the world the letters on the faucets were retained, even in countries where they make no sense at all.

5-2-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

How do they get the caffeine out of coffee?

--Wired in Wichita

Dear Wired:

Since it requires great delicacy and precision to remove the caffeine bract from the coffee flower, the task is performed by specially trained Colombian midgets. Consequently the expression 'short decaf' has migrated into the English language.

5-3-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Why is it when a child asks something like, "Why is the grass green?" we think we've given a satisfactory answer when we say something like, "Grass gets its color from chlorophyll, the substance which allows it to use the energy from the sun to live and grow, etc." Isn't the real question, why is CHLOROPHYLL green, and isn't the answer really we just don't friggin' know why, and we can't bear to admit it?

--Precise in Prescott

Dear Precise:

I feel your pain. That's why I miss Mister Rogers' show so much. He would never settle for a sellout answer like you describe. He would probably have handled it this way:

Hello, boys and girls. Today we're going to answer a question that children are curious about, but which grownups have a hard time explaining: Why is grass green?

Now, most grownups will just answer "because it is," or "God made it that way," or tell you something about chlorophyll which really doesn't explain anything. Worse yet, they may just give you a good one across the chops for interrupting World's Wildest Car Chases and tell you to get them another beer from the fridge.

But the truth is that grass and leaves are green because yellow-green is the only color that plants don't soak up to use for energy to grow and to make baby grasses and leaves.

Now, I can hear you all saying to yourselves, "But that's silly, Mister Rogers-- our sun is a main-sequence type G2 star that radiates mostly in the yellow-green part of the spectrum. It stands to reason that any plant life that evolved on this planet would favor yellow-green wavelengths because they would be the most abundant and easiest to use, with the lowest metabolic cost to the plant."

And you would be perfectly correct. Why does grass throw away this most useful part of the sun's energy, the rejection of which is what makes it look green?

Grass gets most of its energy from the blue-violet and red parts of the spectrum. Our sun does not put out much energy at these wavelengths.

What this means is that grass came from somewhere else in the galaxy, and that the planet where it originated was part of a binary system with a red giant and a blue dwarf.

So grass is green because it's signaling the home planet as if to say, Here we are! And someday the cruel, cruel monsters who live on the home planet will see all this green being radiated into space and realize that the Earth is filled with the nice warm-blooded tasty creatures that feed on grass, and they will send their harvest ships to kill half the delicious warmbloods for shipment back to the home planet to ease the meat shortage. The rest of us will be kept in fattening pens until we're ready.

Can you say "Armageddon"?

I thought you could....

5-4-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Do you know the origin of the overworked phrase, "that's like comparing apples and oranges"?

--Statistician in Staten Island 

Dear Statistician:

The phrase goes back to the earliest slot machines. Charles Fay, inventor of the device and generally regarded as the Thomas Edison of gambling machinery, needed symbols that would be meaningful to the largely illiterate miners who came West, drawn by gold strikes in California and Alaska. He settled on common fruits, with the orange having the lowest payout value, then the persimmon, mango, durian, and so on up to the apple, which paid out as much as $100 in gold or silver coins for a successful match.

So when miners were looking for a phrase to express a wide difference in valuation, they naturally fell back on the slot machine symbols they were familiar with. Eventually the phrase worked itself into the language, as phrases will.

5-5-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

In Chuck Shepherd's "News of the Weird" is a true story about some gassy gent who managed to asphyxiate himself on his own flatulence! What do you suppose they put on his tombstone?

-- Flabbergasted in Floribunda 

Dear Flabbergasted:

It took some digging, but thanks to the wonderful Tombstones of the Poor and Obscure Web site I was able to find the exact wording:

"The road to Heaven, it is strait,
And the way to salvation hard;
Yet here lies a man who reached that state,
Hoisted by his own pêtard.

Drawn Heavenward after a humble meal:
Beans, cabbage, beer-- such simple fare;
Lord, how shall Thy Empyrean peal
If they light a match up there."

5-6-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

In your recent profile of the state of New Jersey you mentioned the city of Newark's annual Vermin Festival. When does it occur and what sort of activities do they have?

--Tourist in Tours 

Dear Tourist:

Rather than just send you to their Web site for the promotional hype, here's an e-mail I received about last year's event from a former resident of The Home who was visiting his kinfolk in beautiful Lodi, New Jersey.

------------------------- 

Dear Nettie and Crew at Living Dead "R" Us:

Say what you will, but Newark remains at the top of the heap when it comes to the sheer dazzle and splendor of a major community celebration.

The Vermin Festival began early this morning as the Retroactive Abortion Piper fluted and piped his way down Biertumpfel Boulevard at the head of a long line of unwanted children as part of a citywide effort to make the streets safe for rats. Clad in his stainless steel biohazard suit, he led them down to the waterfront and into the Passaic River ('Too thin for poison gas, too thick for napalm'), where they burst into multicolored puffs of smoke as soon as they hit the boiling liquid surface. Ooooooooohhhh! said the crowd.

When the smoke had cleared, it was time for the Sneerleader Competition! Every high school in Newark sends its unindicted and non-pregnant cheerleaders (there were 3 this year) in a dynamic display of lewd dancing and acrobatics based on a common theme. This year it was Head Lice. The girl from Marasmus High won, but was immediately shot dead by the runner-up.

With the crowds all warmed up, it was time for the Running of the Roaches. There's a town in Spain that has a watered-down version of this event where they use wild bulls instead of New Jersey cockroaches. Wusses! A yearling Jersey roach is about two hundred pounds heavier than its bovine counterpart, three times as fast, and a carnivore to boot.

The Mayor gave the signal and the first set of gates opened, turning out the crippled, the insane, the terminally unemployed and the incorrigible welfare cases. Then the second gate opened and here come the roaches!! This unique sport had its start in the Reagan Era, when old Ron closed all the mental asylums and shelters on the grounds that the inmates were 'just kidding.' A brilliant budget analyst on Newark's administrative payroll suggested combining dependent reduction with badly needed tourism, and the Running of the Roaches was born!

Afterwards, while the streets are being hosed down, the public is invited to partake of some of the county's famed regional cuisine. There are dozens of stands featuring fried lard, rat-on-a-stick, lead paint chips with mercury dip and the world famous 'Byproducts On A Bun.' Yummy-Yum! And there's nothing better to wash it down with than Newark's own non-potable water. No wonder on a hot day you can see small children exploding in the sunlight!

The afternoon finds us immersed in the splendid music of central New Jersey, which is based on the use of the human body as a percussion instrument. Bands like the Vice Lords and the Demon Skulls play upon each other with baseball bats, chains and bottles, and the impromptu chorus sets the mood for smaller pickup groups like the Spouse Avengers, the Child Whompers and the Granny Bashers.

At last the evening, and as the final rays of the setting sun struggle through the crud, there's a torchlight parade of homeless people and street lunatics, with the gasoline supplied by Harvey's Sunoco and enforcement by the Christian Citizens Council for Better Neighborhoods.

A fun time was had by all-- possibly excepting the homeless.

See you soon, unless I get lucky and die here, 

Eb Ebberstein 

5-7-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

What is serendipity and how can I get some?

--Loser in Lucerne

Dear Loser:

Serendipity is a word that came into the language because of Sarah Ann di Petti, one of the most fortunate people who has ever lived. Her folks were as poor as church mice until she was born. As it happened she was the 100,000th baby born at that particular hospital, which brought her parents an immediate windfall of $100,000. On her first birthday her parents took her out to a local restaurant to celebrate, where she was spotted by a model scout for a major upscale children's clothing line and signed into a 10-year, $1 million contract. Her first word was "Pasadena," which happened to be the correct answer to a contest her mother was participating in and won her first prize. As a reward her mother bought little Sarah a toy piano. A few days later as she was randomly pounding on it she was overheard and recorded by Mick Jagger's agent, and as a consequence received one-percent of all the royalties for "I Can't Get No Satisfaction." 

When she started kindergarten one of her random finger-paintings was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art for an undisclosed sum. In second grade her essay, "No Puppy For Sarah" was published in the New Yorker and later became the basis for the "Benji" movies. Her mother taught her how to sew at the age of 9; her fanciful creations became the basis for the wildly popular I Sarah Ann line of kid's clothing which was later secretly acquired by Oscar de la Renta. At 12 she was briefly on camera during national coverage of a parade in her hometown, which led to starring roles in several motion pictures. At 16 her prom date was the cover boy from "Famous Rich Hunks" magazine. 

It went on and on like that for many years, until "Sarah Ann di Petti" became synonymous with incredible good fortune attained by sheer accident.

However, all this good luck had seriously overloaded her karma and one day it let go with a loud snap. That day she was visiting her broker when he broke the news to her that her entire fortune, which had been invested in asbestos stock and silicone implants, had been lost to litigation. Suddenly taken ill for the first time in her life at the dreadful news, she was rushed to a doctor in the same building, where she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, AIDS and Elephant Man's Disease, all of which began to wreak their terrible effects on her in a matter of moments. All of her teeth and all of her hair fell out spontaneously, and she developed a case of long-postponed acne that was so severe it is still mentioned with awe in dermatology texts. Staggering out of the building she was struck by a falling safe and instantly killed.

Even posthumously the karma correction continued: what they could scrape out from under the safe was cremated, but her ashes were inadvertently used to soak up an oil spill and discarded. The ornate urn which stood on her parents' mantel until their deaths, prayed over constantly, actually contained the remains of a rabid pit bull which had savaged several toddlers and been shot by the police.

5-8-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I was watching an old movie on TV and somebody called it a "slapstick comedy." None of us could figure out what a slapstick was. Is it like lipstick that old-time clowns used to wear?

-- Laughing in Laffin

Dear Laughing:

According to my sources it goes back a lot farther than that. It's the Old High Norse verb "schlaippstyckkem," meaning "to strike a low-ranking slave upon the naked buttocks with two nested oars of a Viking dragon-ship, thereby creating an explosive report for the amusement of the ship's crew, and so encouraging the additional consumption of mead, the telling of bawdy jokes and general raillery of a seafaring homosexual nature."

When the Vikings got tired of raiding on the high seas and returned to Vikeland, the word evolved into "schuss-teak" referring to the type of wood that was prized for making the skis that were used for "schussing," or skiing rapidly down a mountain to plunder a village. A high point of these raids was finding the fattest man in the village and striking him on the naked buttocks with a pair of nested skis, thereby creating an explosive report for the amusement of the raiders as they drank and pillaged and burned.

It became part of Old English through the word "slabsteak," which was a sort of large, long-handled paddle that was used to arrange meat cooking on a griddle or in an oven of a castle. In this sense it meant the striking of a scullion upon the naked buttocks with the well-greased nested paddles, thereby creating an explosive report for the amusement of the lords and ladies as they dined.

The word moved into modern English as "slapstick" or "slipstick," a sort of rudimentary mathematical device also known as a "slide rule" that was used for a time while people were waiting for Messrs Hewlett and Packard to perfect the pocket calculator. Engineering students discovered that larger versions of these-- known as the "log log duplex deci-trig" in the vernacular-- could be nested together and applied to the naked buttocks of their liberal arts classmates, thereby creating an explosive report for the classroom's amusement which, in terms of high hilarity, was considered to be right up there with plastic dog poop.

------------------
Excerpted from "The American Etymological Dictionary of Imaginary and Invented Words, Neologisms, Pleonasms and Portmanteaux," Third Edition ©1979 by Houghton Holler Company, London & Bombay.

5-9-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I was on a civic tour going through the convent of the Little Sisters of Perpetual Misery here in our town. One of the docents mentioned that a mural represented Limbo. I've been in a lot of dance clubs and on a lot of Caribbean cruises and I never once saw a nun performing the Limbo. Is this just hype?

-- Dancer in Danbury 

Dear Dancer:

The Church doesn't talk about it much, but one of the best Limbo dancers around was Sister Alicia Featherstone, who was assigned as a missionary aboard several ships of the Carnival Cruise Line. The good Sister had come from a long line of vaudeville hoofers, and I guess it was just her genes that caused her to snap one midnight during the Equatorial Follies Dance-off. The band, Doctor Bones and the Trinidad Zombies, were at their loudest and best. And what happened next can best be described in the Doctor's own words, as recorded in the song that won him the Island Beat music magazine award the following year:

Missionary Position
©1987, Earl "Doctor Bones" Anthony

Nun be nimble,
Nun be quick,
Nun go unda
Da limbo stick.

Draggin' her ros'ry,
Losin' her shoe,
Dat habit is a drawback
At de limbo to-do.

Oh Saint Harry,
Oh Saint Joe,
Dat wimple gotta come off,
De limbo bar so low.

Nother shot o' rum,
Nother shot o' gin,
She takin' off de habit
An' she limboin' again'.

Shake it on down,
Shake it all right,
Dat Mama she Superior
At de limbo this night.

Black undies flashin'
She movin' like a snake,
Ridin on her ankles,
Shakin' what'll shake.

Mary onna surfboard,
Jesus onna skate,
Sister slide below de bar
Like jelly off a plate.

Yo! Holy mama,
See what you gone done?
De limbo boys dey givin up,
You da nun what won!

5-10-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I'm really ripped by screen and stage actors! They're all so slim and slender and athletic-looking. How come there's no place for highly talented plus-size actors and actresses in modern dramatic productions?

--Fat?So! in Fatehpur 

Dear Fat?So!:

You'll be glad to hear there is a movement afoot to use husky-size actors, especially in classical drama. As a matter of fact the Redbone Players staged a Shakespearean comedy as part of its summer stock efforts last year. I happened to save the review by Etta van der t'Oot, theatre reviewer for the Tribulation, Arkansas Weekly Sporadic.

-----------------------------------------

"Merry Wives" Production Chubby, Checkered.

The Redbone Players has achieved brilliance with "The Merry Wives of Windsor," this year's choice for "Shakespeare in the Ruins" amid the remains of the old Confederate fortress in East Whack. The essence of the play is, as you may know, a tribute to fat people, and Director Colin Fuller has made it into a salute to the generously-proportioned everywhere.

For starters, the play builds around a single character, the avoirdupoisious Falstaff. And Falstaff can't be just fat; he must be a paragon of plumpness, a plenitude of ponderousness, or the rest of the play falters. Unless Falstaff is a seriously chunky monkey, the play is strictly SlimFast. It's sort of like having Richard Simmons playing Jabba the Hutt, or casting Shelley Duvall as a Sumo Queen.

Shakespeare describes Falstaff as "a plenteous, fleshy fellow, as full of meat as an egg; a stout lad with a rubber blubber butt, who puts the "O" in obese; overweight beyond the dreams of freight scales; a puffy, flabby, potbellied, bloated, lardy, fleshy bucket of hog drippings; a hefty hunk of steaming junk food; the envy of a whale; an elephant's role model; 'way off the spherical pigout meter."

So the casting of "Alabama" Mike Smith for the role is brilliant. Smith is so huge he was recently awarded his own ZIP code. He's saved the Redbone Players considerable money in this production by making scenery unnecessary: when Mike is on the stage, Mike is all you can see.

Director Fuller has carried this farce (which means "stuffed with meat" by the way) to its comic extreme by surrounding Smith with equally well-upholstered actors and actresses. Marcia Dox, who recently played the battleship Missouri in Jake Sims' musical, "Saving Ryan's Privates," truly fills the role of Widow Blimp. When she and Mike Smith are on the stage together, there is a measurable increase in force of gravity in East Whack.
Her opening lines with Mike set the high comedic tone of the piece:

Falstaff: "Is that you-all?"
Blimp: "Yes, by my troth, 'tis, and -- O my Gawd!-- is that all *you*?! Wowser!"

Katharine Roast, who plays Widow Pneumatic, is best known for her role in the daytime soap opera, "All the Young, Restless Days of My Doctor's Wives," where she plays the hospital. Will Willywang is exceptional in the fairly small role of Swallow, a country justice. The man truly brings heft to his part; it's not surprising to see his bio; he's done Shakespeare before. You'll remember him as the Rose Theater in the recent film, "Shakespeare in Lard."

Mary Broadman is also very good as Mistress Pendulous, a servant. While not really in the same league as some of the other players, Mary is certainly no piece of fluff, and can really throw her weight around on the stage. It's nice to see her up and about again after recovering from the collapse of her living room floor. Kudos to Pearson's Railway Crane Service for their dramatic rescue, as covered in the Weekly Sporadic.

Fortunately the heat at this weekend's performance added to the merriment; each of the actors was sopping even before he or she set foot on the heavily reinforced stage, and the least movement sent buckets of sweat flying into the audience. In Scene Three Katharine Roast's saturated costume goes partly transparent for an inadvertent "wet circus tent" effect. Due to theatergoers' demands she'll be wearing underwear during the next performance.

The performance was marred by the death of several cast members from heat stroke before the end of the Fourth Act. Director Fuller, himself no lightweight, saved the performance, however, by reading the rest of the playscript from on top of the pile of bodies, doing all the different voices quite well until he slipped on a greasy patch and went through the back wall, utterly ruining the Ruins.

Redbone Players' next effort, "Tennessee in the Dumps" will feature "A Desire Named Streetcar," with all of the characters portrayed by salesmen. It's a logical follow-up to last year's "Miller on Draft," when all the roles in "A Salesman of Death" were played by streetcars.

5-11-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Just exactly how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Insane in St. Augustine 

Dear Insane:

Not being an expert in either woodchucks or their capacity for chucking wood, I turned to some well-known authorities for their insights into the question.

--------------------------------- 

Douglas Adams:  42 

Ronald Reagan: I  cannot recall the woodchuck-chucking incident at all. Ding, dong. Oopsa doggie!

Charles Darwin:  Chucking wood the first time was an unplanned, random event which, if it had succeeded in permitting the woodchuck to survive long enough to pass on this tendency to its offspring, would have led to increasing wood-chucking behavior on the part of its descendants, which, alas, it did not.

Bill Clinton:  It would depend on what your definition of " if " is.

George Bush:  Some chuckification of wood will, of course, be necessary as a result of opening the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, but every effort will be made to protect the necessary woodchucks in their specieshood.

The Taliban:  Woodchucks are unclean, and "chucking" is contrary to Islam, so we will kill all of them. Gladly.

Johnnie Cochran:  The woodchuck never chucked any wood of that description, and we have recorded evidence that shows the arresting officer used the word "marmot" at least six times in the past year.

PETA:  FREE ALL WOODCHUCKS FROM THE ECONOMIC SLAVERY OF CHUCKING WOOD! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Saddam Hussein:  The few woodchucks that survived the bombings have been weakened so much by the embargo that they are no longer able to chuck wood, and are perishing miserably, sometimes on the very steps of my mansions.

Carl Sagan:  Billions and billions and billions.

5-12-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I was picking out a china pattern for my upcoming wedding when I came across the word "gravy boat." It seems like such a silly name for an article of tableware. Do you have any idea why it's called that?

-- Elegant in Ellensburg 

Dear Elegant:

Many people think that a gravy boat is called that because of its shape, which is usually somewhat boatish. The truth of the matter is much more interesting, however.

It dates back to the earliest attempts to colonize the New World. The very first settlers had to do without cookware, since there was a long-standing sailor's superstition against carrying iron utensils upon the open sea. They even had a little rhyme about it:

Take on board an iron pot,
On ocean's floor your bones will rot;

Carry to sea an iron kettle,
In Neptune's lair your skull will settle;

Haul o'er sea some iron dishes,
You'll be sleeping with the fishes...

... and so on, right down to iron salt and pepper shakers and napkin rings.

So, as you can imagine, it was rough going for the early pioneers. They had to boil water in their cupped hands over an open fire, for starters.  Stoneware was attempted, but to chisel out even a single dish took so much time that the entire community generally perished miserably before a single place setting was complete. And of course the wooden frying pan was a bad idea from the get-go, responsible for many horror stories of spontaneously sautéed settlers.

So the colonists were very happy to see the first cargo of silverware and bone china arrive on the HMS Grevé in 1753, under the able direction of Captain Josiah Wedgwood. The sailors had no objection to carrying these objects, since there was no convenient rhyme for 'silver' in the English language, and the only words that rhymed with 'china' or 'glassware' made so sense at all. As a result they carried the tableware without a scruple and spent their evenings afloat making up sea chanteys about sodomizing cabin boys.*

The colonists were so grateful to the captain of the HMS Grevé that they commissioned a special article of chinaware to remind their descendants of the importance of the event, which is why a Grevé boat is included in all place settings to this day.

--------------- 
*History footnote. The most popular seaport drinking song in 1837 started out:

"Oh, Tommy Loye
The cabin boy,
The dirty little nipper,
Packed his ass
With broken glass,
And circumcised the skipper."

5-13-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I read an article in a news magazine that said the state of New Hampshire has neither a sales tax nor a personal income tax. How on earth do they raise money for government operations?

-- Civil Servant in Cedar Springs

Dear Civil:

New Hampshire is indeed unique among the United States in having neither form of taxation. Their motto: "Live Free or Die" says it all. The people of the state are crusty old New England Yankees and don't believe in taxation even *with* representation. It's one reason why the great British steel-making town of Manchester relocated to New Hampshire in 1847 as a tax haven.

The state has several unusual ways of raising its operating funds. You may have seen their acolytes at airports and in other public places, wearing bright green robes and carrying fir twigs as they bounce along begging for spare change. There is also a 24-hour radio station that solicits love offerings and sin offerings in return for miracles like a balanced budget and school lunch programs.

Several times a year there are televised fund raisers where donors are offered a variety of premium gifts in response for their pledges. These *premiums* range from license plates and driving permits up to contracts for providing state services and landing rights at the state's airports.

Most popular are the twice-yearly bake sales, which alone raise one-third of the state's operating budget.

5-14-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I have an overdue paper to do on National Library Week, but I don't like books and I'd rather watch a movie. Are there any movies about libraries I can fake out my teacher with?

-- Viewer in Vieuxbourg 

Dear Viewer:

Well, as I've said so many times, there's nothing Aunt Nettie likes to do more than assisting the slacker youth of our country.

I believe the best-known library-based movie is the 1935 Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers film "Top Catalog," filled with those wonderful Irving Berlin songs.

Who can ever forget the scene when Fred goes the title tune, "Top Catalog, White Cards and Aisles" as he dances his way through the Dewey Decimal System? Or the romantic scene where Fred & Ginger find themselves alone in the closed stacks, singing "Look Me Up, Check Me Out?" Or when they pretend to fight over Encyclopedia Britannica Volume III in "Dancing Cheek to Czech"? My favorite song from the movie was always "It's a Lovely Day, I've No Fines to Pay."

Oh, and don't forget to note the cameo of the old vaudevillian, Maud McGurk, as the very pregnant librarian behind the "Overdue" counter. That will win you bonus points with your teacher, I guarantee it.

They sure don't make any decent library movies like that anymore. <sigh> 

5-15-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

The other day I was discussing with some peculiar friends that a mutual acquaintance named Peter Piper had picked a peck of pickled peppers. While my friends all pondered how many pecks of pickled peppers Peter Piper had picked, what I really wanted to know was... WHAT THE HECK IS A PECK?

--Quantified in Quantico 

Dear Quantified:

The peck is one of a great number of ancient and pretty much obsolete measurements. One peck used to be the equivalent of eight dry quarts, or six pipkins and a fullbright, or seven thirty-seconds of a lamb's wattle with a cherry on the top, which was the same as the weight of green peppercorns piled to the height of a bull's underbelly within a circle formed by the drying up of a beecher's ladle of spoilt milk, slung widdershins by a blindfolded scullion.

We've pretty much lost all of these colorful forms of measurement through the relentless encroachments of standardization. Back in Redbone when I was a girl it was nothing to send a child to the mill for a pood of white flour, or to the stream cooler for a firkin of butter, or down to the saloon for a gill of cheap whisky. Just try that today!

I remember in the autumn going out into the woods to harvest a few lummoks of chestnuts, which we would take down to the trading post and exchange for a demi-quintal of pig iron, which we would drag over to the blacksmith for a few ergs of poundlings, which the drugstore was always happy to trade for an egg phosphate or two at the soda fountain.

Or in the summertime we would sneak off to the pond and gather a stoodney or so of frogs, which we would put into a kettle and render down into a slurry, which could be put up in scantling jars and sold for thruppence to the traveling whelkmonger, and the remainder used to grease the mules for a game of Oops My Bimbo.

And to think that there are those who want to sacrifice all this for the boring old metric system. <sigh!> We've come a long way, maybe. About 40 standard cubits, by my estimation....

5-16-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Every cactus I've tried to cultivate has died, no matter how much attention I've paid to it. Do you know the secret of getting these difficult plants to flourish?

--Horticultural in Horton 

Dear Horticultural:

Well, you've answered your own question. Paying attention to a cactus is the kiss of death. They thrive on neglect. Look at how they live in the wild, in the middle of waterless deserts, under a baking sun, surrounded completely by rattlesnakes and tarantulas. You have to duplicate these conditions in your own home if you hope to have any success at all.

So the first thing you do is pack your newly-acquired plant in hot dry sand, maybe with a little salt or alkali added in for soil balance. Then leave it on a windowsill that faces the sun and do your best to ignore it. I don't hold with talking to houseplants normally, but it's been proven that regular insults are beneficial to cacti. Heave a sigh when you pass it and mutter "I knew I should have gone for the plastic," or "I've seen decomposing udder vetch that looked more attractive." Throw "Laugh at the Cactus" parties. If you're away for any length of time, ask a neighbor to come over and belittle it in your absence.

Other plants need a regular supply of water, but your basic cactus will prosper if you just spit in its general direction once or twice a year, preferably with a curse.

Follow these directions faithfully and you will find that your cacti will blossom delightfully and be the pride of your neighborhood.

---------------------- 
Reference: "A Thorn on the Side: Cactus Abuse for the Homeowner" by Arid Sechesse (London & Bombay, 1990)
Also see the author's "You Call That a Tree?!!: Torturing Bonsai for Fun and Profit," especially chapter 18, "Survivor! The Stunted Saguaro vs. The Puny Prickly Pear." (London & Bombay, 1987)

5-17-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Tourette's Syndrome is a nasty little disease that is named after the doctor who first described it. Why didn't they name it after the poor soul who suffered from it?

--Twitchy in Twickham

Dear Twitchy:

Diseases, like geographical areas, are traditionally named after the discoverer rather than the discoveree. Hence we have "Tourette's Syndrome" instead of "Little Nasty Swearing Freddy's Disease" and "America" instead of "20 Million Pre-Columbian Indians' Homeland."

For the uninformed, Tourette's Syndrome has, as one of its symptoms, the uncontrollable urge to shout out long strings of curses and obscenities, the fouler the better. For many years the unfortunate victims were either hospitalized or treated with drugs to relieve their symptoms. Lately, of course, Tourette sufferers have been given recording contracts with companies like Death Row Records. To protect their families' reputations they usually assume false identities, like M&M, Shoepack Takur, Busted Rhymer or Soup Dog Eat Dog. Many of them are also described as deaf, which may help explain things.

Gilles de la Tourette, the French doctor who discovered the eponymous condition, never made a dime from his discovery, unlike its contemporary sufferers. The recording industry was in its infancy in the late 19th century, and when he approached record company owners with the idea of recording Tourette victims and selling their pornographic rantings as a form of entertainment he was promptly committed to the state insane asylum at Charenton, where he spent the rest of his days.

How far we've come as a society.

5-18-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I was indignant to see you dismissing the American art form of Rap as a mental affliction. How can you claim such a thing? Everybody knows that the late rap stars you mentioned by name are high priests of the sacred music of hip-hop.

-- Offended in Offenburg 

Dear Offended:

Okay, call me an old fuddy-duddy, but here's a direct transcription of the local station, KROK, recorded by yours truly. Mind you, this is merely the announcer talking about local acts appearing in our fair city of Redbone.

"Yo, and this here's your main man, Big Little Fat Slim, bringing yo the lowdown and the hoedown on clubbin' here in Bonetown. You gotta dollah? Then you gotta check out Intrepid BM at the Trax, where they be jivin' an' hi-fivin' an' dumpster-divin' through Monday early AM.

"You got the chance to dance, prance and take a chance at the Bomb Shelter on Grody this weekend, where Stewed Weasel, Mama Come A-Runnin' and Ortho Latex Trampoline gonna be pickin' 'em up an' puttin' 'em down fo yo hip-hop foot-stompin' delight!

"An' at the Escafe, that's the E-S-C-A-F-E under the Eastern Standard in the Downtown -- can I *say* it on th' radio?-- MALL! all this week is pickup rap an' roll with Busted Flush, Mainlining Bosco and Abner's Broken Broomstick. For a change of pace-- can you say Something Completely Different-- I thought you could!-- on Sundays there's the ever-popular Hogwaller Bad Boys, holdin' their own and keepin' their tone! No cover, no minimum, clothing optional at the E-S-C-A-F-E!

"You got to rap? You got to lay out the crap? You got to knock 'em flat, swing yo' bat, do it like that? Well, Main Man Big Little Fat Slim say you got to get yo' bones and stones down to DURTY NELLY’S-- yowsah! Down in the cellar at Park Av-en-yew they gonna give you the class rappin' dudes like Sukup 42, Lektrik Chair, ScumArtist Be-Bop, Little Eva's Revenge, and, AND, *AND*-- Friday's is Mike Frite Nite at the Durty One's! It's you, it's live all the time! You can turn up the sound, bounce it around, let yo' own rap rebound-- Lawdamercy!-- you be the star of the bar, you get the fame and the name, be glad you came, suckah!"

If these people are high priests, I think they've been playing with their altar boys too much....

5-19-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Where did religion come from?

-- Faithful in Faith Hill 

Dear Faithful:

Long, long ago, when fire was cutting-edge technology, some wretched Austropithecene nerd, Shaggy Mo, discovered that he could get bigger shares of the kill than even the mighty hunters, simply by claiming that he had spoken to the Great Spirit and assured the success of the hunt. He would go a little distance into the forest and wail and shout and come back saying a sooth.

Og, the leader of the troupe, applied Pascal's Wager a few hundred thousand years in advance of the man himself and decided that giving Shaggy Mo a slab of mastodon might indeed tip the balance in favor of a successful hunt, and what the hell, it was only a chunk of mastodon, anyway-- it couldn't hurt. So the hunters hunted and Shaggy Mo prospered, until the day when the hunters returned empty-handed and annoyed, and threatened to serve up Shaggy Mo for the main course for having lied to them.

Thinking quickly, Mo said that the reason the Great Spirit hadn't rewarded the hunters that day was because some of them had sinned. The hunters looked at each other and said that, Yeah, as a matter of fact Kragg had been seen having a carnal relationship with a baboon the day before. So they ate Kragg instead, and left prime portions for Shaggy Mo to take into the forest to appease the Great Spirit. The next day their faith was rewarded and Shaggy got even more mastodon, plus the idea for a killer career. Later he added the bit about the ways of the Great Spirit being incomprehensible, which covered him for bad weather, leopard attacks and volcanic activity.

It's one of the sweetest rackets that's ever been invented. The next time you see a televangelist saying that he's spoken to the Great Spirit, who told him to urge people to send tax-deductible mastodon love offerings care of this station, think about Shaggy Mo. Then invest your love offering in a bottle of tequila and you can commune with that great spirit directly.

5-20-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I just read an article which states that India has successfully launched a test satellite into space using its new rocket. Now, I'm not against space exploration, but isn't it silly for a country with huge population, health and ethnic problems to launch all that money into space?

--Pragmatic in Prague 

Dear Pragmatic:

It's sad indeed, and usually defended in the name of "national pride." Both India and Pakistan did the same thing with their silly nuclear weapons-- billions of dollars spent to blow holes in the desert instead of investing in clean water, decent roads or birth control programs. For some reason third-world nations feel a need to have elaborate icing on the social cake in place of substantial, nutritious, regular meals.

You can almost hear what goes on in some national assemblies. The speaker gets up and says: "The problems facing our young nation are poverty, illness, illiteracy, unemployment, poor transportation & communication and a woeful infrastructure. What shall we tackle first?"

Then they decide that the most important thing on the agenda is to order a fleet of air-conditioned Mercedes stretch limos to ferry themselves back and forth across town with a police escort, even though paved roads end at the edge of the capital city. After that comes the 655-room Presidential palace, containing 83 more flush toilets than there are in the rest of the country. Then a national airline, which will be the country's money-losing pride and joy, despite the fact that there's only one place in the whole country a plane can land, and within a year the whole fleet will be out of service because maintenance is not a priority.

It goes on like that until the day the nation decides to apply for debt relief on the grounds that it's a victim of its own incompetence.

I blame it all on the fact that we picked the wrong species to evolve from. Nobody in their right mind would have turned civilization over to a pack of jumped-up chimpanzees. If we had chosen cats instead the world would be a far better place.

5-21-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

What is St. John's Wart?

--Worried in Worcester

Dear Worried:

This dreaded affliction has been all but wiped out thanks to improved hygiene and medical advances, but a century or two ago it was known as the carbuncular plague.

The name goes back to St. John O' Bunion, an Irish monk. While doing missionary work in Africa he was attacked by wart hogs, whose bite, while not fatal, can produce voluminous eruptions of warts, carbuncles, wens, blains, corns and genital misdemeanors. Susceptible persons like John wound up looking like an illustration from a dermatology textbook.

Poor John was indeed a mess, and hobbled home to his monastery, where he spent his remaining days trying to get comfortable. Unfortunately on the voyage home he had afflicted thousands of travelers, who spread the ailment all over the known world. It was a bad time for portrait painters and matchmakers, let me tell you! Anyone who had substantial investments in the mirror trade was wiped out almost overnight.

In these superstitious times it was believed that toads were the carriers of the disease, and that burying a toad at the crossroads under the light of a new moon at midnight was a sure cure. Toads believed the same thing about humans, leading to the vicious Toad Wars of the 14th century, which was only settled in 1530 with the banning of crossroads and the rise of the much more popular Black Death, for which there was no cure and no connection with toads.

Relics of the good saint were believed to have miraculous healing powers against the disease and were circulated among churches by pilgrims, who were often rewarded with money by sufferers, who would shout to them "bone us, bone us!" Eventually the expression came to mean any monetary reward for exemplary service.

5-22-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Do you have any suggestions for dealing with President Bush's artificial energy crisis? I fully agree that Americans are self-centered swine who are incapable of conservation, but surely there must be an alternative to turning our national parks into Texas oil fields.

---- Powerless in Pasadena

Dear Powerless:

Yes, it's too bad that Mr. Bush has to repay his campaign debts in such a shameless fashion, and it's equally too bad that Americans today have so little backbone.

The real solution to any energy crisis, real or concocted, is to take a flying leap into the irrational, the way all great thinkers do.

Let me give you one teensy example of thinking 'way outside the box on the energy issue.

During the past holiday season some well-meaning boneheads gave each of us toothless old people a huge box of Brazil nuts. Having worn my patience thin and broken a variety of tools in attempting to open even one of them, I finally gave up and flung them into the fireplace down in the community room. Imagine my surprise when they not only took fire, but burned with such intensity that the andirons were smelted down to little puddles of brass, and the flowers on the wallpaper shriveled and died. (The regular firewood became so cross at this display of pyrotechnics that it refused to burn for two days until I was reduced to stroking its bark and saying “there, there,” and “pretty puss,” at which point it reluctantly consented to scorch a bit along the edges, and finally took fire when it thought I wasn't watching.)

It dawned on me as a result of this happy accident that the food/fuel/military/industrial conglomerates have been duping us all these years. They’ve been serving Brazil nuts up to us as a food, when in reality they are a cheap and renewable fuel! Had God intended us to eat the things, he or she would have equipped us with dental work designed along the lines of those machines that pulverize gravel in quarries.

A bit of research showed that the nuts really have nothing to do with Brazil. Their name is a corruption of the word “brazier,” as in charcoal brazier. Doubtlessly in times past they were used in much the same manner as charcoal, the only difference being that the nuts smell like sandalwood when they burn, and not like coal gas, as is the case with charcoal.

The possibilities of this discovery are mind-boggling. I can foresee half the country planted in Brazil nuts, providing an economic boom undreamed of even a few minutes ago. Think of it-- forests of vegetable coal trees waving in the wind, with no need to strip-mine or tunnel to get at them. Clean, non—polluting, edible little nuggets of energy with no radioactive residue or risk of oil spills. You can almost see hordes of little kids turning out for the vegetable coal harvests each autumn, and happy VeggieCoal™ farmers putting away one bumper crop after another. Visualize the newspaper pictures of American relief workers sending baskets of nuts to needy Arabs, who in gratitude will send us drums of crude oil for our museums.

Oh, I know what you're going to say: there's no fuel like an old fuel. But let our collective imagination take hold of this and America could once more be the role model for the world.

Now where do you suppose I put the words to the national anthem...? 

5-23-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Yesterday you suggested planting half the country in Brazil nut trees as a way of offsetting the President's bogus energy plan. Have you looked at a map in the last decade or so? My encyclopedia describes Brazil nuts as a tropical rain forest product. How do you propose to get them to flourish in a country known for its winters?

-- Skeptical in Skaneateles

Dear Skeptical:

Several other correspondents have pointed out that the Brazil nut tree, a South American native, could never stand the rigors of a northern winter. This mistaken attitude springs from the apparent location of South America on popular maps. As everyone learns in grade school, mapmakers can transfer the curved features of the earth to the printed page with only a fair degree of accuracy, and many distortions of size and location occur in even the best maps. This is what makes China look larger than Trinidad when actually the reverse is true. South America, except for certain sections which are set aside for the use of National Geographic and the cast and crew of Survivor VII, is roughly on the same latitude as Minnesota. The Brazil nut tree would flourish, without a doubt.

5-24-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I am absolutely in awe of your plan to counter President Bush's energy program with the simple expedient of planting Brazil nut trees. What other revolutionary energy-saving ideas are hiding in that fuchsia-topped head of yours?

-- Electrified in Eleuthera

Dear Electrified:

Oh, my, you're making me blush.

Well, now, let's take another example of an energy source that's easily overlooked because it's so obvious.

Many years ago, during one of the bitterest of Redbone's winter cold snaps, when the heat from the wood stove in our kitchen had the room temperature up to a comfy 70°, I happened to notice that an outside thermometer was still registering two below zero. What was happening to the heat that was supposedly pouring through the uninsulated brick walls? I bundled myself up and applied a thermometer to the outside of one of the kitchen's brick walls, and the reading was the same: -2°.

My curiosity piqued, I pried a brick loose from the wall and broke it open. I was dumbfounded to find that the inside of the brick looked as though it had been baked in an oven! Years of exposure to summer sun and artificial heat in the wintertime had cured and hardened the clay to the consistency of pottery. This overturns the often-stated theory that brick walls transmit heat. Nothing could be further from the truth-- bricks actually absorb and store heat. In the average older brick structure there are years, and in some cases *centuries* of heat locked up, awaiting the secret of release. Bricks are literally the building blocks of our future energy supply.

The ability of rock to hold heat is well known to anyone familiar with the works of Vesuvius. The ability of bricks to do the same thing was probably known to the ancients. The pyramids were apparently heat sinks for the lower Nile Delta, putting out enough Egyptian Thermal Units (ETU’s) to cause the lush Sahara jungles to wither away. The Aztec and Inca technologists who adapted pyramid heating to their own needs used smaller bricks, which allowed for a greater degree of heat control, which is why they still have their jungles. Archeological investigations show that knowledge of the secret of releasing heat from common bricks had permeated these cultures: even the poorest brick hovels were unheated, a phenomenon particularly evident in ancient cities built near the equator.

Instead of spending good money replacing wildlife with oil workers, I feel the current administration should throw all its research dollars behind Brick Heat Release technology. All the dollars that aren't being used to create Brazil nut plantations, of course.

5-25-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I read with interest your comments on the mock energy crisis. What a shame this isn't the kind of situation that would prompt people to write inspiring folk songs, like what we had during the Vietnam protest era.

-- Revolting in Revolitos 

Dear Revolting:

It might be time to revive some of the great songs from the 1973 Oil Embargo and All-Arab Price Hike. One of my favorites is by "New Jersey" Bob Drillin, called "Bayway Refinery" and dedicated to the eponymous petroleum complex that makes mid-coastal Jersey smell the way it does.


"I went down to the Bayway Refinery,
Just to see the tankers there;
They come loaded from Saudi Aray-bee,
Oil so sweet, so crude, so cher.

Well, they told me at the Bayway Refinery,
Son, the tale we tell is hard;
To fill up your tank at our gassery,
You'll have to sell your car.

Now, I remember at the Bayway Refinery,
Nineteen-cent gasoline!
Today a twenty-dollar gold piece,
Don't move the needle off E.

Folks, now that you have heard my story,
Hand me a shot of that booze;
If anyone should happen to ask you,
Tell 'em I got them high-price refinery blues."

5-26-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Have you ever practiced yoga? If so, what kind? Hatha or Tantra?

--Swami in Swansboro 

Dear Swami:

Yoga is another cruelty they try to foist off on us defenseless folks here at The Home. Some perky young woman dressed in an outfit that would have sparked revolutions back when I was a girl will attempt to lead a pack of us in all these movements that were invented by the heathen Chinee as a way of getting secrets out of prisoners. There have been several yoga people who have passed this way... never more than once, however.

You see, all of them are rather birdbrained creatures whose only claim to fame is that they can tie themselves into knots without rupturing something. So we play along with them, pretending to be at the subclueless mental level that's expected of the geriatric set, grunting and groaning our best for a few minutes. At the first breather we pretend to collapse, while one of us will ask the yoga person if she can fold herself up like a pretzel the way we saw somebody do on TV.

Well, they always fall for it, and the next thing you know they're wrapped up with their legs crossed behind their heads, standing on their hands, and I don't know what-all, at which point a few fast squirts of Krazy Glue is all it takes to end the session for us. If they've been particularly annoying we take their bikini away too, before slipping off to our rooms for a nice nap and an Alzheimer's Moment in case anyone asks questions later.

I don't know about Tantra, but Hatha sounds like the name of the blond we took care of the week before last....

5-27-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

There are a plethora of liberal arts colleges all over the place. Why are there no conservative arts colleges? Surely there should be options and choices for this year's graduating high school seniors.

--No Lefty in No. Lafayette 

Dear No:

There have always been conservative arts colleges, like the renowned Bob Jones University, which allow students to receive an education wholly unrelated to reality. You just have to know how to spot them.

The easiest way is to look at the course descriptions. Here are some examples that will tip you off immediately:

SOCIOLOGY:

"Applied Slavery 101" Dr. Legree -- Introduction to the latest revival of this age-old solution to the problem of idleness among the lower classes.

"Eating the Poor 204" Dr. Dahmer -- A practical alternative to abortion, poverty and the high price of beef.

"Getting Around the Popular Vote 440" Prof. Bush -- Simple ways of correcting the inconveniences of American Democracy.

"The Emigration Solution" Instructor TBD -- Getting inferior poor people to go back where they came from.

HISTORY:

"The World According to WASP" Prof. McCarthy -- Outline of world history from the rise of Europe to the domination by America.

"Military History from John Wayne to Ronald Reagan" Various instructors -- Why America always wins.

RELIGION:

"What Would Jesus Do?" Dr. Graham -- Guidelines for dealing with Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and other malevolent anti-American superstitions.

ART:

"... But I Know What I Like" Art Survey Various instructors -- Representational art from the Renaissance to the velvet Elvis and big-eyed children.

5-28-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I'm intrigued by Software Piracy. Do you know who was the first Software Pirate? And did you know him/her personally?

--Long John in Long Beach

Dear Long John:

The first software pirate I'm aware of was the Frenchman, Roger Joli, known as "Blackbeer" because of his fondness for Guinness stout. He sailed up the river to Redbone with his fearsome crew of swashbucklers when we were deep in the alpha development stage of THREETRAN, one of the earliest computer languages, a considerable advance over our earlier versions, ONETRAN and TWOTRAN.

ONETRAN had used only the number one in its code, which made it difficult to adapt to many situations. TWOTRAN, despite its name, had added the zero, thereby gaining amazing flexibility. With THREETRAN we planned to add the negative zero, which would have revolutionized the product all over again.

Upon discovering that all of Redbone's swashes has already been buckled earlier in the season, Joli was hard-pressed to keep his crew of miscreants and ne'er-do-wells gainfully occupied. Hearing of the revolutionary work we were doing, he snuck into our workplace in the dead of night and made off with a full barrel of negative zeros, our entire supply, which he planned to sell to the highest bidder in the Orient.

As luck would have it his crew of villains mishandled the barrel, breaking it open as they were putting it aboard his vessel, the good ship "Polyglot," and ship, master and crew vanished into a negative probability state which can be seen to this day, later renamed Noplace Place. The City Fathers of Redbone attempted to capitalize on this sad event by turning it into a tourist attraction with the theme: "A Little Slice of Nowhere," but after the loss of the first busload of tourists they decided against it and put up a simple cyclone fence instead.

Needless to say with the loss of all our negative zeros we were forced to fall back on using just units and naughts, and the future of high-speed computing was nipped in the bud.

5-29-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I'm really afraid that the mess in the Middle East is going to result in the Arabs cutting off our oil supply. If that happens, what do you think our response should be?

-- Oleaginous in Oleander 

Dear Oleaginous:

I wouldn't worry about it if I were you. Remember that the Arabs get most of their money from the leasing of Arabic numerals to the rest of the world. Any monkeyshines on their part and we'll simply stop using their numbers for a week or two and they'll be broke and helpless.

5-30-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

My grandfather uses the word "humdinger" to describe something 'way cool or rad. Do you have any idea where the word came from? He'll also sometimes refer to something as a "doozy." Are they synonymous?

-- GenX in Genesee 

Dear GenX:

It's sad to see all these fine old American words slipping out of use. It's also a reflection on how electronic entertainment is drowning out youthful creativity.

You see, back in the bad old days before radio or television or gramophones children were forced to invent amusements for themselves to make use of their abundant free time, especially during the long summer holidays. One way they did this was by building and playing musical instruments. Making a violin out of a cigar box was one common practice, or a banjo out of a tambourine.

The more creative and talented children invented new instruments altogether, and if they were clever enough the innovations caught on like wildfire. The "humdinger" was one of these, invented one summer's day by Lemmy Ballhammer of my home town, Redbone. He made it out of a cheese box (long ago cheese used to come in neat wooden containers, and the boxes were a youngster's prize possession). He added a couple of rubber bands, a soda straw or two, some wax paper and a bicycle bell, and by the time the cows came home he could play "Stars and Stripes Forever" and "Camptown Races" to a fare-thee-well, just humming and dinging away for all he was worth. His little brother Mason hammered a hole in a penny and made a penny whistle, as boys did back then, and before you know it they had started a trend.

Willy Shrump combined a kazoo with a section of drainpipe to make the "doozy," named after the sound it made. Then the Scissornose Twins went down to the poor farm and swiped the dole drums that were used to announce the distribution of charity to the indigent, and after a few days practice they were good enough to play for nickels in front of the saloon whenever the constable wasn't watching.

So that's where the expressions came from. A "humdinger" or a "doozy" meant something new and brilliant and creative. Oh, and after the constable found out who had broken into the poor farm the term "dole drums" came to mean the state of low spirits brought on by being whomped with a barrel stave while slung over a horse trough.

5-31-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

You grew up around farms and things. What do you think the smartest farm animal is?

--Rural in Ruritania 

Dear Rural:

Surprisingly enough, it's the pig, and among pigs the smartest was the now-extinct Australian pig, easily recognized by its characteristic "g'doink."

Australian pigs arrived because of a clause in the British Transportation Act of 1718. Convicted felons from England were transported to Australia, and on the return trip an equal number of pigs was dropped off in the American colonies. These new arrivals tended to congregate in Redbone because the weather was almost exactly like what they were used to, six months out of phase, of course.

Well, now, the colonists knew a good deal when they saw one. The Australian animals were too wise and talented to be served up at the dinner table, and once a means of communication had been established with them (American Swine Language) they were put to work running farms and stores and being voted into public office.

This happy situation came to an abrupt end with the Hogg vs. Wilde case of 1877, in which a tenant farmer, George Wilde, sued to prevent his eviction from the farm he was leasing, claiming that the overseer, Silas Hogg, was himself part of the property and constituted only livestock in the eyes of the law, with neither citizenship nor legal standing. The Hogg/Wilde case was eventually carried to the Supreme Court which, under heavy pressure from the politically influential Armour and Hormel families, declared in Wilde's favor. "Pigs," said Chief Justice Morrison Waite in his historic decision, "is pigs."

Disenfranchised and disillusioned, Hogg used money from sympathetic supporters to establish a private preserve-- Hogg Haven-- a sort of commune to which Australian swine flocked to avoid coming home as bacon. They supported themselves with arts and crafts-- most notably the hugely popular piggy banks which became a national fad. Alas, in the early years of the 20th century the commune was wiped out to the last piglet by swine flu, fulfilling an earlier prophecy that they would achieve liberation "when pigs fly."

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