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12-1-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

The weather is bracing here on the Kansas peninsula and I have finally been invited-- after much persuasion and many dropped hints-- to accompany the local prestigious country club set on its first nighttime skeet hunt of the season. They have even offered me the honor of holding the bag. What do you know about this elusive sporting bird, and do you think #7 shot is appropriate? How are they prepared for the table? I truly wish to impress my important friends with my knowledge of game preparation.

-- Climber in Clinton

Dear Climber:

Let's put it this way. If you've been invited on a skeet hunt the game has already been prepared. Expect a long night. And just keep holding that bag....

12-2-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I am traveling to a sales conference next week. One of the entertainments prepared for us is at a place called "The Naughty Norwegian" and features "Lap Dancing." I don't get out very much, and I hate to appear ignorant in front of the other men. Can you explain what "lap dancing" is?

--- Meek in McKeesport

Dear Meek:

That's apparently a spelling error. I'm sure what they mean is "Lapp Dancing," the delightful interpretive dances that are put on by ancient nomadic Lapps (now known as "Sami," if you want to be politically correct). The governments of Norway, Sweden and Finland sponsor cross-cultural tours of these fine performers.

My favorite is "Cycle of the Reindeer," in which the dance troupe conveys a year in the life of one of these creatures, reindeer being fundamental to the survival and the society of the Lapps. In another, the story of the heroic battle against the frost giants is recounted. I'm sure you and your buddies will have a grand time at such an inspiring event.

12-3-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

When you look up at the stars how do you know they are not holes in the sky?

-- Doubter in Dubuque

Dear Doubter:

I suspect they actually are. It's a conspiracy by NASA and the World Council of Astronomers to keep the research money rolling in, just like those faked moon landings. And I suspect the moon isn't real either. Ever wonder why you never see the other side of it? Because there is none. If you could actually get around to the other side of the moon all you would see would be huge wood beams, canvas, papier mâché and a big tag that said "Act IV, Scene 2-- the Homo Sapiens interlude".

And what about the sun? Ninety-three million miles away and you can still get a sunburn from it? My granddad's tintype! It's probably not more than 50 miles away. Probably owned by some megacorporation. If their stock slips too far they'll declare Chapter 11 and then it will be Hello Darkness....

12-4-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Oh, woe is me! My high-speed Excite@Home cable service tanked and I've had to fall back on a miserable 56k dial-up connection. I had forgotten how s -l - o - w 56k connections are. What to do, what to do?

-- Bogged in Bangor

Dear Bogged:

Welcome to the real world. I often wonder if those jokers who design Web sites know how excruciating it is to try to get through their stupid piles of graphics and Flash animations. They sit there at the business end of a T3 line and think their sites are fast and slick and clever as all get-out. Then us poor folks in old buildings with copper wire that was installed just after the Spanish-American War have to go into Prolonged Wait Mode before we can get past the fluff and to the real stuff. At which point we're timed out, of course....

I hope in the afterlife they get the same punishment that that old Greek guy Sisyphus got: having to roll a boulder to the top of a mountain and losing it just before the summit. Over and over again. It would serve them right.

12-5-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I've been reading some old true crime reports and something struck me: all those old-time mobsters had great nicknames, like "Legs" Diamond, "Lucky" Luciano, "Bugsy" Siegel, and so on. How come contemporary criminals don't have such interesting sobriquets, huh?

-- "Johnnymop" in Johnson City

Dear "Johnnymop":

Quite frankly it got completely out of hand. Mobsters began affecting ever more fanciful nicknames, and more time was spent crafting them than was applied to the hard work of committing crimes. 

During the 1930s there was a fad for fancy restaurant menu names, which gave us some real howlers. "Eggs" Benedict was bad enough, but "Oysters" Rockefeller was approaching the border of self-satire, and "Tripes à la Mode" de Caen was 'way over the line. 

By the 1940s some criminals had monikers they dared not mention in public, like the Japanese hitman "Arms" Akimbo, or the British con man "Tubeless" Tyre. "Maidenform" Braugh was rarely seen in public, and both "Barf" Baggs and "Jockey" Schwartz were in such a state of perpetual humiliation that they took vows of silence and entered a Trappist monastery. The suicide of "Modess" Becawes was widely attributed to his unfortunate cognomen.

Finally the Mafia's Subcommittee on Creative Onomastics declared that enough was enough and too much was plenty, and banned the use of nicknames during the 1958 International Geocriminal Year Conference in Cincinnati. Willie "The Actor" Sutton was one of the last of the old breed to carry a nickname during his crime career, and it was retired at his death in 1980.

12-6-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I understand that Oliver Stone, the movie director, is trying to sign on as a paying passenger on a Space Shuttle trip. What do you think of these zillionaire guys who are paying big bucks for these joyrides? 

--Grounded in Great Falls

Dear Grounded:

Hey, if I had the mazuma my name would be on the list! I can't think of anything that would be more fun than floating around instead of being earthbound by gravity and senescence. And just imagine stepping on a scale and having it register zero! I'm surprised Weight Watchers doesn't sponsor space tours-- lose 100% of your weight in one easy trip, with no dieting and no exercise.

I think there will be a great market for orbiting homes for the elderly someday. No worries about falls, no stresses on weak hearts, and the food is probably better, too. And no funeral expenses, either. You'd be given a choice of burning up in the atmosphere, being launched into Mr. Sun, or taking the Magical Mystery Tour on a path to interstellar space. What a hoot!

12-7-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I am a plant lover and have my entire house adorned with various species of shrubs and plants, some of them quite rare. I was wondering what your favorite plant is?

-- Horticultural in Horton's Notch

Dear Horticultural:

It's a plant so rare that no one has heard of it outside of a hundred-mile radius of Redbone, here in Arkansas. I'm speaking, of course, of the Venus Cow Trap, which has been dying off since the decline in free-range cattle grazing and the loss of the buffalo herds. It was greatly feared by farmers back in the old pioneer days. Little Timmy might be driving old Bossie home from the field in the evening when SNAP! and all that would be left on the ground were four hooves, a stump of a tail and sometimes a muzzle with a surprised expression on it. If little Timmy wasn't on his toes he might wind up as a snack for one of the smaller plants, although the larger ones concentrated on cattle exclusively. 

There was a great effort made to eradicate the Cow Traps, but they were well camouflaged and sometimes hid in trees during the day to escape detection. Others worked underground, completely invisible until a cow or steer walked over their hiding place, at which point it was SNAP! and Katie bar the door.

John James Audubon visited Redbone on several occasions to paint pictures of the Cow Trap for one of his books, but the plants would never cooperate, not even when tempted with a choice heifer or bullock. Eventually he gave up in disgust and simply drew an exaggerated Venus *Fly* Trap, which is a different thing altogether, not having either the eyes or the tusks. I believe the Fly Trap is silent as well, whereas the Cow Trap is plainly identified by the snickering chortle it makes after a successful capture. 
---------
Ref: "Roots of Terror: Giant Carnivorous Plants of the Upper Ozarks" Elijah Dibble (London & Bombay, 1841)

12-8-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I have a splitting headache. Do you have know of any folk remedies? What do YOU do to get rid of a headache?

--Migraine in Milagro

Dear Migraine:

The shure-fire backwoods remedy for a katzenjammer was the "hair of the dog" cure. Go back to your supplier and get another jug. 

And cut it with water this time, for heaven's sake! 

12-9-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Am new to America. Am working as salesman for printing company. Boss, he tell me, go see client, knock their socks off. I go, but when I try this thing the Security people they escort me from building. What is meaning of this strange expression?

-- Slobodan in Sloane

Dear  Slobodan:

Yes, English has borrowed lots of curious expressions from other cultures, hasn't it? The phrase means to have a tremendous impact on someone. It's from Anglo-Saxon and originated at the time when the Anglo-Saxons were battling against the Picts of Scotland. 

Now one curious tradition of the Pictish warriors is that they went into battle painted bright blue and stark naked. (Given Scotland's climate I believe they were able to skip the paint during the wintertime.) This left them extremely vulnerable to a well-placed spear thrust or sword swipe, as you can imagine. 

Anglo-Saxon chieftains used to exhort their followers to take advantage of this vulnerability, yelling to their men in the field to "knock their sex off." Somehow the expression became bowdlerized down through the ages.

This fact may also explain why the Picts or Scots, when they finally got around to wearing clothes, preferred skirts or kilts....

12-10-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

What on earth you call people who live in Utah? Utahians looks silly.

-- Addresser in Adelaide

Dear Addresser:

Utavians. There are other states that are problems as well. Apparently when the early settlers were naming places they never thought about what to call the residents. "New Yorker" is obvious, as is "Rhode Islander" and "Pennsylvanian," but others don't exactly flow off the tongue. Who would ever guess that people from my home state were called "Arkansahoovians." Or people from Idaho "Idaheers."

Here's a list of the correct designations for some other difficult-to-remember state residents' names:

"North/South Dakotakahites"

"Ohionians"

"Minnesotateers"

"Indianianians"

"Massachusettsettsians"

"Connecticutuckians"

Louisiananians"

As for those north of the border, it's "Ottowegians," "Saskatchewanitas," Newfoundlonians," "Manitobotomies" and "Ontarioyos."

Keep this list close by for reference. You can never tell when you're going to have to impress a Mississippiteeter or a Nevadonian.

12-11-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Do you have any theories about why some whales beach themselves?

--SurfinDude in San Diego

Dear SurfinDude: 

Whales are indeed curious creatures, and many of them suffer from an overpowering craving for spinach, which has the same effect on them as catnip has on a cat. The very word "spinach" is derived from the old Persian word for "whalenip." Spinach-seeking whales have been known to cross miles of agricultural land until they come to a fresh patch of spinach, at which point they will frolic and disport themselves, snarfing the stuff down, rolling in it and generally behaving like 20-ton idiots until driven off. 

California has a particularly hard time with spinach whales since they raise so much of the vegetable in such close proximity to the sea. Whenever a spinach crop is ready to harvest and the alluring scent drifts over the bays and estuaries and out to sea, the whales abandon whatever they're doing and fling themselves up on the beaches, desperate to reach the nearest spinach farm. The weaker ones, of course, never make it, and expire on the beaches dreaming of their leafy green addiction while the stronger ones, sometimes disguised as unusually large cattle, sneak across the countryside for their appointment with bacchanalian abandon. Sometimes they can be seen crawling back to the sea just before dawn past the bodies of their fallen comrades, leering drunkenly and singing the dirty version of the latest whale song. 

The next morning, chastened and suffering from an intolerable spinach hangover, they resume their placid lives, earning a few coins diving for the amusement of the tourist boats.

12-12-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Can you explain to me just what bandwidth is, where it comes from, how it's made and why it costs so much?

-- Techless in Teccuciztecutl

Dear Techless:

Bandwidth is the electronic "fabric" that carries messages through the ether. It was discovered accidentally by Guglielmo Marconi in 1895, when his father's carpet loom was struck by lightning. Marconi realized that larger, electrically powered looms could produce broad- or narrow-bandwidth in great quantities, and he soon cornered the market. He later moved to the United States where he set up the American Bandwidth Corporation (ABC), the first commercial bandwidth supplier.

Bandwidth used to be manufactured in the USA in great sprawling factories in the Midwest. That's where radio and TV got their start, as Marconi was able to modify his looms to carry more and more content. 

World War II saw a steep drop in bandwidth usage, as most of it was reserved for the military. Every effort was made to collect unused bandwidth in private hands, using citizen propaganda campaign slogans like: Give till it hertz!

During the 1980s, as production costs increased in America, more and more bandwidth manufacturing was moved offshore. Malaysia is the principal source of the world's bandwidth at the present time, although China is opening new factories and hopes to be the leader by 2010. The downside of this was high unemployment in America in what came to be known as the "Static Belt."

Another unfortunate side effect is the growing number of sweatshop operations in third-world countries, where even children are forced to work at bandwidth looms 12 to 16 hours a day for token compensation.

The good news is that, in terms of purchasing power, a cubic yard of bandwidth costs only one-tenth of what it cost in 1950, as economies of scale have driven down the price, even though newer bandwidth can carry color TV programs, cell phone calls and the World Wide Web-- none of which existed in 1950. 

12-13-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Do you have any good stock tips? It seems like everything I invest in goes bust. My Enron stock certificates are hanging in the outhouse now, right next to my Polaroid certificates. Yet other companies seem to be doing great. What's the secret?

-- Penniless in Pennsauken

Dear Penniless: 

You may have missed last month's article in "Popular Penury," the small-time investor's magazine, where Buster "Dow" Jones explained that most people simply don't understand the macroeconomics of investment strategies. 

"The average person thinks that stock prices are set by some magic supply and demand process, whatever that means. Actually, world stock prices are set by our chimpanzee Martha, who has a computer console in her cage here in the basement of our office on Wall Street. Martha pushes buttons randomly, and there are corresponding rises and falls in the price of stocks."

"This isn't an exact science, of course, and there are the inevitable inconsistencies. For instance, AOL/Time-Warner was randomly assigned an orange button on her computer console. Martha LOVES the color orange! She sits there all day just pounding away at that big orange button, so, of course, AOL makes money no matter what they do."

"Enron, on the other hand, was assigned a dark blue button, the same one that Polaroid used to have. Martha HATES dark blue. So, of course Enron went down the tubes. They never had a chance."

Jones finished the article by mentioning that he has all his money tied up in cabbage futures, which he calls the next big thing.
------------------
Popular Penury, "Simian Sinks Sophisticated Stock Strategies" by Buster Jones November 2001

12-14-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

What's your favorite movie of all time?

--Cinephile in Cicero

Dear Cinephile:

I suppose I should say "Citizen Kane" or "Gone With the Wind," or one of those others that are always popping up on top movie lists, but my all-time favorite is one that I'm sure no one else has ever seen or heard tell of. 

It's called "Bill and Coo," released in 1947, and there has never been anything like it before or since. Imagine an entire movie with a cast of birds, plus some other animals. Birds dressed up as humans, no less. Birds riding bicycles, fighting fires and eating in restaurants. Think "Chicken Run" with live actors.

No, I have *not* slipped over the edge, you doubting Thomases! Here, check it out yourselves: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0039188 . Honestly, I don't get any more respect than that Dangerfield boy....

12-15-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

What do you know about BoTox injections and do you think I should have them before I attend my 40th high school reunion?

--Wrinkled in Wrightsville

Dear Wrinkled:

I don't think botulism booster shots are necessary. The food at those events is usually dreadful, but benign. You might want to do something about those wrinkles, though.

12-16-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I have often heard or read the expression "vent your spleen" and I really have no idea what it means. I do know that the spleen is often removed surgically due to trauma, so wouldn't it make sense to bypass the venting and just remove the damned thing once and for all?

--Organic in Oregon

Dear Organic:

Splenetic venting was a popular pastime a century or so ago, although today it's been replaced almost completely by road rage and talk radio. People back then would vent their spleens at the slightest provocation, and since the spleen is a essentially a bagful of recycled blood, things must have gotten rather ghastly at times.

How the venting was done remains a mystery, although some scholars suggest it was something like the Heimlich Maneuver, only messier. At one point it was thought that "venting one's spleen" was simply a figure of speech, but there are too many vivid descriptions in the literature:

"... and he did vent his spleen mightily at his Tory opponent, to the point where the back bench was well ensanguined, and when his spleen was dead empty he didst grasp the splenetic artery and vein and belabor the Tory wretch with the organ itself, using the strength of his two arms until the welkin rang with the sound, as though a great ass's bladder full of blancmange were being struck by bulls' pizzles, only with better harmony."¹

It has also been suggested that the people of the 18th and 19th century were built differently than modern folks.
-----------------
¹"A Pleasaunt Discussion upon Political Themes Interrupted by a Sound Splenetic Thrashing," Aberystwyth Evening Evangel & Machynlleth Messenger, June 11, 1787

12-17-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I heard recently that United Fruit Company is in danger of dissolution. Whatever will become of Chiquita Banana?

--Señorita X in Santo Domingo

Dear Señorita:

Chiquita retired in 1974 after a glorious career spent warning people to never, never put bananas in the refrigerator. At the present time she is on the board of directors of Banana Republic and president of the Bananarama Fan Clubs of America.

In her autobiography "Confessions of a Banana Boat Bimbo," she mentions her struggle to overcome the handicap which left her with an elongated torso and head and a fused neck, not to mention the yellow complexion. She just happened to be working in a hotel in 1945 when one of the members of United Fruits, an early gay group, was looking for someone to portray Carmen Miranda in a camp spoof of Busby Berkley musicals. She was spotted by a talent scout and the rest, as they say, is history.

12-18-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I came across your site while researching sexagenarian porn, and was wondering if you'd be interested in adding narration to the documentary film I'm completing for my senior project.

X-rated in Xenia

Dear X-rated:

Sexagenarian porn? You've got to be kidding! Do bakeries feature week-old bread? Do restaurants tout last week's leftovers?

Sex appeal is for the young, firm, and fully packed. Foldouts are only supposed to have two wrinkles. I heard about someplace in Florida putting out a nudie calendar of over-the-hill hunks and superannuated sexpots, but that was Florida, where senility rules and they can get away with stunts like that. 

Anyway, I'm several decades beyond the sexagenarian category. And don't get any bright ideas: centenarian porn would cause people to go blind or insane. <shudder!>

12-19-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

A new year is almost upon us and I was wondering if you were planning on making any predictions for 2002. I'd ask Miss Cleo, but she's too expensive, and Jeanne Dixon hasn't got one right in years.

--Foreboding in Fort Ord

Dear Foreboding:

The prediction business is always risky unless you use a high fudge factor like Nostradamus did. I mean, something like...

.... can mean just about anything you want it to mean, right?

Famous "experts" have also made some real howlers when it comes to predicting the future:

So if it's all right with you I'll pass on this one. Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to make a prediction and become the laughingstock of future generations, that's my motto....

12-20-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

My fiancé would like to take me to Andalusia to see the Bullfights for our Honeymoon - I think Bullfighting is cruel and that we should just go to Cheyenne to see the Rodeo. What do you think Nettie?

-- Timid in Toledo

Dear Timid:

I agree with you that bullfighting is cruel and pointless. It's supposed to be one of those macho things, but have you ever seen how those bullfighters dress? Ballet slippers, tight silk pants in pink and gold, ruffled shirts, brocaded jackets, satin capes and those darling tam-o'-shanters with the puffy mouse ears? I personally think that this whole bullfighting business got started when a bunch of cross-dressers were looking for a way to parade in public without being pelted with rocks and spoilt tomatoes. "Sí, it's cruel for the animal, Raoul, but where else can I show off these adorable orange peau de soie pedal-pushers with the Valencian lace trim, or the lavender velvet cummerbund you said sets off my eyes so well? And if I save you the ears, can we have a Moment of Truth later in the evening at the hotel? Ooooh! Watch the hands, you saucy little minx, you! "

The rodeo's not much better. I can't imagine any warm honeymoon memories rising from watching someone get stomped on by a Brahma bull or flang off the back of a horse and kicked in the head. Or hanging around cowboy bars afterwards listening to maudlin C&W music while everybody gets drunk on Budweiser and the guys fight in the parking lot or people go sneaking off to the Motel 6 for a low-rent rendezvous-- your new hubby among them, more than likely.

Whatever happened to Niagara Falls? Or the Catskills? No wonder marriages don't last these days....

12-21-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I have a friend who has, by turns, pursued hang gliding, sky diving, bungee jumping and cliff diving. Are some people just born to be wild?

--Born to be Mild

Dear Born:

These people are described in psychiatric literature as having a thinly-disguised death wish. The only difference between bungee jumping and suicide is a couple of feet of rubber cable. Sky divers are the worst of all. It must take a heroic act of will to pull the ripcord at the last possible second. Many of them are overcome by temptation and wind up with just their heads sticking out of the ground like surprised cabbages.

12-22-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I've heard that the third secret of Fatima accurately predicts the attack on the World Trade Centers. Could that be true?

-- Fascinated in Fashoda

Dear Fascinated:

I had to look that one up on the Dissociated Press NewsWire. Apparently the story is a hoax begun by someone with too much time on his hands. Here's the real McCoy:

12-23-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Did you ever attend your high school reunions?

--RahRah in Rahway

Dear RahRah:

That would necessitate my having gone to a high school, which I didn't. As I have related elsewhere, early Redbone had only the classic one-room schoolhouse where we learned the "Three Rs" (Reading, Recombinant Genetic Engineering and Riemannian Geometry).

I have, however, made a practice of attending other people's high school reunions, beginning with the 40th, at which point nobody recognizes anyone else and mental acuity has begun to slip. It's a great way of getting a free meal while confusing a whole bunch of people. 

12-24-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

There are many who don't believe that humans have had an impact on Earth's climate. Since you've been around since the last Ice Age, perhaps you can give your faithful readers some expert commentary on the subject of global warming. Is it a reality?

--Meteorologist in Mauritania

Dear Meteorologist:

Although many people deny it, it appears that the planet is indeed getting warmer. Some of the most visible signs are:

-- the presence of palm trees at the North Pole

-- the fact that Eskimos are down to 2 words for "snow"

-- fierce competition for recreational beachfront property in Antarctica

-- the 3 seasons

-- snowmobile manufacturers switching over to dune buggies

-- the spread of the Sahara Desert into Norway

-- the sudden spike in sales of freezers and refrigerators north of the Arctic Circle

-- Iceland now a tropical cruise destination

-- climbers dying of sunstroke on Mount Everest

-- Warm Springs, Georgia renamed as Satan's Steam Bath

-- the disappearance of migration among birds and animals

-- bald polar bears and skinny penguins

-- Alaskan fishermen pulling in mahi-mahi and pompano

-- the Siberian alligator invasion

-- the firewood glut

-- Labrador's new indoor glacier museum

...and if that weren't proof enough, here at "Living Dead 'R' Us" it's late December and there's not a single sweater in sight. Also unprecedented requests for the air conditioning to be turned up.

12-25-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

What is the true meaning of Christmas?

-- Merry in Merrick

Dear Merry:

I swear some of you kids wouldn't know what a dictionary was if it bit you on the gluteus maximus....

Okay, my researched-challenged young friend, here's an easier way than lugging down that heavy book and flipping through all those pages: go to www.atomica.com and download their free program. Once it's installed all you have to do is press ALT and left-click on the word you want to look up and it will tell you the definition, and even give you synonyms and things.

Unless you mean what's the *deeper* meaning of Christmas, in which case we have to use more obscure resources:

According to my Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring, Wartime Edition, it means Watch the Skies!

According to my anagram generator it could be any of the following:

Schism Art

Hi Mrs Cats

Shirt scam

It's Mr Cash

Mr Hiss Cat

According to National Geographic it's an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean just south of Java in Indonesia.

According to the Encyclopedia of Pathology it's a type of hemophilia caused by a deficiency of factor IX.

According to Fielding's Guide to North American Shrubbery it's an evergreen fern having pinnate leaves and dense clusters of lance-shaped fronds. Also known as canker brake or dagger fern.

According to the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, it was one step in the alchemist's attempt to produce the philosopher's stone.

One of the most famous of practicing alchemists was Sir Isaac Newton, who was born on Christmas Day in 1642.

December 25th is also the birthday of Freya, the Norse goddess of love and beauty, and the birthday of the Persian/Roman god Mithras.

I hope that satisfies your curiosity. Have a happy holiday anyway. And please ask your sister Virginia to stop sending me the Santa Claus question every year. She's 46 now, for heaven's sake.

12-26-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Why is the day after Christmas called "Boxing Day" in England?

-- Uncrated in Uncas

Dear Uncrated:

It goes back to the medieval era, when all Xmas gifts were handmade and it was consequently impossible to rush back to the mall to return or exchange them. People who were sorely disappointed in their gifts could retaliate only by soundly drubbing the gift-giver.

One December 26th good King Wenceslas looked out and saw a couple of peasants belaboring another wretch with cudgels, and he was inspired to set up a ring in the public square where gifters and giftees could work off their disappointments under the rules set up by the Marquis of Queensbury: 10 oz gloves, Everlast trunks, two-minute rounds with a one-minute break between rounds, no biting, ear-ripping or eye-gouging. This greatly improved the chances of survival, and soon every British town had a "boxing day" ring set up in the public square on the day after Xmas. 

The first contest, held in 1138, was won by Wat Persson, who had been expecting a span of oxen from his wealthy uncle Moke, and received instead a secondhand breechclout and a cluster of turnips. 

During the 1141 holiday season Featherweight and Flyweight categories were added to give youngsters a chance to work off their aggressions. Walter Oddduck took the latter category, pummeling his cousin Laik for having given him a Spiritual Bouquet when what he really wanted was a wooden sword to play Crusader with. The Heavyweight division that year was claimed by Olaf Studlyson, who received a scarf instead of the barrel of ale he had his heart set on.

And so it went down through the ages. To this very day you can hear the joyous seasonal cries of "That's not what I wanted!", "You've got to be kidding!", and "I got this last year!" echoing through the towns and villages, usually accompanied by fisticuffs, especially if the wassail bowl has been dipped into in excess.

12-27-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

In our house we always had a tradition of telling ghost stories during the week after Christmas. It's sad to see that this tradition has died out. Do you remember any ghost stories from your youth?

-- Spectral in Spaulding

Dear Spectral:

Oh, my, yes! Our Uncle Dunk used to tell some bone-chilling tales that would cause the little ones to void their bladders out of sheer enthusiasm, and keep the rest of us up for the next month with nightmares. 

The one I remember best is "The Parson's Jugged Head," which I will relate here if you promise you'll turn all the lights down low and not sue me if your own little ones ruin the rug or have to be committed in a catatonic state to the local weird farm.

As I recall, the story begins on Christmas eve, when the tough but kindly Parson Weemish hears a knock on the parsonage door. (I don't think there are parsonages around these parts, but Merrie Old England was lousy with them, and we must thereby assume that the story is set in the English countryside, probably near a moor, because the English countryside is made up entirely of moors and parsonages, with the occasional Hound of the Baskervilles thrown in to break up the monotony).

Anyway, there sits Parson Weemish by his fire on Christmas Eve, a gill of Tokay by his side, the cat on the hob, the clock on the mantel, etc., etc. (if you want the whole effect you'll have to brush up on your Dickens), putting the final polish on his Christmas Day sermon, tickling his ear with the quill (we're only mentioning the quill to point out that it's not exactly the 21st century when this is taking place. The technique is called verisimilitude, I think. Ghost story writers use it a lot to "set the scene" as they say). He hears a tap-tap-tapping on the parsonage door, and, not wishing to wake the elderly housekeeper who's nodding by the fire (journalistic accuracy forces us to point out that Weemish's housekeeper is actually a red-haired, 17-year-old Irish lass with a penchant for see-through peignoirs and fellatio, which is why the Parson has that contented smile on his face as he works on his sermon), he tiptoes to the door and opens it just enough to let some fog roll in from the moors (you can't have your moors without your fog in Merrie England, you know-- it just rolls in by the cartload whenever you open a door, in strict defiance of the laws of atmospheric pressure and thermodynamics) where he sees Sam from the adjoining plantation standing in the mist with his eyes as big as soup plates.

Sam, clutching the neck of his banjo in a death- grip, cries out in a quavering voice, "Massa Weemish, you gots to come up to de big house, fo' old Auntie Hephzibah, she done say dere gonna be haunts thissere...."

No, no, no... Sam says nothing of the sort. Sam is a Comical Darky from my Deep South Christmas ghost story collection and has wandered over here by mistake. Honestly, I swear my mind goes off the rails more and more every day. Let me give him a quarter and send him on his way so we can get back to the business on the moors.

Okay, Parson Weemish opens the door, the fog rolls in and expires on the rug. Only it's not the fog, it's Old William, the halfwit handyman from the parsonage in Notknowing Squat, who very much resembles fog, especially when he rolls in off the moors. (Note the silly name of the village. I honestly don't know who was in charge of naming quaint little villages in Merrie England, but I hope they never got paid good money for them. You can't go a country mile in Merrie England without stumbling over a Notknowing Squat, a Bumstutters, a Wanking Peter or a Buggery Grange. It probably accounts for all the abandoned villages there. People would do anything to avoid living in Humping Lust or Ramswhanger, I should think.)

So now we have Old William dead on the hall rug. Parson Weemish notices that the old duffer has a piece of paper in his cold, twisted hand, which he removes and uses to light his pipe, utterly forgetting that this is a ghost story and that there is inevitably a louring missive of doom written on any piece of paper found clutched in the hand of anyone who has died of fright on the moors. Fortunately Old William had a carbon copy in his weskit, and the Parson, puffing his calabash of shag tobacco and opium, reads the following foredoomed portent by the light of his housekeeper. (This is called "foreshadowing" in literary terms. When we get to the scary conclusion of the story you'll snap your fingers and say, "By George, that's right! He read the foredoomed portent by *the light of his housekeeper*! We should have seen the ending coming miles away with an authorial teaser like that one. Perhaps we should lay off the Muscatel when we read ghost stories so we could pick up on things like that.")

Clutching the note close to his sweat-daubed brow (the housekeeper's peignoir has crept up another inch or so as she stretches, catlike, in slumber) he sees the doom-impending words:

lettuce
Worstershee
Woostershi
Whooshtier
Worsechesstereshyre sauce!
garlic
basil
2 lbs veal
cracked pepper
malmsey

Seizing his chest in terror at the flagrant misspellings of his favorite condiment , the parson reels backward, catching his heel on a misplaced bronze andiron, or firedog, which has been waiting patiently by the door to be let outside. He falls, striking his head on a jug of Olde Stump Blower, a Christmas gift from his Ozark cousin Lem, which he and the housekeeper had been sampling assiduously before the knock on the parsonage door a couple of paragraphs ago. 

The housekeeper wakens chilled to the bone as the fire dies down. Seeing the bodies of Old William and the jug-brained Parson on the floor, she decides to make the best of a bad deal, packs up her spare peignoirs and the Weemish family silver into an overnight bag and heads off to find her brother for a fast boat trip back to Kilkenny in the Auld Sod.

Alas, halfway down the foggy path to the harbor she is devoured down to her shoe buttons by the ghost of the moors. 

The end. 
(That *light of his housekeeper* business wasn't foreshadowing after all, but misdirection. My bad.)

12-28-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I drive one of the big snowplows that keeps the mountain passes clear here in the Rockies. I'd like to put together a CD of mountain-pass-clearing songs to give out to my friends but I'm having a hard time finding them. Any suggestions?

-- Assdeep in Aspen

Dear Assdeep:

I had to consult the Grove Dictionary of Roadway Songs and Railway Melodies for that one. Some of these are pretty obscure, but I think they'll fit the bill:

* It's Impassable (Perry Como did a great job with this one)

* Chains for Fools

* Blue Snow Shoes (by either Carl Perkins or that young Elvis boy)

* Whole Lotta Sandin' Goin' On

* Here Come the Plows

* Ice Life if You Can Get It (and You Can Get It if You Slide)

* Spinning Wheels

* Jumpin' Jack Frost

* Born to Skid

...and anything by The Drifters, of course.

12-29-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

With the economy in the toilet and soaring unemployment rates and all the bad news about traveling and threats and stuff, I thought I'd write a country/western song to commemorate 2001. I was inspired by being laid off from the employment agency where I worked. What do you think of these sample verses?


That stopgap job that I didn't want has now rejected me;
I blame the blue-eyed HR gal at that temping agency;
Gonna go home an' get my guns an' field artillery;
Cause I go postal every time somebody makes a fool of me.

-----------

Well, on Christmas day I went to fly to my folks in Tennessee
This great big guard, he took my keys and watch and shoes from me 
We had to fly sedated, all chained in rows of three, 
That's the last of the friendly skies I think we'll ever see.

-----------

I sent the Prez a holiday card made specially by me
With talcum powder on the hills for snowy scenery
They evacuated DC for a week and hid old Dick Cheney
And now the Secret Service wants to have a word with me.

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

So, do I have what it takes to make the Grand Ole Opry, Nettie?

-- Twelve-string in Twentynine Palms

Dear Twelve-string:

Garth Cash, eat your heart out.

12-30-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Is swallowing chewing gum deadly? My mother keeps telling my kids it will get stuck in their appendix, which will then swell up and burst. She used to tell me and my sisters the same thing. Everybody else says it's hogwash. Where do these numbskull theories come from anyway?

-- Elastic in Elantra

Dear Elastic:

You can tell your mother that she's a bit out of step with the times. Chewing gum was reformulated in 1928 after the great Exploding Appendix Epidemic of 1927.

As for where the theory came from, Dr. Roger Naumskell was in charge of the Harvard Medical School at the height of the aforementioned epidemic. He and his researchers were utterly at a loss to explain why perfectly normal kid appendixes would detonate so suddenly. One night he was toiling late in the medical school library, searching for an answer when he overheard a librarian telling a colleague, "Look, here's another book where some kid has stuck his chewing gum in the appendix. I'm going to kill whoever I catch doing it!" Suddenly the good doctor had a moment of illumination, and from it was derived the Naumskell Theory of Gum-burst Organs. The following year the FDA mandated the reformulation of gum and the epidemic was over.

12-31-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

We at the Society Promoting Annual Millennial Shindigs (SPAMS) have determined that the year 744 AD should not be included in determining the start of the new millennium (for reasons that should be obvious). 

Therefore, we are suggesting that everyone should celebrate the beginning of the 21st Century on January 1st, although, we must warn everyone that due to "credible evidence" all should remain vigilant against millennial terrorism.

Do you have any plans?

-- SPAMer in Spandau

Dear SPAMer:

We should first explain to the chronologically challenged the significance of the year 744 AD. As Carlos Santana once said, "Those with really short attention spans who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it condemned to repeat it repeat it."

The year 744 is notorious among historians as The Year That Nothing Happened. Try as they might, neither historians, anthropologists, archaeologists nor others of their ilk have managed to scrape up a single event that would put 744 on the map. This being the Dark Ages, nothing much was scheduled to happen anyway, but some cultures managed to press on. In 743 a big Buddha statue was completed in Japan, and in 745 Constantinople came down with bubonic plague, but in 744-- nothing. There's not a single scrap of writing that has the date 744 on it, which is why many special interest groups like SPAMS have been pushing bills through various legislatures seeking to have 744 declared The Year That Never Was, so that we can have yet another millennial celebration. I know that Tony Blair would dearly love to find another use for London's Millennial Dome (Motto: "It's ugly and useless and it was really expensive to build and we're stuck with it, God save the Queen.")

So that's the background on that. As for my own plans, I'm going to age my way gracefully into yet another year, sinking into insensibility with the aid of some pills I prestidigitated from the nurses' station and a healthy shot of gin from my secret stash. Every now and again here at "Living Dead 'R' Us" some senile old fools attempt to get a New Years party going, but fortunately they run out of steam around 8pm and the rest of us get to laugh at them in the morning, slumped over in their wheelchairs with those silly hats on.

MUSEUM OF
DEPRESSIONIST ART

GALLERY OF
THE UNIDENTIFIABLE