2-2-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I was appalled to discover that today is Ground Hog Day. When will we see an end to these ridiculous self-serving promotions?! Ground Beef Day I could understand, but this one affronts the sensibilities of Jews, Moslems and vegetarians, not to mention the hogs themselves. What's next, Tuna Enlightenment Month? Please cancel my subscription if I have one.

-- Affronted in Affton 

Dear Affronted:

Not to worry. No hogs were injured to bring you this holiday. The term is from the Dutch "aardvark," or "earth pig," and it's a local celebration in Unpronounceable, Pennsylvania.

You see, back during the Boer War (1899-1902 in overtime) the Orange-Free State asked for American volunteers of Dutch descent to join the fight to keep oranges out of South Africa. Alas, the Orange Aid volunteers were soundly drubbed by the British, and when they were shipped back home in dishonor and disgrace it was discovered that several of them had been walking around in the tropical sun without their pith helmets on for so long that their brains were properly cooked. They were wards of the state ever after, living on cabbage stumps and the charity of the good people of Pennsylvania.

These poor souls used to escape from the county home on occasion, usually in early February, and make their way to a hill outside Unpronounceable, where they would stand naked in the snow around a deceased woodchuck's burrow with clubs in their hands, prepared to defend America in case any aardvarks had tunneled their way over from South Africa.

Well, over the years their exploits became famous, and "Aardvark Day" became a local holiday, celebrated long after the addled adventurers had gone to their eternal reward. At some point the name was Anglicized to "Groundhog Day," and a movie starring Bill Murray was made about Pennsylvania's role in the Boer War.

Today the holiday has deteriorated into a drunken brawl between college students and Unpronouncebelites. The former run around naked in the snow, as high as kites, and the latter run around whomping them with clubs to protect the honor and dignity of their home town. No one has ever spotted an aardvark.

2-3-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

The other day you mentioned that the Humpenglo Twins at Living Dead "R" us are "...two of LDRU's oddest characters." 

You've mentioned so many oddball characters that I was wondering what makes these two stand out?

-- Eldritch in Eldorado

Dear Eldritch:

I should have qualified that by saying the oddest characters in all of Redbone, since they've lived in these parts all their lives. What makes them somewhat odd is that they're Siamese twins, joined at the waist with a single set of legs. What makes them *really* odd is that they can't stand each other, and never have. Belinda was always playing with Melinda's toys, and Melinda always pointed out where Belinda was when they were playing hide-and-seek. 

It got worse as they got older. Among other things they had completely different tastes in clothing, which made dressing for school a battle royal every morning. Also Melinda liked high heels and Belinda didn't, and when they compromised they could barely walk. Belinda was a wonderful dancer and Melinda had two left feet-- the fact that they were the same feet didn't seem to matter. They could never find compatible boys to take them out, so most of their dates wound up with fistfights and bloodshed. Melinda was a virgin; Belinda wasn't. 

It was hopeless trying to teach them to drive, since neither of them could decide whose foot controlled which pedal, and they both had different shortcuts to get around town. Also when they applied for their licenses Melinda claimed she was 24 and Belinda said she was 29 when everyone in Redbone knew they were 33. Oh, and they claimed different birthdays, too.

Here at the Home they're constantly at each other's throats. Belinda loves chamomile tea, which gives Melinda a throbbing headache; she takes her revenge with tawny port and Stilton cheese, which she enjoys but which gives Belinda a voluminous and resounding case of gas. Melinda can also hold her liquor, which Belinda can't; at the Christmas party Melinda put away 5 tequila shooters in half an hour and poor Belinda wound up with a lampshade on her head barfing into a potted palm.

No one knows how it will all end up. Melinda confided to me once that her worst fear was dying first, since her sister would inherit everything and probably dress her funny for the funeral. Belinda insists on cremation and wants her ashes scattered in the sea. I pity the undertaker....

2-4-2001

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Kenneth Lay's wife and kids were on the news recently. Despite receiving over 300 million dollars in compensation, Linda tearfully claimed, "We’re fighting for liquidity." That sounds so sad. Can you explain what it means to be "fighting for liquidity." 

-- Illiquid in Illinois

Dear Illiquid:

First you have to understand that the fabulously wealthy are not like the rest of us. Their perceptions of the line between essentials and luxuries has been surgically removed, probably at the same time that their teeth were capped. There was a typical case in the paper lately where a woman who had divorced a gazillionaire was claiming she needed $340,000 a month to support their 4-year-old. Now, to you and me that sounds a tad excessive, but the woman went on to explain that she needed $120,000 just for "playtime activities and parties," which apparently involves renting Disneyland for the day so babykins won't have to mix with any lice-ridden and diseased poor folks.

Mrs. Lay's comment on "liquidity" probably means that they will no longer be able to fill their swimming pools with Château Lafitte-Rothschild '37 champagne for their dinner parties now that Enron has gone bust. Or perhaps that the water in their mansion, which is pumped in directly from the Evian spring in the French Alps, may have to be cut back for such things as watering the lawn. It must be a dreadful hardship.

I also thought it was interesting that Mrs. Lay took acting lessons for a week before her emotional comments in the news media. Her acting coach has handled such masters of public sincerity as Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and Imelda Marcos. That, as they say in the ads, is priceless.

2-5-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Who is America's fourth greatest inventor? I'm 9 years old, and I gotta do an oral report on a great American inventor in class in couple of days. All the other kids are gonna do Edison or Ford or Whitney, I just know it. I really need a good grade on this so I can work off my time-out points and go on the field trip next week. Help me do something creative.

-- Desperate in Des Plaines

Dear Desperate:

Well, your old Aunt Nettie never has a problem with creativity, as you probably already know. 

There are many people who might fit the bill as America's fourth greatest inventor, but I'm a bit partial to Redbone's own Pilchard Entwhistle-Bulge, who at one time was as well known as the first three, but who has been sadly forgotten over the years despite his many contributions to our way of life.

Like many bright youngsters, Pilchard was bored in school and found his own ways of amusing himself when he should have been doing his lessons. This culminated on the fateful day he dissolved his French teacher, Mrs. Merdalor, and was permanently suspended from Redbone's PS #½. Once free of the bonds of education he turned his inventive genius to the improvement of everyday items. His first patent was secured at the tender age of 9, consisting of the installation of a swivel caster into the bottom of a wooden peg leg to permit Civil War veterans to participate in ballroom dancing once again... although years later Pilchard confessed that he had originally intended it as a cruel practical joke.

His next invention, the reversible diaper, was hailed as a tremendous labor and material saver. It was never put into production as there were difficulties with the field tests. He was the first to invent a working airplane, the steam-powered "Spirit of Redbone," which was never test-flown as the 12-year-old Pilchard was too young to qualify for a pilot's license. Two years later the Wright Brothers accomplished the feat the boy had set his heart on, leaving him desolate. 

He then worked briefly as a freelance spittoon designer, although his masterpiece, a cross between a spittoon and a slot machine that paid off for exceptional accuracy came to market just as the chewing of tobacco and public expectoration was outlawed. Likewise his Instant Diarrhea Cure, the "Buttbung"™ never really caught on, perhaps because of the graphic instructions.

In his teens he applied his drawing and painting skills and opened the world's first telephone art instruction class, which soon failed as Redbone had only 6 telephones at the time. And his attempt to help the Tunzadung Bros. adapt their fertilizer business to the war effort led to the leveling of a good portion of suburban Redbone and parts of Elkblight as well.

It was downhill after that. Pilchard applied for and got his membership card in the National Association of Bindlestiffs and spent the Depression under freight cars, constantly moving about looking for a sponsor for his plan to make waterproof clothing out of old Crisco. He was last heard of in Gardyloo, Illinois, although it was later rumored that he had perished of the galloping fantods in a rooming house in west Texas while falsely representing himself as a kazoo repairman.

There you go! An excellent oral report, if I do say so myself. Won't your teacher be surprised at how clever you are....

2-6-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Where is the final frontier? Some say it's outer space, some say the ocean, some say it's the inner workings of the human mind. Wherever it is I want to be there, so where should I go?

-- Adventurous in Advaita

Dear Adventurous:

Well, I'm sorry to report that the final frontier is exactly that: death. People have come back from outer space and the ocean, and the human mind has been explored, but death remains a blank page. 

I'd like to make an appeal for a new government program like NASA that would train and prepare necronauts to explore this new dimension, boldly going where nobody has ever come back from before. I can see the extremely old being recruited for government service in the National Mortuaric and Surcease Administration, being locked into airtight black spaceless suits and loaded into coffin-shaped capsules for launching into the unknown while Americans watched their TVs breathlessly in anticipation of their return. 

Someone would probably even do a book or a movie about it called "The Late Stuff." Kids, when asked about their future, would dutifully declare, "When I grow up I want to be a fireman, but if I don't grow up I want to be a necronaut." And of course many nations would be competing to have one of their citizens be the first to return. 

I figure that in a dozen years or so there wouldn't be a soul on the planet over 55, which would certainly help with Social Security payouts, wouldn't it? Then you could use the savings to send all the young upstarts to Mars, thereby ending the overpopulation problem as well.

I should really run for office. I could make life so much easier for people. Briefer, too....
 

2-7-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Why do kids have so much energy, and us "older" folks have very little? It seems like it should be the other way around, don't you think?

-- Exhausted in Exeter

Dear Exhausted:

There are several reasons why youngsters have so much energy and oldsters so little. They boil down to: Lack of Responsibility, Absence of Conscience and Sugar.

When your average 4-year-old bounds out of bed at dawn on a Saturday morning, it's because he or she is not restrained by the knowledge that breakfast must be prepared, bills paid, the house cleaned, the car serviced and one's mate assuaged. That's lack of responsibility. 

No 4-year-old will ever lie staring at the ceiling wondering if they should get up at all, or whether it might be better to simply lie there until they're eaten by rats. That's absence of conscience.

Sugar is self explanatory. While Mom and Dad crunch down a healthy bowl of muesli and decaffeinated coffee, Junior or Junioress is on the third bowl of Super Sucrose Sweeties drowned in chocolate milk with an ice cream chaser. 

On sugar alone most little kids could generate enough electricity to illuminate their neighborhoods, if feeding them into the power grid wasn't considered to be cruel and unusual punishment.

2-8-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Why can't a comedy movie ever win Best Picture at the Oscars? Do you think "Dude, Where's My Car?" got cheated last year? What would you say are the most overlooked films? 

-- Critic in Crittenden

Dear Critic:

That's actually three questions, isn't it? I normally do only one at a time, but since you're a brand new poster I'll try to work up the strength to answer all three.

1. Comedies have indeed won the Best Picture of the year award. Right off the top of my IMDB I can think of eight of them:

   * It Happened One Night (1934)
   * You Can't Take It With You (1938)
   * Going My Way (1944)
   * All About Eve (1950)
   * The Apartment (1960)
   * Tom Jones (1963)
   * The Sting (1973)
   * Annie Hall (1977)

2. "Dude, Where's My Car?" may have been cheated for the Worst Picture of the Year award, but the competition was unusually heavy in 2001, with contenders like "Freddy Got Fingered," "Bubble Boy," "Corky Romano," "Tomcats" and "Glitter." It could have been worse, however. In 2000 "Battlefield Earth" swept all the dishonors.

3. The most overlooked films? I've already mentioned Bill and Coo as being my favorite among the utterly lost and forgotten. Then there's "The Bath Chair Man" from 1904, a sidesplitting French romp that makes you understand why those people took so quickly to Jerry Lewis. And Buster Keaton's "The High Sign" from 1921. But from the standpoint of sheer dramatic power in a new medium, I believe that "Fred Ott Holding a Bird" from 1894 is the hands-down winner.

2-9-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Can dreams come true?

-- Oneiric in Oneglia

Dear Oneiric:

Oh, yes, they do, and nightmares even more so.

There was a young man in Redbone who was subject to very vivid dreams and nightmares. This was, of course, back in the era before psychiatrists and mental health workers, so he was simply shunned as a lunatic and pelted with rocks whenever he wandered into town. One day he described a peculiar nightmare to the postman, who pelted him with rocks and told him to get back to his chores. Not half an hour after that, the boy was eaten by a 16-foot-tall blue jay, just as his dream had predicted. Then the blue jay flew into the sun and was never seen again. In lieu of a funeral they put up a catafalque in the cemetery which was pelted with rocks until it disintegrated.

And then there was Aunt Bessie Binzt, who told her married daughter that she had had a vivid dream the night before in which she died from a fall. Bessie was extremely careful all that day and the next, avoiding the stairs and the cellar and even the stepstool in the kitchen. Finally, after the sun went down she stepped out the back door to catch a breath of air, whereupon she fell *up* at a high rate of speed, vanishing into a distant speck as her family looked on in horror. In 1923 her body was found by Sherpas on the west face of Everest, dressed in her summer gingham and bonnet, with a really mortified expression on her frozen face.

So my advice to you is to not hope that your dreams come true, because these things have a habit of going haywire in the strangest ways.

2-10-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

How come the commercial airlines, which claim to be in desperate need of money due to the monumental downturn in air travel after September 2001, treat travelers like cattle? What is the purpose of the apparent callous treatment of the paying customer? 

-- Trashed in Transit

Dear Trashed:

Ever since airlines were deregulated in 1978 they have been attempting to increase profits by decreasing service and cutting corners while at the same time lowering costs to encourage people to fly more. This is a vicious circle and has led to schemes like airport "hubs," so that in order to fly from Chicago to Cleveland you have to stop and change planes in Miami, where your luggage is x-rayed, scanned, inspected by sniffer dogs and carefully tagged before it's sent on to Omaha.

The current preoccupation with security only makes things worse. Getting to the airport 3 hours early for a one-hour flight, being strip-searched and fluoroscoped and being given a battery of psychological tests before you're allowed to board is bound to depress people, especially since it's a classic case of locking the barn after the horse is gone. 

I won't even mention the food, which always looks as though it had just been excreted by some kind of large gastropod. 

What's the alternative? You can always take the train, unless you're allergic to derailments. Most tracks haven't been maintained since 1953, which was the same time that most of the cars were cleaned. Amtrack no longer posts schedules, just the odds of reaching a particular destination. Oh, and if you use the train you'll be contributing to the national debt, since Amtrak loses roughly $45 for every passenger it carries. 

My suggestion is to stay at home. That'll teach them.

2-11-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

On behalf of an unmarried lady about to turn 40, what words of comfort can you offer to all the future spinsters of the world?

-- Unyoked in Ungava 

Dear Unyoked:

I offer my heartiest congratulations! Not all women have the strength of spirit and the indomitable will to overcome the social pressures that drive them into unhappy marriages. In your unattached state you can find a succession of princes, then dump them when they start turning into frogs. Back in the bad old days a woman would make a life decision at the age of 18 years, then regret it for the next 60.

No one is ever going to spend your household budget on beer, or think that taking you to a tractor pull or a monster truck demolition derby is the equivalent of a romantic evening out. Your TV remote control is your own, and if you feel like watching "Gone With the Wind" instead of Super Bowl XLVIII you're free to do it. You can have all the male friends you want, and if most of them are gay, so much the better. Those boys understand the finer things in life better than your average straight guy, anyway, and you can call them up at 2am and get a sympathetic shoulder to cry on if you need one. If you need companionship get a cat. 

It may not seem like it sometimes, but you've picked the best of all possible worlds. Only in fairy tales does "happily ever after" mean what it's supposed to mean; in real life there's a dozen pages of fine print attached as a footnote.

2-12-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

It says on the calendar that today is Shrove Tuesday. Who on earth was Shrove, and why do we have a holiday devoted to him?

-- Celebrant in Celebes

Dear Celebrant:

Emmanuel Shrove was a Puritan who came over on the ship that had to sail in a holding pattern while the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock and was greeted by the press corps and the media. He was considerably annoyed by the delay, and even more so when a storm blew up and his own ship, the Peaseflower, was diverted to a landing slot in Rhode Island. Worse yet, he discovered that his luggage had been sent to Newfoundland, so he was in quite a state by the time he finally reached Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts by muleback 3 weeks later. He reportedly spent a day in the stocks for taking the Lord's name in vain when discussing the cruise line he had booked the voyage on.

Shrove's contribution to American colonial history came about when he opened the first fast-food restaurants in the New World in 1623, serving up griddle-cakes, cornpone, polenta and Belgian waffles to colonists who didn't have time to cook because they were busy flogging heretics, chastising sinners or fighting off Indians. He later expanded the menu to include spoon-bread and latkes, and he was the first to discover that boiling down the sap from a maple tree made a delicious accompaniment to his wares, although he was less successful with oak and sycamore syrup.

On the day before Ash Wednesday, when the strict fasting season of Lent was to begin, Shrove served free meals to all comers from sunrise to sunset. This became such an ingrained tradition that the name "Shrove Tuesday" was assigned by colonists to the last day before Lent, just as their brethren in New Orleans celebrated "Mardi Gras" or "Gross Tuesday" to mark the day before drunkenness, nudity and reckless abandon were put aside for Lent.

Shrove's ambition was his eventual undoing. He attempted to add pizza to his product line, which brought him to the attention of the Costaricci family. After a midnight discussion on the ethics of sales territories with certain associates of the family he was never seen again, although rumor had it that he had been incorporated into the foundations of the Olde Boston Poste Road.

---------------------------
Ref: "Take This Batter And Shrove It" by Elihu Spoonbread (London and Bombay, 1952)
"Waffling with Words: Deconstructing Flapjacks as a Key to Meaning" Florence Butterworth (London and Bombay, 1982)

2-13-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Now my shift has changed to "swing shift" but another clock still insists on waking me up at 2am. Have smashed the one on my dresser, given away all others, but I still wake up waaaaaaaaaay too early. Someone said I have an "internal" clock. What is it, and how do I become depossessed by it? Working 24/7 is getting a bit old!

-- Zoning in Zagreb

Dear Zoning:

Yes, humans, like many other animals, have an inner clock that is based on the 24-hour day and extremely hard to reset. Nature intended our species to be awake during the day foraging for food and asleep at night in our caves, safe from the night-prowling saber-toothed tigers. Paleolithic man never had a night job, and was lucky if he could find gainful employment during the day, economic conditions being what they were back then. As soon as fire was discovered everyone sat around it blaming the government, or claiming that Neanderthals were taking all the good jobs. This was especially true after the invention of beer.

Then the Industrial Revolution occurred, and suddenly primitive man was required to work the so-called graveyard shift. It was called that because of the number of workers who fell into the bowels of the machinery they were tending when they nodded off, obeying nature's call to avoid saber-teeth, just another example of how nature sometimes plays second fiddle to nurture, especially where steam engines are concerned.

The good news is that scientists have recently discovered the precise location of the timing center on the optic nerve behind the eye. Now it's just a matter of figuring out how to make adjustments to it, which may possibly involve drilling holes in the skull and installing little chrome-plated winding stems. In this era of body piercing I'm sure no one will even notice them. 

2-14-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I have a homework assignment. I have to explain the history of Valentine's Day. How can sending cards to people have a history? And what's with the heart? Anyway I think girls are dumb.

-- Bored in Borland

Dear Bored:

Ah, but Valentine's Day has a long and interesting history once you dig into it a bit. 

Although the truth is shrouded in the mists of time, the legend apparently began in the third century of this era. A Roman procurer named Lucius Valentinus, nicknamed "the Saint" for his humble and reverential appearance toward his superiors, used to seduce young women into the prostitution trade by promising them gold and an easy life servicing the randy young officers of the Roman legions. 

When the actual misery of their day-to-day lives became apparent he assured their ongoing cooperation by casually mentioning that the last girl who had escaped from "Valentinus's You-Name-It-You-Got-It Lust Emporium" had been made an example of by having her heart torn from her body while it was still beating, a deterrent if ever there was one. Thereafter it was only necessary to show the outline of a heart to a recalcitrant recruit to assure the strictest obedience. Sometimes he would color it red to show that he meant business, and because he was fond of coloring, being very good at staying within the lines.

Somehow down through the ages the original meaning of the symbol was lost, and Platonic love took over the image of the heart, with young studs plighting their troths instead of inviting some hot babe for a roll in the hay. By the time of the Victorians, a notoriously sentimental breed, Valentine's Day had evolved into a mushy celebration filled with lacy satin hearts, proclamations of undying affection and loads of chocolate, which was acceptable back in the days when women were supposed to be well-upholstered and the word "cholesterol" hadn't yet entered the vocabulary.

So that, in essence, is the history of the Valentine's Day that we so innocently celebrate with simple-minded verses and hothouse roses. On a quiet afternoon you can probably hear Valentinus spinning in his grave. 

Now, if you'd like to try a practical experiment in restoring the old meaning of the holiday, I suggest you pick out an appropriate young lady from amongst your classmates, preferably one who falls into the "precocious developer" category. Design a card especially for her, using cutouts from those copies of "Hustler" your old man keeps hidden in the garage. 

If anyone complains, ask them if they would rather have you packing guns or drugs in the classroom.  

Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day....

2-15-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Almost all the Web sites I click on have music in the background. I've noticed that yours doesn't. Are you anti-music or what?

-- Harmonic in Harmony

Dear Harmonic:

Not really anti-music. I just don't want to inflict my musical choices on unsuspecting surfers. We've all had the experience of clicking on an unassuming site and being assaulted with "Hamster Dance" or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. What I'd like to do is give people the opportunity to listen to music if they chose, perhaps by clicking on a link. That way they could listen to, oh, maybe a soft mountain hammer dulcimer tune from here in the Ozarks, or perhaps a choral piece from my youth that would bring back fond memories and improve the site experience for my many loyal fans.

However, I'm not sure how to handle this. There are a lot of really strange music formats, none of which I recognize, and I'm afraid my musical abilities aren't what they used to be. (I used to play ragtime piano until the state closed down the bordellos in Redbone.) So I'm asking for your patience and understanding here as I experiment. 

Now, this first one should be a little musical treat from Basil and Eleutherea Cindercone, who used to have a little autoharp and dulcimer combo that was good enough to be recorded sometime in the late 1920s. I'm sure you'll find the dulcet tones relaxing and "easy listening" as the fellow says on the radio.
Next we have Jethro Rumpfender, the "Fiddlin' Wizard" from over to Hog's Noggin, and his rendition of "A Child's Prayer at Twilight," one of the old -fashioned lullabies of a bygone era. Old Jethro could pull tears out of a stone with that tune.  

If you out there in the listening audience would like to hear more I have a big stack of cylinders and 78s that I could put online. Please send your requests via e-mail and I'll see what I can do. 

Thanks to my Aural Machinator:  Froggy

2-16-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Don't you just hate it when someone uses a French phrase just to sound sophisticated? And what does "joie d'après vivre" mean, anyway?

--Tongue-Tied in Texas

Dear Tongue-Tied:

Oh, I don't know.... personally I think a soupçon of French now and then adds a certain je ne sais quoi to an otherwise blasé paragraph. Of course, chacun à son goût, you have to have the savoir faire to use them as a bon mot, and it would be a faux pas to use them de trop.

Your expression joie d'après vivre isn't French at all, by the way. It's some American trying to make a French portmanteau word out of "joy of life" and "after life" and failing miserably, le pauvre.  

2-17-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

What would happen if we all woke up one fine Saturday morning to find out from CNN that during the night the earth had stopped spinning? Would that mean that it would always be 7am in NYC, and always dark in the Tora Bora region? Can you explain what might happen if my worst fears were realized, Miss Nettie?

-- Static in Staten Island

Dear Static:

I can safely say that you wouldn't need CNN to tell you about it. If the Earth stopped spinning everything *on* the earth would continue moving in an easterly direction-- including you, your TV and the CNN anchorpeople. Depending on where you were on the Earth's surface, that would mean an instantaneous acceleration of up to a thousand miles an hour (at the equator), turning you into a thin reddish smear amid the flying rubble. If you lived on the west coast of the USA you would suddenly be under several miles of Pacific Ocean. New York wouldn't miss this part of the fun, however, as the Pacific wave would catch up in about 4 hours, washing away anything that was still standing. A few hours after that the Atlantic, completing its tour of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Basin would tidy up anything the Pacific had left behind. Then the Pacific would reappear, and so on for quite a long time.

Most of the water and ice would vanish as steam, however, as the tectonic plates of the planet were ripped asunder, exposing millions of square miles of white-hot magma. Observers from space would suddenly see the Earth transformed into an enormous pearl as all that steam joined the atmosphere, the very air itself moving at hundreds of miles an hour. The newly-released heat, plus the greenhouse effect of all the steam, would send planetary surface temperatures up to about 900° F. in a short while, just like our sister planet Venus. It would probably be rather pretty to watch.

Several tens of millions of years later life might re-seed itself from space and this whole dreary cycle would start all over again, until, three and a half billion years down the figurative road, with the moon long ago lost in space, someone would be writing to an Internet columnist about the effect of the Earth stopping spinning all of a sudden.

May I respectfully suggest that you take up worrying about something closer to home, like Social Security running out? It would be lots more practical.

2-18-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty delta day, and I was out driving down country roads with my nephew Sue and a dog named Blue. (Sue's a boy, in spite of the odd name. What was his father was thinking of?)

Just as we were crossing the Tallahatchie Bridge on our way to the PTA meeting in Harper Valley, I had to hit the brakes hard, to avoid that daft neighbor boy Billy-Joe, who was dallying on the bridge. I just flew forward and hit my noggin on the dashboard Jesus.

But enough about me. What I need to know is how to come up with nifty ideas for country-western songs. They say to write what you know, but nothing much ever happens up on Cripple Creek where I live.

-- Tuneless in Tupelo 

Dear Tuneless:

One of the best parts about writing country-western music is that it doesn't have to be about much at all, and the arrangement is always on the same twang-twang-twang theme, which saves lots of musical thinking. Why, great country music has been written about being in prison, or drinking moonshine, or walking down shady lanes in the summertime-- you name it. Just keep it miserable and patriotic and you'll do fine.

I'll bet if you went over that e-mail you just sent to me, you'd find half a dozen inspirations, although you might need a twelve-pack to get the creative juices flowing.... Let me get you started with some ideas (I get 10% off the top if any of them sell):

* Breaking (My Heart) on Your Bridge

* June Third's Purt' Nearly the Fourth of July in America

* Hittin' My Noggin Over You

* I Hit the Brakes (And Lost My Heart)

* My Woman Run off with that Daft Neighbor Boy

* Bridge over Troubled Waters

See how easy it is? Now you just get a paper store sack and a pencil and I'll bet dollars to doughnuts you'll be on Grand Ole Opry in two shakes of a lamb's tail. 

2-19-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I'm a single woman in my mid-30s who just can't find a worthwhile man. The few times I thought I'd identified one with all the right qualities -- wit, humor, kindness, passion, strength of character, and respect for women -- I inevitably learned that he was gay. I mean, some of my best friends are gay but, damn it, I need more! What am I really searching for, and when, for God's sake, can I expect to find it?

-- Frustrated in Philadelphia

Dear Frustrated:

Frankly, my dear, I'd stick with the gay guys. I've never heard anyone complain that a gelding was hard to handle, and they have lots more personality than stallions do. It's what we call a trade-off. And if you learn to ignore his boy friends, he'll learn to ignore yours....

2-20-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

What's the cheapest and easiest way to manufacture a nuclear device from spare parts?

-- Ghassan in Guantanamo

Dear Ghassan:

It's fairly simple once you have the necessary ingredients. You're fortunate to be located by the sea, since seawater contains about 3 parts per billion of uranium 238. If you boil down about a cubic mile of seawater and take away the salt and other contaminants, you should wind up with about 30 pounds of U-238. Unfortunately this isotope of uranium is worthless for nuclear devices, so you'll have to convert it to a different isotope, the fissionable U-235. 

The easiest way to do this is by extracting gaseous fluorine from common fluoride toothpaste (look for the ADA seal of approval). Then spray the fluorine over your finely atomized U-238 to form uranium hexafluoride gas, which can be fed into a gas centrifuge to separate out the U-235. (Lacking a gas centrifuge it can be done manually, but it's *lots* slower.) Be sure to collect the U-235 in small amounts in sealed containers, otherwise a premature reaction may set in. Be alert for signs like sudden hair loss and bleeding from the eyes.

Once you've got your U-235 all separated out then it's just a matter of converting it back into a machinable metal, using the normal methods. Let me know when you've got that far and I'll explain about compression and triggering devices, which can be whipped up from fertilizer and jukebox parts. Right now I have to answer an urgent e-mail from that nice Tommy Ridge of the Office of Homeland Security.... 

2-21-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

What is electricity and how was it discovered?

-- Inductive in Indianapolis

Dear Inductive:

Electromagnetism is one of the 4 basic forces in the universe, the others being death, taxes and stupidity. 

Primitive humans knew nothing about electricity, tending to avoid lightning out of a superstitious belief that it was an expression of the gods' anger. This was occasionally reinforced when a caveperson was hit by lightning and char-broiled on the spot. Then one day a very bright Cro-Magnon type, observing the similarity between a lightning-struck caveperson and a roasted side of mastodon baby back ribs, made an astonishing discovery: people were good to eat! This led to wholesale cannibalism, severely affecting the population until it was reversed by an aggressive public relations campaign based on the slogan, "Friends Don't Let Friends Eat Friends."

Once the population was built up to sustainable levels again interest in electricity was renewed. Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Travolta, a group of conjoined Italian brothers, successfully separated electricity from magnetism in the year 1800, storing the electricity in batteries and the magnetism in some old horseshoes. They later discovered that electricity and magnetism could be recombined in the same proportions to produce water, which was a godsend for the drier parts of Calabria that year.

An American, Benjamin Franklin Mint, who earned a cartload of money from his collectible plates and trinkets business and from the ice cream flavor that bears his name, first discovered the connection between lightning and electricity when he was romping with some naked young boys in a thunderstorm on his estate, Neverland. He quickly put his discovery to use by manufacturing the Franklin Stove, which had four burners on the top and the ability to switch from bake to broil with the turn of a single knob. A drawer in the bottom held broiler pans and other cooking utensils. A driven man, Franklin died tragically while attempting to perfect the electric toilet.

The electric motor was discovered when a pile of old magnetized horseshoes was struck by lightning. The blacksmith who had been sitting on the horseshoes kept spinning for almost three days, which led to the invention of the whirling dervish, which can still be seen today in parts of the Middle East. 

Early motors depended on lightning storms to set them going, which greatly reduced their usefulness, especially in the home, which had to be equipped with lightning rods to attract the necessary power to operate, say, a washer and dryer combo. Franklin's electric stove had the same limitation, which is why the controls were often marked with only two settings, Cold and Vaporize. Later on a national electrical grid was installed, consisting of tall towers strung with copper wires which would attract lightning and allow the distribution of electricity in manageable amounts, all controlled by a company called Enron.

Recent advances in electrical research have given us the rechargeable joy buzzer and the static which is preloaded into acrylic carpets at the factory by people who dislike cats. Great hope is being held out for the electric car. Recent models weigh a mere 13 tons and can travel at a speed of 4 miles per hour for over a mile before exploding in a pile of molten lead and boiling sulfuric acid. 

The electric toilet has been abandoned as impractical.

2-22-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

What is the plural of computer mouse? Computer mouses? Computer mice? Computer mouse devices? Why isn't the plural of spouse spice? And shouldn't two houses really be hice? You've lived a long time, Nettie. You've seen the English language change and grow. What happened here?

--Noam in Nome

Dear Noam:

You have to remember that English is a borrowed language. Merrie olde Englande was invaded by just about everybody at one time or another, including the Celts, the Romans and the Danes. When it came time to settle on a national language they got really politically correct about it and decided to do it by proportional representation, which is why we have lots of Saxon words from Germany and very few words from Outer Mongolia. 

The Angles and the Saxons spent a lot of money on advertising their particular languages, whereas the Jutes spent next to nothing which is why the only word from them that's come down to us refers to carpet fiber and cordage. However, voters were confused since almost all of them were illiterate and the ones who weren't couldn't make head or tail of "futhark," the Runic alphabet that the Angles and Saxons wrote in. Most people would have preferred to speak and write Latin, which had been around for a long time and looked good on the sides of government buildings, whereas "futhark" looked pretty much the way it sounded. You couldn't imagine writing an ode or a love poem in futhark, although it looked good as graffiti.

But many Anglos feared that if the Latin element prevailed it would drive property values down. Eventually the Angles and the Saxons, fearful of losing the grassroots vote, compromised and adopted the Gothic alphabet, which was dark and moody and thought nothing of dressing up like a vampire and hanging around dimly-lit bars. This was an improvement on futhark, but still contained odd letters like "Þ" and "ð" which no one knew quite what to do with, and which made heroic poems like "BeowðlÞ" sound like kazoo practice at times. And let's face it, lines like "...beheoldon þær engel dryhtnes ealle, fægere þurh forðgesceaft!" just weren't going to give Anglo-Saxon the audience share it needed to win the ratings sweeps.

So the Angles and the Saxons petitioned the court for more time, and came up with what they called "Olde Anglytccch," which eliminated the questionable letters and looked almost as good as Latin on a page, especially if the copyist was sober. That advance made it possible to write passable poetry, such as :

  "Sumer is icumen in,
  Lhude sing, cuccu!
  Groweth sed and bloweth med
  And springth the wude nu.
  Sing, cuccu!"

... although pollsters discovered that most of the people they interviewed thought an "icumen" was a type of insect and that "wude nu" sounded vaguely suggestive. Finally the Angles and Saxons, who were by now calling themselves "AngSax, Ltd., a Language Consortium" hired Geoffrey Chaucer to write an entire novel in Olde Englych, as it had come to be known, and Chaucer gave the world "The Canterbury Tales," although his agent reserved overseas, reprint and paperback residuals. Canterbury Tales starts out:

  "Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote, 
  The droghte of March hath perced to the roote 
  And bathed every veyne in swich licour, 
  Of which vertu engendred is the flour."

... but gets much better as it goes along, leading eventually to "The Miller's Tale," which is a hoot, ending up as it does with some guy getting stuck with a red-hot poker where the sun doesn't shine.

The "Miller's Tale" really put English on the map, and when the votes were counted it was yards ahead of Latin and outdistanced even Provençal, which had the backing of Minnesinger & Troubadours Union #23, but which you couldn't dance to in groups of less than thirty.

So there's the history of our language in a nutshell. It's not perfect, but as the Angles and the Saxons might have said, "Ece Drihten, or onstealde, he ærest sceop eorðan bearnum heofon to hrofe, halig Scyppend," which, loosely translated, means "Love It or Leave It, Sucker."

2-23-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

In a recent column, you mentioned that you "should run for office." In my experience, it is a rare occasion where someone with true wisdom will devote themselves to public service. These days, it seems that the elected politicians are either bright, but in it for personal gain, or dim but sincere.... Why don't the truly brilliant sacrifice some personal wealth to serve the electorate?

-- Elective in Elmira

Dear Elective:

Well, it seems to me you've answered your own question. The smart people are in it so they can abuse the system for their own ends and the rest are deluded into thinking they can make a difference. Once the latter learn better, they become the former and run for re-election.

Anyone considering running for office should be presented with a single copy of the Federal Register and a copy of the Congressional Record. After perusing the contents they will have one of two opinions: (a) "Whoa! I can make this work for me!" or, (b) "This is the most insufferable pile of claptrap I have ever laid eyes on!" 

Those of the former opinion should hire a campaign manager. Those of the latter opinion should join a commune.

2-24-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

As an ex-altar boy, I know I should know this, but what is meant by the term "mea culpa," and why don't we hear more of this term in the state of Texas, or in Washington DC?

-- Justifiable in Justicia

Dear Justifiable:

Mea and her brother, O. Felix Culpa, were the first lawyers to practice west of the Mississippi during the frontier era, when men were men and life was nasty, brutish and short. Before the Rule of Law was imposed criminals tended to plead guilty, which greatly simplified the justice system. The courthouse was usually the local saloon, the justice of the peace was related to the sheriff, and a dozen cases could be disposed of on a Sunday afternoon, with hangings and a barbecue later in the day.

Felix and Mea were horrified at this when they first set up to practice in Frognozzle, Texas, as there was virtually nothing for lawyers to do. Law school had taught them that winning cases was the purpose of the legal system, not the carefree dispensing of justice to the guilty and the freeing of the innocent. 

The first case they took involved a drifter who had shot an unarmed farmer in broad daylight in front of 47 witnesses, all of whom were stone sober and had excellent vision. The drifter himself cheerfully confessed to the crime and looked forward to the hanging as he had a hankering for some barbecue. Felix and Mea clearly had their work cut out for them.

By the fourth week of the trial they had managed to prove that the defendant, a Canadian subject, had been framed by the sheriff, who had once used the word "canuck" in grade school. They also used the newly-discovered and highly scientific Uncertainty Theory to show that the bullet which was found in the victim's heart wasn't necessarily the same bullet which had been fired from the defendant's gun, as no one could successfully account for where the bullet had been after it left the barrel of the gun and before it entered the chest of the deceased. 

During the sixth week of the trial they had proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the eyewitnesses could not have distinguished between the defendant and his identical twin brother, had the defendant actually had a twin brother who had been dressed identically and present at the scene of the crime. The confession was thrown out because the defendant was illiterate and couldn't have known what he had signed his mark to, if indeed it was him and not his twin brother who had signed it.

By the ninth week of the trial the jury, after three days of deliberation, came forth with a verdict of involuntary suicide on the part of the farmer. The townspeople were so relieved to be free of the tedious trial that they threw a splendid barbecue, at the end of which they hanged the lawyers. The defendant perished of involuntary suicide at the hands of the sheriff as he was robbing the Wells Fargo office.

2-25-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

How many non-baking uses are there for Arm & Hammer baking soda?

-- Carbonated in Carbondale

Dear Carbonated:

According to the people who make the stuff, over 4,000 uses have been found, including some that are pretty arcane. For instance:

1. Baking soda can be used instead of water for emergency baptisms.

2. Replacing the shot in a shotgun shell with baking soda is a great way to selectively abrade titanium.

3. Use baking soda instead of rice at weddings. It won't attract rats and leaves wedding garments smelling sweet.

4. Baking soda is legal tender on the island of Numtunk in the Pacific Ocean.

5. No mousetrap? Mice can be suffocated under a large enough pile of baking soda.

6. Can't sleep? Empty a large box of baking soda into your dryer and set it for 2 hours. Sounds relaxing, just like the surf.

7. And you don't have to waste that baking soda either. In a dryer it ages counterfeit money realistically.

8. Mail some baking soda to the Senate and House of Representatives to watch Congress in action.

9. Forty tons of baking soda will freshen a subway station for almost a whole day.

10. Equal parts of vinegar and baking soda in a tightly-capped glass bottle makes a nifty-- and undetectable-- grenade.

Send your suggestions to the baking soda people today. They're always happy to hear from happy and creative customers.

2-26-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

What is the difference between fusion and fission?

-- Nuclear in New Caledonia

Dear Nuclear:

Oh, my, that's a complicated one. To illustrate fission, one can use the classic device of a room full of mousetraps, all loaded with ping-pong balls. If you toss a single ping-pong ball into the room it will set of a trap or two or six, which will then set off more traps until a blizzard of ping-pong balls will occur, which is called a chain reaction. Anyone caught in the room would be severely maimed, which is what makes chain reactions so dangerous.

Now, if you replace the ping-pong balls with neutrons, which are a sort of vitamin found in uranium, plutonium and asparagus, and if you make really, really tiny mousetraps to hold them, and if you step up the strength of the springs on the tiny, tiny mousetraps so they fire off the neutrons like rifle bullets, and if you pack a few trillion of the loaded mousetraps into a canister and then drop just *one single free neutron* through a hole bored in the end, you can flatten a good-sized city, with enough neutrons left over to cause people's eyes to bleed and their hair to fall out as they wander in the wreckage trying to find pieces of their loved ones.

That's simple fission. Fusion is lots worse.

Our Mister Sun is essentially one great big fusion bomb that's been going off for several billion years in violation of a whole bundle of treaties and conventions. It works by mushing together hydrogen atoms to form helium. This not only can be used for filling balloons, but will incidentally release so much energy that both you and the balloon will become the focal point of a very deep, white-hot crater, which is why most people buy their helium ready-made at the store.

Mister Sun squashes his hydrogen with gravity, producing sufficient helium to keep itself in the sky and not fall to earth, where it would do considerable damage. We, of course, don't have strong enough gravity to be able to spontaneously fuse helium, and a lucky thing it is, too, because if we did even basketball players would only be about a micron tall and considerably spread out. So we rely on a different principle to produce our helium, namely those neutron-loaded mousetraps. It seems that you can deceive a simple fission bomb into producing helium if you pack lots of standard TNT around it and pack it the whole shooting match into a really thick steel shell. When you set off the TNT the mousetraps are squashed so tight when they go off that any nearby hydrogen is converted instantly into helium, sometimes enough to fill a good-sized zeppelin. Of course, there's a lot of wasted heat released as well, roughly enough to convert Chicago into a liquid state, which is why helium manufacturing is such a high-paying job.

I could give you some Web site references on do-it-yourself fission and fusion kits, but your parents would probably be interrogated by the FBI and you personally would wind up going to the kind of school where the teachers carry guns and never turn their backs on the class....

2-27-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie:

A friend of mine told me that if there are 20 people in a room, there's a 50/50 chance that two of them will have the same birthday. I told him he was crazy, but he proved it to me at a party with 25 people at it. Two people actually had the same birthday! How can such a small group of people have two people with the same birthday in it?

-- Astounded in Astoria

Dear Astounded:

There are four possible answers to this question. 

The first is that people who are born under the same astrological sign tend to clump together, greatly reducing the odds.

The second is that group peer pressure and the medical condition known as Munchausen's Syndrome by Birthday forces someone to claim that their birthday is the same as another person's just to call attention to themselves and for the "ooooh!" factor.

The third is that your friend deliberately planted those two people in order to win a large bet.

Finally, if you apply the well-known probability formula: 365! / ((365-n)! * 365^n), you'll discover that in a group of 23 people there's a 50.7% chance that 2 people will have been born on the same day.

It can get weirder than that, though. At the last meeting of the American Association of Quadruplets, three-quarters of the people in the room had the same birthday. That's the kind of statistic that makes people shake their heads in disbelief. But it's simple probability, one of the basic building blocks of weirdness.

2-28-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

How come men snore more than women?

-- Awake in Awaji

Dear Awake:

Snoring is a carryover from our primitive animal-like selves, and is-- surprisingly-- related to the reason why male animals are generally larger and more brightly colored than female animals.

You see, the female is more important than the male, since she bears and nurtures the young and must be kept safe. The male, however is expendable. When a predator comes to call, it's certainly going to notice the larger, flashier male and probably not even see the smaller, camouflaged female, right?

Snoring serves the same function. Back in our cavepeople days, if a night-roaming sabertooth or other large carnivore slunk into a cave looking to chow down on one of our ancestors, it would inevitably be drawn to the loud-snoring male, not the silently sleeping female. She would awaken in the morning, notice her mate was missing, shrug her shoulders and go skinny-dipping at the waterhole until she found a replacement, behavior that continues down to the present day....

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