4-1-2002

Episode the Last:  Revelation! 

... here at last, safely ensconced back in my room at Living Dead "R" Us after my adventure to Tennessee, and trembling with excitement over the prospect of opening the fabled Map of the Fabled Family Treasure of Redbone (part of the shaking is attributable to the methadone cart being late making its rounds).

I forgot yesterday in the enthusiasm of the moment to mention the history behind the fabled family treasure. 

In previous columns I've mentioned one or two of the possible origins of the settlers of Redbone. (Which reminds me, I have to dig out great-great-grandmother Hagridden's diary again for a historical update. The last one I published had them still on the ship, the MS Narrenshiff, on their way to the New World.)

One thing that is fairly certain is that there was an early settlement of Redbonians in Louisiana before they were driven north-eastward during the Plague of Rabid Crocodiles and the Wars of the Melungeon Inheritance, settling eventually in Arkansas. This chronicle is covered nicely on several Web sites, like http://www.murrah.com/gen/redbones.htm, done by honest-to-goodness historians with no affiliation to your Aunt Nettie, more's the pity.

One of the persistent myths of this early era concerned the mystery of the Family Treasure, the resolution of which was the actual purpose of my voyage to Tennessee last week. The rumor has persisted down through the centuries that either the Redbonians or the Melungeons had accumulated a vast treasure, called "uncountable"-- naturally enough in an innumerate population. At some point one group stole it from the other group, or vice-versa. In any case it led to bad blood between them, over and above the congenital venereal disease they were afflicted with, and many pitched battles were fought. When pitch wasn't available they used other naturally-occurring bitumens like asphalt. They were a messy business, those early wars.

Anyway, at one point the stewardship of the Treasure fell to great-great-grandfather Buckluck "No Knuckle" Hucklebuck, a man of secretive ways and peculiar habits, who was once arrested for assaulting a bishop with half a naked sheep. Grandfather Hucklebuck, obsessed with security, first hid the treasure where no one would think of looking "in a million billion zillion years," as he put it in his memoirs. He then drew up a map, which he also hid. Then, to put himself beyond suspicion or temptation, he whacked himself on the head repeatedly with a Model #8 Acme lignum-vitae bung starter until amnesia set in. So at last the treasure was safe from everyone, and thus it remained until my Uncle stumbled across the map in a copy of "Bawdy Songs and Backroom Ballads," where it was cleverly disguised as a bookmark. Uncle, himself scoring an 89 on the Wacky-Addled Senility Test, thought it was just another dirty song and never opened the envelope, although he did mention the unique handwriting on it to a ward attendant, which is how I found out about it. Always make friends in low places.

With my pacemaker turned up to "race," I opened the envelope, and was astonished to see how clever great-etc., Hucklebuck had been. Taking his cue from Poe's "Purloined Letter," which would not be written for another 40 years, he secreted the treasure under the floor of the stall that was occupied by "Redbone's Family Treasure," a stud bull that had been purchased long ago to begin a mighty herd of cattle which would bring fortune and fame to our people, but who had turned out to be indisputedly gay and, worse yet, attracted to stallions, which accounted for his brief, unsatisfied life.

It was an easy matter to discover the location of the now-destroyed stall by going over town survey records, and even easier to bribe Caleb and his cousin Terebinth, the fundamentalist minister's son, with sufficient whiskey so that they would be able to excavate the treasure at night whilst retaining no memory of it the following morning. 

Thus I came to possess the vast and begrimed ironwood chest which sits before me now, bound with corroded straps of steel and hung with brass padlocks snapped in place by great-etc., grandfather Hucklebuck himself. It was short work to unsnap them with a usurped crowbar, and with mingled avarice and greed I flung back the cover to reveal...
.
.
.
.
.
[wait for it]
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
... roughly a ton of cowrie shells!

Yes, dear readers, your Aunt Nettie had been the victim of a changing monetary system. The early Redbonians and Melungeons, having adopted the Afro-Caribbean currency based on these intricate little seashells, had never bothered to switch over to the gold standard, and had been bypassed by the Free Silver movement and the Federal Reserve Act of 1933 as well. So all my underhanded dealings, misdirection, threats and bribery had paid off in sufficient calcium carbonate to pave a couple of dozen feet of a Florida driveway. DAMN!

Now if you'll pardon me I have an appointment with an ampoule of morphine and a coffee cup full of Jack Daniels....

4-2-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I was just in the supermarket and I saw lettuce priced at $2.95 per head, with a limit of one to a customer. Has lettuce now become a target for terrorist threats?

-- Crisp in Twisp 

Dear Crisp: 

According to agricultural reports, this is simply the result of bad weather in California and other lettuce-raising parts of the country. However, times being what they are, an appropriate government response has been prepared, as you can see from the following article: 
------------------

WASHINGTON D.C. (DP) -- Tom Ridge, Director of the Office of Homeland Security, speaking on condition of anonymity, said today that the OHS has set up an advisory system to warn American consumers of the threat of lettucelessness. This system consists of five levels of increasing perceived danger:

Condition Iceberg -- No perceived threat to the lettuce supply.

Condition Cos -- Wilting noticed in selections at salad bars. Big Macs thinner.

Condition Romaine -- Salads tossed with caution. Vegetarians must show ID. Jokes about "succulents" not tolerated by airlines.

Condition Endive -- Cottage cheese to be served alone. Only BTs are available at lunch counters. "Lettuce pray" remark grounds for arrest.

Condition Escarole -- Lettuce restricted to formal state dinners. Consumers encouraged to preserve dandelions when mowing for use in salads. Al Sharpton volubly protests restrictions on turnip and mustard greens. DEA declares possession of more than 3 imported lettuce leaves a felony.

---------------------
--©2002, The Dissociated Press

4-3-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I have just moved into your part of the country from the West Coast, and I'm flabbergasted at the number of churches here. Why are there so many of them, and how do they exist? My new neighbors seem normal otherwise.

-- Awestruck in Arkadelphia

Dear Awestruck:

Yes, this neck of the woods is the buckle on the Bible Belt, isn't it? I have the feeling sometimes that there are more churches out here than there are pickup trucks or handguns, and that's saying a lot.

We have your old standards, of course, but you'll also notice as you travel hereabouts that there's every conceivable spin on your basic Baptist black dress, as it were. We've got Predestinarian and Free-will Baptists, Reformed, Unreformed and Reformulated Baptists, Dunkers and Plungers and Full-Immersion Riverine Baptists-- whom I imagine are dead set against the Blood-of-the-Lamb Baptists who prefer a gorier medium to get the job done. 

Then we have Progressive and Regressive branches, New Sabbath and Old Sabbath groups, End Times Testifiers, Pre-Rapture Adamites, Pre- and Post-Lapsarian Fellowships, Evangelicals and Pentecostals and Pentecostal Evangelicals, and the Nazarene Missionary Assembly of Antiochian Apostolic Congregational Episcopal Odd Fellows.

There are also odd little ones with Jesus Christ in the title, like the Church of Jesus Christ, Albanian; the Church of Jesus Christ, Christian; the Church of Jesus Christ, Mime, and the Church of Jesus Christ, Achondroplastic Dwarf. And way-out ones like the Irredentist Baptist Crusade, which wants to recover Jerusalem from the infidel, and the First Church of People for the Ethical Salvation of Animals, which baptizes fish, among other creatures. Oh, we have all kinds.

So welcome to the neighborhood. If you want to blend in nicely and not be stoned I suggest you invent an affiliation of your own-- a Church Unique as it were. Me, whenever the holiness crowd gets to vexing me overmuch I declare myself to be a founding foursquare cornerstone of the Prolapsed Community of Superannuated Coquettes of the Church of Mary Magdalene, Harlot with a Heart of Gold, Postcoital. 

By the time someone sorts that one out I've usually managed to slip away to the bar.

4-4-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Recently, I've seen a number of prescription medication advertisements containing statements like: "This drug may cause some side effects, such as headache, nausea, sweating, and swelling. Occurrence is rare and generally mild, similar to sugar pills." 

If sugar pills are causing these effects, shouldn't they be prohibited, even if the occurrence is rare - or do they have some beneficial uses...?

-- Overdosed in Overtown

Dear Overdosed:

The problem here is that sugar pills are the basis of placebos, which are at the heart of modern curative medicine. Without placebos the success rate of most pharmaceuticals would be dismal. If you study the FDA testing that's required before new medications are placed on the market you'll notice that, say, 17% of the test subjects reported a significant reduction in symptoms when taking the medication, whereas 49% of those who took placebos reported the same improvement.

What I don't understand is why the big pharmaceutical houses don't drop the charade of selling medicine and simply market placebos-- they work better and faster and with fewer side effects. Placebo® Brand products should sell like hotcakes, and there would be no fear of lawsuits, either, since they're utterly harmless.

4-5-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie:

As a citizen of Murfreesboro in the involuntary state of Tennessee, I want to know what you were smoking when you said you passed into the Eastern Time Zone on your recent trip into our fair state and city. Eastern time doesn't begin until 'way the hell over near Knoxville. Us Murfreesboronians are lodged firmly in Central Time, and have been since they started zoning time back in 1883. Where exactly were you that day?

-- Miffed in Murfreesboro

Dear Miffed:

Well, I certainly got my fair share of hate mail from the denizens of Murfreesboro this week. It appears that what Caleb and I passed through on our way East was what's called a "temporal anomaly," of which the Southeast has plenty, second only to southern New Jersey in variety and intensity. I should have caught on right away since that shiver-and-shimmy effect was much stronger than when one passes through a normal time zone. Also the half-cow should have clued me in: part of it was there and part of it hadn't been born yet.

We have a similar situation near Redbone, close by what the old folks in the area call the "big hunk of wrung time." You can be driving down US Route #0 minding your own business when all of a sudden there's that familiar shimmer and shiver and Wham! -- you're in a buckboard or a brand new Model T or on a Chinese palanquin being toted along by eunuchs. Some people make the mistake of trying to leap free of the anomaly, but if you jump North you wind up in the Pleistocene at the mercy of saberteeth, and if you jump South you wind up in that place that Time hasn't got to yet, which I've been told is lots worse.

Anyway, I apologize for relocating Murfreesboro. While I was briefly in your fair city I recognized that the citizenry was composed of upstanding Central Time Zone types, corn-fed, God-fearing and all-American, and proud of all three. 

4-6-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie:

As a person of advanced age, perhaps you can explain something to me. Why on earth do old people endlessly repeat the same stories over and over and over again? My grandmother drives us nuts repeating How Grandpa Lost the Car Keys, and When Sadie Was Nearly Electrocuted by the Toaster and That Time I Fell off the Porch. My kids roll their eyes and grit their teeth and plug in their Walkpersons, but the rest of us have to pretend to be interested until our eyes glaze over. Is there a cure?

-- Bored in Bora-Bora

Dear Bored:

I believe I've answered this question in the past, put out of sympathy I'll restate my response.

You have to understand that as people deteriorate their input is the first to go: they stop paying attention to the new and become preoccupied with whatever happened 20 or 30 or 50 years ago. For some reason they think that endlessly retelling these long-outdated events is just fascinating to younger people, and tend not to notice the warning signs of terminal boredom in their audience. Sometimes the teller becomes oblivious to his or her surroundings, which is a bit of luck. We always knew that once Great-aunt Millie got started on the epic tale of Her Experience in the Hat Store, the rest of us could slip away to tend to things like mowing the lawn, cooking dinner or attending double features at the movies and still be back in time for the Big Finish with the Comical Putdown of the Saleslady.

It appears that you have a raconteuse on your hands who is still vaguely aware of people being in the room, so you can't take the evasion, avoidance and escape route. You already know from long experience that trying to override or distract the speaker won't work-- at best they'll just go mum for a while, then pop up at exactly the same point in the story as soon as there's an opening.

Here at the Home we can always turn off our hearing aids, but for the deafness challenged another technique is necessary. The one that seems to work the best is the Distraction of Seeking After Details, sometimes known as Inquiring Minds Need to Know. Here's a typical scenario for your edification and instruction:

---------------------------
Garrulous Old Person: "... why that reminds me of the time we were on our way to Cousin Reprobah's wedding and your Grandfather lost the car keys. It seems he...."

Victim Seeking Escape: "You had a Studebaker back then, didn't you?"

GOP: "Why, no, that was long before the Studebaker. It was a Packard, and your Grandfather...."

VSE: "Packard? Those were great cars, weren't they? They used to be the classiest auto on the road before WWII. What model was it?"

GOP: "Well, it was what they called a 'Phaeton' back in those days, and your Grandfather...."

VSE: "Six cylinder or eight?" 

GOP: "Ah... well, you know, I'm not really sure. Your Grandfather took care of the mechanical details; anyway, this one day we were supposed to go to Cousin Reprobah's wedding in...."

VSE: "What color was it?"

GOP: "Um... they called it 'Midnight Green,' I believe, sort of a darkish green."

VSE: "Did it have the mahogany dashboard and the crystal bud vases?"

GOP: "Well... the dashboard was wood, but I'm not sure what kind of wood. You see...."

VSE: "If you had the crystal bud vases, it was probably the model with the mahogany dashboard."

GOP: (weakening) "I... I... remember the bud vases when the car was new, but what happened to them I have no idea."

VSE: "Aha! So it probably had the mahogany dash, then. Did you get the RCA Victor Travelmaster radio with Slide-Select Tuning?"

GOP: (fading away) "It had a radio... I think. It... it was... we used to listen to... but during the War... it stopped... something about a tube...."

VSE: "Superheterodyne circuit?"

GOP: (moving towards doorway in a state of panic) "I... I believe it was... I believe... I think it's time for my nap now... and my headache is coming back. So nice to talking with you. Come again soon. Goodbye!"
------------------------

Using this as your template, you should be able to establish a conditioned response in your grandmother in no time at all, so that as soon as she sees you coming she'll pretend to be fascinated in her knitting, refuse to say a word in your presence, or use any excuse to flee to the attic and hide in a trunk.

4-7-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie:

Once again we've been forced to go through this foolishness of resetting our clocks. How on earth did this all begin, anyway?

-- Temporal in Temple Terrace    

Dear Temporal:

Daylight Saving Time was begun during World War I as part of the war effort, like sending the Pillsbury Doughboy into the trenches. 

As soon as America entered the war, it became obvious that our troops were operating at a distinct disadvantage, since their body clocks were 7 hours behind the German troops' and they tended to miss all the best bombardments because they were sound asleep. 

President Woodrow Wilson issued an emergency appeal to all Americans to save up an extra hour a day and send it to the War Department, where they would all be bundled into Liberty ships and sent to Our Boys At The Front.

Well, public reaction was overwhelming, and in no time at all Our Boys had received sufficient hours of daylight to be able to fight in broad daylight clean around the clock, putting the Germans into a bind because they had to stop for night. This led to the shortening of the war and the Allied victory.

So why do we still have Daylight Saving today? 

Unfortunately, this being a government operation, it's taken since 1918 for a committee to be chosen to oversee the dismantling of the program and the mothballing of the unused hours. If this seems the least bit strange, remember that our government still maintains a Strategic Helium Reserve to support our zeppelins from WWI, and that the Wartime Emergency Tax imposed by Teddy Roosevelt to support our troops in the Spanish-American War was only lifted in 1988. Apparently Congress had to make certain that the War was actually over before canceling the tax.

Using that as a benchmark, I'm sure you can look forward to the end of DST somewhere in early 2017.

4-8-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I recently acquired a beautiful second-hand Yellow-Nape Amazonian parrot. She's truly delightful, but her former owner must have run a pool hall or bordello-- her vocabulary is dreadful. Is there any way I can train her out of using such awful language?

-- Euphoniphile in Euless

Dear Euphoniphile:

I'm afraid not. According to Dr. Palaver Billingsgate, the world-renowned authority on such things, parrots tend to have highly developed Record and Playback circuits, but no obvious Erase button. Dr. Billingsgate has tried many forms of rewards and punishments to efface psittacine scurrility, all to no avail. He one time tried brief high-voltage shocks to the cage of Jolly Roger, a notoriously foul-beaked beast who had lived in a gay S&M environment for many years. All that happened was that after every jolt the parrot would ask "Whoa! Was it good for you, too, stud?" and ask for a cigarette. 

I suggest you purchase a black blanket to fling over the cage whenever the Bishop comes to tea, and pray that your bird doesn't confuse darkness with intimacy....
--------------

References~

"Talk Birdy to Me: A Report on Psittaciforme Verbal Retraining Strategies" Palaver Billingsgate, PhD, Mockingbird Press, London & Bombay, 1979

"Minor Key: Ramblings of a Miner's Mynah" Clementine Mynersdottir, 49er Publications, London & Bombay, 1851

4-9-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I just saw a news report that said that 70% of the American population doesn't get enough exercise. That seems awfully high to me, especially with the number of joggers I have to dodge every day while driving to work. Surely we must be in better shape than that?

-- Chubby in Chicago

Dear Chubby:

I'm afraid it's a fact. America is the most flabcentric nation on earth, and it's getting worse, as you can see from this Dissociated Press article:

----------------------
ATLANTA, Georgia (DP) -- The Centers for Controlled Disease today released a report severely critical of Americans' disenchantment with exercise. The report is a follow-up to a study released last month that showed 60% of our nation's youth is so overweight as to be indistinguishable from elephant seals, except for lower SAT scores.

Dr. Ralston Zwieback, chief researcher on the federally-funded project stated that 70% of the Americans who took part in the study were lazy, shiftless bastards whose only form of exercise was putting down a bacon double cheeseburger to pick up the TV remote. 

Worse yet, 40% of this group had no heartbeat or respiration whatsoever, and should technically be reclassified as lawn ornaments, or as Furniture, Household, Other, on the General Services Administration's Big Index of Stuff (2001 Edition).

"It was painfully obvious to us as researchers," Dr. Zwieback stated in his summary of the report, "that the overwhelming majority of the citizens of this country cannot touch their toes without surgical intervention, and many of them become out of breath simply from the act of breathing. It's imperative that something be done, or we will wake up some morning and discover that most of us are all dead of fulminating inertia."

The CCD report also used as evidence the dramatic drop in fitness among Army recruits, stating that 65% of all inductees were suitable for service only as sandbags, or for dropping on the enemy from a great height in the hopes of causing widespread panic and infection. 

Noting that fear is a great motivator, the report concludes with a suggestion for a Cabinet-level Office of Domestic Terror to, "...scare the bejesus out of people, sending them running into the streets in panic, carrying all their belongings on their back, a strategy which has done wonders for Third World nations. Refugee populations have been shown to have extremely low fat-to-mass ratios and are capable of lifting at least their own body weight in household goods, donated commodities and the bodies of relatives."
---------------------- 

©2002 The Dissociated Press

4-10-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie:

What's the best way to achieve lasting peace in the Middle East?

-- Hopeful in Homedale

Dear Hopeful:

Given that some of these people have been at each other's throats for most of recorded history, the only true peace will be achieved when Saudi Arabia's vast petroleum reserves are converted to asphalt and the entire region is paved over.

4-11-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I sure wish you would explain something to me. Why is it whenever I send my installers into a retirement community to do some work they're inevitably set upon by one or more old duffers who try to convince them that what they're doing is either illegal or all wrong? My installers tend to be the butter knives of the cutlery drawer and believe these garrulous old farts, which means I have to send then back a second time in every case to get the job done. Who are these people, and why are there so many of them?

-- Steamed in Steadman

Dear Steamed:

Well, first off you have my deepest sympathies. The dreaded Old Farts League has branches in all senior communities, and are a plague that has to be experienced to be believed. What we really need is an Office of Homeland Senility to deal with them. They could make up color alertness charts and everything.

What your poor doomed installers have been exposed to is a combination of Deflated Male Ego combined with Outworn Authority and Late-Blooming Senile Indignation. Let's analyze each of these components so you can better comprehend what you're up against.

Deflated Male Ego -- many male retirees used to have positions of power and self-importance, which evaporated like Enron stock the day after they stopped having a job to go to. Now they find themselves without form or purpose, constantly underfoot, completely unnecessary, and reduced to pushing a shopping cart behind their wives on Seniors Day at the supermarket. This condition produces an abnormal Desire to Appear To Have Useful Information which is off-putting to the uninitiated. 

Outworn Authority -- These men were once used to being listened to and their advice heeded. Now no one cares about them or their opinions, leading to the dreaded backlash known as the Desire to Appear to be In Charge. 

Late-Blooming Senile Indignation -- Having nothing to do all day leads some men to concentrate all their energy on imaginary shortcomings and injustices, and on a perverse sense of what's important. This leads them to call the Mayor's office about people who park in front of their homes, ring up the police to report innocent children at play, and start neighborhood campaigns to change the time mail is delivered or to reroute aircraft during their nap time. 

What your installers have been running into is the typical combination of ingredients, or All of the Above. Although it's difficult, these attacks can be redirected or neutralized completely. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Employ only non-English speakers or bilinguals who can pretend to be non-English speakers. There's nothing that ticks off the Old Farts League like foreigners, and they'll immediately turn their walkers around, scurry back to their dens and start writing letters to Congress about limiting immigration, making English mandatory or closing the borders once and for all. Advise your people that making up a foreign-sounding language on the spur of the moment also works.

2. Carry false documentation. Old Farts are impressed with paperwork and bureaucracy. Handing them a wad of paper that looks official and is in very fine print works wonders.

3. Smile, agree with them and proceed normally. This runs the risk that they will call someone in authority, but chances are those in authority already have them on a Do Not Respond/Do Not Resuscitate list and will ignore them.

4. Synchronize your activities with Community Nap Time. There are some senior housing places where the world could end right after lunch and not a single soul would notice....

4-12-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

What do you miss most about your long-vanished youth?

-- Retrospective in Rethondes

Dear Retrospective:

I assume you mean apart from eyes, ears, teeth, bones and functioning organs....

Probably what I miss most is the power that a good-looking, well-assembled young woman has on the male of the species. Times are different today, but I remember when simply raising the hem of my skirt to step over a puddle would cause otherwise respectable gents to walk into lamp posts. Or how a certain turn of the head and glance of the eye and moue of the lips would reduce powerful men to quivering lumps of jelly. 

I'll never forget one Sunday in July when I was old enough to wreak havoc on the opposite gender and still young enough to play it for all it was worth with an air of innocence. We were listening to the Bishop speak on the weakness of the flesh and of human fallibility down at the First Church of the New Reformed Redemption, Sanctified. It was a hot day, and I was sitting near the front to catch the breeze from the open door to the vestry. After a bit I noticed that the Bishop's eyes were saying something a lot different than his mouth was, so I casually undid a button on my frock an leaned forward a bit, ostensibly to pay closer attention. Well, the Bishop's eyes bugged out of his head, and his voice began to squeak whenever he hit the word "flesh," so I gave him another button and a few more degrees of inclination, at which point in his sermon he attempted to warn the congregation of the perils of trusting in mere mortals, using the famous quote about Saint Peter's denial of Christ from Luke 22:34. 

What came out instead of "the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me, Peter " was something altogether different. In his stentorian voice, his eyes firmly fixed on my cleavage, he announced that his cock would crow that day-- three times, if he knew his peter.

There was a long, loud silence as his words sank in. Then the congregation took a collective breath, and the laughter didn't stop nearly until vespers.

They later defrocked him formally, but I got him first in the train station waiting room. 

Three times, too. 

4-13-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I saw in the news yesterday that some poor guy was stopped at a US airport for having "suspicious shoes." What on earth does that mean, and what are the implications for the rest of us? How do we know which footgear is suspicious?

-- Imelda in Immaculata

Dear Imelda:

In the case you mention, the poor devil was wearing some battery-heated sneakers to aid his poor circulation on the long flight from Taiwan. However, this incident has raised the "shoe threat awareness" at American airports to Condition Scarlet-with-Hazy Sunflower-Accents. This means that any odd-shod person is at risk of being given the old once-over.

The head of the Office of Domestic Insecurity, Colonel Tom "Ridge" Parker, has commissioned a song based on an old favorite to justify his department's actions:

"Suspicious Shoes"

If you're caught in our trap, you can't walk out
because we'll confiscate your laces

Why can't you see, what your shoes mean to me
Those Cuban heels could hide C4 traces.

You can't go on an airplane, with suspicious shoes
You call them Thom McAns-- do you take us for fools?

So, if an old friend I know, has toe shoes in yellow,
You'll see suspicion in our eyes...

Here we go again, asking where you've been
Slingbacks with pedal pushers-- a fashion sin

You can't go on an airplane, with suspicious shoes
You call them orthopedics-- we see an Al-Qaida ruse....

(with apologies to any one sincerely fond of blue suede)

4-14-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I wonder if you can help me with this problem I have. A bunch of us will go out to a play or a movie, and afterwards we'll go to a restaurant or a bar to discuss it. Most of the time I blank completely-- I can't even remember what I just saw! Needless to say I feel like an idiot. Is there a name for this condition?

-- Vacant in Vacaville

Dear Vacant:

Yes, this is a fairly common affliction, according to my psychologist contacts, which is known as Post-Dramatic Stress Syndrome. It usually affects those who have been scarred by early exposure to the winners of obscure French or Italian film festivals with titles like "8½ Balloons at Marienbad" or "The 400 Umbrellas of the Finzi-Continis," most of which are incomprehensible even when outfitted with decent English subtitles. 

Worse yet, after one stumbles from the theater, dazed and confused, having watched one of these turkeys, one is then subjected to the cinemababble of critics, all of whom hail these productions as works of art and go to great lengths to point out how the cabbage carried by the old pot-mender symbolizes the frustrated lust of the postman's lunatic dwarf brother, or how the washline full of underwear flapping in slow motion is the definitive post-modernist statement summarizing the effect of World War I on the macroeconomic goals of Polish banking. Or cooking.

Take heart, for there is a cure. Hasten down to your local video store and rent a weekend's worth of really bad movies-- preferably the kind aimed at teenagers who have burned out their critical senses watching MTV since birth. After 48 hours of "Police Academy," "Buford's Beach Bunnies," "Glitter," and anything with Leslie Nielsen, Tom Green or Pia Zadora in it, you will have established a base line for awfulness. Not only will you remember these movies, you will be haunted by them. After that it's a simple matter of recreating your critical talents from scratch by watching the classics. In no time at all you'll find yourself amazing your friends by speaking with authority on David Lynch films....

4-15-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie:

You're good at tracking down the origins of words and expressions. Where on earth did the phrase "going to Hell in a handbasket" come from? I'd like to use it in a sermon I'm preparing, but I want to be sure there are no immoral double-entendres involved.

-- Reverend in Revere

Dear Reverend:

The Helena Handbasket Company was established in Montana in 1901 to provide employment opportunities to the inhabitants of madhouses who had been trained in basketweaving as part of their therapy. It slowly grew to become a major provider of handbaskets in America, although it was forced out of business in the 1970s as competition from cheaper overseas madhouses increased. The lunatics who were turned out into the streets as a result usually became professionally homeless, although many of them successfully ran for political office.

During the nineteen-teens and -twenties the phrase "going to Helena Handbasket" came to mean "being insane but capable of gainful employment to support oneself if given the opportunity." For example, one might say of a neighbor who was an odd duck: "He'll be going to Helena Handbasket any day now, as soon as the men in the white coats with the butterfly nets catch up with him."

I'm not sure how you could use that in a sermon, but it's the gospel truth... at least in my version of the gospel.

4-16-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie:

What's the deal with BoTox injections? How can paralysis make you look younger?

-- Rugose in Ruritania

Dear Rugose:

Haven't you ever noticed how carefree dead people look? Everyone always comments on how peaceful they are, lying there in the casket. And, of course, death is the reason-- the dead are beyond the petty frustrations of this world, the wearying cares, the mental and physical burdens that line the face, sometimes to the point of making it look like New Mexican landscape

Based on this phenomenon, some clever scientists theorized that applying death in small amounts could erase wrinkles. They first experimented with stabbings, gunshots and blunt trauma, but those research subjects either died completely or showed no facial improvement other than temporary swellings. Then they stumbled on poisons, and discovered that one of the world's great killers, botulism toxin, killed people's faces just enough to restore a youthful, wrinkle-free appearance without objectionable holes, slashes or dents. Of course, these people can no longer smile, speak or blink their eyes, but hey!-- who notices?

The research team that came up with the BoTox approach is now hard at work on Phase Two, "Project Britney" in which they inject judicious applications of botulism toxin and formaldehyde to the entire body to restore youthful vim and vigor. The downside is that the people undergoing the treatment have to spend 18 hours a day in a meat locker to minimize gangrene and the tendency of the meat to slide off the bones. But for the 6 hours they're allowed outside, carefully shielded from the sun, they look terrific!

NOTE: Do not confuse this product with Tae-BoTox, a form of self defense based on kick-boxing and the subtle use of botulism toxins to disable or kill your opponent.

4-17-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I like flowers. Do you like flowers? I bet you like flowers. What's your favorite flower?

-- Floradora in Florida

Dear Floradora:

I've never cared for ordinary flowering plants. For me a flower has to be either the biggest or the rarest or the most unusual. Or all three. That's why I've selected the Corpse Plant of Sumatra as the Official Flower of Dear Aunt Nettie's Web site.

Officially known as the Titan Arum, the corpse plant has blossoms that can have a diameter of as much as four feet, growing from a plant that weighs up to 200 pounds. Hardly anyone has ever seen one, not even really curious Sumatrese.

So that takes care of the biggest and the rarest categories. What about the most unusual?

Well, boys and girls, we all know that most flowers emit a pleasing fragrance to attract the insects that pollinate them, which makes them attractive to humans as well. The corpse plant, however, has taken a different pollination strategy, and relies on the services of carrion beetles and great ugly hairy Sumatran jungle flies to accomplish the task. 

To put it delicately, the corpse plant in full flower smells like a week-old body just a-frying under that hot tropical sun with all that lovely tropical humidity. A very *large* week-old body-- say a Sumatran rhinoceros that died of gangrene and halitosis and galloping flatulence, and whose busy intestinal bacteria have caused its putrefying digestive system to go off like a hundred pounds of dynamite buried in a manure pile. It is a very ripe flower, much beloved of the crawling things which relish decomposing flesh. They pollinate it so it can slowly, over the course of a year, produce another one like itself.

The corpse plant is humankind's strongest argument for God having a perverse sense of humor. I suspect that the Pearly Gates are going to be hung with toilet paper, and all of Paradise will be one huge everlasting fraternity initiation....

4-18-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

The planets Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Saturn and Venus are now in alignment in the western sky. What dire events do you think this portends for mankind?

-- Ominous in Omolon

Dear Ominous:

Exactly the same dire events that a similar phenomenon called "The Jupiter Effect" had 20 years ago: nada, zilch, zero.

In 1982, among other catastrophes, California was supposed to fall into the sea. This, so far as anyone can tell, has not happened. 

As I understand the crackpot theory, all of these planets lumping up in one place is supposed to cause dangerous levels of gravity to rise, placing stresses and strains on our frail planet and leading to rack and ruin. 

Can it actually do that? Here's an experiment you can perform in the safety of your own back yard. Walk around until you find a pebble. Any old pebble will do. Avoid rocks if at all possible, as we are trying to make a point here. Now pick up the pebble. Hold it in the palm of your hand. Fondle it and whisper to it, if you're inclined in that direction. 

Now contemplate this: the Earth is pulling on that pebble with all of its 6.65 sextillion tons of mass, and you just walked over and picked it up off its surface. Does this give you some idea of the weakness of the force of gravity? Do you see why the idea of a bunch of planets millions of miles in space having any effect whatsoever is laughable?

Reliable scientists estimate that the entire force amassed by the planetary alignment would be offset by a single atom of lead.

Why people get themselves into such a tizzy over astronomically distant events is beyond me. If they applied their energies right on our home planet they might be able to contribute to a cure for something truly dangerous, like Jerry Springer.

4-l9-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

For homework I have to explain why the names of the days of the week are in the order they're in-- you know, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc. How come they weren't arranged some other way? I know you get a kick out of helping us needy kids. I know I'm needy... I need to watch "Son of Survivor" tonite. Ha ha. So what's the story on the days of the week? 

-- Week Late in Weehawken

Dear Week:

Yes indeedy, I get some of my largest charges out of assisting the undeserving. And here, as they say, is the story.

You see, long ago there was no need for the days of the week to be in any particular order-- not much was going on back then, communications and transportation were primitive, and it really didn't matter if today was last Saturday or next Thursday.

All this changed when Christian missionaries began traveling among the pagans and heathens and barbarian tribes. They were forced to introduce the concept of the seven-day week to be sure that Sundays, holy days and festivals were celebrated properly.

At first it was a difficult sell, since each missionary had a different system for reckoning time and the pagans and heathens and barbarians weren't all that interested, much preferring to use the missionaries for dinner or for target practice. Once Rome picked Christianity as its Official State Belief System and started sending its legions around with the missionaries it was a whole different story, as the legionnaires also needed archery targets, and were fond of pouring boiling oil down the shirtfronts of any pagan who dissed a missionary. 

We owe the ordering of the days of the week to Saint Smtwtfs, a Retreaded, or Twice-Calced, Friar from Wales, who was sent to convert the savage hordes of Transdniestria and Lower Moldavia. Good Saint Smtwtfs was, of course, obliged to introduce the concept of the seven-day week so that the Transdniestrians and Lower Moldavians would know exactly when Pentecost conflicted with the Feast of the Festival or Morose Tuesday or any of the other celebrations of the early church.

Clever man that he was, Saint Smtwtfs hit upon the idea of naming the days of the week after himself, in the same way that St. Cyrill got drunk on arrack one night and invented a comically outlandish written language for the Russians which he named after himself. Fortunately Smtwtfs' name had exactly seven letters, too, just like the days of the week! Surely a portent from heaven. Fortunately his name had exactly seven letters, too! And that's why, to this very day, all English calendars have SMTWTFS across them, in honor of this brave and dedicated man. (The French, of course, claimed that their patron saint of weeks, St. Lmmjvsd-- a pathetically obvious Baltic import-- came up with the idea first, and insist on putting his name across the top of their calendars. But we all know about the French, now, don't we?)

So that's the story of how the order of the days came to be. I'm sure you're teacher will be as fascinated as you are, and will probably call your parents in to congratulate them personally on having such a bright child...

4-20-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie:

The Office of Homeland Insecurity announced today that the Feds are talking about using Microsoft Passport as a national ID system. What implications does this have for our species in general, and Americans in particular?

-- Secure in Secaucus

Dear Secure:

Given Microsoft's track record, I believe that this marks the end of American civilization as we know it. Tens of thousands of citizens will quietly vanish, just the way Microsoft Bob did in the mid-90s (although I believe that he's recently been reincarnated as SpongeBob on Nickelodeon TV). 

If Windows is any indicator of reliability, we can expect our identities to crash at least 5 times a day, usually when we're engaged in some critical stage of proving who we are. How we'll reboot ourselves is beyond me.

You'll also discover that you have to pay for an annual subscription, plus $95 for any upgrade involving change of address, marital status or employment. Twice a day you'll have to check for security patches to prevent Bulgarian anarchists from assuming your identity and rifling the crown jewels. And you'll be endlessly badgered to join MSN-ID for 24-hour-a-day reports on how secure you are.

Oh, and Bill Gates will be constantly promising that MSID2005 will correct all the bugs in earlier versions....

I was never so happy to be so close to going to my final reward. The dead are gratefully anonymous.

Although... you don't think this plan will apply to toe tags and cemetery plots, do you? If it does, we may have to adopt the German system, where entire graveyards are designated Friedhof der Namenlosen, filled with the corpses of the unidentifiable....

4-21-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

The other day you helped some kid with a question about the days of the week. I need help even worse than he did, since I have to identify this idiot green bird sitting on a branch as part of a biology makeup. The only birds I know are robins and those blackish ones that are everyplace, and I don't have the time to go to the library because Selma Louise Bindermann said she'd let me take her to the basketball game, and you know what that means! Anyway, the bird picture is attached. Let me know when you figure out what it is.

-- Ornitholophobe in Orono

Dear Ornitholophobe:

Well, it's your lucky day, since Aunt Nettie knows birds backwards and forwards. I know them well enough to know that this is a trick question, probably an attempt by your teacher to test your critical thinking skills. For you see, it's not a bird at all, but rather an amazing example of mimicry in plants.

Yes, the Oriolus Wolfdownus, or "Swiss Gandersucker," as it is called in Europe, is a carnivorous plant which feeds on songbirds. Over millions of years it has evolved its spathe, calyx and voicebox into a remarkable copy of a bird which does not exist in nature! Its song bears no resemblance to any known birdsong, either, which makes it appear to be a territorial intruder to all other bird species, from titmice to peekapoos. Infuriated by this foreign trespass, other birds immediately fly over to attack it, and as soon as they get within range the Gandersucker gulps them down. On a fine afternoon in May perhaps six to eight birds of various species will fall victim to the predator's clever disguise. 

No elaborate thanks for my help, please. I am rewarded enough in visualizing the look of astonishment on your teacher's face when she realizes that you've seen through her little ruse.... 

4-22-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie:

I am the only boy in 5th grade who cannot belch. My friends all can do it, and my best friend Boomer was even sent to the principal's office he can do it so loud. Some of the girls can even do it! Is there hope for me?

-- Silent in Silesia

Dear Silent:

Years ago this condition, known as eructale dysfunction, was something a preadolescent boy would just have to live with and hope he would grow out of. Today, I'm happy to say, there are medications that will relieve your problem and allow you to perform with the best of them. It's called Viaguurp®, from the Pfizzr! Company, and you can get it with a prescription at any drug store. 

Here are some of the glowing testimonials the company has received about the product:

"I thought I would never be able to hold my head up in public, but Viaguurp has changed all that. I noticed an immediate difference, and so did my home room teacher."

"I used to hang out at the beach, hoping some bully would kick sand in my face to distract my buddies so they wouldn't notice I couldn't get it up to barely audible, even. Now I can do it sometimes three or four times in a row. If I liked girls I'm sure they would be impressed."

"I was so embarrassed to be in the locker room during swimming, when some of the older boys would take advantage of the echo in the pool room to show off their enormous belches. Now I have nothing to fear, thanks to Viaguurp."

You may find it awkward to approach your parents to ask them about taking you to a doctor for a prescription, but it's well worth the temporary embarrassment. Whatever you do, don't buy any so-called "generic" eructor pills on the black market or from drug dealers. Many pills look alike, and you may find yourself with a handful of industrial-grade laxatives instead of what you need. 

4-23-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

You know how all of your fans treasure your every word, especially me, your biggest fan? I would like to ask you a personal favor-- would you review the enclosed treatment for a TV program I'm trying to sell to the networks or to cable? I think that in this age of reality programs, and things like "Weakest Link," the American viewing public would really eat it up. What's your opinion?

-- Starstruck in Staritsa

Dear Starstruck:

I honestly don't think the world is ready for "America's Least Wanted." First of all, we don't have all that many orphanages in this country, and secondly, trying to work up a situation comedy around a group of crippled and deformed children who are constantly rejected by prospective step-parents is going to be a hard sell, no matter how you slice it. 

Take the pilot episode, when Mr. and Mrs. Smith trip over young Tommy, the armless and legless pinhead whom the other mischievous inhabitants of St. Jude's have varnished bronze and used as a doorstop. Mr. Smith's comic riposte, "He could always play second base!" just falls flat, and there's only so much you can do with a laugh track. The same thing later, when Sister Goebbels lets the ants loose in Judy's iron lung with the comment that she's been itching to do that for years.

I did, however, enjoy young Bobby the Quadriplegic's attempts to commit suicide, always frustrated by his inability to maneuver a weapon. The final scene, where he has the vision of Jesus and accepts his condition, only to inadvertently place his electric wheelchair in reverse and go ass-backwards into the deep end of the therapy pool, was a real knee-slapper. Lulu the Elephant Girl is funny, too, especially the flashbacks to puberty when she's chased around the zoo by Jumbo, the aroused rogue male pachyderm. 

What I suggest you do is polish the treatment a bit. Try to make the children more adorable and fun-loving, and I strongly suggest getting rid of Little Larry the Leper. That breakfast table scene where the camera pans across the milk carton with the picture of Larry's leg under "Missing," was a bit much, even for broadcast TV.

4-24-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Hey, maybe you can help me. I gotta sell my '88 Toyota to pay off my bail bondsman, but so far I get no calls from the ads I put in the paper. You're a creative type-- what kind of ad can I run that will help me sell this thing? Enclosed is a picture and description. Thanks in advance.

-- Busted in Bustamante

Dear Busted:

Well, what you have to do is take some lessons from the world's greatest suppliers of dubious merchandise to not-very-bright customers. Here are several suggestions
:
---------------------------------------
~ THE PUBLISHER’S CLEARING HOUSE APPROACH:
“You may have already bought this car!!!!!”

~ THE FURNITURE OUTLET APPROACH:
“LOST OUR DRIVEWAY!! Must sell at or below our cost!! Profit is not a consideration!!!"

~ THE PERSONALS APPROACH:
“Into rust? This sedentary middle-aged Asiatic seeks soft-hearted owner with passionate need to revitalize and motivate. Must have own tools.”

~ TIMESHARING APPROACH:
“You and three other downscale families can option this urban condotransportium for only $650, AND have the chance to win a 50-inch color TV carton!”

~ AUDUBON SOCIETY APPROACH:
“Only $650 will rid the neighborhood of this urban blight!”

~ THE FINE-PRINT APPROACH:
“FREE CAR!!!” (...with purchase of $650 ignition key)

~ THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER APPROACH:
“Di, Bigfoot, Marilyn, Elvis & JFK have all been spotted from this Japanese UFO magnet! Last visitation shocked 98-year-old grandfather into birth of alien quintuplets by Titanic survivor locked in attic for 90 years!”

~ THE LOTTERY APPROACH:
“Just scratch off the rust and you may have a winner!”
-----------------------------------------

Just give any of those a spin in your local shopper's giveaway paper and I'm sure the world will beat a path to the big grease spot outside your front door.... 

4-25-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

What on earth is a self-defining sentence? I have to define it in class tomorrow and I just don't feel like dealing with a dictionary tonight.

-- Indolent in Indianapolis

Dear Indolent:

Well, this is what we would call anencephalic at a meeting of the Synonym Club.

A self-defining sentence is one which is so obvious that it really has no need to exist. Here are a few examples.

1. This sentence has no punctuation period

2. This sentence has contains two verbs.

3. This sentence was in the past tense.

4. This sentence has cabbage six words.

5. This sentence no verb.

6. The whole point of this sentence is to make clear what the whole point of this sentence is.

4-26-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

After a life of comparative misery I suddenly have had happiness thrust unexpectedly upon me. Quite frankly I'm a bit uncomfortable with this new situation. Any pointers on how to deal with it? I called the local mental health clinic looking for a support group, but they just laughed at me. It wasn't a nice laugh, either.

-- Ecstatic in Ecbatana

Dear Ecstatic:

Well this is a bit off the unbeaten path, isn't it? I poked around amongst my usual contacts, but without much luck. 

Fortunately the good people at Crutch Press, America's leading vendor of self-help books, came through with a list that may give you some consolation and direction. You can obtain them direct from Crutch, or look in your local library's collection under the topic, "Emotional Cripples."

* "When Good Things Happen to Mediocre People" by Rabbi Pinchas Teitz. Case studies on how ordinary people overcame success, fame, wealth and beauty.

* "How Green Was My Money" by Llewellyn Richards. Inspirational novel about a young boy growing up in Beverly Hills long after the Depression. 

* "Stalking the Bluebird of Happiness" by Leo Bustalgia. Hands-on methods for attaining misery and alienation. 

* "Who Cut My Cheese?" by John Spencerson. Simple lessons in everyday depression. Scenarios for both work and home.

* "Sweating the Small Stuff" by Carl Richardson. Learning to overcome satisfaction, from the author of "Surprise Them with Suicide."

* "A Course in Miserable" Classic texbook on coping with good fortune, with specific exercises on developing a sense of existential futility.

* "Opting Out of Optimism" by Justin Paltry. How Scientology helped one man become poor, unpopular and subject to ridicule.

I suggest you try those for starters. If you still need help, try renting videos of early episodes of "Queen for a Day." 

4-27-2002   *A change of format because of a very special announcement*

It is with great pleasure that I announce that my two best friends in the world, Andrea "Ditty" Nicolaides and Ernie "Ernie" Jurick are getting married today. 

It seems like just the other day that I first met them in a Kinky Couples chat room and they persuaded me to get online and share my life experiences with the world. The rest, as they say, is herstory.

After exchanging their first tentative e-mails on April 30, 2000, they realized that there was something special about each other, and now, 13,036 e-mails later, they have finally decided to legally network themselves and their computers. Ernie gave up his palatial estate just down the street from Bill Gates in Bellevue, Washington, and crossed the country in a blizzard to settle in Johnson City, Tennessee, just down the street from the John Deere franchise and the Odd Fellows Hall. Ditty has lived in Johnson City for 25 years after she was expelled from a New Orleans convent after having smuggled the officers and crew of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz into her room for a weekend fling in 1977.

I know you will join me in wishing them all the best. I for one would have no reason to go on living if it weren't for them.... 

4-28-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I'm curious. What is meant by the term "fooling around"?

-- Fallacious in Falls Church

Dear Fallacious:

The term comes from the Middle Ages. After the invention of the Black Death in the 1340s entire villages and towns were wiped out. The disease was particularly cruel to village idiots and town fools. In some places there wasn't anyone to mock, insult and spit on for 100 versts (66.6 miles) in any direction. A crisis was building, as the remaining shreds of the population desperately needed someone to make fun of to distract them from the horrors of the plague. 

In 1358 the League of Itinerant Fools was founded in Kitzbühel, Austria by a compassionate group of Black-Footed Friars, who collected a number of village idiots, dressed them in motley garments and sent them out on a good-will tour of the decimated hamlets of Austria and Germany. This proved to be so popular that other religious groups in other countries followed suit, and soon there were fools traveling almost everywhere throughout the Holy Roman Empire.

Hence it became an in-joke whenever anyone inquired after the whereabouts of a missing member of a community or social group to claim that they had been recruited into one of these peripathetic [sic] teams. "Where's Euphonius?" someone would ask, "I haven't seen hide nor hair of him since Saint Swithin's Day forenoon."

"Oh, Euphonius," someone would reply, "well, after he was kicked in the head by the miller's mule he went plumb daft, and the Blackfoots sent him out fooling around in Bavaria." 

And so to this very day we refer to those who have been sent on the road to act like idiots in public as "fooling around." Or, more recently, as "dot-com evangelists."

4-29-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I have these really weird dreams. I wrote out the one I had last night in the hopes you could tell me what it means. 

-- Dreamweaver in Dresden

Dear Dreamweaver:

Well, this is certainly not your ordinary run-of-the-mill nighttime entertainment, now is it? Let me locate by copy of "Madame Lenora's Book of Dream Interpretation" and see what we can come up with....

The burning antelope represents desire, although the nun riding on its back wearing the Carmen Miranda fruit hat indicates childhood repression involving vegetation. The fact that they are chasing you naked through a forest of fettuccini is symbolic of gender identity conflicts, especially since the fettuccini is male and the parmesan cheese is female, reversing the usual dream identification. The parsley is subject to many interpretations in the literature, none of them particularly flattering.

The huge gorilla symbolizes a huge gorilla, particularly one that plays a steam calliope while balancing cantaloupes on its ears. The gigantic wave that washes everything away is overpowering emotion. The sperm whale that rescues you by seizing your ***** is, of course, too dirty to talk about in a public forum, and what it does to the mermaids indicates a profoundly psychotic state of mind for a cetacean, which are usually sexually unconflicted beasts with no interest in poultry.

After the flood, when you find yourself washed up in the Iowa cornfield with the corpse of the dead whale and the inflatable Pia Zadora doll suggests a conflict at the most fundamental level, especially when you use the gas station air pump set at 150psi to increase the size of her Britneys and she goes off with a bang that brings down a duck with a secret word which you pronounce and are immediately plunged into a vat of whipped cream with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and that awful Mr. Shalhoob from the old peoples' home stands on the rim of the vat throwing nectarines while making fun of the size of your digits as you frantically try to finish playing Chopin's "Mayonnaise in B Minor" before the woodchuck eats the sustain pedal.

I have no idea what all the umbrellas mean. Nor why SpongeBob Squarepants appears as the God of the Old Testament in drag riding a Harley and accompanied by tie-dyed chihuahuas on unicycles. Madame Lenora's book appears to fall short in many areas, and her disclaimer in the introduction states that it's to be used for entertainment purposes only. 

Consider talking to a mental health professional. I suggest a whole bunch of them....

4-30-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

My doctor prescribed a simple popular allergy medication for me. I made the mistake of reading the enclosed leaflet and discovered that I'm at risk for everything from strokes to birth defects to sudden meltdowns of my cerebral cortex! What gives? How can the FDA or whoever let these killer meds on the market?

-- Fearful in Febragaen

Dear Fearful:

Not to worry. All those scary words are what's called CYAisms in the legal trade-- strictly designed to cover every conceivable eventuality to discourage lawsuits. You'll see it spreading into other fields pretty soon, too. Like for instance, here's a warning label I spotted this afternoon:

"Discontinue use and call a physician or licensed qualified health care professional immediately if you experience any of the following symptoms: dizziness, severe headache, rapid and/or irregular heart beat, chest pain, shortness of breath, nausea, noticeable changes in behavior, psychotic episodes, amnesia, bleeding from the eyes or ears, loss of consciousness, increased blood pressure, sleeplessness, anxiety, acute paranoia, skin reactions, water loss, tingling sensations, tremors, convulsions, coma, cardiac arrest, cessation of brain activity or other similar symptoms."

It was on a box of tea bags. 

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