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8-1-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I have a homework question you can help me with so I don't have to do it. The question is: "What was the first novel ever written on a typewriter and who wrote it?" Please be creative, as I will get extra points.

-- Indolent in Indrapura

Dear Indolent:

Ah, if creativity is what you want, creativity is what you'll get....

--
An excellent report, I must say, simply oozing with creativity. Hand it in with pride, and be prepared for a surprise when your grade is announced.

8-2-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I've just returned from a trip to New York, where I was fortunate to get tickets to Edward Albee's new Pulitzer Prize winning play entitled "The Goat, or Who is Sylvia" which begins with the comical revelation that a successful architect (married with a son) is having a mid-life affair with a goat and descends into a introspective look at relationships and societal norms as he is made a pariah.

How do you think this play would be received in middle America?

--Capricious in Capistrano 

Dear Capricious:

I'm afraid it's been done. Several times, as a matter of fact, if you consider rural American theater as being within the definition of middle America.

You see, rural life being what it is, and the opportunities for temptation by a member of the same species highly improbable because of distance and logistics, it long ago became acceptable for farm-folk to take livestock as lovers. Rural playwrights, of course, treated these affairs as material worthy of artistic commentary, which is why we have such PulletSurprise-winning plays as the following:

"The Taming of the Sow" by Willie Shack Spur 

"A Sheep's Heart Named Desire" by William Tennessee 

"Mooing Becomes Electrifying" by Gene Oniel 

"The Untuppable Brown Molly" by Mare's Death Wilson 

"The Classy Menagerie" by William Tennessee 

"The Ass Man Cometh" by Gene Oniel 

"Six Characters in Search of an Aurochs" by U. Bran Granola 

"The Swine of Miss Jean Brodie" by Muriel Sparkle 

"Camel Lot" by Low Learner 

"The Odd Coupling" by Kneel Swinedominator 

"Piggymallion" by George Barnyard Sure 

"J. S. Wright's Superstud" by Andy & Lloyd Webber 

"Ram of La Mancha" by Miguel Certainties 

"The Vicuña Monologues" by Eve Estrogen 

...and, of course, the unforgettable classic, 

"My Fair Lassie" by Low Learner.

8-3-2002

A Camel's Lot Is Not A Happy One 

A Puzzle:
There was once an Arab sheik who had two sons who were not the sharpest scimitars in the palace armory, as it were. He loved playing jokes on them to watch their reaction. 

One day he told his two sons to race their camels to a distant city to see who would inherit his fortune. The rules stated that the one whose camel was slowest would be the winner.

The brothers, after wandering aimlessly for days, going slower and slower, finally ran across a wise man in the desert whom they ask for advice. After hearing the advice they jumped on their beasts and raced as fast as they could to the city. What did the wise man say to them?

The Answer:
The wise man took a look at their mounts and said: "Those aren't camels, you nudniks-- they're horses! Your old man set you up again. Now, if you're smart you'll get to the city as fast as you can, and by the time your father gets there you can say, 'Papa, neither camel was slower than the other, so we traded them both for these nifty horses. Some deal, hey, Pa?' and the old sheik your father will be so amused with his clever offspring that he will divide the fortune equally."

And so the brothers set off with great speed and light hearts, and did exactly what the wise man had recommended. As it came to pass the old sheik arrived in the city the following day. When heard the tale, proudly told to him by the brothers, he was so astounded at their unexpected cleverness that he suffered an apoplectic stroke and died on the spot. Lo! At the reading of the will it turned out that the wealthy sheik had indeed divided his fortune equally. Half went to build a new mosque in his honor and half went to build a home for superannuated dancing girls. 

The brothers sold their horses and emigrated to the USA, where they started an unsuccessful line of falafel pushcarts in the Bronx. When the old wise man in the desert heard the story he laughed so hard that he suffered an aneurism, fell into the campfire and was burned to ashes.

Moral I: A clever man will not bet all his money on a camel in a horse race.

Moral II: Anyone who expects simple answers to complex social questions from some old recluse who lives alone in the desert deserves exactly what he gets.

8-4-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I hear people using the expression "fritter," when they mean spending time pointlessly. I thought a fritter was a kind of fried dough thingy. What's the connection?

— Friar in Frisia

Dear Friar:

They are one and the same. Remember that, back in the frontier days, one just didn't decide to whip up a batch of munchies on the spur of the moment the way we do today. It took careful planning and a fearsome amount of work to prepare anything more than the traditional pork and beans or hoe-cakes. 

Fritters were especially time consuming, as they required the pioneer housewife to first locate a source of fritter material, then send one of the children out with an axe to whack off a few pounds of frit. The frit then had to be soaked in three changes of buffalo milk to leach out the aluminum salts, then pounded with a pool cue for an hour to tenderize it, then boiled in salted water with a touch of cognac until the skin peeled off. 

When the cook decided that the frit was neither going to deflate into uselessness nor swell up so large that the cauldron would be jammed and gunfire would be needed to reduce it to a submissive state, then, and only then could the pastry shells be thawed out, lined with aged, pressed okra as a bed for the frit, the frit minced, blanched, slivered and tucked into the okra, then the contents lovingly bathed in a mixture of ox extract and cream of pork tongues before being rolled up and plunged into a ramekin of hot buttered lard at precisely 368°F. for 3 minutes and 26 seconds. 

And remember that back in the pioneer days temperature could only be estimated by determining the angle of the sun and subtracting it from the cube root of the volume of rock salt that could be grasped in two fists. Each fritter had to be prepared individually— there were no automatic fry baskets like they have at McDonald's, let me assure you. The cooked fritters were placed on a linen doily on the warming shelf of the wood stove to keep warm. 

At last all was ready, the man of the house would come in from a hard day of plowing the sheep or overhauling the wellworks, take one look at the mound of golden, piping-hot, mouth-watering fritters and say, "I had it for lunch."

So you can see where the expression came from: a frontier housewife would ring up her neighbor after supper and complain that she had frittered her whole day away for nothing. She might also ask the neighbor lady to keep her eye out for any eligible young men passing through, as her husband had accidentally perished from multiple axe wounds just before dinner....

8-5-2002

The Tortoise, the Hare, the Contest and the Moral 

There was once a very vain tortoise who could not resist bragging. He would tell his swamp-creature friends about the killings he had made in the stock market, about his days of debauchery in Hollywood, and about his escapades as a CIA counterspy. The swamp creatures, who had heard it all many times before and were bored to tears, would sit there glassy-eyed and pass gas into the brackish, pond-scummed water.

One day a hare happened to pause nearby just as the tortoise was finishing his tale of winning an Olympic marathon. He promptly challenged the armored amphibian to a race. The tortoise, who dimly remembered hearing a story about this same kind of event when he was just a soft-shelled sprout, reluctantly agreed.

A ten-mile course was mapped out by the local eagle. On the big day the two contenders met on the highway shoulder, the hare thinking to himself that he had enough time to catch a nap along the route while he waited for the tortoise to catch up, while the tortoise kept trying to remember the details of the fable. He suspected that guile was involved, because it almost always was.

The signal was given, and the hare dashed off in a burst of speed, only to be hit by a sports car, his broken body flung into the bushes to the amazed delight of a family of coyotes, who weren't used to room service. The tortoise, who had barely set foot on the macadam when the accident occurred, paused, waiting for some comment on the part of the judges, at which point he was flattened by an eighteen-wheeler to the point where his own mother couldn't have told his plastron from his carapace.

The swamp creatures pondered the significance of all this for almost a minute before they resumed passing gas in the brackish, pond-scummed water.


Moral: The race is not always to the swift. Sometimes there isn't even a race at all. But a good moral will always find a home.

8-6-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

A bunch of us were sitting around after watching "Road to Perdition," and we got to talking about the importance of actors in the success or failure of a film. Do you think that the movie is stronger than the actor, or vice-versa?

- Cineaste in Cincinnati

Dear Cineaste: 

The actor is by far the most important. Just imagine a famous movie with a different actor or actress in the lead, and you'll see my point immediately.

For the sake of argument, let's take the pivotal point in "Gone with the Wind," immediately after the death of Melanie. Lets recap the scene:

After the death of Melanie, Scarlett comes to the realization that Ashley did really love Melanie after all and Scarlett has been wasting her time running after a man who doesn't love her. She realizes that she truly loves Rhett. Scarlett runs through the mist, back to the house she shares with Rhett. She plans to tell him that she loves him and wants him back. She comes into the house only to find Rhett packing, ready to leave. She confesses her love. Rhett tells her it's too late. Rhett turns and exits into the mist and out of Scarlett's life. Scarlett, distraught, turns back into the house and collapses on the stairs. 

Now, again, just for the sake of argument, let's replace Clark Gable with another actor of equal stature and watch the scene unfold:

SCARLETT runs to the door, pushes it open.

CAMERA DOLLIES TO door revealing RHETT, played by Woody Allen, seated by the window wearing a prayer shawl. He turns his head, looks at her. She walks to him. 

SCARLETT: Rhett...

RHETT: So come in, sit down. I'd offer you something to drink but all I have is Manishevitz, for company.

SCARLETT: Rhett... 

RHETT: Melanie - she's...

(SCARLETT nods) Well...that means I should probably send my funeral suit to the dry cleaners. I think it still has spots from the time when we took the parrot to be circumcised. Poor Melanie. She's the only completely kind person I ever knew, and she died anyway. It makes me wonder about the nature of God, and about all the time I spent in rabbinical school. Maybe mortuary science would have been a better career choice....

SCARLETT: She thought of everybody except herself. Why, her last words were about you. 

RHETT: Me? Me! What did she say?

SCARLETT: She said, "Be kind to Rabbi Butler. Not too much onions with his brisket. It gives him gas." 

RHETT: Did she say anything else? Anything involving a will, for example?

SCARLETT: She - she asked me to look after Ashley, too.

RHETT: It's so typical of her to think of her husband at a time like that! I suppose this means he gets the house, too.

RHETT starts packing.

SCARLETT: What are you doing? 

RHETT: I'm moving into the YMHA. With Ashley as landlord the first thing he'll do is raise the rent, and he'll refuse to paint.

SCARLETT: I don't want you to leave! Especially for the YMHA- you know how easy you pick up athlete's foot in public showers. The Feldmans up the street, they have a nice room, it looks out on the garden, we could have it for cheap, I'm sure.

RHETT: The Feldmans? Him with the cigar and the Lincoln? Her with the hair and those polyester lounging pajamas? {shudders} Leave us some dignity to remember in our declining years. With the Feldmans it would be living death with klezmer for background.

SCARLETT: Oh, Rhett, do listen to me. You must care. Melanie said you did.

RHETT: Melanie I could believe. What about Ashley Wilkes?

SCARLETT: I - I never really cared for Ashley.

RHETT: Nu? He gets the house, you get to wear the pants and be the baalbusteh for half the neighborhood. It sounds like an arrangement made in Heaven, you should only excuse the expression.

RHETT takes bag, starts for door. SCARLETT follows. 

RHETT: I tried everything. If you'd only met me halfway, like when I came back from rabbinical school. We could have lived in Brooklyn, Williamsburg section, nice. Instead you find an apartment over a pork store. For 6 years I couldn't take a deep breath. 

SCARLETT: Oh, but - but you were so nasty to the poor owner. 

RHETT: Nasty? Just one time I asked him not to play "Heinrich Himmler's Greatest Hits" on the Sabbath. He hit me with a bratwurst. I was ritually unclean until sundown.

SCARLETT: I wanted you to be happy. I wanted you desperately, but I didn't think you wanted me.

RHETT: I wanted you, but it was more platonic for me. It was enough for me just to shake hands, and afterwards we could share a cigarette. But I had needs too, you know. Here I was trying to think about God and you signed up for the Victoria's Secret 'Negligee of the Week' program. 

SCARLETT: Oh, Rhett. 

SCARLETT and RHETT go to door. RHETT gives her the prayer shawl.

SCARLETT: Not your prayer shawl! Is nothing sacred?

RHETT: It's not mine, it's Ashley's. I had to borrow it after you ironed mine set on "scorch" and I went to shul looking like something the Inquisition dragged in...

RHETT, followed by SCARLETT, leaves his rooms. SCARLETT catches his arm.

SCARLETT: Please. Please take me with you. 

RHETT: To the YMHA? Think of the scandal! 

SCARLETT: Rhett! If you go, where shall I go? What shall I do? 

RHETT: Frankly, my dear, I don't give a daven. 

--------- 
I think you can clearly see that a simple change of leading actor changes the meaning of the scene entirely. Now think about how Jerry Lewis would have played it. Need I say more?

8-7-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Do they let you have pets at Living Dead R Us? I have heard nowadays nursing homes are allowing their inmates to keep small animals, and I think you need a cat.

-- Felophile in Feldkirch

Dear Felophile:

There are about a dozen resident cats here, ranging from Humperdinck and PopsicleToes and SlapShot and Murfreesboro-- the warm, friendly indoor cats, to Lucifer, Spawn of Sheol, Nightstalker, Asmodeus, T2, Shoggoth, and The Nameless Evil One-- the feral outdoor cats who catch the basis of most of our meals here (our biggest kitchen expense is Yardkill Helper, which should give you some idea of the state of the cuisine).

Like all cats, the indoor ones have distinct personalities. SlapShot, for example, prefers to sleep on the emergency generator downstairs, which is the reason that several times a year she come up from the cellar looking like one of those hideous hairless Sphynx creatures- catdom's answer to the naked mole rat.

Humperdinck, on the other hand, prefers to hang around the nurses' station, especially when medications are being given out. He begs so cutely that you can't resist slipping him a Xanax or a bit of Oxycontin or morphine, after which he sleeps for 60 hours straight, awakening bleary-eyed and miscoordinated, barely able to find his way to the nurses' station for his next fix.

My favorite, I think, is Murfreesboro, who should have been named In-Sink-Erator. No, not because of his resemblance to a boy band member, but due to his prodigious appetite for leftovers. He works the kitchen area as a sort of feline pre-wash cycle. No food is safe around him; he's been known to totally consume a visitor's candy bar without disturbing the wrapper. 

I like him because he snores louder than anyone in the place, which keeps the night staff from drifting off and neglecting the flat-line alarms....

8-8-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

As I'm sure you're aware, Nietzsche wrote, "The metaphysical comfort— with which, I am suggesting even now, every true tragedy leaves us— that life is at the bottom of things, despite all the changes of appearances, indestructibly powerful and pleasurable— this comfort appears in incarnate clarity in the chorus of the satyrs, a chorus of natural beings who live ineradicably, as it were, behind all civilization and remain eternally the same, despite the changes of generations and of the history of nations."

So, what's THAT all about?

— Metaphysical in Methuen

Dear Metaphysical:

Keep in mind that Nietzsche, although one of the major influences on 20th century philosophy, was totally bonkers for the last 11 years of his life, as the statement you quoted proves beyond the shadow of a doubt. Not to mention that it was translated from the German, a language filled with words like "vergangenheitsbewältigung" and "stacheldrahtabriegelung," which have no equivalent in normal Earth languages. 

One of the big problems with German is that it's so easy to make up long new words that a person can be certifiably insane for years and still hold down a responsible job as an accountant or politician— okay, as an accountant, at any rate. So German philosophers and scholars are forever debating exactly when the break occurred in Nietzche's work, although most are convinced that the line "I am not a man I am dynamite," from "Ecce Homo" ("The Gay Science") marks a jumping-off place.

8-9-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I'm taking a job next week, and as part of my benefits package, I have to choose between stock options and 401K matching. What do you suggest?

- Nonfinancial in Nonpareil 

Dear Nonfinancial:

Given the performance of 401k plans over the last year, I'd say you're better off with the stock options. Even a small herd of Black Angus will show steady growth, barring outbreaks of hoof-and-mouth disease or rustlers. This will also qualify you for a piece of the President's new Agricultural Welfare program, which assures that taxpayers' money will be used to prop up meat prices to the point where most Americans can't afford it, and the poor will be thusly protected from nasty old Grade A Prime beef that's missing the growth hormones, gene splicing and antibiotics that make 100% American beef unimportable into civilized places like Europe.

8-11-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Got any suggestions for using cucumbers besides pickling and salads? I've got a bumper crop of 'em, and my family units are getting tired of eating them as a salad, and I don't do pickles.

-- Cucurbited in Cudahy

Dear Cucurbited:

My friends at The Cucumber Council suggest the following, from their new promotional booklet, "Cucumbers! They're Not Just for Breakfast Anymore."

Veggie Hot Dogs  
Grill medium-sized cucumbers till done. Pop into hot dog rolls, add mustard, onions, etc.

Pizzaettes
Slice large cucumber into disks. Place on cornmeal-dusted cookie sheet. Top with pizza sauce, pepperoni and mozzarella cheese. Bake until cheese it bubbly and brown.

Cucumber Splits
Replace the banana in this popular summertime treat with a fresh cucumber sliced lengthwise!

VegOreos
Surprise the kids with rich frosted creme filling between two cucumber slices. A taste sensation!

Mini-Frisbees
That's right, a large cucumber cut into thick disks is the perfect picnic diversion-- and it's environmentally friendly!

Skeet Cukes
Replacing clay pigeons with cucumbers produces a much more satisfying direct hit experience-- and it's environmentally friendly!

Gopher Rockets
Got gophers? Drop an M-80 into a hole, plug solidly with an appropriately-sized cucumber. Ends the problem and entertains the children on long summer days!

Cuba Cukes
Did you know that thoroughly dried cucumbers make an excellent smoke? Mild, easy on the draw, and high in Vitamin C, too!

8-12-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I've got a trivia question for you. What was the first toy ever advertised on television?

-- Videophile in Vidalia

Dear Videophile:

Easy one. "Felix the Cat." His image was the first one successfully transmitted by Redbone's own Philo T. Farnsworth in 1927.

Since Mr. Farnsworth had the only receiver as well as the only transmitter, he had an audience share of 100, a feat which has never been duplicated. And when his daughter Lucinda saw the image of Felix on the screen, she immediately threw a tantrum until he bought her one of her very own, which accounts for a 1:1 viewer:purchase ratio, another feat which has never been duplicated with modern advertising. 

Farnsworth perfected his invention during most of 1928 and '29, and was prepared to astound the world with the perfect entertainment/advertising medium at an exposition in Madison Square Garden on November 3, 1929. The exposition was unfortunately cancelled due to falling stockbrokers in the downtown area.

Undeterred, Farnsworth used his savings to start a manufacturing company, and by Christmas of 1929 the first "Farnsworths" were rolling off the assembly line. Alas, the fickle public's attention had been captured by the even newerfangled home computer, and Apples were being sold on every streetcorner. Farnsworth poured the rest of his money into the development of color and surround sound, but soon went blind from hours of watching TV too close, just as his mother had warned him about. His later years were spent trying to perfect moving Braille.  

8-13-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Why is a portrait sculpture called a *bust*?

--Chippy in Chappaqua 

Dear Chippy:

The first portrait sculptures were done by Myron Discobolus for his gift shop, "Practically Praxiteles," which supplied the tourist trade in 4th century Athens. He employed several cheap chiselers to whack out fast copies of famous sculptures for the rubes who came from the hinterlands and wouldn't know Pheidias from Phædippides if they bumped into them on the street.

Although legitimate artists scorned his work— "He puts the crap in Acrapolis," is how Vince de Milo put it— Myron made a great deal of money and was soon able to afford larger quarters for his workshop. Wanting to make a memorable impression and create an unmistakable business sign for his shop, he paid the courtesan Luxos— who was renowned for her unusually large "amphorae"— to sit for a portrait sculpture, which he placed high above the entrance. 

The city fathers were irate to see such a generously-endowed call-girl used as a billboard, but, as the Greeks had a much healthier attitude toward nudity than, say, Methodists, they accepted a bribe to look the other way. So for many years thereafter out-of-towners looking for souvenirs would be sure to ask for the shop with the "great-jugged one" above the door. Soon the word for "portrait sculpture" and "bust" became synonymous.

8-14-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I have a new game that I recently thought of. It is played on a frisbee golf course but you use flattened beer cans instead of frisbees. Each player starts off with an 18 pack of 12 oz beers (no 16 oz or Fosters cans allowed!) Each player kills a beer at the first tee, flattens the can as best as he can and sails the flat can toward the hole which is of course a recycling trash can. Same thing at each successive hole.

This game is a natural, since they now sell 18-packs of beer. I believe this new game has real possibilities. I bet one of those portable toilet companies would love to sponsor a pro circuit since their facilities would be required at every other hole at least.

Think it would fly?

-- Inventive Imbiber in Indianapolis

Dear Inventive:

Given what's available on TV these days, I'm sure you have a winner here. Maybe the winner could set himself on fire for an extra ratings boost....

8-15-2002

The Portraitless Dorian Gray

Once upon a time in Nowhere, a prosperous community not far from Redbone in the heart of Arkansas, there lived a young man who fancied himself an artist. His family sold his other siblings into bondage in order to pay his way through art school, and he had sold his parents into bondage in order to finance a year abroad studying at the Louvre in Paris.

On the day that he returned from this sabbatical he was met at the train station by the mayor and the brass band of the Nowhere fire department. The mayor's wife made a flowery speech in which she expressed the hope that the young artist would "put Nowhere on the map" with his artistry. There was great applause, and the bars stayed open past curfew that night so that well-wishers could toast its returned son.

That very evening the artist set to work stretching and preparing a canvas for his chef d'oeuvre. The next morning at cockcrow, while the northern light was still coming from the right direction, he began work on a frame for the painting, for, he thought, the frame is father to the artwork, as a father is parent to the child, n'est-ce pas?. He sent to New York and Boston for the proper exotic woods, and spent months curing it and preparing the glue size that would embrace the gold leaf, preserving the glory of his painting down through the ages. After many weeks of ritual purification he set about carving the base of the frame.  Two years later he started work on the intermediary layer, and five years after that he commenced the final, or decorative work. On the twelfth anniversary of his arrival back in Nowhere he began the application of gold leaf, one square millimeter at a time. 

At the age of sixty he passed away from acute gold poisoning, complicated by heartbreak and goldbeater's elbow. People came from leagues around to view the magnificent frame, twelve feet wide and seven and a half feet tall. It was set at the head of his coffin, where it set off the canvas, which had never received so much as a speck of paint.

----------- 
Moral: To accomplish great works it is sometimes necessary to get off the pot.

8-16-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Aunt Nettie, what do you think of sex over 70? Is it worth the chance of a coronary? I assure you, you little minx, this a question, not an offer.

-- Frisky in Frieberg

Dear Frisky:

Let me be perfectly clear about this. No form of carnal gratification is safe in a moving vehicle, regardless of the speed!

---
Ref:  "Unsafe at Any Speed"  Masters & Johnson, London & Bombay, 1981

8-17-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

All of my daylilies are turning yellow this year. Is this a delayed reaction to the 9-11 tragedy or could it be an iron deficiency? Please hurry!

-- Wilting in Williamsburg 

Dear Wilting:

Unless memory fails me (as it so often has), I believe daylilies are *supposed* to be yellow. Are you sure you're not the one suffering from an affliction? Perhaps iron deficiency, one of the symptoms of which is chromatic anomalies of the visual cortex? 

Take this test: look at your garden. Is the grass green or violet? Are the African violets African chartreuses? Are the roses any color but rose? If so, you may be suffering from what we doctors call "iron deficiency anemia," or Hogbladder's Narcosis. There is no cure. Liberal applications of hashish to the affected parts may alleviate the symptoms. And even if they don't, you won't care, because that violet grass is groovy, man....

8-18-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

My elderly aunt uses the expression "Jumping Jehoshaphat!" all the time, I think it's when she's surprised or amazed at something. I've never heard the expression before. Any idea what it means?

-- Caregiver in Careggi 

Dear Caregiver:

That's an expression I haven't heard in a long, long time. Oddly enough it originated right here in Redbone, as so many things have.

Jehoshaphat Jereboam Mudplunger was one of the greatest track and field enthusiasts Redbone ever produced. Even in high school he was bettering Olympic records in the long jump, and there was high hopes for him if the nation had ever started up a professional long jump franchise. Unfortunately his career went down the tubes because of the Great Depression, and Jehoshaphat wound up jumping for nickels on street corners in Little Rock, where he was discovered by a recruiter for the 1936 Olympics, which was to be held in Berlin that year, hosted by Alois Schickelgruber, an Austrian wallpaper mechanic who, through great diligence and hard work, had risen to the head of the German Third Reich Olympics committee, the  HeustundFlingunRunnaroundtudSchwimDiveWaterpolo-
ActivitgeKompetitioningUnternazionaleGevartikin.

Young Jehoshaphat swore that he would bring glory to Redbone and the US of A, and he practiced like a madman, until he could jump and stay up in the air so long and travel so far that his trainers needed a radio beacon to find where he had landed.

At last his time came, and, after a terrible Atlantic crossing and a tedious train ride, he arrived in Berlin and astounded the SportzNeusGereportenzerHerren with his astounding practice jumps. The German competitors were extremely nervous, since they had been assured that betraying the Fatherland by losing would get them a one-way ticket to a Polish training camp, no luggage needed.

The fateful afternoon arrived, and Jehoshaphat watched his competitors with a bemused look on his face. When it was his turn he took a deep breath, cried out "This one's for Uncle Sam and the prettiest gal in Redbone, Arkansas," and flung himself into a fling that has gone down in Olympic history. 

... or would have, except that, by putting every ounce of energy he could dredge up into that mighty jump, he sailed clear over the track, over Leni Riefensthal's astonished camera crew, over Jesse Owens' separate-but-equal tar paper athlete's trailer, over the massed dignitaries from all over the world, over Herr Schickelgruber's tousled forelock, and smack into the outstretched claws and beak of a Nazi eagle high atop the Gothic proscenium arch over Der Fuhrer's box seat. (The Fuhrer was the one who coined the phrase "Jumping Jehoshaphat!" which was caught by an open microphone and broadcast 'round the world.)

There he hung, dead and impaled, while the judges fought over the certification of his jump. It was finally decided that his attempt remained incomplete, since he never touched the ground as a living man, and dead men were by their very nature barred from competition. The Guinness Record Book still lists his name in the Track & Field section, under the heading, "The Man Who Never Touched Down."

In the intervening years I have often wondered how history might have been altered if I, the prettiest gal in Redbone, hadn't asked him to bring me back the gold.... <sniff!> 

8-19-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Would you settle a bet for us? We've agreed not to go online to check this out ourselves, so your answer will be the tie-breaker. The question is: What river did convicts go "up the river" to if their destination was Sing Sing?

-- Felonious in Feltham 

Dear Felonious: 

Not a river, precisely, it was Schilt's Creek, which apparently ran much stronger when the state penitentiary at Ossining was opened in 1829, so that the appellation "river" may have been accurately applied back then.

We have another expression inspired by the same location. Back when corporal punishment was the rule of the day at penal institutions, incoming prisoners were expected to bring a paddle along with them for disciplinary purposes, much as fraternity pledges do today. Woe betide the prisoner who showed up without one! He was immediately flung into "the Hole" and expected to carve a paddle out of leftover food scraps, using only his teeth. Hence the expression "to be up Schilt's Creek without a paddle," meant that one was in dire circumstances indeed.

Another etymological note: paddleless prisoners in "the Hole" who wore their teeth down to nubs attempting to carve a paddle were often pardoned on humanitarian grounds, by demonstrating the condition of their edentulous gums to an appeals board. It's from this custom that we derive the expression "to escape by the skin of [originally 'over'] one's [missing] teeth.

8-20-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Why is it that we see women (hardly ever a man) with really huge derrieres? I mean, I have seen some fat-bottomed girls at the mall who were mostly normal everywhere else, but who were packing a really ponderous posterior. When most people become chunky monkeys they add the lard all over - how come some of these chubby chicks only get the corpulent caboose?

-- Slenderella in Sleidan

Dear Slenderella:

You know, I used to be secretly puzzled and amused by the same thing until I read an article in the New England Ladies' Home Journal of Medicine which changed my opinion of these unfortunate women completely. You see, several alert physicians have noticed an unusual connection between cubic-yardage cheeks and weight. It turns out that the bigger the butt, the lighter the weight- exactly the opposite of what you'd expect.

The answer to the conundrum was discovered at the Holda-Mayo Weight Loss Clinic in Sagamore, Michigan. They studied a volunteer who had a hind end like the Hindenburg- to the point where she had to have her jeans made at the Ringling Bros. tent fabrication facility in Winter Haven, Florida- yet who weighed only 45 pounds. 

Scientists discovered that her bountiful buttocks were not composed of fat at all, but were instead spongy storage spaces filled with pure hydrogen! The condition now has a name: it's called "Fuel Cellulite," and it has attracted the attention of several auto companies and the Goodyear blimp people. If it's caused by a simple genetic modification, it may soon be possible for each and every one of us to be our own power source, although it would mark the end of the fashion industry as we know it, and would force the radical redesign of airplane and theater seating.

There are some drawbacks, of course. It turns out that the leading cause of death among women thus afflicted is spontaneous combustion. But I'm sure with sufficient research this danger will be overcome, and America's fuel problem will be solved forever!

8-21-2002

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Here's a big problem I hope you can help me with. You see, last week I was going down the stairs from the back deck to water the nasturtiums because of the hot weather we've been having when I slipped on the wet grass and landed hard on one of my garden gnomes ("Grumpy"). I wasn't hurt much- only my pride, as they say, ha ha!-- but a couple of days later I had this enormous bruise on my left buttock.

That didn't bother me much either until I went to the YMCA for my weekly swim. A lot of the guys started commenting on the huge bruise, and then somebody pointed out that it looked exactly like the head of Jesus Christ! Well, I was a bit put out, especially when somebody sneaked a Polaroid of it and posted copies of it on the bulletin board, after which somebody else put it out on the Internet.

All of a sudden I started getting these calls at all hours of the day and night from people wanting me to pray for them and calling me the Chosen One. Then they started showing up at my apartment, standing in the parking lot lighting candles and praying and wanting me to vouchsafe (I had to look that up) unto them a view of the "miracle." At first I ignored them, but when they started rolling the paralytics into the parking lot the superintendent called the owner, who said I should give them whatever they wanted to clear the parking lot.

So that's when I began mooning the faithful. They were beside themselves with joy, and a couple of people threw away their crutches and tottered a couple of steps (I had to pay for the rose bush one of them fell into). So anyway, this all got the newspapers and the TV station involved, and the next night when I mooned the faithful they got it in pictures and on tape, and the next day I couldn't go to work I was so embarrassed. Then the police vice squad showed up and arrested me for committing a lewd act in public, plus indecent behavior and exposing myself to minors for purposes of carnal gratification, since a lot of the faithful had started dragging their kids to the parking lot. 

When my boss heard this he fired me from the 7-Eleven. Then some other agency put Known Sex Offender posters up in my apartment house, so I got kicked out and couldn't find another place to live. A couple of the faithful said that they would go away if I would give them some color photocopies of the big bruise on my butt, but when I tried to do that the manager there threw me out saying that I had the wrong idea of what "Kinko's" stood for. At last I found a Serv-Ur-Self copy place in a seedy part of town and used the last of my money to make 34 eleven-by-seventeen color copies of my butt, but all that got me was arrested again for possession of obscene materials with intent to distribute, with an aggravated charge of distribution to minors.

I couldn't make bail, of course, so they put me in the local jailhouse, and sure enough the faithful found out where I was and followed me and began bringing their paralytics into the Public Safety Building parking lot and begging me to vouchsafe unto them the miracle again. Fortunately the cells all have safety glass instead of bars, so I was able to vouchsafe them for about an hour until one of the cops noticed what was going on and they put me in what they call the Tank, which I think was a good thing since my cellmate Bruce was starting to look at me funny, and I think he might have wanted to vouchsafe me as well, possibly later in the showers.

Now, I hear that the faithful are still out in the parking lot, and the police are getting annoyed and threatening to use tear gas for crowd control, except that might kill off some of the paralytics or endanger some kids. Worse yet, the bruise is starting to fade, and the faithful are afraid that it means the End of the World when it's gone completely.

Last night a couple of guys in dark suits who may or may not have worked for the Vatican got a visitor's pass and they talked to me, and I showed them the bruise, and then they made me an offer. They'd pay my fines, wipe out my police record, get me a secure government job and a new car if I let them have my left buttock. I think they want to pickle it or something to stave off the Apocalypse, or maybe start a shrine. It would be done in a hospital, so there's no danger of infection.

I think my question is obvious. Please hurry up with your answer, as they're getting impatient.

- Iconic in Ionia 

Dear Iconic:

I checked with my experts in this area, and they said it's not a good idea to water nasturtiums in hot and humid weather, as it leads to leaf blight. They also suggested adding a layer of peat moss around the roots and spraying for aphids, just to be on the safe side.

MUSEUM OF
DEPRESSIONIST ART

GALLERY OF
THE UNIDENTIFIABLE