1-2-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie:

When do you take your Xmas decorations down?

--Illuminated in Illyria

 
1-3-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Charles E. Weller is best known for a single sentence he created. What is it?

--Puzzled in Pasadena

Judge Weller was the first to condemn a hardened criminal to sequential life sentences. Although he was mocked at the time, his penological theory was soundly vindicated in 1921, when Lester "Mad Dog" Rincelemeyer was successfully reincarnated and immediately moved to a secure nursery to begin serving his second life term. Rincelmeyer died for the second time in 1988, of chronic neglect. His last word was "Finally!"

His second life is a sad, sad story. You might enjoy his autobiography, "Outside is Not a Place" Folsom Prison Press (Folsom & Bombay, 1982). Rincelmeyer was never able to convince the parole board that he was a changed man. All his life he had the feeling he was destined to become an Olympic gold medalist in the 5-man bobsled category if he could only get out. His faith in his destiny never wavered, even after the head of the International Olympic Commission wrote to tell him there was no such category. He was more pitied than condemned for his delusion, however, especially on the rare snowy day when he would stare out the barred windows for hours on end making wwwwooosssssshhhhhhhing noises. Over the years he even managed to secretly construct a 5-man bobsled, made entirely of misspelled or defective vanity license plates. It was found in his cell after only his death. The warden was so moved that he added a charge of misuse of state property, to be applied to Rincelmeyer's estate.

 
1-4-1004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

A trick question to tickle your declining intellect, Nettie. What three-letter, one-syllable word becomes a three-syllable word by adding one letter to the end of it?

--Lingual in Linguini

Hmmmm.... In which language? You have to specify because, while such a word would be rare in, say, English, it would be extremely common in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia.

For example, the single-syllable verb "eso," meaning "to gather or distribute dung," has a wide variety of meanings and pronunciations depending on which qualitative letter is added as a suffix.

"Esot," the subjective jubilant form of the verb, when pronounced "ay-sa-oot," by a farmer would mean "I am off to gather dung, tra-laa." Whereas the adverse subjunctive "esof," pronounced "ee-so-oof," by a night-soil collector means, "I am off to gather dung reluctantly," and "esoh," pronounced "ee-su-och," means, "I am responsible for distributing dung," when spoken by a fertilizer salesman.

The related word "esoh," although spelled the same, is pronounced "ee-su-yuk," and is best translated as "Yes, I *am* a spin doctor for President Bush. How did you know? The dung? Ah, I see. How much would you like?"

 
1-5-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Where did German chocolate come about?

--Hans in Feetz

Well, Bavaria in sunny southwestern Germany has the largest cocoa plantations, although most of the actual processing is done in the Czech Republic these days due to the lower labor costs there.

The association of Germany with chocolate came about in a curious way. In 1722 the Hapsburg monarch Charles VI was visiting Tenochtitlán in Mexico, part of his duties as Holy Roaming Emperor. He was introduced to the bitter Aztec beverage during a supermarket ribbon-cutting over which he was presiding. After gagging down a swallow of the bitter brew, he asked the Mexican trade representative what it was called. The trade rep, knowing no German at all, answered what he thought was the Emperor's inquiry by saying "t'ch'a-a-khol-hät," which is Aztec for "You have to add lots of sugar to make it drinkable," demonstrating by adding several heaping teaspoons to the Emperor's cup.

Charles "The Sixth" Hapsburg was nobody's fool, and while he pretended a mild official monarchic interest in the sucrose-fortified drink, his mind was working frantically. At last he had a solution to Bavaria's chronic sugar surplus! Lack of proper agricultural policies in Bavaria caused its sugar plantations to chronically overproduce. The state had whole warehouses full of the sweet stuff, which was bought up by the government as a last resort.

Charles made sure that one of his agents in Mexico had the resources to surreptitiously buy up a hundred thousand cocoa seedlings and have them shipped overnight express to Bavaria. By royal ukase he ordered the unhappy and heavily subsidized sugar growers to devote one-half their plantations to the new crop. A year later he introduced German "chocolate" at the Parisian World's Fair, and created a sensation. The rest is history.
-------------
Ref: "Hot, Sweet and Sticky: How Germany Cornered the World Chocolate Market, 1723-1848" by Maxmillian Baker. American Dentistry Association Press (London & Bombay, 1928)
 

 
1-7-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Why do police in movies "taste" cocaine?

--Dazed in Deusenberg

Because ingesting cocaine provides a faster, more powerful high. The purer the drug, the more intense it is. So the police each have to have a taste to determine how pure it is. Then the District Attorney's office has to verify the purity, as does the judge, the bailiffs and the rest of the courthouse legal staff. Some of it is sent over to the public defender's office so the staff there can verify the purity. Then the police verify it one more time before the case is dismissed for lack of evidence.

In major cocaine busts the sampling sometimes continues through the appellate divisions and all the way up to the Supreme Court. After the record 1998 80-ton Colombian cocaine seizure the Supreme Court's decisions began to show the stress of so much tasting. One read in part: "We find the defendant to be one hell of a swell guy regardless of whatever it is he's supposed to have done, and we suggest he be sent right back to Colombia to score some more of this primo junk. We have ordered the Treasury and the US Mint to run off sufficient $100 bills for the purpose, and the military will provide an escort." The decision was signed "Trixie," with a little heart dotting the "I."

 
1-8-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Where did the word "vitamin" come from?

--Supplemented in Suppan

From the two Etruscan words "vita," meaning pellet, and "min" meaning "expensive." The Etruscans were the first over-the-counter pharmaceutical moguls, and their vita-mins sold like hopcakes, which they also invented, along with advertising.

Here for your edification are some original Etruscan vita-min ads:¹
 

Etruscan pharmaceutical advertising is believed to have reached its peak with the brilliant campaign, "How do you spell relief? E-P-H-N-U-K'-T."

Shortly thereafter the Etruscan civilization died out, as Ephnuk't's Vita-Power Panacea Pills were compounded mainly of arsenic and cyanide....
—————————-

¹ My translation, based on the book "Wet Clay Wordsmiths: 6th Century Etruscan Advertising Copy" by Mortmain Ogilvy. Brick Books, Ltd (London & Bombay, 1921)

² This is a literal translation. Humans do not normally have gasters, although ants do. It may have been an Etruscan figure of speech, the way we will advise someone to get his "ass in gear," knowing full well that there are no synchromesh components in the glutei maximi.
 

 
1-9-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Why do you get lemon served with your fish?

--Limey in Limehouse

Ah, now there's an interesting bit of history. You see, years ago the fish supply was erratic, and spoilage in the days before refrigeration made each fish dish a roll of the dice, so to speak. At large banquets it was a virtual certainty that some of the guests would be served fish that were long past their sell-by date. In Shakespeare's times it was permissible for a dinner guest to stand up and declaim:

In politer times, this was out of the question. By the Victorian Era in Britain, when politeness was at its acme and giving offense an offense unto itself, a disappointed diner had to either grin and bear it or subtly push his fish dish away and hope that the host didn't notice. This led to the death of some guests and a fair number of duels if the host saw the furtive slipping of a Dover sole under the table decorations. It was then decided to give each guest a lemon along with his fish. In the event that the finnan haddie or poached sea bass was, as they put it delicately, long time no sea, all the diner had to do was silently hold up his lemon and the dish would be quickly and unobtrusively replaced by a servant. In this age of refrigeration the supplying of a lemon with a fish platter is a quaint anachronism. Yet even today we can see the influence of the dining custom in that a defective automobile or appliance is referred to as "a lemon."

 
1-10-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Who on earth was Laurentin Foozgoober, and why do they say such terrible things about him?

--Imperiled in Imperia

A story that has need of retelling, my child. You see, on December 7, 1894 the arch-villain Laurentin Foozgoober was born in Rerun, Texas. That was not his original name, however. His birth certificate reads "Benjamin 'Benny the Icepick' Anastasio, mother and father unknown," a unique example of a child being christened with an alias, which gives you some idea of the depths of degradation into which he was born. He was sent to the Rerun Orphanage for the Socially Short-Changed after his mother denied having given birth to him, insisting to officials that she had only been in the hospital to visit a sick relative whom she refused to identify on the grounds of medical privacy. Since the only other patient in the tiny Rerun Hospital at the time was an elderly Chinese man, police suspected that she was lying about the birth and the relative, but could never prove anything beyond reasonable doubt.

Young Benjamin quickly learned the essential skills of any fin-de-siècle orphan-- lock-picking, petty theft, recreational sodomy and incidental vandalism. Before leaving the orphanage at age 18 he took a degree in extortion, which gave him the skills he needed to set up San Francisco's first Nob Hill protection racket. He legally changed his name to Laurentin Foozgoober at the age of 20, a name which he thought was more intimidating. He hired cronies, button men, molls and enforcers by running ads in the San Francisco Chronicle, specifying that he wanted cultured, college-educated men and women, and soon had a cadre of hardened sophisticates who would think nothing of bringing disgrace to their victims by forcing them to wear white after Labor Day or ordering claret as an accompaniment to squab. One Nob Hill socialite threw himself into San Francisco Bay on discovering that his socks didn't match and his ascot had been tied as a "granny" instead of a four-in-hand.

Foozgoober ruled the criminal roost, becoming so wealthy from his ill-gotten gains that at one point he hired The Big Four - Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker-- to simonize his Pierce-Arrow, then berated them publicly for cutting corners on the third coat. Like other rich men of the era he sent his clothes to China to be laundered, which is why for 6 months of the year he wore a blanket whenever he went out in public. He was very fond of the actress Lillian Russell, and one time had her Pekingese lapdog gold-plated as a token of his affection. He also bought the young Mae West the state of Nevada after she "showed him a good time" in 1915. The pinnacle of his success came in 1947, when the Random House Unabridged Dictionary added "foozgoobered" to its newest edition as a synonym for "being flummoxed or hornswoggled with malice aforethought."

However, Foozgoober, like all miscreants, finally paid the ultimate price, cut down at the age of 103 in a Jacuzzi filled with champagne and chorus girls at his villa on the Riviera. People are still searching for a moral in his tragic end, but without much luck.
 

 
1-11-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Is there such a thing as Chinese rock-and-roll?

Hsein in Hschenectady

Oh, my, yes. Although it was later ruthlessly suppressed during the Cultural Revolution, rock-and-roll music flourished during the 1960s, dominated by the Fab Gang of Four and similar groups. Here's a sample, which later went on to climb the charts in the USA when translated and adjusted for the listening needs of the running dogs of capitalism:

Sichuan, summer in the paddy
Back of my neck getting burned and gritty
Bend down, isn't it so pretty
Doesn't seem to be a single weed in the paddy
All around, peasants looking China Red
Wading in the water, hotter than spiced carp head

But at night it's a different world
Go out and find a Party girl
Come on, come on, we'll denounce all night
Cool mountain breeze'll be all right.

And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the paddy, down in Sichuan
In the paddy, down in Sichuan...

Cool hut, evening in the paddy
Rice so fine, each plant holds a catty
Cool cat, looking for a kitty
Gonna cook it up for the citizens' committee
Fried cat, sizzling like a carp shop
Serve it upstairs, gonna meet you on the rooftop...

And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights
In the paddy, down in Sichuan
In the paddy, down in Sichuan...

~ from Sing Along with Chairman Mao
©1966, Cultural Revolution Karaoke, Ltd.

 
1-12-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

We're supposed to read this "Divine Comedy" thing by some Italian guy. I finished 4 pages and it's not the least bit funny. Why can't they assign us something up to date Italian-American, like "The Sopranos"?

--Underachiever in Underwood

Well, "La Divinia Commedia" is a lot like "The Sopranos" when you break it down to its basic plot structure. You see, Canegrande ("Big Dog") della Scala was Dante's patron at the time he wrote the Commedia. Like most members of the Italian crime families in Florence, della Scala attempted to elevate his social position by sponsoring an artist, musician or poet. He offered his protection to Durante ("Dante") Alighieri in exchange for what he called a "rip-roaring, two-fisted interpretation of Christian eschatology, post-Harrowing, told allegorically. In Italian." He also suggested that, unless Dante stretched it out to "a three-booker," he was likely to have his legs broken in a parking lot some night.

Dante tried to convince della Scala that his social standing would be vastly improved if the poet whipped up a nice Hell-Purgatory-Heaven incense-burner filled with compliments toward Italian nobility, the Church and the Pope, but his patron was having none of it, insisting on a comedy. "Lotsa yucks. Real breech-wetters. With lotsa babes and car chases," as Alighieri was to later recall. Della Scalla also reminded Dante of the fate of Marcello ("Big Pussy") Gatogrande, who was whacked after he had welched on a deal to provide a sestina and a matched set of sonatas based on classical themes for della Scalla's daughter's coming-out party.

So quick-witted Dante sold him on the "Divina Commedia" concept, and had it storyboarded by his friend Sandro "The Sandman" Botticelli, replete with ogres, demons, hot cherubs in filmy gowns, and of course, the car chases. Della Scalla ran it up the family flagpole and everybody saluted, so he gave Dante a cigar and told him to get his plume in gear. The rest is history. Specifically, History 303: Pre-Renaissance Italian Poetry. Professor Moltisanti. Room 811A.

Fortunately the Don della Scala was dead by the time the so-called "Comedy" was in the can and ready for prime time, although his son Paolo ("Paolo Noci") had him whacked anyway on general principles. His tomb, paid for by a repentant Paolo after he joined the Programma Federale Di Protezione Del Testimone, can be seen to this day in Bologna. It was Paolo himself who also added the touching inscription, "Un uomo che dorme con i pesci."

 
1-13-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Which blender is named after an orchestra leader?

--Osterizer in Ossining

The classic "Leopold Stokowski Mark V," produced by the House of Steinway in 1936 to commemorate the great conductor's leadership of the Philadelphia orchestra. Stokowski was instrumental, if you'll forgive the pun, in introducing a generation of children to classical music through the simple expedient of replacing the difficult-to-remember eight-tone Western music scale with simple blender settings: Stir, Grate, Mix, Chop, Blend, Whip, Purée and Liquefy.

Depression-era schools discovered that blenders were far cheaper than pianos, French horns and other instruments, and children took to them quickly, although marching bands had problems with the requisite extension cords, especially during close-order drill. The 1935 "Wisconsin Fight Song" performed on 128 massed blenders is still considered to be the pinnacle of marching band achievement.

Stokowski also arranged classical music pieces for the blender. Who could forget his haunting 1930 rendition of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, with its portent-filled opening notes: MIX MIX MIX, STIR... MIX MIX MIX, STIR..... Stokowski had a lighter side, though, and scored the Andrews Sisters rousing version of "Gimme Some Seafood, Mama," for their Carnegie Hall performance in 1938. He also produced the comic patter song, "Yes, We Have No Bananas, So Have a Hickory Daiquiri, Doc," to commemorate the end of Prohibition in 1933, although the credits do not list him due to ASCAP conflicts. He is, however, listed as being the first to use ice cubes in a blender in order to create the distinctive "shika-shika-shika" which was to become Carmen Miranda's signature sound style.

Stokowski died in 1977 when a blender full of napalm he was using to score Igor Stravinsky's "Firebird" Symphony exploded prematurely.

 
1-14-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I saw in the paper that today is the 200th Anniversary of the Great Pittsburgh Rain of Fishes. What's up with that?

--Puzzled in Pescador

Truly one of the most extraordinary events of the time. Around noon on Saturday, January 14, 1803, an unusual cloud formation was seen approaching Pittsburgh from the east over the mountains. A few minutes later the sky darkened ominously, then, slowly at first, but with increasing intensity, a variety of fish began falling from the clouds. At first the light pattering of minnows on the streets attracted the attention only of the local children and cats. Then smelts and catfish began pelting down with such force that umbrellas and awnings were shredded, and the citizenry ran for cover to the town's fort, thinking this was a particularly devious attack by the local Indians. Soon it was flounders, pike, salmon of several varieties, then a 2-minute burst of yellowfin tuna, which demolished most of the town before it tapered off and a rainbow was seen in the sky.

Well, as you can imagine the populace was vexed, and the Pittsburgh dry-cleaners did a land-office business. Even so, the place was almost uninhabitable until the following spring, and learnéd folks came from all over to marvel at the phenomenon. Much later a report was issued by the newly-established National Weather Service, which attributed it to swamp gas.

 
1-15-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Who is Søren Adams, and why does he have such a prominent place in the Gallery of American Inventors, only two lines down from Thomas Edison? I for one have never heard of the guy.

--Tinkerer Junior in Tinkham Junction

Oh sure, and what would American life be like today without the joy buzzer, that nifty gadget which transmits an electric-like shock to the unsuspecting handshaker? Søren S. Adams, a Danish immigrant, was a prolific inventor of pranks and novelties, allegedly patenting over 650 items which are still sold today by his factory, Adams Magic Manufacturing, (founded in 1906 as "The Cachoo Sneezing Powder Company"). In addition to sneeze powder and the Joy Buzzer®, he created the Dribble Glass®, the snakes-in-the-peanut-can joke, and the Whoopee Cushion®, all still being sold to people who confuse embarrassment with humor. Adams met an unfortunate end at the Bronx Zoo in 1933 when he attempted to liven up morose "Mongo the Killer Gorilla" with a joy buzzer. Surgeons in those days were unable to reattach limbs, and Adams died of blood loss and septicemia. The judge in probate court during the opening of his will was not amused when he opened the sealed envelope and discovered the documents had been dusted with itch powder.

 
1-16-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

What have some called the most important work of literary history and criticism ever published?

--Scholastic in Scholes

That would undoubtedly be the "Prologomenon to a Compendium of All Sentient Creative Thought" by 3-T¡¨¨°°³.

A member of the long-lived ¨¨°°³ people of R'ªªÑ in the Rigel Group of Hive Intelligences, 3-T¡ spent over 16,000 cycles (106,256 Terran years) compiling his vast work, which required him to learn upwards of a thousand methods of communicating, from the machine language ß-logosh to Zeta¹², which consists solely of nuances of the color green (490 to 570 nanometers cis-C).

As an amateur scholar, 3-T¡ was not bound by the formal rules of the intergalactic academic community, and his style is both lively and incisive. He did not hesitate to describe the Library of O, engraved on iron in a language consisting solely of the letters "O" and "O/o" as "...supremely boring," or the gas-bubble epic poem "Blurp!" of the Tvd'ian swamp-dwellers as "... turgid, and under certain atmospheric conditions, flammable."

The physical 3-T¡ perished in the Pholon supernova of 1.3.664.18GE. His memories are kept alive thanks to a grant from the Perseus Foundation of Y¥y.
----------
Ref: "Prologomenon to a Compendium of All Sentient Creative Thought" by 3-T¡¨¨°°³. (Casseopia & Boötes, 1.3.671.42 GE) 8.4 cubic petagigs. Free shipping through http://www.amazon.com until 9/15/8003 RGE.

 
1-17-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Does the Japanese bow have the same meaning as our Western custom of shaking hands?

--Formal in Fomalhaut

Not unless you compare it with the dreadfully complex Masonic or Odd Fellows Lodge handshake, where the thumb-touch-pinky-over-index-finger handshake has a completely different meaning from the second-knuckle-thumb-base-twice-ring-finger handshake. Unlike the simple bow, however, which varies only in degree, these ritual handshakes can cause complications. In 1889 an Odd Fellow met a 19th-degree Mason who was also a member of the International Order of the Exalted Woodchuck. The handshake they exchanged later resulted in duels, breach of promise lawsuits and eventually led to the assassination of the Grand Aardvark of the Revised Ottoman Empire, plunging all of Europe into war until 1926, when the Poobah of Panjandrum-Fandango settled differences with his ingenious invention of the triple-tap-crossover-pinky-thrust-ring-finger-lift handshake, which brought peace to the region until the Amputee Question ("Severed but Equal?") was raised in 1928 and became a major civil rights issue in the Diaspora of the Holy Roman Empire. Everyone remembers Marmot Luther King's emotional, "I have a hook," speech before the Fulminating Grand Lodge of the Honorable Muskrat in Toledo, Ohio, which completely revolutionized handshake theory and evolved into the present-day universally egalitarian high-five.

Oh, and there are additional bows in Japan which convey even subtler meanings, like the bobblehead 17-degree bow when one is uncertain of the rank of a stranger, or the 270-degree bow exhibited by certain members of the Japanese Cirque du Soleil.
---------
Refs:
"Bend it Like Benihana: Use of the Protractor in Japanese Politeness Rituals" by Hashimoto Yashihana (Tokyo & Bombay, 1953)
"Get a Grip: Extraordinary Handshakes of Late 19th and Early 20th Century American Secret Societies" by Castor Pollux (London & Bombay, 1971)

 
1-18-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Is it true that hummingbirds hitch rides on geese or other large birds?

--Ornithological in Oregon

It's a considerable problem, particularly along the main migration routes. Every truck stop seems to have hundreds of these diminutive would-be riders begging for transportation. Canada geese seem to be the most gullible victims, especially those from Quebec who are eager to work on their English so they can emigrate to Ontario or British Columbia. Imagine their surprise and disappointment when they discover that their passengers hum because they don't know the words!

The Office of Homegrown Security has issued bulletins about the risk of transporting hummingbirds across international borders. Some of the adult male birds have bright orange and red coloring, which can throw off detectors of the Martha Stewart National Panic Color Scheme. Only last week a ruby-throated hummingbird threw Dallas-Fort Worth airport into utter chaos, resulting in the shutting down of the entire operation, a declaration of martial law, and the shooting of several passengers who had broken into the food court as an warning to the others.

Some popular gathering places have resorted to posting conspicuous "No Hummers" signs on their premises, even though it means turning away potential customers who own outlandish converted military vehicles as status symbols.

 
1-19-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Today's question: What exactly is a "hush puppy"? Is it a dog or what?

--Breeder in Bremerton

In the ancient Kingdom of Scythia gold and silver were used only for jewelry and ornamentation. The official currency was the dog (Ð), which is why ancient banks smelled the way they did. Puppies were considered to be small change. For example, if you went to the market to stock up on rutabagas to make the national dish spzøkrðs for the Vermin Festival Potluck Supper, you might run up a tab of Ð2.30 (about 16¢ American in 1998 dollars). You would give the vendor three dogs (Ð3.00), and receive either three week-old puppies or one
3½-week-old puppy in change. Puppy coinage was inexact at best, represented by the yip (ÿ).

Certain goods sold in the marketplace were actually black market items, like dental floss, bumper stickers and queen-sized mattress covers, legal trade in which was restricted to the King's immediate family. For these items one paid the negotiated amount, then handed over a few extra puppies to keep the exchange from being reported to the authorities. Hence the term "hush puppies."

 
1-21-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Every day I read the "Today in History" bit in the local paper. There was nothing listed for today. Didn't anything ever happen on January 21?

--Reader in Redding

Not much apparently. All I could dig up in my copy of the "Universal Compendium of Notable Dates, 27,000 BCE - Present" was that on January 21 in 1836 Cyrus "Gumboot" McTavish, after a lifelong struggle, invented the mechanical potato, permanently ending hunger at the Broadmoor Asylum for the Chronically Insane.

Also on this day in 1703 the fabled Lost Kingdom of Chunk was established. Or maybe not. Chunk is believed to be in Nepal or Tibet, but it is such an insular society that no one is really sure. Perhaps it moves around. Nothing has been heard from Chunk since February 8th, 1704, when a Post Office clerk in Birmingham, England found an unfranked letter with the return address blacked out slid under the bars of his guichet. As it was unaddressed, he forwarded it to the Dead Letters Department on the left side of the counter, then, in the capacity of Acting Dead Letter Opener, took out the single sheet that was enclosed. Written in a hasty scrawl were the words, "Arrived Kngdm Chunk Jan 14. All's well so far, weather excellent, same the hotel, love to mother, Alex."

The identity of Alex has never been discovered, but careful research on the part of the Dead Letter Office revealed that the missive was indeed from Chunk, as it was written on stationery from a hotel there. In 1734 a subscription was raised to send an exploring party out looking for it, but they were never heard from again. Since that time no one has much cared about Chunk and its people, although Playboy has a standing offer of $50,000 for a nude centerfold of its Queen, should they have one. The Advocate has a matching offer for a nude centerfold of the King, and Michael Jackson has offered $100,000 if one of the younger Princes will spend the night at Neverland Ranch with him.

 
1-22-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

What famous American politician coined the phrase "lunatic fringe"?

--Independent in Independence

None did. It's a British expression from the late 1700s. You see, British insane asylums like St. Mary of Bethlehem in London (popularly known as "Bedlam") were at a loss as to how to occupy their patients' time and help them develop marketable skills and contribute to their own maintenance. The problem was that most forms of work involved tools of one sort or another (even sewing and knitting require needles), which the patients were prohibited from having for obvious reasons.

One day an attendant got the bright idea of showing several patients his mother's handmade lace, which was made by a process called tatting: simple or complex knotting in elaborate patterns which was done without any tools at all. Many of the patients quickly took to the process, and before long the hospital was able to sell lace trim and borders to visitors and local dressmaking shops. The quality varied greatly (we get the word "tawdry" from the contraction of "Saint Audrey," another asylum in the town of Ely in England which turned out a poorer quality lace).

It wasn't long before local wits began calling the product "lunatic's fringe," later shortened to the form we still use today. The association with extreme political and social views came from the use of the lace by social reformers, who bought and wore it to support the asylums. Soon it became customary to refer to a bombastic preacher or soapbox orator as "wearing his lunatic fringe," or "showing off his lunatic fringe." By the 19th century lunatic fringe became a synecdoche for activists holding unconventional views.
--------------
Cf. "Beyond the Fringe: Advances in Inmate Occupational Therapy in Nineteenth-Century Europe" by Jean-Martin Charcot de la Salpêtrière. Camisole Press (Broadmoor & Jubbulpore, 1922)

 
1-23-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Hey, I have another trick question for you: How fast can a kiwi fly?

--Hilarius in Hilo

The Kiwi Fly (Musca Actinidia), an endangered insect species found only on some isolated islands in the South Pacific, is renowned for its ability to abstain from food for prodigious lengths of time. Under laboratory conditions, one was able to fast for 5 years in a state of suspended animation or extreme boredom. Upon being presented with a few tempting morsels of rotted mango, its favorite food, it immediately revived and was apparently no worse for the experience, although it no longer trusted the researchers. There are tales of kiwi flies being released from a bead of amber in which they had become entrapped millions of years ago, but these stories have not been scientifically documented and are probably nothing more than tall tales.

There's an old pidgin English proverb which is popular among the Polynesian inhabitants of South Pacific atolls. When faced with an unanswerable question, they shrug and say, "How fast can a kiwi fly?" meaning that there are some questions which cannot be answered, like how a kiwi fly manages to fast as long as it does.¹ Both the kiwi fly and the human inhabitants who share these remote Pacific atolls are at risk from rising sea levels brought on by global warming. The Glub people of the island of Great Binch, which rises only a foot and a half above sea level and vanishes altogether during neap tides, has filed a request for emergency humanitarian assistance from the United Nations in the form of water wings, life preservers and inner tubes. PETV (People for the Ethical Treatment of Vermin) have already begun raising funds to have the remaining kiwi flies relocated to nearby Outer Bungstart Island in the event of a critical rise in sea levels. Donations may be made at their website, www.petv.org. Click on the "Don't Leave Our Flies Undone!" button, and thank you in advance.
-----
¹ "Fly-lore and Other Dipteric Sayings of South Pacific Sterno Drinkers and Lapsed Cannibals" by Muscatine Swatter, FRSF. Citronella Press (London & Bombay, 1981)

 
1-24-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Is there a future in professional Skee-ball®? I really gotta know, 'cause my parents want me to join the Army and I'm allergic to bullets and high explosives.

--Ballroller in Ballykissangel

From the boardwalk to the big time? Not quite, although it's probably not too far away. Fans of Skee-Ball are asking the International Olympic Committee to recognize the game as an official event, and are kicking off a global fundraiser today in the hope of raising $15 million to bribe the IOC decision-makers. Including Skee-Ball would bring the total number of Olympic games, sports, events, hobbies and diversions to 2,889. Plans are in the works to hold the games every year to allow sufficient time for all of them, and to merge the summer and winter games, and the newly added spring, fall and Native American summer games into a year-round advertising spectacular. For information or to buy a t-shirt and make a donation, contact the Skee-Ball Foundation at http://www.skeeball.com/. And best of luck with your career.

 
1-25-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I got a mailer from some travel place offering discount fares and lodging for "Whelk Wheek" in New Caledonia. Is this on the level, or is it some kind of scam?

--Voyager in Voyavoda

No, there really is a Whelk Wheek in New Caledonia, according to my back issues of National Geologic. This ancient festival harks back to the days when the New Jersey-shaped Pacific island was used as a French penal colony and whelks were the only food there was. Fortunately the prisoners were French, and thought that dining on mollusks was haute cuisine. They soon learned to distinguish the poisonous whelks from the non-poisonous ones by the simple expedient of forcing the weaker prisoners to try them first.

New Caledonia is famous for its erosion and forest fires. The island being naturally barren, the forests are imported from Canada in exchange for whelk jerky and conch shells, which Canadians use for money. The forests are burned each year to provide fuel for the Great Whelk Harvest & Barbe-à-queue, the only tourist attraction the island has going for it. Some of the wood is also spirited off by desperate natives, who build bonfires to send smoke signals in the hope of attracting a freighter which will take them to someplace else. Tourists, particularly American tourists with lots of travelers cheques and credit cards, are cautioned that New Caledonia's motto, "You Won't Be Able to Leave©" was not created by the board of tourism, but is a leftover from its prison colony days. Ransom is the chief industry, followed by cannibalism.

Curiously, New Caledonia has about 25% of the world's supply of nickels, due to an 1899 incident when a freighter hauling newly-stamped coins from the San Francisco mint was blown off-course during a typhoon and ended up beached on the island. Nickels are the island's currency now, at an exchange rate of one nickel to one-twentieth of a US dollar. The freighter is the only hotel, at least during low tide. For more information on Whelk Wheek go to http://www.newcaledonia.jp/home.htm WARNING: Clicking on the "English" link will drain your bank account, max out your credit cards and revise your will to make New Caledonia your sole beneficiary. They have to make a living somehow. God knows they're fed up with whelks....

 
1-26-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

What does "M&M®" on each piece actually stand for?

--Bloated in Blodgett

There's a long, strange tale behind that innocuous name. When Forrest "Gump" Mars was fighting in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939 in overtime), he discovered that his indiginous fellow soldiers carried with them nuggets of dark chocolate which had been dipped in melted sugar and allowed to dry, which made them easier to carry in the torrid Extramaduranese summers. The Spanish soldiers even had a saying about them. '¡Derriten en su boca, no en su mano!' they would cry out merrily while being strafed by Nazi Stukas. With his limited knowledge of Spanish, Forrest thought this phrase had sexual overtones and primly refused offers to try the confection. One day, however, while searching a dead soldier for cigarettes, he came across a handful of the confection. Famished, he tried one, and to his delight discovered that, verily, they melted in his mouth, not in his hand. Later he shared some with an ambulance driver who went on to write a classic novel about the candy, "A Farewell to Armance," the latter being a French chocolate which not only melted messily in the hand, but was known to spontaneously surrender to the Germans, much to the embarrassment of the soldiers who carried them.

After the war Mars returned by tramp steamer to the United States, where he devised machinery which would produce uniform pellets of sugar-coated chocolate. He added food coloring to the sugar glaze, and by 1941 he was ready to enter the market. He had planned to call his product "Pepitas Azúcar-cubierta del Chocolate," in honor of the source of his inspiration, but his advertising people ran the name up the flagpole and nobody saluted.

Besides, this was 1941 and Spain was firmly Fascist, so a Hispanic-sounding name was out.

The legal department feared that children, unaccustomed to the newfangled treat, might try to swallow a handful of them directly, thus creating a choking hazard. After much debate it was decided to stamp each piece with two "M"s with a lower-case "I" between them, which stood for "macerate in moderation," which Legal thought would get them off the hook in any product liability lawsuits. Legal also suggested enclosing an instruction manual and cautionary stickers in each bag.

Alas, during the production of the tiny die stamps that would print the phrase on each piece, a nearsighted sweatshop font carver mistook "in" for "and," so he efficiently replaced the three letters with an ampersand to save space. He was very proud of his engraved ampersands, and used them at every opportunity. Poor Forrest Mars, almost destitute after his advertising and legal bills had been paid, did not notice the error, so desperate was he to get his product to market. Finally in early December he was ready, and sent a trial order of one thousand bags to the Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii to test their consumer acceptance. The order unfortunately arrived on December 7th, when the US Navy was otherwise engaged.

Every cloud has a silver lining, however. Military commanders seized the candies for distribution as emergency rations to the troops, where they were extremely well received, especially after a clever GI discovered that a hundred pounds of them in the mouth of a howitzer made very effective grapeshot to use against "human wave" Japanese assaults. Those of the enemy who were only wounded would perish in a few days from diabetes. A big plus was that the candies tasted better than standard grapeshot, and came in more flavors.

Although Mars was later accused of war profiteering, he had amassed so much money that he was able to purchase several crucial Senators and Representatives, who not only had the charges thrown out of court, but beaten by police in a nearby alley. They also nominated Forrest for an American Freedom medal in 1948.

The inventor's only regret is that people referred to his creation as "M&Ms." To his dying day he kept trying to get the public to call them "Pepitas Azúcar-cubierta del Chocolate," to no avail. He died, a broken man, in 1999, not living long enough to see California declare itself a Spanish-speaking state, which would have warmed the cockles of his heart. Not so warm as to melt an M&M, however.

 
1-27-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

According to the calendar in the Congressional Record, this week is, among many other things, "the Annual Meeting of the Cheerleader Spell-Checker Team Assistants Association." Please tell me this is a joke. Wasn't Porcupine Awareness Month bad enough?

--Baffled in Banff

GIMME AN N...
GIMME A Q...
GIMME AN APOSTROPHE!

Yes, American football season has come and gone again, and that means tens of thousands of scantily-clad young maidens have been yelling out things for the fans to call back to them in loud, drunken, boisterous voices. Haven't you ever wondered how they know what to spell? These are blondes, remember.

Well, this week really is the Annual Meeting of the Cheerleader Spell-Checker Team Assistants Association, or CS-CTAA (pronounced "sistah"). They are the ones responsible for the accuracy of cheerleader calls, and for maintaining the definitive Lexicon of Cheerleading Calls (©2003 Echo Press, London & Mumbai. Wholesale to the trade only.)

On the agenda this year is the touchy question of diacritical marks. English is fairly free of tildes, accents graves, cedillas, breath-stops and ritual clicks, but growing diversity among football players and fans is putting pressure on cheerleaders to add a dieresis or circumflex or ![tok] where necessary for clarity and accuracy. Some West Coast teams have even been debating the political correctness of adding Mandarin pictographs to encourage Asian team participation, or whether the phonetic Romanization known as Pinyin would suffice. Cheerleading is apparently not just padded brassieres and pom-pons anymore....
 

 
1-28-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

Why did medieval people like beer so much? In all those medieval stories everybody is always knocking back the suds. Couldn't they get Coke?

--Fizzy in Fitzmaurice

Ah, the "Beer Decades," as they were later called. Why did they drink so much of it? Mostly it was peer pressure and the intensive advertising to youth which was permitted back in those days. The brewing industry's mission statement was, "Hook 'em young on the suds, they're our lifelong buds!"

Some of the classic beer ads of the medieval era have been preserved in psalters, hymnals and prayerbooks, the printing costs for which were usually paid for by brand advertising from brewers. For instance, in the Book of Kells is a two-page spread for a local Irish brand which reads: "Walk behind an ox all day? O'Reilly's floats the smell away!" And the Burnet Psalter has this consolation for the Dark Age peasant: "Life is more than shovelling horse pucky. A quart of Guinness and you might get lucky!"

Industry ads aimed at young peasants focused on the quality of life back then. A banner saved from a Bavarian tavern says it all:

"Poor you're Born
And Poor you'll Stay
Your Life is Misery,
Pain and Decay.
Your grandser's a serf,
And so's your pappy,
Your sons will be serfs
And grandsons unhappy.
Your *hovel* has mud walls,
Alas, this is true,
But *you* can get plastered
With enough of our brew!"

~ Translation courtesy of Dr Piels Gablinger, from his definitive study, "Das Rheingold: Beer Advertising in 12th-century Bavaria." Oktoberfest Press (London & Munich, 1977)

Youngsters and beer meant trouble, of course. Many is the tale of medieval youth on a bender, engaging in oxjacking, flail fights and pre-Vandalism. In response to a tragic event in 1189, when beer-fuelled teens drag-racing stolen oxcarts after midnight struck a wagonload of nuns coming back from matins, killing them all, the beer industry began a self-righteous campaign to allegedly keep beer out of the hands of youth. The "Lock Your Ox" message to parents, and stiffer penalties for getting stiff did nothing to dissuade young imbibers, although laws permitting castration and walling-up in a monastery cellar did catch the attention of some....
 

 
1-29-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

They tell me to put chains on my tires. To me that sounds just like putting earrings on a pig, but what do I know ? How close are we as a nation, to having cars that levitate and how much more will that cost me per month, per car payment ?

-- Unchained in Uncini

 
1-30-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I'm so glad to see that you are back...At least I think you are back... I noticed that Tuesday you dated your column 1-13-2003, which I attributed to a simple slip of memory - but today's column is dated 1-16-2002! For the last year, your site claimed that you were taking a break to write... But I suspect you've been researching the space-time continuum... Have you actually succeeded in unlocking the secrets of time-travel???

--Temporal in Tempe

You'll have to take up the dating with my Webmistress.*

Regarding time travel, I have indeed perfected it. I started out over a hundred years ago and just arrived here today. And what a long strange trip it's been, as some dead guy once said....

*Note to Eagle-Eyed Questioner from WebMistress: 
Sheesh!  Can't a webmistress have a senior moment too?

 
1-31-2004

Dear Aunt Nettie: 

I was in the middle of the frozen pea aisle at Safeway when I heard a couple future ruffians discussing their bling-blings. Is this something that some of old ones should know about. Or did I just miss the seniors bus again?

-- Baffled in Banff

Sorry, can't help you there. I gave up trying to comprehend kid's slang when zoot suits were in fashion. I don't suppose that bling-blings have anything to do with tricycle warning devices, do they?

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