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Dear Aunt Nettie: How come electric eels don't
electrocute themselves? I mean, you drop a toaster in water and you're
history. They swim around in water all the time-- there shouldn't be any
left, right?
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Dear Logical: You're quite right, there are none left. They long ago fried themselves into extinction during mating, which involved crossed polarities. National Geographic bought the rights to the species in 1947, and has maintained the fiction of the species' existence ever since to raise money during "Save the Electric Eel Month." There are no giant sea turtles or baby harp seals, either, but they sell magazine subscriptions, so NG has kept them "alive."
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Dear Aunt Nettie: What was the original name of the
band "Creedence Clearwater Revival"?
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Dear Golden: "The John, Tom, Doug and Don Rhythm System." After Don left for barber college, the boys recruited Creedence, who was a preacher's son hence the name. (His father was Barebones Perseverence Clearwater, which explains why he had to drop out of school in 2nd grade.) Creedence had lots of money to play with thanks to his father's unceasing fundraising efforts, and he also had liens on Ralph's Stratocaster and Doug's drum kit, so they reluctantly named the band after him. By adding "Revival" to the name they were able to claim a tax deduction until 1970, when someone in the IRS discovered that Proud Mary and Suzie Q were not actual deacons of the church, and that the substantial charitable deduction to Willy and the Poor Boys was fraudulent. Nor did "I Put a Spell on You" fall under "healing services, other," in the IRS manual.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: What do the initials M.G. stand for
on the famous British-made automobile?
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Dear Carphile: Melvin Gunderson, inventor of the hood ornament. The car was named after him in view of his tragic death. He was making the final adjustment to the hood ornament on what was then called the Upper Class Twitmobile when Tommy Chisworth, a mechanic, inadvertently engaged the clutch, driving poor Melvin through the back wall of Morrie's Garage in South London. A later model was named the MG-TC after the mechanic's lawyers insisted that he get equal billing.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Where did we get Kool-Aid?
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Dear Cherry: Like so many extraordinary discoveries, the invention of Kool-Aid was quite accidental. A researcher at Johns-Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland, who was working on the university's synthetic blood program was ordering supplies on his lunch hour and spilled mayonnaise on the order form. At the warehouse the order filler was unable to decipher two items. She thought "serum" was sugar and "chyle" was either chervil or cherry. They were out of chervil so she sent concentrated cherry extract. The researcher mixed the ingredients in a giant pitcher and raised it through the roof of the castle where it was struck repeatedly by lightning, stimulating the life-force and causing the "Glass-Pitcher Golem" scare of 1927, as the giant vessel lumbered through Baltimore leaving destruction in its wake. Torch-bearing townspeople eventually cornered it in an old mill where it was believed to be killed in the fire they set to destroy it, although a sufficient quantity of fused glass was never found to account for the entire pitcher, and there were rumors that the monster, horribly deformed, had survived and lived in the woods, sweeping down on lonely travelers by the dark of the moon. Professor Perkins of Johns-Hopkins was about to destroy the remains of the concoction that had caused the terror, but as he was about to pour it down the drain the crucible shattered, cutting his index finger. Instinctively putting his finger in his mouth, he discovered from the delicious taste of the blood that he was actually a vampire, and became an after-dark scourge of Baltimore suburbs for years afterward. He was eventually dispatched by a professional vampire hunter posing as an itinerant Kool-Aid vendor.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Why wouldn't you pour your own drink
in Japan?
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Dear Toastmaster: There's no need. Japan assures everyone of employment by hiring people for tasks which are so incidental we don't think twice about them in this country. There are elevator-button pushers, official bowers, shoelace tiers, hitchhiking assistants, people who pass the bread, contact lens finders and those who adjust rear-view mirrors. All hotels and bars, and some of the higher-class homes, have drink-pourers, usually divided by caste from mineral water and soft drinks up to sake and mai-tai. There is always a white wine pourer and a red wine pourer, and for rosés they often pour together. These people take their jobs seriously, often making a lifetime pursuit of it. There are professional door openers who retire after 60 years in a career which wouldn't hold the attention of an American teenager for a nanosecond. Obviously it's considered highly insulting to attempt to do something for oneself in the presence of one of these professionals. American tourists often do something unwittingly, like dial a telephone or unwrap a stick of gum when there's a professional phone dialer or gum unwrapper just waiting to be called on, thereby forcing the dialer or unwrapper to spread a mat at the offender's feet and disembowel themselves in disgrace. Unless, of course, there's a professional disemboweler readily available.... ---- See P. F. Luggin's excellent treatise on Japanese customs, "Adventures of a Tokyo Zipper-Upper." Servile Press (London and Mumbai, 2002)
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Who was the most villainous villain
ever?
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Dear Shifty: 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.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Do you ever thing we'll see flying
cars?
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Dear Aeronaut: There was an event in 1921 that put my generation off personal air transport permanently. You see, the ad agency Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne launched an award-winning "Goodyear Personal Dirigible" ad campaign to convince Americans of the efficiency and increased social status of blimp travel. As a publicity stunt 144 male volunteers in Columbus, Ohio, were outfitted with hydrogen-filled "GPDs" and sent on a 330-mile maiden voyage to Kankakee, Illinois, where they were to be greeted by a monster rally of enthusiastic citizens. Alas, weather is unpredictable, and a sudden veering flaw swept all 144 men to an altitude of 20,000 feet as they were passing over Frankfort, Indiana. The thin-walled dirigibles were never designed for such extreme conditions, and they burst, sending the volunteers plummeting to their deaths.¹ Because of the number of people involved, the term "Gross!" was soon added to American slanguage as an expression of revulsion. Needless to say personal dirigibles never took off as a concept, although hardy adventurers would sometimes attempt to revive them. In 1926 Charles Lindbergh's brother, Ollie, attempted to become the first person to cross the Atlantic Ocean via Goodyear Personal Dirigible, using "Minnie the Miniblimp" as he called his lighter-than-air craft. Ollie took off from Nag's Head, North Carolina on March 14, taking with him only 3 bologna sandwiches and a thermos of coffee to save weight. On April 26th of the following year his rag-covered skeleton landed gently in a field just outside the city of Hobart in Tasmania. To the amazement of the natives the coffee was still warm. ¹ Full details of this gruesome tragedy are recorded in an eyewitness account by an anonymous resident of Frankfort: "It's Raining Men!" Sudden Impact Press (London & Bombay, 1923)
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Dear Aunt Nettie: What was the only wood used by famed
London cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale?
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Dear Woody: Chippendale patented the recycled wood process that results in what we call "chipboard" today, made up of sawdust and splinters held together with formaldehyde glue and covered with 1/128" of cheap wood veneer. He sold his furniture out of his crate and barrel shop in Eastcheap to newlyweds, servicemen and the desperately poor, usually on easy-credit installment plans. When he got production up to speed he could turn out 50 six-piece bedroom suites a week, which he advertised as "top quality furniture for the price of a dead horse."
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Who was the first person to be
executed by that new, improved, 100% humane device, the electric chair?
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Dear Shocked: Harris A. Smiler was the first person to ride the lightning at Sing Sing prison in New York state on July 17, 1891. The execution went so smoothly that the warden decided to try it again. They did three more before they ran out of death row inmates. Not wanting to lose the momentum, they had a fifth miscreant brought over from the main prison. He was Lucas G. Fard, who was being held on suspicion of loitering. When his lawyer protested, they executed him, too. All in all it was a great day for American jurisprudence, if you ignore the "prudence" part. By working 3 shifts prison officials got the total number of executions up to 200 a day. When they ran out of prisoners they used unpopular guards, then turned on the citizens of Ossining. They came to their senses only after the first power bill arrived in August, at which point Warden Fletcher was dismissed and the prison limited to 2 executions a week.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Where would you go to find a tree to
mato?
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Dear Veggie: Where to go to find a tree to mato? It's easy to mato the common potato But to mato a tree takes a mind like a Plato Or an organization just as big as our NATO Worse yet if you try it to make it gelato As a birthday surprise for your inamorato One degree to chilly and it will deflate-- oh, What a mess-- such a waste of wappato! You'll cry and you'll howl like an araguato Or keen like a bagpipe obbligato No, better leave that dish to the chefs at El Gato Who know just how to get a tree to mato.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Who is Kevin O'Sullivan, and what
does he have to do with the history of Michigan? Please hurry as my paper
is due yesterday.
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Dear Procrastinator: When Kevin O'Sullivan, a small, unassuming Michigan cooper's assistant went to work that fateful Saturday, December 14, 1878, little did he know what fate had in store for him. He was planing down a set of hogshead staves for a beer company when he decided to heat up some coffee he had brought from home on the gas plate the coopers used to melt hide glue. As he picked up his tin cup full of coffee he was distracted by the sound of a woodpecker at work somewhere in the factory. Knowing that a woodpecker could undo the work of many hours in a few minutes, he located the bird and chased it away, completely forgetting to turn off the gas cock. He finished hooping the hogshead a little after noon, and decided to test it for fit in the usual manner, by climbing inside, putting the lid on, and looking for light leaks. As he sat in the barrel waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, the gas buildup finally reached the pilot light on the boiler and the factory exploded in a gigantic flash and bang. Young Kevin, fortunately protected by the sturdy hogshead, was hurled completely over the town, landing in a field on the other side, thus becoming the first person to go over Grand Rapids in a barrel.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Are there still undiscovered places
out there like Shangri-la and Eldorado, or has everything been discovered?
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Dear Indiana: You could look for the fabled Kingdom of Chunk, which 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.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Who invented the tuba, and for
heaven's sake, *why*? |
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Dear Oom Paul: Cognoscenti of the tuba know that this lowest-pitched of the brass wind family and indispensable instrument for fat kids in school marching bands was actually invented as a prank in 1835 by Prussian bandmaster Friedrich Wilhelm Wieprecht and co-conspirator Johann Gottfried Moritz, an itinerant Austrian brass-basher. Wieprecht had been pestered by Prince Ruprecht, son of the monarch Frederick Wilhelm III, to build him a horn with which he could embarrass royalty by imitating the sound of flatulence. Wieprecht convinced him that he needed an instrument of at least three octaves, with which he could then embarrass everyone from the king down to the lowest scullery maid. He then had his fellow prankster Moritz build an outlandish horn which was physically wrapped around Prince Ruprecht's body so tightly that he could only be released from it after a good greasing with butter and the application of a sturdy block and tackle. Even so, young Ruprecht was delighted with his gift, and spent the remaining years of his short life whoomping! and whooshing! and blatting! at all and sundry until person or persons unknown poisoned the mouthpiece. Hence it became customary in the palace to excuse bodily indiscretions with the phrase, "It's just that imbecile with the tuba." ("Es ist daß Schwachkopf mit dem Tuba gerecht.") After Ruprecht's death King Frederick got even with the pranksters by commanding them to write serious music for the "instrument," which was, of course, impossible. 
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Can you tell me the source of this
quote? "Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn't it, of a long line
of proven criminals?"
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Dear Curious:
It was J. Edgar Hoover, the fussy, prurient head of the FBI from 1924 to
1972.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: I hafta rite a paper on "Post
Dramatic Stress Syndrome." Is that, like, a medikal thing?
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Dear Incurious: The diagnosis of Post-Dramatic Stress Syndrome recognizes the sacrifices made by parents and weak-willed relatives who are forced to endure school recitals at this difficult time of year. The Iron Smile Award for the past season will be presented at the annual banquet on January 24th to Mrs Eustace Bellowes Constable of Penderecki, New Hampshire. Mrs Constable has 5 children spread across grades 2 through 8, all in different schools. She also had the flu during School Play Week, and there were 3 snowstorms, not to mention the Diarrhea Incident with the baby. Immediately prior to her breakdown she began referring to her seasonally costumed children as "Satan's Little Helpers," and her laughter and applause became noticeably forced. Her state of mind will be taken into account during the hearing on whether to charge her for justifiable mayhem after she used a gift-wrapped Louisville Slugger on her husband in response to his offhand question about what she did all day.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: What's the name of that place that
helps people with reading problems. It ends in "Volunteers."
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Dear Forgetful: It's Illiteracy Volunteers, which was formed in 1986 in an effort to wean heavy readers away from their psychological dependence on books. During a carefully thought-out twelve-step program, addicts are first forced to admit their addiction before the group-- "My nom de plume is Phil, and I once read all six volumes of 'Remembrance of Things Past' on my honeymoon. Yes, the flawed but lively Scott Moncrieff translation..." They are then introduced to counselors who gradually replace their favorite genres with the polar opposite: those whose literary diet is mainly Harlequin Romances are weaned onto the despairing parables and stories of Kierkegaard and Kafka; Stephen King fans are segued into Gene Stratton-Porter's saccharine works; aficionados of the shoot-'em-up western are introduced to Jane Austen; war story devotees are directed to the works of Mother Teresa and Saint Francis; votaries of the classics are switched over to the "Captain Underpants" series, etc., etc. After several weeks-- except in the most stubborn of cases-- a decided waning of interest in books will be detected, and the program is considered complete when the recovering reader says that he or she would rather watch Oprah, if it's not a problem....
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Dear Aunt Nettie: I just got back from a scholarly
visit to Oxford University in England. I was amazed to see the odd list of
things one is not allowed to bring into the Bodleian Library there. I
meant to write it down but it slipped my mind. Do you know if it's posted
on the Internet anywhere? I know it would amuse your readers.
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Dear Scholar: Here's the complete list: Connecting rods for a 1951 Hudson Hornet Six More than 4 pounds of cayenne pepper Slide whistles Yak fat in any container but Spode Runcible spoons Periscope gaskets (neoprene) Creeping red fescue Steamfitter's gloves Timbale irons Glow-in-the-dark suspenders "If you lived here you'd be home already" (bumper stickers from Lakeside Cemetery, Estes Park, Colorado) Argon in any form Stairmaster lube (winter weight) Left sneakers in any size but 10½ "I LIKE IKE" buttons Plutonium Helper® Wisteria prongs Elephant litter Copies of "The End Is Near! Are you ready?" pamphlets Vector wrenches "Ferndale High - State Champs - 1946" banners Edison cylinders of "Great Bavarian Yodels" Twinkie polish Brass monkeys 155mm high-loft howitzers w/ wo/ shells Lychee nuts Ox yokes (unless accompanied by undergraduate oxen) Butter guns Margerine grenades Stomach staplers w/ staples Street maps of Dacca, Bangladesh Orreries with more than 7 planets Stuffed Bedlington Terriers Condensed eggplant juice Canned or dried durian fruit Used electricity Spray-on cheese Udder vetch Sequoias Herring Icicles Bugs Its
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Who, in your opinion, is or was
America's greatest poet?
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Dear Rhymester: Although he was never a household name on the scale of Carl Sandburg or Edgar A. Guest, Petro "Petey Mumps" Munpakzowski was for many years considered to be one of America's finest poets in the extremely difficult medium of palindromic verse. He labored over his first poem "I'm Aloof, A Fool Am I," for eight years before he got it right.¹ Munpakzowski published a tiny magazine ("Re-Verse.") dedicated to his palindromic poetry. Alas, one of his racier poems, "Eros? Sidney, my end is sore" caught the attention of the Censor General of the time, Anthony Comstock, who sent him to the state asylum for sending "weird perverty obscenity" through the US Mail. Asylum life was oddly good to Munpakzowski, however. Known as "Petey Mumps" he was protected from much of the vileness of mental-institutional life, and devoted his time to his poetic passion. It was during this time that he published "A Dog, a Plan, a Canal: Pagoda," on the topic of canine worship along the Ganges,² and his seamy "Tulsa Night Life: Filth, Gin, a Slut," which broke new ground in the field of palindromic free verse "street realism." He reached the pinnacle of success with his epic account of Columbus's voyage to America, "Are We Not Drawn Onward, We Few? Drawn Onward to New Era?" which ran for 500 lines and is considered unsurpassable by the Guinness Book of World Palindromic Poetry Records. Munpakzowski died in 1911 of what was described by the asylum doctor as "mental reverses." He is buried on the hospital grounds under a stone which bears this cryptic epitaph: "In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni."³
¹ "I'm aloof, a fool am I
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Which do you think would be better
for my arthritic knees - castor oil or mineral oil?
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Dear Creaky:  Either one will give your knees an adequate polish, but for the brightest shine plus long-lasting protection I recommend an old-fashioned Simonize® job. Nothing beats the hand-rubbed glow of first-rate carnauba wax and essential oils. The photograph at left is an excellent example of a well cared-for knee and leg, which have actually outlasted their owner.
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