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Dear Aunt Nettie: Our new TV, or "Home Entertainment
Center," came with something called a V-Chip. What is it for?
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Dear Tubular: It's a misguided attempt to give parents some degree of control over the level of violence their children watch on television. You set the appropriate violence level and the action and dialogue is modified appropriately. If you want to have some good clean fun, activate your TV's V-chip, set it at "Infantile" and watch your family's reaction as "The Sopranos" dialogue drops to the level of the Teletubbies: Dr. Jennifer Melfi: "Are you still feeling bad, Anthony? Are you feeling bad bad bad?" Tony Soprano: "I am feeling bad, Doctor, I feel bad bad bad." Dr. Jennifer Melfi: "Where does it hurt, Anthony? Can you tell me where it hurts?" Tony Soprano: "I feel so bad about the things I have to do, Doctor. The things I have to do make me feel sad." Dr. Jennifer Melfi: "I feel bad because you feel bad, Anthony. I feel bad and sad." Tony Soprano: "I think we should have a big hug, Doctor. That would make me feel better. A big hug would make me feel better." Dr. Jennifer Melfi: "A big hug would make me feel better too, Anthony. I would feel better because you feel better." (They hug. A laughing-baby sun rises over them. It is shot in the face by Silvio.)
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Dear Aunt Nettie: What was the first country to send a
whale into orbit?
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Dear Cetaceous: Surprisingly, it was Indonesia. The volcanic eruption of 1883 on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa in the Sundra Strait between Java and Sumatra sent a lot of flash-fried seafood into the stratosphere. One 20-ton adolescent humpback whale happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and was launched into a high eccentric near-equatorial orbit with an apogee of 439 miles (706.5 kilometers) and a perigee of 211 miles (339.5 kilometers). Plainly visible through even low-power telescopes, the whale remained in orbit until 1899 when terrestrial gravity finally dragged it back. Its spectacular flaming re-entry, coming so soon after the publication of H G Wells' science-fiction novel "War of the Worlds" caused the entire population (37) of Elkblight, Oklahoma, to commit suicide rather than be taken captive by the rapacious Martian fiends. --------- For complete details see "Thar She Blows!: the Strange but True Story of the World's First Cetaceanaut" by John Ahab Glenn. Pequod Press (London & Bombay, 1978)
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Is it legal to make your own money?
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Dear Mercenary: Not only is it legal, it's lots of fun! If you have any artistic talent you can design and print your own money in any denominations you fancy. Complete instructions are available online, or from any one of several books on the subject.¹ But why not go one better and form your own nation-state? That way you can issue stamps as well as money, and petition the UN for membership and the attendant foreign aid. Establishing a kingdom or independent republic is easy to do. Simply follow the instructions provided by the Sovereign Principality of Sealand. ------------ ¹Highly recommended: "Creative Currency" by Lyle Burin, Leavenworth Prison Press (Kansas, 1997)
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Here's a puzzle for you: Where does a
candle go when it goes out?
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Dear Somber: It depends a lot on the candle. Some are perfectly happy to hang out at the local pub or sports bar, others require the presence of a witty crowd of like-minded individuals in a four-star restaurant specializing in nouvelle cuisine with carloads of ambiance. In working-class neighborhoods many candles go bowling, whereas in snooty intellectual neighborhoods you'll find them in bookstores. As Helen Gurley Brown wisely observed, Good candles go to heaven, bad candles go everywhere.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: What was the most important
revolution in the world? Please hurry with your answer as I am already
late.
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Dear Slow: It would have to be November 13 in 233,875,344 BCE when Gondwanaland split from Pangaea to form what it called "a more perfect Union." In listing its grievances against the Parent Continent, Gondwana stated:
Efforts to reunite the two, beginning in 231,332,8745 BCE have failed, but the Reunite Pangaea!™ movement has not given up hope. Spokesperson Clive Horst-Graben has said that if everyone on the Earth's surface would work together, Pangaea would be reunited "in virtually no time at all, geologically speaking."
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Dear Aunt Nettie: What does the dark side of the moon
look like?
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Dear Occluded: Although its view of the sky is admittedly spectacular with the sun obscured, the dark side has never caught up with the bright side in terms of popularity and economic development. The first things visitors notice is the dirtiness of the regolith and the shabbiness of the craters, which appear eroded and splintered in comparison with bright side craters, which are better maintained. The dark side, with its cheaper rents and lower real estate values, tends to attract the lower end of the economic spectrum, and consequently suffers a higher incidence of crime and drug addiction. Inner Crater areas are particularly bad, with run-down schools, a lack of investment, and a preponderance of liquor stores, lottery kiosks, storefront churches and payday loan offices. From time to time-- usually during election years-- one or another party of the Lunar Government attempts to promote renaissance or renewal projects on the dark side, in which vast sums of taxpayer money are transferred to wealthy contractors, architects and city planners, who produce stunning and visionary presentations of Apollo Crater Esplanade or Birkhoff Estates. Once the money is gone the plans are shelved until the next renewal push or election. Recently there has been concern that the low-end jobs which support the majority of far side families are being outsourced to Mars, which has lower labor rates and relaxed environmental standards. The current candidates for lunar office have, as is customary, blamed each other or one of the previous administrations.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: I have a question for you. What do
you get when you combine a corrosive liquid metal that explodes on contact
with water, with a poison gas banned by the Geneva convention?
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Dear Chemic: Easy one. It's common table salt. The story of the invention of salt is fraught with horror, bravery and sheer animal cunning. Everyone agreed that something was missing from the ingredients used in food preparation, and people were somehow bothered by the presence of just a pepper shaker on the kitchen table. Countless ingredients were combined in the hope of finding the elusive condiment, to no avail. Plutonium carbide was a particular disaster, which is why the village of Trounce in southern Austria has been abandoned since time out of mind. Strontium nitride tasted good, but as the consumer went permanently blind after eating it, marketing plans were shelved. Yttrium bicarbonate set one's teeth on fire; hydrogen iodide contributed iodine to the diet, a necessary supplement, but dissolved any container it was put in, making it impractical for everyday use; lithium astatine-- well, let's just say that there's a good reason why lithium astatine is no longer produced. It made leprosy look like acne. Like so many famous inventions, the discovery of salt happened by accident. Despite years of effort and countless lives lost, no one had come upon the perfect condimental formula. Then, at the end of the Third Punic War, Rome, having had it up to here with the upstart city-state of Carthage, decided to wipe it off the map, so that no one would ever live there again, nor would plants grow, nor would animals flourish, and even butterflies flitting over the site would start coughing up blood and complaining of sick headaches. To this end the great Roman general and alchemist Scipio "Skippy" Aemilianus, after flattening the city and busting all its component parts, burning the rest, and having his troops jump up and down on the ashes, decided to poison the land with two of the vilest chemicals he could think of: sodium and chlorine. Lo and behold, when quantities of these terrible elements were catapulted into the pulverized city, they combined to form salt. Puzzled by the sudden appearance of the white stuff, the Romans sent some surplus slaves out to bring some back for laboratory analysis. The slaves returned unharmed. One of them was forced to taste the compound, and to everyone's surprise he smiled blissfully and asked for some pretzels and beer. Thus salt was discovered, and Rome managed to convince its soldiers to accept a bag of salt as payment for their services ("salary"), an even bigger rip-off than stock options would be several millennia later. Salt was brought to Rome in triumph, and even the great orator and statesman Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder sang its praises, saying, "Censeo Carthaginem esse delendam!" ("This stuff of Carthage is delicious on popcorn!"). Finally Roman pottery makers were able to sell matched seasoning sets in weird shapes as wedding presents, many of which have been found in Roman ruins, still in their original gift wrap. Other nations soon got into the salt business, not without several disasters, most notably the Dead Sea. And so salt became essential to civilized life, and we consume it today without giving a thought to its hazardous and serendipitous history.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: What's the story on these
%$#&$%&*&%@$!! air blowers? What the hell was wrong with good
old-fashioned rakes? They never woke anybody out of a sound sleep, I'll
bet!
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Dear Venting: Your timing is excellent, for today we celebrate the invention of the lawn & leaf air blower, beloved by illegal immigrant landscape workers everywhere. Originally patented in Japan for use as a localized crop-duster, it was quickly adopted by Californians to move leaves around, where it replaced the technologically more complex "lawn rake" you mentioned, now obsolete. An entire generation has been brought up on the music of the air blower, just as a previous generation had been raised to the Saturday-morning sounds of the human-powered reel mower, also obsolete. The center of the air blower industry is Oxnard, California, which celebrates Air Blower Days during the first week in July with parades, contests and displays of the latest models. Of special interest to the musically-minded tourist is the Oxnard Air Blower Tabernacle Choir, which consists of 110 specially tuned air blowers under the direction of Chris Okinawa, its principal conductor. In past years they have entertained audiences with astonishing performances of such popular favorites as "The Falling Leaves," "I Fought the Lawn and the Lawn Won," "Boulevard of Broken Husks," and the theme from "A Mighty Wind." This year's program includes the first orchestral composition written especially for the air blower, "Toccata and Fugue for Massed Air Blowers," by Oxnard resident Stanley Fishbein, who in his other life operates a Lawn Doctor franchise. Hearing protection is suggested.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Somebody at work today was talking
about a rattlesnake roundup. Was he putting me on or what?
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Dear Ophidiphobic: The rattlesnake roundup originated in Oklahoma when the need for snake meat to feed our expanding American population grew so great that rattlers had to be brought in from the western states. Wild rattlesnakes would be rounded up from great expanses of open range and then collected into huge herds. Once rounded up, the drive to the East or nearest railroad would begin. It could take up to a month to reach the stockyard. Driving the herd was slow, with the snakeboys always looking for snakegrass grazing pastures and keeping an eye out for Indians or rustlers. The value of each snake was based on weight, so it was important not to move quickly or the serpents would lose weight "Lost Pounds Lost Money," as they used to say. Today the Rattler Roundup is principally a tourist attraction. Daring young men (and women!) can pay to join the professional wranglers to drive the herd. But you'd better hurry! There's a movement afoot to end the drives altogether on humanitarian grounds, just as they're doing in Kansas.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: What is an octothorpe, and should we
fear it?
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Dear Jumpy: Not at all! The octothorpe¹ is simply the formal name for the "#" sign, variously known as a pound sign, a hash mark, a sharp note and a hobo's coded chalk notation for a square meal. The # sign was based on the animal it resembles, the Peruvian Nocturnal Octothorpe. Utterly harmless, the Peruvian octothorpe spends its time on the floors of ponds or in the pools of slow-moving streams, where it is an efficient feeder on small zooplankton like daphnia. The eight protruding tentacles are equipped with tiny harpoon-like stinging cells called nematocysts with which they spear passing sea monkeys. They rarely do larger animals any harm, but can sting and catch very small fishes and microscopic ducks. Humans most often encounter the octothorpe when they press the lowermost button on a telephone keypad in certain seaside Peruvian neighborhoods like Chiclayo and Chimbote. There have been unsubstantiated reports of allergic reactions to octothorpodia, but no human death has ever been recorded, and they are consequently considered innocuous. —— ~ Ref: Crossbar, B.W., Stinger, P.S., "Encountering the Octothorpe, A Color Atlas." Includes information on keeping as pets, taming, and the prevention, first aid and treatment of stings. Coelenterate Press (London Bridge and Deeper Bombay, 1991) —— ¹Not to be confused with Jim "Octo" Thorpe, the eight-legged football player. He was also winner of the Pentathlon and Decathlon gold medals at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm until he was disqualified on the grounds of not being human.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: I found a recipe for Mock Turtle
soup, but it it doesn't contain any turtle parts! Isn't this false
advertising? Should I sue?
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Dear Chubby: Alas, the Mock Turtle is no more, only the name remains. In 1908 last one was killed along the wild seashores of Borneo by Sir Phipps Braxton-Hicks. Although unknown to him at the time, he had brought about the extinction of this once numerous species, which roamed from the Seychelles to Patagonia, and whose migrations were described by explorer Richard Burton as, "...darkening the seas and the beaches as far as the eye can see, as awe-inspiring a sight as the great waves of the wildebeest across the plains of the Serengeti." Sir Phipps sent the head to Lady Braxton-Hicks who, unmindful of its value, had cook prepare it as soup for a luncheon she had planned. There is no record of the success or failure of this gastronomical experiment. Upon his return 7 years later, Sir Phipps was indignant that Lady Braxton-Hicks had served up his trophy to her neighborhood bridge club, as he had thought the stuffed head would look smashing in his study between the Quagga and the Tasmanian Tiger. 
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Dear Aunt Nettie: My father says I should learn our
homeland language to connect with our Eastern European roots. Can you give
me one good reason I should learn Armenian?
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Dear Arshile: Why, learning Armenian is one of the hottest new trends in East Coast society! Even if you don't know a narinj from a dz'meruk, after a few weeks of study you'll be rattling along in this fascinating language, which was invented by Noah's sons as a prank after the old man had drunk too much new wine. They later created an alphabet to go with it. Every time Noah would tell them to do something they would respond by shrugging their shoulders and saying "chem haskanum," or "inch e sa n'shanakum?" which got them out of a lot of work details, and explains why Noah spent so much time talking with the parrots, who spoke flawless Hebrew and would often take the role of cantor during the high holidays. The boys realized their joke had gone too far after Noah married a Blue Front Amazon female, knowing full well their children would be mamzarim. Not willing to risk their father's wrath and stepmother's beak by exposing the joke, they and their descendants began to use Armenian day in and day out, until its prankish origins were lost in history.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Who invented roller skates?
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Dear Wheeled: The great genius of the Renaissance, Leonardo "Da" Vinci, of course. Old Leonardo invented just about everything back then. In 1974 a closer investigation of one of his notebooks revealed a patent application for standard four-wheel lace-up skates, plus plans for a "Rollerdrome" and a rulebook for Derby competition, including such concepts as the jam cycle, the pack, strategic and tactical blocking, and color commentary for the game announcer. The first professional "rullo d'erbi" contest was held in 1504 between the Pisan Scontri ("Smasher-uppers") and the Florentine Battitori delle Natiche ("Ass-Whompers"). The final score was 105 - 87 in overtime, although the winning team was not mentioned, nor were the 6 fatalities incurred during the game explained. In 1506 Leonardo improved on the design with his "lamierine di rotella," or roller-blades, in which the wheels were smaller and in a straight line. He thought these would be popular with hockey players in the summertime when there was no ice to practice on, in that it would maintain ankle strength and coordination. Alas, when the game of ice hockey was invented in Quebec during the 1850s, Leonardo's daring roller-blade training devices were rejected, as they had not been invented by a Frenchman. This unfortunate decision led to the domination of the game by Brazil, where ice was unknown, but which had embraced the roller-blades ("lâminas do rolo") for training, and as a result Canada did not win a single game of ice hockey until 1987 when Quebec had the rules changed to define defeat as victory.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: What is the toughest, most extreme
sport in the world? I've already unicycled up and down Everest and I'm
looking for a new challenge.
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Dear Xtreme: Few sports are more thrilling than surfing the length of the Amazon River as it wends its way to the sea, although not a single surfer has made it the full distance so far. Some are stung to death by monster wasps or mosquitoes, others are collected by headhunters or eaten by cannibals, and some simply fall exhausted off their board and are stripped to the bone by piranha. One daring fellow made it nearly all the way to the sea before being swallowed whole by a salt water crocodile during a tidal flux. Oh, and some are plucked off their boards by boa constrictors if they stray under trees to get out of the merciless sun, which also kills surfers. All in all, it's not much of a sport, but guys will be guys, and all of them have a secret hope of appearing on "Jackass" if they do something really dumb and dangerous. Did we mention the water spiders that chew off your ankles? Fans of the sport may enjoy the book "Board to Death: An Amazon Surfing Misadventure" by the late "Chum" Bucket, Pororoca Press (London & Mumbai, 2000).
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Will you settle a bar bet for us?
What was the drink we know as the Bloody Mary originally called?
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Dear Imbiber: The Splattered Cat. Feline fanciers objected, so the name was changed again, first to Slaughterhouse Spritzer, then to Dracula's Daiquiri after slaughterhouse owners objected, then to Bloody Mary after the estate of Bram Stoker filed suit. However the Kosher Tavern Keepers Association protested the use of blood, which was officially replaced with tomato juice in 1928, except at certain saloons in dangerous neighborhoods.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: What goes up must come down, but why?
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Dear Stumped: It wasn't always that way. Before the law of gravity was passed in 1590 and enforcement began during the early 17th century, coming down was pretty much optional for upgoing objects. Sometimes they came down, sometimes they didn't. Even after the law was in place, there were protests, like the one in the city of Ulm in 1632, where most of the townspeople went up, but refused to come down until the Governor called out the Horse Marines with extension ladders to forcibly return them to the Earth's surface. During the Great Wheat Strike of 1677, over 750 protestors went up and were never seen again, which effectively ended the strike, but caused a 4,000 germit fine to be levied against the town fathers. Since the town mothers didn't have the vote, they were exempt from the fine and went shopping instead. The fine was later overturned by the Slezônian Supreme Court, which held that the protestors should have been the ones paying the fine, not the town fathers, who had remained firmly grounded during the event. The return of the 4,000 germit fine-- with interest-- allowed the citizens to fulfill their fondest wish of building a seagoing bowling alley to attract the tourist trade. It was a great success until the tsunami of 1712 gave everyone a 300 game and the alley was burned to the waterline during the ensuing riots over who should be awarded the league championship trophy. Even as late as 1848, amid the revolutionary fervor which gripped Europe in those days, attempts were made to repeal the law of gravity, fortunately without success except in the tiny Duchy of Munksprüng. The Hole Where Munksprüng Used To Be is still one of Europe's most popular attractions, enticing more visitors than Germany's ValtDizneyWelt ("You Vill Come Und You Vill Enchoy It-- Or Else!") or France's Hall of Famous Surrenders. Today the law of gravity is accepted everywhere, and it is only rarely that exceptions are made to the law, as during satellite launches. The designer of SpaceShip One, Dick Rutan, had to apply for a special Congressional exemption to allow him to bypass Earth's gravity and launch his unique craft into space. And, of course, places like the International Space Station which are not subject to the laws of any country remain gravity-free and devoid of Starbucks franchises as well.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Where did we get the word "quark"?
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Dear Quantal: It's to commemorate a misguided early attempt at genetic engineering. Scientists at the National Institutes for Creative Breeding crossed a water spaniel with a mallard in the hopes of producing the perfect retriever. Instead they got a green-headed, toothless, web-footed dog-thingy which loved the water but sank like a stone. It was named after the sound it made, which terrified both ducks and dogs, making it useless in the field. It also had a duck-sized brain, so it died from forgetting to breathe.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: I want to study a corse in scholl.
What's the difference between auto mechanics and quantum mechanics, and
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Dear Underachiever: I've always found quantum mechanics to be much easier than auto mechanics, especially after they got rid of carburetors and switched to fuel injection. Plus the fact that learning quantum mechanics is a great way to meet girls. How many times have you used a word like "gluon" or a phrase like "short-range perturbative regime" at a party or luncheon and been met with an admiring gaze from some comely young thing? So few people appreciate the importance of quantum chromodynamics in everyday life. Why, without the principle of asymptotic freedom alone the quality of our lives would change dramatically for the worse. Take some time today to discuss, say, the hadronic decay of the tau lepton with with your guidance counselor, or casually during lunch bring up the issue of anomalies associated with triangular fermion loops in the gauge symmetries of the standard model of electroweak interactions-- always a topic that fascinates the quantumly-challenged. A few Feynman diagrams rapidly sketched on a cocktail napkin will go far to relieve the embarrassment of those unfamiliar with third-order equations. If their attention wanders, you can always recaptivate them with a Lagrangian descriptor of free Dirac fermions. Pretty soon they'll get the hang of it and begin discussing confinement theories. They may even introduce you to a doctor or two with whom you can continue your discussion of confinement on a more elevated level. These doctors may ask you to accompany them to a more secure location. You can't be too careful these days....
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Is it wise to give children candy as
a reward for good behavior? Our little Graustark is a 4-year-old role
model of manners and deportment, but at 138 pounds we're wondering if he
might be a tad *too* good.
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Dear Enabler: Curious you should mention that. It was the Turkish people who first used candy as a reward, and it was fortunate that they considered fat to be beautiful. In early Puritan America, however, candy was used as a punishment, and usually took the form of an oversized all-day-sucker-type lollypop, which the errant child was forced to consume while his friends and family mocked him. That tradition added several words to the English language. We still describe someone as being a "sucker for punishment," and children are still threatened with a "licking" if they misbehave. Lazy children were particularly prone to this corrective measure back in colonial times, which is why "lollygagging" is the perfect word to describe both the crime and the punishment.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: What color were dinosaurs?
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Dear Dinophile: It depends on where they lived. American dinosaurs were red, white and blue, of course, as were French¹ and Russian dinos. Scotch dinosaurs were plaid or argyle. British dinosaurs were true-blue. Chinese dinosaurs were red. During the Middle Cretaceous styles began to shift from bright colors to earth tones, along with natural tints and pastels. Textures rather than colors became very important near the end of the period, when the Age of Suede gave way to the Age of Corduroy. Around 65 million years ago fashion dictates caused the extinction of most dinosaurs, when designers began pushing the bare look, ignoring the impending Ice Age. Only the bird branch survived, as they stuck with old-fashioned insulating feathers despite the snide comments of their trendier cousins. --- ¹ French therapods turned yellow when attacked, however.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: When would it be New Years on Mars? I
think this is a trick question from our substitute science teacher, but I
want to make sure in case it's on the test.
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Dear Sedulous:
Ek'Usna Us°'ema! (Happy Martian New Year!)
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Where did salami come from? I thought
it was invented by Mr. Oscar Mayer, but my Granny says it's been around
forever.
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Dear Aunty: It does have a long and noble history, according to my sources. In 1344 the first salami mine was discovered in Abruzzi, a region of central Italy bordering on the Adriatic Sea. Opinions differ as to the original discoverer, and after much contention and name-calling, Abruzzi decided to name two independent co-discoverers, Mario Palumbo and Giuseppe della Mara. Salami mining greatly improved the economy of the area, causing many southern Italians abd Sicilians to pour into the region in hope of making their fortunes. By 1500 the export trade alone was bringing over 400 trillion lira ($630 at the 1500 dollar/lira exchange rate) to mining companies each year. With the establishment of pizza parlors along the eastern coast of the New World, demand exploded again, to the point where sausageologists were sent out to look for deeply-buried veins of pepperoni. Cheap surface deposits of cotechino and zampone were often substituted for the real thing, leading to the Salami Wars of 1611-1702. An attempt to substitute British sausage was instantly detected by the failure of the British to use spices of any kind. During World War II synthetic salami was invented to replace the genuine product, which had become unavailable due to hostilities. Made from nylon, synthetic salami was a good enough imitation for American tastes, and could be manufactured so cheaply that it soon replaced the original everywhere but in the home provinces. Post-war Abruzzi never fully recovered its former economic glory and today is principally an unpopular tourist trap, despite its Salami Hall of Fame (Corridoio di Fama di Salame, Centro visita del Parco d'Abruzzo. Tel. 0863/910715- 91955 Hours: 10am-1pm and 3pm-7pm. Admission charge: L/It.10,000) -- Ref: "Slicing Through Time: the History and Geology of the Abruzzi Mining Region" by Boris Culpepper. Garlic Press (Abruzzi & Bombay, 1888) "My Job Is My Lunch: Travails of an Early Salami Miner" Anonymous manuscript dated 1539
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Most of us are familiar with the
faces of Dr. B. H. McKeeby and Nan Wood, but who are they and where have
we seen them?
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Dear Grant: Among the Wanted posters in any post office. "BH" and Nan are probably the most cunning art thieves the world has ever seen. They specialize in dressing up like famous paintings, sometimes hanging on walls for days until museum officials drop their guard, then making off with the rarest and most expensive items. Their most daring escapade was in the Vatican where, after successfully imitating two of the background figures in Raphael's "Coronation of the Virgin," for nearly a week, they slipped out of the frame one night and made away with Michelangelo's "Pietà," replacing it with an exact copy made of styrofoam. The theft wasn't discovered until a visitor sneezed near the copy and it fell over. They have also been indicted in connection with the theft of the Leaning Tower in Pisa, Italy, which disappeared in 1987 and has not yet turned up in any private collection. The Museum of Modern Art in New York was highly embarrassed after the theft of Jackson Pollock's "One" (Number 31, 1950), which was returned by BH and Nan three days after it was stolen, with a Post-it® note attached explaining that it was a forgery and that they didn't steal forgeries. When the Museum confronted Pollock, he admitted that the original had been a forgery, too, a confession which shook the art world. Further questioning revealed that over half of Pollock's original paintings were forgeries done by himself, forcing the New York Stock Exchange to halt trading in PollockPaintings, Ltd. (NYSE:POLP) until the market recovered. They may have struck again in the past few weeks. Egyptian officials at the Museum in Giza, near Cairo, took delivery of an "unusually lifelike" sculpture of Isis and Horus which they placed in a conspicuous position in the atrium of the Museum. Three days later the "sculpture" was gone, along with the Great Pyramid. Authorities have replaced it with a hologram, but tourists keep walking through it, so the news of the theft is bound to leak out soon, much to Egypt's embarrassment, as they had failed to renew the insurance on the pyramids this year due to an oversight. |
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Today we think of the poodle as a
yappy, neurotic obnoxious surrogate child.
But what was the origin of the breed?
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Dear Rover: All modern poodles are descended from the Great Feral Poodles of the late Pleistocene. Known as "Dire Poodles" in England, these huge beasts struck fear into the hearts of even the wooly mammoth, the shaggy rhinoceros and the disheveled megatherium. Specimens have been found which measured thirteen feet at the shoulder, and the cunning puffy pompon on the end of the tail which we note in modern poodles was instead a wicked spike-studded ball which could be swung with devastating impact against enemies and prey. Domestication of these fearsome creatures took place in southern Europe about 13,000 years ago, when a Cro-Magnon man named Thuk taught a poodle pup to play "fetch." Discovery of the Poodles' Burying Ground in 1956 revealed their later evolution, when chew toys, beds, rhinestone collars and ruffs became evident. Selective breeding reduced their size to one that was more fitting for living in caves and apartments. Today's poodle is but a faint echo of its former self, and caninologists suspect buried memories of their former magnificence are the reason poodles act the way they do.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: One of the failures of my childhood
was the inability to cut out paper dolls in a chain or anything else that
required scissors, paper and coordination, for that matter. Now I have to
learn this skill as part of my Early Childhood Education course in
teaching geometry! Got any simple cut-and-fold projects I can use?
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Dear Euclidia: Not a problem. Here's a simple one for creating n-dimensional cootie catchers which should fascinate your young students. Warning: Do NOT allow clothing or body parts to come in contact with the flexing cootie catcher.
Bobby Dietrich in 4th grade inadvertently allowed his Cub Scout
neckerchief to become trapped during the hexahexaflexing. Years later they
found him wandering the Australian Outback living on radishes and speaking
only Swedish. The aborigines though he was either one of the elder gods
from the Dreamtime or a lost extra from a Mad Max movie.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: I was in the playground the other day
and I got to thinking: How long have we been playing with yo-yos?
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Dear Sleeper: "Playing" is a callous word to use for one of the world's most devastating weapons of war in the ages preceding the invention of gunpowder. One only has to visit the island of Yap in the Pacific, where it was invented, to see the dreadful carnage these weapons of mass destruction (real ones, not Republican ones) were capable of causing. Oral tradition holds that Yap-a-anu-anu, the first Yapanese, who was created from coral sand, sea water and DNA by the ocean god Whooooshboomie, invented the formidable yo-yo weapon to protect his homestead against any other Yapanese the sea god might choose to create on his off days. The word "yo-yo" (a shortened form of "yo-yo'm'n'ha'a'puna'puna'a-duncanR-uspatoff") is from the Old High Yapanese language, meaning "rock which returns after having failed to smash in the brains of a traditional enemy, ha-ha!" Since Yap-a-anu-anu was the only human on earth at the time, his paranoia was obvious. He took to chiseling out a deep circumferential ridge in huge round flattish boulders,a feat which took him many seasons since the only chisels he had were made of bamboo and consequently did not hold an edge well at all. Into this ridge he placed a thick cord woven from the strongest lianas. When he had assembled one hundred of these fearsome weapons he felt secure against anything the gods could create to challenge him. Well, sure enough, Whooooshboomie the sea god was feeling a bit bored one day and whipped up a new creation out of gin, Cherry Heering, Cointreau, Benedictine, pineapple juice, lime juice (from concentrate), grenadine and a dash of bitters, which he called the Yapapore Sling, Singapore not having been discovered yet. This lucky accident gave rise to the Sling People which, as their name implies, used slings and stones as their favorite weapons. They would have used bows and arrows or AK-47s, but that would have made it impossible for them to carry their war sign, little pastel paper umbrellas, into battle. Eventually the Sling people, citing the need for Lebensraum, decided that Yap-a-anu-anu's hilltop fortress would make a terrific tourist hotel, and they invaded. Yap-a-anu-anu had, of course, anticipated this day, and with great glee he unleashed the first of his yo-yos of doom and destruction. The Sling People, quite graceful in spite of their steady diet of palm wine and fermented taro "shine of the moon," neatly sidestepped the huge boulder, not even dropping their little umbrellas. As the rolling stone reached the limit of its cord, Yap-a-anu-anu, chortling at his own devious inventiveness, gave a mighty yank and sure enough the yo-yo returned to the top of the hill with ever-increasing speed, pausing only to execute a tactical maneuver known as "walking the dog." Alas, poor Yap-a-anu-anu had made the same mistake as the great Australian aboriginal inventor of the boomerang, Forgot-To-Duck-Cleft-Skull. He had made no provision for dealing with the return of the tons-heavy yo-yo and was as a result squashed flatter than a tourist's change purse. The victorious Sling People dismantled the titanic stone yo-yos, then, as part of their victory celebration, they split each rock in half to prevent such a weapon from ever again being used as a weapon. That night, as the tribe danced around the ceremonial fires after liberally imbibing palm wine and shine of the moon and doing "the wave" with their paper umbrellas and holding up outsized "We're #1!!" seafoam hands, the Undersecretary of the Treasury proposed that they add insult to injury by using the great split stone wheels of the defeated Yap-a-anu-anu as currency. Everyone thought this was just a swell idea until they awoke from the celebration several days later and attempted to use a turnstile or laundromat machine and discovered that the new coinage was about three yards too big and about a ton and a half too heavy to fit in the usual coin slots. As pronouncements of the Undersecretary of the Treasury were traditionally irreversible, the tribe's culture fell into ruin as barter replaced money and all the accoutrements of civilization decayed. The people were forced to go mostly naked, catch their own food, build elaborate dugout canoes from tree trunks, swim in the gorgeous lagoons and laze upon the beaches listening to music and drinking Yapapore Slings until they were later discovered by missionaries and told about the Good Life. |
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Dear Aunt Nettie: Who is the only champ ever to draw
eight walks in one day, intentional or not?
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Dear Batboy: Ch. Sunny Black Orion des Planches de Jerez, a Belgian Shepherd, was once walked 8 times in one day, due to a mixup in his walkers' schedules and the time change between Spain and New York.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: What is the Polish village of
Przedswitgrebki famous for?
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Dear Polak: Absolutely nothing. Przedswitgrebki is known as "the village where nothing ever happens." It was first noted in the year 914 by an itinerant discalced monk, Fra Wroblewski who listed its name in his journal next to the comment: "Bored to tears. Is next time sleeping with pigs in Wólka Somiankowska." The next mention of Przedswitgrebki isn't until the 13th century, when Prince Kazimir XLVII records in his diary: "Not worth laying to waste. Ugliest prostitutes in twelve provinces. Beer flat, potatoes undercooked, population barely sentient. Latest newspaper 214 years old. Off to Kiev in the morning, and good riddance." Przedswitgrebki fell into obscurity for the next 400 years, and selective inbreeding reduced the difference between the farm animals and the human population to the point where a goat was elected mayor on the Mensa platform. In 1637 an officer accompanying an invading party of either Russians or Turks noted in his military logbook that: "If we could bottle what these people have here and shell the enemy with it, we would be unstoppable. Lost 43 troops to suicide, another 60 or so to terminal ennui. Even gambling is impossible due to the antiquity of the dice, which have become round as marbles and lost all their face markings. Lost 1,600 zlotys to a sharper before I realized this." With the dawn of the 19th century, as Poland was again being invaded by somebody or the other, the great Polish novelist Sbigniew Zbkowczykzi described the village in his masterwork, "War and War," as: "Somebody's idea of a Polish joke. I was here a week and the villagers did nothing but bet on slug races and drink fermented potato juice. Lost 5,700 zlotys when I backed the wrong slug, ended up with splitting potato-flavored headache in horse trough outside main hotel/stable. Memo to self: Submit reimbursement forms for missing horse, purse, boots and pants." In 1917 Przedswitgrebki became the setting for the famous peace talks intended to settle the First World War. The town's habitual lack of effort and chronic malaise rubbed off on the attendees, however, and the final version wasn't signed until 1986. Prussia was forced to trade Bulgaria to Herzegovina for 600 litres of vodka and two outfielders. Announcement of the historic treaty was delayed for several months as the telegraph lines ended at the village limits. The French representative to the conference describes his ordeal in his autobiography, "Cruel Victory," as "the worst 69 years I ever spent anywhere. Impossible to find decent cheese, the pâté is strictly faux gras, and the potato wine not fit to dip sheep in. Populace apparently unaware of World War, Crimean Campaign and the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries inclusive. Sold my mistress to the local butcher on the way out of town. Received 2,300 zlotys, and thought I had bargained expertly, but discovered later on the train that the coins included a cleverly-fashioned wooden 100-zloty piece, two expired subway tokens and a brass "gold" coin stamped "Souvenir of the Przedswitgrebki World's Fair ~ 1556." With the fall of Communism Poland entered a period of substantive economic growth, an inflow of foreign investment and a rise in the standard of living, all of which bypassed Przedswitgrebki, which was dealing with the Black Death at the time. A lost tourist passing through the village in 1994 reported that the inhabitants appeared never to have seen a motor vehicle before, and that he was lucky to escape the place without being stoned for witchcraft. The Polish Interior Ministry's Community Development Co-ordinator wasn't as lucky, as he had the bad fortune to have a flat tire in the village square. The inedible parts of his body were returned postage due about a week later. The metal from his car was used to fashion plowshares and spearheads, and the radiator found a home in the Przedswitgrebki distillery (established -238). Alarmed by this intrusion into their simple way of life, the villagers packed up the entire town overnight and moved to an undisclosed location, where they remain to this day, one assumes.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: What is the only year in baseball
history that the smallest man in the National League led the league in
slugging percentage?
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Dear Statistical: Ah, the year was 1938, and the fellow in question was "Rabid Ralph" Moskowitz. At 4' 10¾" Moskowitz was forced to play in high heels to meet minimum National League height requirements, which added to the free-floating anger he continually experienced in the "land of the big bastards," as he called it. From the booster seat in the team bus to the stepstool he needed to reach the water fountain, and the ID he was constantly forced to produce whenever he wanted to buy chewing tobacco or whiskey, Moskowitz was a seething fountain of fury. He took out his anger on opposing team players, lashing out at the knees of the basemen as he passed them. During one overtime game he nearly crippled the infield of the Minnesota Conjoined Twins, and on another occasion the game was interrupted so that icepacks could be distributed to the visitors. Although Rabid Ralph's career performance was brilliant (he had a strike zone of only six inches if he hunched over, which invariably got him to first base), his temper got the best of him during the 1938 pennant race, when he slugged the knees of the umpire, the Philadelphia Blunts' manager and all the peanut and hot dog vendors, which caused his ouster from the game. His end came in 1949 when he was dining in a seafood restaurant in San Francisco. The waiter politely asked him if he would like an appetizer, and when Moskowitz answered in the affirmative, the waiter further inquired, "Shrimp?" which Rabid Ralph took as a mortal insult. He slugged both the waiter's knees, unaware that the server was a decorated Army veteran with two prosthetic legs made of stainless steel. Although both fists were shattered, he refused medical attention, skulking back to his hotel room with two quarts of bourbon and several straws. Infection set in, and he died alone in the hotel room on August 7th, surrounded by empty bottles, clutching an early photo of Shirley Temple to his chest.
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Dear Aunt Nettie: I just bought my nephew Dale Jr. a
new pickup truck. Except he calls it a "rig". What's up with that? |
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Dear Furby: He probably found out how you "bought" the car by swiping invoices and switching VIN tags. Hope he's of a forgiving turn of mind if he's ever pulled over....
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