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2-1-2005 What was the name of the cat Alice
left behind when she fell down the rabbit hole in Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland by Lewis Carroll? |
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Dear Wondering: That one was Dinah, but a more interesting part of the tale concerns Alice's other cat, Cheshire (so named because of his resemblance to the hard yellow cheese produced in that English village). Cheshire was much the more dedicated of Alice's two cats, and when he saw her toppling into the rabbit hole he selflessly plunged in after her. Unfortunately the queer physics of the rabbit hole affected humans and cats differently, so poor Cheshire was routed off to the Endless Forest where he was promptly eaten by a frumious bandersnatch. The bandersnatch was unusually fond of Cheshire cheese, and it is not recorded how it reacted to discovering that the "cheese" was actually a rather rotund yellow cat. If it was like all other frumious bandersnatchen, it probably didn't think much about it at all. 
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2-3-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: What was Rembrandt's last name? |
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Dear Onomastic: His last name was legally Shakespeare, although the spelling is questionable. Rembrandt had always wanted to be an English playwright, but was stuck with a low-paying job as a Dutch painter. He changed his name in the hopes that people would confuse him with "Bronco Billy" Shakespeare, the famous author of such plays as "Romeo vs. Juliet," "The Mere Chance of Venice," and "Julie, He Sees Her." But it was hopeless, and he was threatened by a lawsuit from Shakespeare's grandsons Mortimer and Gladys. He took refuge in what he called "canvas-based graffiti," doing sprawling paintings like "The Night Clock," and "The Tulip Lesson of Dr Anatomy." Near the end he began loading on the brown varnish until you could barely see what was going on and had to wait until the art of antique picture cleaning was developed in 1959. It was only then that it was discovered that Rembrandt was one of the master pornographers of all ages. Which is why you have to be this ¯¯¯¯¯ tall to view his paintings, or bring a note from home. 
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2-4-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: What was the movie "Chariots of
Fire" based on? |
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Dear Cineaste: The development of fire engines.
Firemen originally used to run to
fires, usually getting there only in time to wet down the ashes and do a
bit of surreptitious looting. But the invention of the steam engine
allowed the use of high pressure water pumps pulled by a team of horses,
which allowed firefighters to arrive at the scene in time to bargain
with the building owner over costs and have fistfights with other fire
companies. These horse-drawn engines were quite a sight to see,
thundering through the town with a bell ringing madly and the sparks
streaming from the boiler setting other buildings on fire.
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2-5-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: Have you ever had your identity
stolen? I live in fear that it could happen to me. Help me cope. |
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Dear Copeless: Who would want it?
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2-7-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: Which three countries have not
adopted the metric (SI) system of measurement? |
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Dear Mene: Bamboozleland, Whumpistan and East Pork. They feel that their systems of mensuration are perfectly fine and that the rest of the world should change. For instance, in Bamboozleland the basic unit of measurement is the quince, an awfully handy measure since the country is absolutely lousy with quince trees. Anybody can reach out and pick a standard unit of measure whenever they need one. Bamboozlelandians feel that this convenience would be hard for its people to give up if they were forced to switch to the nasty old metric system. They are, however, willing to export quince trees to any nation which wished to switch over to their system. Whumpistan has a system of weights and measures based on the old Bronze Age spudney. Fourteen chingoes make a spudney up to 30, after which 60 chingoes make a spudney. Whumpistanians are convinced that this is the most logical system of weights and measures ever devised, and see no reason to change to the metric system, which they find "silly." The Whumpistanian Embassy regularly sponsors demonstrations of the simplicity of the system in the hopes of converting others. The inhabitants of East Pork have nothing against the metric system, really. It's just that there is so much tradition tied up in the fooster that they feel switching would be a betrayal of their ancestors. The fooster is based on random numbers, which makes shopping an adventure. If a trip to the neighboring village is 7 foosters on Monday, why, you can get there in the blink of an eye. If on Tuesday, however, a fooster is 16,388, it would be wise to stock the wagon with supplies and bring winter clothing, because you'll be gone a long, long time. East Porkovians don't find this at all frustrating and confusing, and sadly lament that switching to kilometers would be dull and boring. Curiously, it's not only tiny nation-states which cling to outdated systems of measurement. Right here at home there's Bindlestiff, Arkansas, which has never even adopted the Anglo-American system, but bases all weights and distances on ducks.
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2-8-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: How many different animal shapes
are there in the "Animal Crackers" cookie zoo? |
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Dear Crunchy: That depends. In the Evangelical version there are seven of each kind of the clean animals and two of each kind of the unclean animals; in the US Cattlemen's Association there are millions of cookies, but they're all identical from the same cloned stock; the Darwinian animals change according to environmental pressures; in the island of Dr Moreau version there are 8 kinds, all horribly mutilated and twisted; the Dr Doolittle animals talk to you and scream as they're eaten, whereas the Vegetarian version's animals are inedible; the Spongiform Squarepants edition has animals with wide staring eyes and drooling chops; the PETA boxes contain only a lawsuit, and the Animal Liberation Front boxes are empty.
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2-9-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: What do the words "Veni, Vidi, Vici"
mean ? I think it will be on the test. |
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Dear Dullard: It's an old French expression. It means, "I came, I saw, I surrendered to the Germans." |
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2-10-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: What film did Ingrid Bergman make
twice - first in Swedish and then in English for her Hollywood debut? |
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Dear Filmbuff: That was "Smörgåsbord," which was directed by her twin brother, Ingemar. Like all Ingemar Bergman's films, it was characterized by slow pacing, laconic dialogue, and the heavy use of symbolism to explore the psychological states of the doomed characters. "Smörgåsbord" tells the story of the conflicted Nels Nielsen family, and is set around the kitchen table which forms the core of the movie and also furnishes its title. As the movie opens we see bleak stretches of Nordic ice for about 15 minutes. Slowly we see in the distance a tiny slovenly house, which grows larger from the viewpoint of the person approaching it, whose anguished breathing becomes louder and louder as he comes closer, finally rising to a labored gasping as he pushes open the door to the barren shack. There we see the frozen remains of his family, Nellie Nielsen, his wife, Nelson Nielsen, his paralytic son, and Nell Nielsen (played by Ingrid Bergman) his daughter, who had wanted to become a career nymphomaniac but was prevented by her cruel father, who demanded she become a psychoanalyst so he could get free treatments. The exhausted Nels flings down his burden on the table, explaining in gasps (he's dying of lung cancer caused by his addiction to smoking reindeer jerky) how this was all he was able to hunt for the daily meal, as he had run out of rifle bullets two years ago and UPS wouldn't deliver this far out on the tundra. The family stare motionlessly, as frozen dead people have a habit of doing, as impolite as it may be. Nels opens the game bag and puts on the table a box of glazed doughnuts, a six-pack of Büdweisør, the fiery local brew, and a Starbuck's tall mocha. He then begins an almost interminable monologue (2 hours, 41 minutes by the clock, although Bergman's superb direction makes it seem much, much longer) explaining in painful detail how he drove his family insane by his incessant viewing of reruns of "The Price is Right" despite not knowing a word of English and not understanding the American currency system. Eventually his family put their heads in the refrigerator and froze to death rather than listen to one more word from Bob Barker. Then we see in flashbacks several of the low points in Nels's wretched life, starting with him being the only Swedish child in recorded history to fall for the old double-dog dare to lick a metal flagpole in midwinter. The flashbacks follow his dreary days as he drones on, showing how he met his wife when he was a lonely Fuller Brush salesman and she was a walrus hunter on the Arctic ice floes. We see the painful births of Nell and Nelson, and how Nels causes his son to become paralyzed from the toupee down when he tells the young boy to hold his beer and watch this as he attempts to loop-the-loop in a dogsled. After many more long and drawn-out scenes of anguish in the frozen cabin, Nels finally does the right thing and beats himself to death with a frozen can of Büdweisør. The camera slowly pulls back as the isolated shack disintegrates under the sheer weight of revulsion, guilt and despair. It was remade in America as "Table for Three," a musical comedy about a young Swedish Gevalia salesman and his misadventures in Hollywood, starring Jerry Lewis. Ingrid Bergman reprises her role as Lewis's psychoanalyst. They loved it in France, or so I'm told....
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2-14-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: I have to write an essay about Point Barrow, Alaska, for my creative writing class here at Nunapitchuk Junior College. I'd really like to get out of this place and move to milder climes so is there any way you can help me? -- Numb in Nunapitchuk |
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Dear Numb: I had to really dig into my old correspondence for this one, but I was finally able to come up with an article my second cousin twice removed wrote shortly before she was finally sent to the rubber room. Unfortunately it was never published, so you may use it or not. But I'd consider the karma attached to the original writer if I were you. "Before the Winter
Winds Blow It All Away" |
| 2-15-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: I have to be able to name seven of
the 14 punctuation marks in English for a test tomorrow. Can you tell me
what they are? |
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Dear Procrastinator: If you really want to impress your teacher, you can list all 27 of them and get extra credit: Pointy thing Squiggly thing Asking thing Demanding thing The two-dotted thing The one-dot-and-a-squiggly Smiley Frowny The elevated, or snooty, comma Suspenders Half-boxes Short line¹ Longer line The three or four dots Single speechifying snooty comma Double speechifying snooty comma Star thingy Little-"a"-in-the-circle The amsterdam, or bent-eight-"and"-sign The falling-forwards vertical line Falling-backwards vertical line The wavy line over the "n" in jalapeño Up pointy Right pointy Left pointy The tilty cagey thing The upper-"o"-falling-forwards-vertical line and lower "o" --- ¹ Not to be confused with the Monopoly game railroad.
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2-19-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: What were paintballs initially used
for? |
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Dear Targeted: They were a way for the Picts, or Painted People of the North, to meet Brythons, or the Painted People of the South, in ancient Britain. Both tribes feared that inbreeding would weaken and ultimately destroy their clans, so they arranged a series of cotillions and formal dances at which young people could meet, mingle and marry. The story of the first Coloured Ball became a saga, retold from generation to generation. The highlight of the event was when Scarlet, of the red-painted O'Hara clan, who was engaged to Red of the Butler clan, was wooed and won by Ashy, an interloper from the Jute clan. In revenge, Red made a play for the hand of Sapphire of the blue-painted Picts. His solo, "I Want Some Red Roses for a Blue Lady," brought down the house, which was dangerously overloaded in any event. The survivors eventually mingled with the Saxons, who, although they eschewed body painting, were considered a savvy and cunning tribe who knew all the Angles. Their descendants became the colorless Britains of today, although many of the contemporary unemployed young have returned to body-painting and hair-dyeing to annoy their elders.
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2-20-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: My German Catholic grandfather
scandalized the family by marrying a Lutheran woman. His brothers would
not speak to him ever again. Some of them moved to Wisconsin, and others
just continued not to speak. Have you ever had to deal with this kind of
sticky family situation? |
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Dear Stuck: That wasn't a problem in our family. My paternal grandparents were both Druids. The only point of contention was that my grandmother insisted on speaking Swedish and my grandfather stuck with Gaelic. My father and his siblings had to learn English from the Italian organ-grinders in the streets of lower Manhattan. To this day my father refuses to speak in public without a monkey and a tin cup. That's how my parents met: my mother, of Hungarian gypsy stock, stole his monkey. That odd grandparental mixture had some equally odd results: we were the only family who sat down to meals like green goulash svenska, Irish meatballs in sour cream, köttbullar with boiled potatoes and cabbage paprikas, rye soda streudel, and Dublin-style Gyulai mit lutefisk. When the family had a get-together everyone drank a mixture of usquebaugh, vodka and akavit. By the time I was 14 I could puke in four languages. Those were certainly interesting times....
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2-21-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: "The way to a man's heart is
through his stomach." Who said that anyway? |
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Dear Junior: That would have to be Dr. Josef Halzputter. He also said "The way to a man's kidney is through his fingernails," and "The way to a man's frontal lobes is through his bellybutton." Dr Halzputter was relieved of his medical license after that last incident.
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2-23-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: How did the flashlight get its
name? |
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Dear EverReady: It's a corruption of the word "fleshlight." In medieval Britain it was believed that the light cast by a burning human appendage would render the bearer invisible. Burglars and poachers would dig up fresh graves, hack off the arms and legs of a corpse, then soak them in a mixture of pine tar and civet oil until they were fully cured. A properly-prepared arm would burn for about an hour, a leg for about two and a half hours-- sufficient time to allow the miscreant to do his evil deeds undetected by local authorities. The ghostly blue light cast by these abominable torches led to the belief in the will o' the wisp and other apparitions. Curiously, we still use "light on his feet" and "light-fingered," in common speech, both of which hark back to the era of fleshlights. When battery-powered lanterns were invented, the same name was used, although over the centuries the term had evolved to "flashlight." Proof of this is that the British still call a flashlight a "torch." --- Ref: "Deer, Hart, Flesh You Were Here: Poaching by Fleshlight from the Dark Ages to Victorian Times." Pied Flambeau Hand o'Glory Press (London & Bombay, 1938)
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2-24-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: During what war was the Battle of
the Herrings fought? |
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Dear Piscine: It was during the great Fishmongers' War of 1671-79, fought between Dutch and Belgian fish peddlers. It started out quite innocently, when Jan Hrumpfstad tossed a minnow at Stijn Shlbeecx during a lull in the afternoon's trading. Shlbeecx riposted with a sardine, and before you know it siege engines had been brought into play, and vast quantities of eels, flounder and dogfish were being fired across the border. In May of the following year the great Battle of the Herrings was fought, with over 160,000 herring, mackerel and smelts sacrificed to gain a strategic advantage. In August, at the height of the fish spoilage season, the famous Turbot Charge saw the first use of exhaust-boosted siege engines to launch enormous quantities of overripe flounders into the enemy trenches. The defending general was heard to remark that, "these are the times that fry men's soles," which would become a Belgian rallying cry, equivalent to the Dutch side's, "No plaice for Belgs!" The war ended with the Peace of Blubber negotiated by the Inuit. Og Mukluk, leader of the Inuit team, gave his famous "I Have a Bream" speech to commemorate the occasion, although some people carped that "He Stoops to Conger" would have been a more appropriate title. The war was commemorated by the great Belgian painter Anonymous, in one of her better-known works.
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