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8-1-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Rotgut: Most people simply call it "POP-skül," but you have wisely perceived that there's more to the name than appearances suggest. It does not mean "homemade whiskey strong enough to blow a hole in your cranium," as most people think. No, its origins are Latvo-Polo-Hrüscanian, and should be written ÞøÞßçû£ in the formal orthography of that lingo, and pronounced "Pah-aw-pap-PSSSCH-kweuell-uh," with a sort of sneeze at the end. It literally translates as "blood [of the] heroic goats of Psschkwelluh," and refers to an old Latvo-Polo-Hrüscanian folktale about how the town was saved from an invasion of Danish polecats (ilder in Danish) in 1244. Here's the best translation I could find on the Internet, from a Latvo-Polo-Hrüscanian support group: "[It was] a dark and stormy night, and the villagers of innocent Psschkwelluh slept the sleep of dead swine [an idiom meaning they slept deeply]. Even [the] watchmen nodded in their portapotties [that's the literal meaning, but I think the imputation is a sort of sentry-box], their spears at rest [also]. Sneakingly over the mountain came the ilder— sly voracious thieving predatory Danish pestilences of no known worth. Vastly yawned the town before them, just as asleep as two knorish [a kind of Latvo-Polo-Hrüscanian duck] ******* [expletive deleted] in a puddle of lard [this may also be idiomatic]. Closely the ilderpak crept, noiseless as a nun breaking wind on Good Friday. Changing the wind direction it did, and the oldest of the great Bockensplurfuttermann [a sort of primitive goat with large bangles, raised for its hooves, which were used as money in Latvo-Polo-Hrüscaniana and its lard, used to sweeten coffee (kaffee, with a sort of burp at the end)] lifted his hornéd head, elevating [his] ears highly to perceive up the sound of slithers made by a famished ilder. Up to springing onto his stumps [a Latvo-Polo-Hrüscanian peasant would know immediately from this expression that the goat had been shorn of its hooves to provide ready cash, meaning that it was late spring, a time of feasting and penury in Latvo-Polo-Hrüscania] the ancient animal fiercly its bangles jangled, [awakening?] the others, who also sprang to their stumps, bangles jangling. Awake the town did, the peasants rushing out to belabor the ilder with swine-hammers [literal translation. The reference is obviously to some sort of tool which has been lost to history], udder-snurkles [ditto], sporking prongs [ditto] and halibut shears [these are used in Denmark to this day for roaching halibut]. Driven away by [such] a display of peasant ferocity, away the ilder fled, to wreak dirty deeds another day. "Joyful were the denizens of victorious Psschkwelluh! A party they threw that very night, slaying the goats and fermenting their blood to make bratzlpfnatusk, the powerful beverage which is making the region famously. All too late a peasant said, "Hey, weren't these the same Bockensplurfuttermann which just saved our town?" and the peasants, with remorse greatly covered, drowned their sorrows in bratzlpfnatusk, for, really, what else was there to do? "Upon the following day, their heads a-pounding with bratzlpfnatuskatzenjammeru [a hangover caused by excessive ingestion of fermented goat's blood], the men of the village gathered to slap together a fitting memorial, but [lacking] the hooves sufficient to [pay for] the job of quality workmanship, instead decided they to change the name of their beloved bratzlpfnatusk to ÞøÞßçû£ in honor of the sacrifice of the goats. And, unless they changed it back again, or forgot the new name when they sobered up, it remains ÞøÞßçû£ to this very day." ~ "Readings in the Folklore of the Latvo-Polo-Hrüscanian Peoples" Laszlo Futtermann, ed. Bratzlpfnatuskatzenjammeru Press (Psschkwelluh and Bombay, 1947)  |
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8-3-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Piscatorial: The Bronqk, named after its curious mating call. There is only one Bronqk in the world, and there will never be another. You see, when Jehovah created the Garden of Eden, he planted two trees there, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Eternal Life. Consumption of the first gave you the knowledge of right and wrong, consumption of the latter allowed you to live forever. Now, Adam and Eve, inspired by the eight-legged serpent of the garden, sampled the wares of the first tree, not knowing the difference between right and wrong. They abruptly discovered the difference, and Jehovah popped out of the bushes where he was hiding and yelled "GOTCHA!" It was obviously entrapment and Adam and Eve, having no concept of disobedience, could not possibly have sinned, so any half-decent lawyer would have had the charges dropped in a heartbeat, but Jehovah had not gotten around to creating lawyers yet, as he was working his way down the scale of animal awfulness and had just completed the hagfish, even although the slime put him off his dinner that day. Oh, and the Bronqk? After Jehovah had played his cruel practical joke on the two innocents (later that day he gave Adam an exploding cigar and Eve fell for the old dribble glass prank), he realized he should dismantle the Tree of Life or there would be hell to pay, as it were. As he was packing it back into its shipping container one of its tasty fruits fell off into the pond where the lonely Bronqk was waiting for his mate to be created. The fish snapped it up, and the refreshment it provided allowed it to get in a few more hours of "bronqk"-ing before the Garden was rezoned into a particularly arid stretch of Iraqi desert. About a thousand years later the Bronqk realized that he was not like other fish, as he never met another fish in the desert, and the absence of any response to his plaintive "bronqk!" meant that Jehovah had never gotten around to creating a mate for it and had probably gotten bored with the whole scene and went of to create a better place. To this day on quiet evenings in the Iraqi desert you can hear the plangent call of the lonely Bronqk, alone of all his kind.... |
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8-5-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Rosie: Association with Commie sympathizer storks. A survey of flamingos in 1954 showed that 92% believed that Trotsky was still alive, 88% believed that America would be better off adopting a centralized Soviet-style economy, and 71% had voted for Gus Hall's American Communist Party candidates in the recent election. During the Army-McCarthy hearings "Tail-Gunner Joe" claimed he had a list of 120 flamingos in the Florida Board of Tourism who were card-carrying members of the Communist Party, but on second glance it turned out to be his weekly bar tab. J Edgar Hoover once spent 6 months as an undercover flamingo in the Everglades, using the material he gathered to write the exposé, "I Was a Teenage Flamenco Dancer!' for "True Romances" magazine. |
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8-7-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Anonymous: That was Orson Welles, who was tired of being confused with H G Wells, even though he went out of his way to point out the "E" in his last name, which H G lacked. Part of the confusion stemmed from the fact that both had fought in the first Mars-Earth War and recorded their experiences in semi-autobiographical sketches, "War of the Worlds," by H G ("No E") Wells, and "Citizen Kane," by the Welles with the "E." Both books were also made into movies, which heightened the confusion, as their plots were nearly identical. Then, adding insult to injury, H G ("No E") Wells was inadvertently awarded an Oscar for "Citizen Kane," thanks to a typo in the engraving order. Orson "E" Wells was so infuriated that he lay for H G ("No E") Wells after the awards ceremony and zapped him with a Mark VII Martian Thermoblaster®, reducing him to his component elements and thus committing the perfect crime, which he described in his next movie, "North by Northwest," in which he plays the role of Alfred Hitchcock. Once the plot was exposed Orson "E" Wells was, of course, tried for the murder of H G ("No E") Wells, and sentenced to wear an ankle bracelet with a matching feather boa whenever he went out in public, the shame of which eventually killed him. He is buried in Morningside Cemetery, next to the catafalque of H G ("No E") Wells, and, in a further mixup, is actually in no-E's catafalque, to his eternal mortification. |
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8-9-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Faithful: Creationism isn't taught in schools because it is, with all due respect, a load of hooey designed to prop up faith-based fundraising units. Evolution is easy to understand if you think about it. Here's a simple scenario which explains how it works: Here is species A. Species A flourishes in the mountains and in river valleys, cropping grass. Mountain and river valley individuals interbreed easily, as they have for generations. Species A is minding its own business one day when an earthquake separates the mountains from the river valley. The mountain Species A goes on evolving, some of its offspring surviving cold weather and brief summers, the others dying off. The river valley Species A goes on evolving, some of its offspring dealing better with heat, parasites and flooding, the rest dying off. The DNA of the surviving mountain-adapted Species A becomes gradually different from the surviving river valley Species A through the generations because different qualities are being passed along in their genes. Mountain Species A offspring who can digest leaves and lichen better than others survive a particularly harsh winter; the rest die. River valley Species A offspring who can hold their breath longer survive a flood better than those who do not and die off. The DNA of each class of survivors is reproduced with every generation. The river valley Species A suffers a heat wave; those with the thinnest coats survive; the others do not. The mountain Species A suffers a prolonged famine; those with more stored fat survive; the others do not. At the end of 200 generations the mountain Species A has thick coats, a heavy layer of fat and browses on leaves and lichen. At the end of 200 generations the river valley Species A is virtually hairless, with large lungs and slow metabolism, and it feeds mostly on underwater plants. After 250 generations a land bridge appears between the mountain Species A and the river valley Species A. Individuals who wander across the land bridge mate with each other. They produce no offspring because their DNA has changed sufficiently to make even a hybrid impossible; they can only breed with their own kind. Mountain Species A is now Species B with unique characteristics. River valley species A is now Species C with unique characteristics. What could be simpler? |
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8-11-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Dubya: Surprisingly, it was Bogart himself. His sweet contralto voice was at odds with the tough-guy image he tried to project, so he always recorded under a voix de plume, as it were. You can hear him in several other well-known films, most notably as the singing voice of Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, which Bogart recorded posthumously, trouper that he was. He was also the singing voice of entertainer Maurice Chevalier, for whom he recorded the sound track of Gigi. Chevalier himself was tone deaf, a well-known side effect of overindulgence in pâté de foie gras, especially the duck fois gras in aspic with Armagnac brandy from the French Gascony region of which he was so fond. Bogart preferred buffalo jerky and Kentucky bourbon, which made their luncheons on the set of the movie somewhat tense. |
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8-13-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Crawstuck: He called it "Hell's Half Acre," because of the high crime rate. His horse Champion was stolen every other week, and poor Gene would find him a few blocks away up on cinder blocks, stripped of anything that could be fenced. Fortunately the royalties on the pro-Soviet meteorological song, "Rudolph the Red Knows Rain, Dear" allowed him to move to a more upscale neighborhood, although the song was denounced as subversive by "Tail-gunner Joe" McCarthy, who said he had a list of 120 reindeer who had crossed over from Siberia and were employed by the State Department. Autry later founded a retreat for sick children called "Malady Ranch," beating Michael Jackson by decades. |
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8-16-2005 Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Baffled: I think this is why they call military intelligence an oxymoron. To celebrate the second-worst attack on American soil with a country music party is personally off my bad taste meter. Worse yet, it could be the start of a trend. Using the same logic, why not have: * Swing band festival and jitterbug competition on the anniversary of December 7th, 1941 * A fancy-dress ball and cakewalk contest on April 19th at the site of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City * The Johnstown Flood Memorial hoedown and rap battle on May 31st * The International Tsunami Remembrance Day conga line and samba school competition on December 26th * Jonestown!: the Musical on November 18th, with free grape Kool-Aid for the kids * The Donner Party Spring Thaw Potluck Supper * The Spanish Influenza Flamenco Party * The Great Peshtigo/Chicago Fire Combined Communities Cookout on October 8th |
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