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1-2-2007 Dear Aunt Nettie: Who was President Ronald Reagan
quoting when he said "I forgot to duck" after he was shot by John W.
Hinckley, Jr. in 1981?
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Dear Sniper: His actual comment was "I forgot the duck," referring to the classic 1951 exchange between Groucho Marx and a contestant on the early TV program, "You Bet Your Life." A transcript of the conversation follows: GROUCHO: "So you claim to be a states' attorney, eh? Quick, what's the capital of South Dakota?" CONTESTANT: "Uh... it's not about states... it's like 'state's witness'." G: "Well, I want all the other states to witness that you don't know what the capital of South Dakota is. And you call yourself an expert!" C: " What a state's attorney does is..." G: "Don't beat around the bush- if you don't know the capital of South Dakota, just say so. It's not like your boss is watching. Or is he? Would you describe him as intelligent?" C: "Well, yes, he's..." G: "Then he's not watching. Let's try another one- what's the capital of Rhode Island?" C: "Providence?" G: "Providence isn't going to save you if you haven't studied for the test. Didn't they ever tell you that in school?" C: "I don't recall...." G: "You don't recall going to school? And they still made you a state's attorney? You must be a great friend of Joe McCarthy! Okay, one last chance. I'll name a state and you tell me the capital, and if you get it right the duck will come down and give you ten dollars. What's the capital of Omaha?" C: "I... I... forget." G: "That's okay, I forgot the duck." The phrase caught on quickly, and pretty soon, "I forgot the duck," was the standard witty response to anyone asking you a question you didn't know the answer to.
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1-4-2007 Dear Aunt Nettie:
What is the difference between poultry
and fowl?
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Dear Avian: The word "poultry" was substituted for "fowl" during the Victorian era for the same reason that "limb" was substituted for "leg" and "passed away" for "died." Victorian women were supposed to be so delicate that the mere mention of a coarse word like "fowl" would cause whole drawing rooms to collapse with the vapors, necessitating their revival with loosened stays and smelling salts. Dinner parties were especially tricky, unless conversations were kept rigidly to safe topics like the weather. If a guest were to slip and say, "Boy, this dead baby cow tastes great!" instead of carefully complimenting the hostess on the wiener schnitzel, why, all the ladies would go over like ninepins, forcing the loosening of stays and the application of smelling salts. Some hostesses would place mattresses behind all the chairs to be occupied by women at a dinner, and there were several patents taken out for chairs which would lower the occupant to the ground slowly and safely. Verbal or written communication of sexual feelings was also forbidden, so people instead used the language of flowers. Sending a clutch of buttercups to one's intended conveyed a sort of highly moral cheerfulness; a bunch of bachelor buttons signified celibacy, as the daisy conveyed an aura of innocence. No gentleman would ever send a lady an arrangement of tiger lilies and peonies, which was like a billboard suggesting a roll in the hay with the horses watching. And the prickly pear was so offensive that florists were often hanged or sent to the Tower for even possessing a photograph or sketch of the plant. All of this was blamed on Queen Victoria, who was supposed to be the role model for delicacy, and who would allegedly faint at the mention of "trousers" in her presence. The truth is that Queen Vicky smoked Spanish cigars, swore like a Billingsgate fishwife, and had the largest collection of pornography in the kingdom. Prince Albert's posthumous tell-all book, "The Consort Cavorts," showed her subjects the real down and dirty side of the monarchy, especially the Queen's penchant for hot buttered stableboys and games like Johnnie-ride-the-pony.
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1-8-2007 Dear Aunt Nettie:
What is the most plentiful metal in
the earth's crust? |
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Dear Miner: It was once thought to be crustene until scientists discovered that crustene is actually a species of beetle, so the search was on again for the most abundant metal. The French nominated camembertine, hoping to unload a batch of soft cheese that had gone all moldy and awful. The Italians nominated pastatene, pointing out that the entire Italian peninsula is held up by eons of slowly accumulated pastatene, sometimes in layers separated by tomatosausium to form the related mineral lasagnite. The Germans, of course, nominated hasenpfefferium which is extremely abundant in their land, forming domes under which beerite is often found and gaseous reserves of eructite and flatulum. The Chinese could not agree on an element; an hour after making a decision their representatives were hungry to change it again. North Korea suggested povertine, which is mined and eaten by its citizens, and threatened to blow up anyone who disagreed. India also has a great deal of povertine, but it's mixed with rich seams of outsourcium, or callcentrite, causing unsettled mineral conditions in many areas. Venezuela naturally proposed chavezite, a highly unstable petroleum-bearing stratum liable to go off in unpredictable directions at any time. Reacts with bushite to release sulfur. Russia nominated vodkite, as it has little else, but vodkite has been known to cause staggering, slurred speech and mental confusion, especially among Russians. Australia made a strong case for kangaroovium, causing share prices in that element to grow by leaps and bounds. Mexico said it had an abundance of emmigrantine, related to povertine, which it illegally ships north in great quantities. Iraq made a weak case for kaboomium!, understandable since the country has been distracted by the discovery of enormous toxic deposits of shiite and sunnium. Iran made a very loud proposal for ahmadinejadene, which is considered as unstable as chavezite, and radioactive to boot. Canada said it would support whatever the United States was nominating, since its main resources, snowene and icene, is not easily exportable. The USA casually suggested it might or might not consider hegemonium, but its Congress could not decide right now, as it was concentrating all its efforts on preventing horsemeat from being sold, flags from being burnt, and blastocysts from being dismantled. Whatever decision it might have come to would have been overruled by its leader anyway, in the name of national security. Poland said it thought rubber would make a dandy metal. No wonder the country has the reputation it does.... 
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1-10-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Ruler: "Not much," according to official documents, and there's an interesting story connected with that response. You see, when the Stanley Powerlock® satellite was launched in 1981, scientists had hoped to discover why the Moon is so much bigger and closer at the horizon than when it's way high up in the sky. After a successful lunar landing, one end of the tape was hooked to the edge of a crater. Once secure, the body of the tape measure lifted off and was returned gently to earth, unspooling the tape as it went. Scientists clustered around the returned measurement module, anxious to know the distance to the Moon to a sixty-fourth of an inch. Alas, in their haste to read the tape someone inadvertently leaned on the yellow return button, and ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!! the tape was respooled before you could say "metric system." Aghast at their blunder, and fearing the wrath of the accounting department, they acted quickly to protect themselves and their careers by agreeing to "enfudgeify" all future responses to questions about the Moon's distance. That's why all lunar distance data is codified in terms like "not much," "about the same as last year," "our best guesstimate is...," "are you familiar with base-14 calculations?" "let me get back to you on that," "our measurer person is out this week," and "national security concerns prohibit a response."
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1-16-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Rapid: It depends on the species. The Speedy Sardine can hit up to 85 mph. The Aerial Anchovy can do 75 mph with a tailwind. The Rapid Ray may hit 45 mph, but thanks to its large "wings" it can stay aloft until it perishes of dehydration. The Swift Shark is relatively slow at 33 mph, but is considered the deadliest of the flying fish, especially over crowded summer beaches. The Galloping Goldfish has a top speed of only about 17 mph, making them easy to catch with butterfly shrimp nets for home aquaria. (The "Butterfly" Shrimp is a misnomer; btw; its yellow coloring, rectangular shape and buzzing sound account for the name. All species are flightless. Many just lay there.) There are rumors of a Supersonic Squid, but none has ever been found, and photographs are too blurred for positive identification. However, SOMETHING tentacular hit the aircraft carrier USS Codswallop at 3:47 am on November 22, 1958 in the South China Sea. The impact site suggests that, whatever it was, it was traveling at around 800 mph when it hit. At the other end of the speed scale, the Dirigible Drumfish and the Zeppelin Zebrafish have no intrinsic means of propulsion, depending on sea breezes to provide movement. The Nimble Nautilus is technically not a flying fish but a mobile mollusk, although accounts of it leaving the ocean surface using its water jet have been verified. The largest flying seafood is not a fish at all, but a sea mammal. The Wright Whale, named after the eponymous founders of human aviation, needs about 20 linear miles to build up sufficient speed to leave the water, and ichthyologists disagree as to whether it exhibits true flight or is simply a glider, like the Gliding Grouper of the Florida Keys.¹ At any rate, when these 50-foot-long, 60-ton creatures lift into the air, it is perhaps the most awe-inspiring sight one can experience on the open sea. In 1992 a Carnival Cruise Line passenger vessel reported a pair executing the fabled Mating Flight off the coast of Ecuador, a sight rarely seen by human eyes. They were traveling about 12 mph at the time. ----------------------- ¹ See also the Flatulent Flounder and the Wind Wrasse, two other species whose flying abilities are often debated.
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1-19-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Monte: It was Hubert Heaver-Wentle, who used his mother's family's great wealth (amassed by cornering the late 19th-century wentle trap trade) to run for nomination in 1896, 1900 and 1904 races. In the first race he easily outdistanced the out-of-shape William Jennings Bryant-Gumball, who also used his mother's family's great wealth (amassed by cornering the late 19th-century gum vending industry) to run for the nomination, but was unable to catch the fleeter William McKinley-Potatopeeler, who used his mother's family's great wealth (amassed by cornering the 19-century tuber denuder market) to buy special Greek running shoes, which gave him an edge. In 1900 Heaver-Wentle ran again, and once again faced William McKinley-Potatopeeler, whose vice-presidential mate, Theodore Roosevelt-Teddybear, was a professional jogger, giving competitors little chance of victory. Roosevelt-Teddybear used his mother's family's great wealth (amassed by cornering the fin de siècle plush toy market) to fund his portion of the race. A still-out-of shape William Jennings Bryant-Gumball came in third, huffing and puffing and wishing he had evolved better lungs. McKinley-Potatopeeler did not compete in the 1904 race, having been assassinated in 1901, which disqualified him. His former vice-president, Theodore Roosevelt-Teddybear would prove to be impossible to beat, as he had been running around the Washington Monument since the 1900 election and was "as fast as greased lightning," according to the Smithsonian Institute's Department of Adipose Atmospheric Electrical Discharges. Bryant-Gumball would be passed over for the nomination to run this time, the Democrats choosing the speedier Alton B. Parker-Pen, whose campaign race was sponsored in part by his mother's family's great wealth (amassed by cornering the turn-of-the-century fountain pen market). A surprise candidate in the 1904 race was Eugene V Debs-Ball, a popular entertainer and recording star ("Eugene Debs-Ball and the Sociable Socialists") who had the 1903 hit, "Massa's in de Cold, Cold Ground," a touching tribute to William McKinley-Potatopeeler's assassination. Debs-Ball used his mother's family's great wealth (amassed by cornering the early 20th-century debutant ball commercial business) to fund his race, but he really had little chance against Roosevelt-Teddybear, plus he had the misfortune of having a shoelace come untied midway down the track. To the end of his days he blamed his defeat on a betrayal by his trainer and shoeshine boy, Rastus Kiwi-Shinola. Theodore Roosevelt-Teddybear also won on the basis of his optimism about the stock market. When asked his opinion, he always said, "Bully!"
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1-22-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Reader: Romantic fiction, westerns and cookbooks. Jefferson didn't know much about literature, but he knew what he liked. He fancied a good bodice-ripper at bedtime, which really used to annoy Sally Hemings, who had to get up at dawn and didn't appreciate him leaving the lamp on half the night. Westerns were for rainy afternoons. Jefferson felt that the invention of the six-gun would end war as we know it, and he designed the wide avenues at the University of Virginia so they could be used for gunfights, which also explains the presence of the Saloon on campus, and what he called the Hoosegow. Cookbooks, oddly enough, did not belong in the kitchen at Monticello. Jefferson kept them in his study under lock and key. Few people know that he was a victim of Literate's Bullemia, a dreaded affliction in which a person reads a dozen different recipes, then spends an hour in the bathroom with an eraser. As President, he used to go on "reating" jags lasting an entire afternoon, which is why the Monroe Doctrine wasn't named after him because he didn't show up for the naming ceremony one afternoon and Jimmy Monroe snuck his name in, the little minx. There was a fourth and fifth category of reading matter which was suppressed after his death. Jefferson had an extensive collection of outhouse humor publications, including "WC Privy's Original Bathroom Companion," "Flushed with Success," and "Three-Holer Howlers." The fifth category, his comic book collection, was given away by his mother, and would have been worth a fortune today.
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1-24-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Geographic: Belguim? The town in Wisconsin? Of course it exists! Belguim raises personable cows, makes fine cheese, and if the fog lifts tourists can still see the remains of the pier where ships loaded during the Civil War, and where the "Pride of Sheboygan" ferryboat almost stopped one day in 1951 due to mechanical failure. It's also the home of the Fighting Marmots, the middle-school volleyball team which swept the Ozaukee County championships in 1966. You may be confusing it with Belgium, also known as the International House of Waffles. Belguim doesn't feature waffles, though. The town specialty is sturgeon burgers. Since the lake sturgeon is an endangered species, most restaurants substitute canned penguin imported from Tierra del Fuego. They cancel out the notoriously oily, fishy taste of penguin by dipping the burgers in lye just before putting them on the griddle, and serving them up with ample quantities of pungent Thai fermented pork sauce, which is relabeled as "Belguim Burger Béarnaise." It fools the tourists. Residents know that you can get an authentic sturgeon burger at Andy's House of Big Food by ordering "moose meat over easy," a coded expression designed to confuse environmentalists. Try it if you find yourself in Belguim on your way to someplace important. Andy's accepts food stamps, or you can barter with .30-06 ammo. Doesn't exist, indeed!
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1-29-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Tripper: From here in Redbone, Arkansas, Oregon is one of those "out there" states which should rightfully belong to Japan or China. Quite a few Arkansahoovians believe that California is a myth. So, since I know nothing about the place, I was forced to use online information. From that I have discovered that: * Fish will only fly over bear paws if it's a busy day in an expensive Chinese restaurant. Why anyone would want to order bear paw as an entrée is beyond me, but these days most everything is beyond me. * I have no idea who or what a Manute Bol is. The closest I could come to online was "malamute boil," which is either an affliction of Alaskan sled dogs or a potluck if the supply of bear paws runs out. * Oregon trees are indeed tall, as trees tend to be, except for those weenie shrunk-down Japanesey trees they grow in pots in California, if indeed there is a California. * The climate in Oregon leaves something to be desired, as it rains most of the year and is overcast the rest. People born there can live their entire lives without once seeing the sun. If the sun ever did break through, it would probably cause mass panic. * Portland is the only important city. As a matter of fact the entire rest of the state is considered superfluous except as scenery. * The principal cash crop is marijuana. The second biggest crop in terms of yield per acre is wild moss, which is harvested and sent to the putative citizens of California for use in salads, which is what they live on, if they exist. The third biggest crop in terms of yield per acre is mildew. * The only native livestock is the giant earthworm, which has eaten all the other species. The earthworms have profited from the dankness and dirt to grow to amazing size, some of them 40 feet long and weighing over 500 pounds. Worm-breaking has become a popular rodeo event since all the horses were eaten. * Portland has one restaurant for every resident, most of which are empty, except for McDonald's, which is not technically a restaurant but a fast-food joint. * The principal industry in Oregon is keeping out alleged Californians. Most people are employed in this trade. Other industries include barbed wire manufacturing and land mine assembly. * Almost everyone is literate, which comes in handy if a volcano is about to explode, an earthquake is due, or a tsunami has been spotted off the coast. The only illiterate ones are illegal Mexicans, and who cares about them? * Oregon is one of only two states without a sales tax. It's not necessary because the state has a generous income from drug smuggling. * It's pronounced Or-gun. * Everyone in the western part of the state, the only part that counts, is an eco-freak. Western Oregon is the only place in the world where they recycle Kleenex. Teams of the otherwise unemployable wash, dry, sanitize and repack Kleeneces. Used matches are also rebuilt, and the state newspaper, "The Oregonian," conveniently turns back into wood pulp after three days. * The seashore is so spectacular that resident Oregonians are not permitted anywhere near it so as not to bother the tourists, who bring money. * The state drink is bottled water. Even the tiniest convenience stores carry several hundred brands, and supermarkets have thousands, all guaranteed to be genuine water. Visitors are sometimes surprised that bathrooms and kitchens have no taps, and that washing machines have a funnel built in to take straight Evian. Which is of course recycled and returned to store shelves the following day. * There are no slums, which are recycled into second homes. The fate of the slum dwellers is unknown, but they are believed to account for the presence of a homeless "Vietnam vet" beggar on every streetcorner, some of whom are in their 30s and must have been drafted as embryos. * Everyone rides bicycles or takes public transportation, as automobiles were outlawed several years ago. The public transportation system is so pervasive that most citizens have a bus stop just off the living room. * In autumn leaves fall only into approved recycling bins so they can be stapled back onto the trees come springtime. * Finally, if you have to ask how much it costs to live here, you can't afford it....
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2-1-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Floral: The common dandelion, which has varieties as small as the Dandyette and as large as the Trampolinedelion. Dandelions have a surprising number of uses, from dandelion salad and dandelion wine to DandylineR paper products, the Dan DeeR line of men's colognes, and, of course, the rapper Dan D, the first plant to reach Billboard's Top 20 with his performance of "******** ** ****!" Larger varieties of dandelion are used as wallpaper and carpeting in many countries, and "dandillows" are now available in the bedding section of stores like "Bed, Bath & Begonias." Although the 1957 Belgian attempt to market the dandelion-powered "Paardebloem" economy car was a failure, its lack of success is blamed more on the limited number of dandelion refilling stations than on design and manufacture. After all, the much more conventional Edsel motorcar was likewise released in 1957, cost six times more than the Paardebloem, and was still a dud. And the Dutch "DAF," released in late 1957, which ran on daffodils and had unique wooden tires and an Edam dispenser in the dashboard, sold precisely 3 cars in the USA, despite an intensive advertising campaign. ("Think Globally, Drive Daffily!") Economists who study automobile marketing and sales trends later determined that 1957 was a year with "bad mojo," and that any new car introductions in that year were doomed. During the Flower Power craze of the 1960s, several Carnaby Street tailors introduced dandelion clothing. The disadvantage was that immediately after the first cold snap, the clothes would turn into a ball of fragile tufts which drifted away at the slightest breeze. Only Cher was able to wear them effectively after October. During the same era dandelion was promoted as an organic coffee substitute ("DanDecaf") and Soviet scientists claimed they could vulcanize dandelions to form a sort of rubber. The 1969 spring line of new Lada automobiles were all equipped with this novel new rubber product. Alas, after the first cold snap (mid-July), the tires turned into a ball of fragile tufts which drifted away at the slightest breeze. Russians, long used to Soviet consumer product failures, shrugged their shoulders and drove around on the rims until they wore down, then simply drank vodka instead of going anywhere. Trivia: Dandelions were the first plant to be unanimously voted into the Should Be Extinct, Dammit! protection category by the EPA.
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2-4-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Inhaled: It depends on the body. Some people, like rhinoceroses, have super-heavy skin. Others, like the extinct Irish elk, have antlers that weigh as much as 75 pounds, attached to a 5-pound skull with a little itty-bitty brain inside. Now, some people will say, "Hey, doofus, antlers ain't organs!" but they reveal their own ignorance, as antlers play an important part in this particular cervid's temperature regulating mechanism, so there! Now, blue whales, their heaviest organ is their tongue, which weighs as much as 3 tons! Hoo, boy! Couldn't you blow some raspberries with that sucker! In jellyfish, their stinging tentacles weigh more than the rest of their body. And if some know-it-all dunce-type says, "Hey, dimwit, everybody knows that tentacles ain't organs!" we can riposte with, "Oh yeah? Without tentacles to catch krill or whatever they eat, they would starve to death, so it is so an organ, neener, neener, neener!"¹ Now, in other sea creatures, like the hermit crab, the shell they live in and carry around is their heaviest organ. And I can just hear some of you saying, "Organ? Those shells aren't even from the same species, you stultified numbskull!" To which I reply, "Oh, sure, you just watch a naked hermit crab and see what happens. In 2 seconds, GULP!, they're swallowed up by a grouper or something, which makes the shell the most important organ they got, as well as the heaviest, smartass!" In plants things are different. I mean, a tree is just one big organ, right, from the tippy-topmost leaf to the deepest darkest apical meristem buried in the dirt. It don't have to calculate what part is which-- you take away any part and it's kerflooey! Except leaves in Autumn. They don't count. And fruit. Some fruit-bearing trees, like the watermelon, have such heavy fruit that the whole tree is mashed flat and can only squiggle across the field. It must feel like some kind of fool, I tell ya. I can hear all the other trees, some of them 200 feet tall, calling out, "Hey, 'melon, what you doin' down there? You look like some kinda vine, all flat like that. Why ain'tchu up on you feets, you lazy bastich?" And the watermelon tree says nothing, but plots dark revenge. Lastly, in the insect kingdom, ruled over by Queen Bee and King Cricket, the heaviest organs don't amount to a hill of beans, since insects are such lowlife anyway. Except the lobster, in which the claws are the largest organs. And if you don't believe me, you just slip those thick rubber bands off their wrists and see what happens. They'll grab holt of your organs and then you'll be singing a different tune. And you'll be singing it soprano, too!² Oh, and somebody has pointed out that I left out birds. In birds, their fur is the heaviest organ, which is why you never see them with fur coats in the summertime. ------------------------ ¹ Quoted in the Journal of Coelenterate Physiology, June, 1997, pg 215ff. "Aspects of Maternal Dominance in Scyphozoa, with Special Attention Paid to the Role of Tentacles as Organs, Neener, Neener, Neener." ² This statement has absolutely no connection to a noted crime family in Newark, New Jersey. No connection whatsoever. Really! There's no need to send anybody around to check it out, and if that somebody is carrying a baseball bat, we no longer live here, anyway. Moved, left no forwarding address. Signed up for the Federal Witness Protection Program, too. And had plastic surgery. Perhaps residing in Tibet. Who knows?
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2-6-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Chance: Although some Continental art programs can get away with showing several pictures and frames per second due to their citizenry's familiarity with great art, American TV cannot. Even with very simple pictures-- a Rothko, perhaps-- it's necessary to keep the image on the screen while a voice-over explains what it is and who did it. And frames? Hoo boy! Not one American in a thousand can tell Baroque from pickled oak. I mean, in Great Britain they have a museum at Beningbrough Hall in Yorkshire just for frames! (The audience will please refrain from stereotypical Yorkshiremen jokes.¹) Painting, shmainting!-- in many cases the Beningbrough museum curators have spray-painted over the picture with dark gray automotive primer so as not to distract from the beauty of the frames in its collection. Americans? They buy frames at Wal-mart and think they're just as fashionable as all get-out. Now, when you combine a great picture with a great frame, then you're cooking with gas! Remember that fancy-assed painting of Louis HIV in full court drag? The frame on that baby weighs 85 pounds and has more gold leaf on it than Zsa Zsa Gabor's mummy case. When you flash that sucker on European TV for just a millisecond, everybody says, "Dude! That was Louis HIV in full court drag in that gonzo 85-pound frame!" In America you could leave it up there for a week and the only reaction from a channel-surfer would be, "I gotta get me some of that beer," before he switched to "Celebrity Hopscotch." And that's classical art! When it comes to modern or post-modern art, most of which doesn't even have frames, then your American viewer is ass-over-teakettle lost at sea. There's a lulu of an "installation art" piece over at the Tate Modern: a completely empty room with a couple of flashing lights in it. When a proper Brit sees that popping up on his art program, he or she knows instantly what it is, because they saw it in "The Sun" when the Tate paid £100,000 in ratepayers' pelf for it in 1999. And what's the proper Brit's response to the image on the screen? "Bleedin' Tate is barking mad," is one of the few we can print, and it's dead-on accurate. Show an American viewer the same image and he or she will only wonder where Martha Stewart gets her ideas..... --------------------- ¹ Well, okay, just one. A Yorkshireman wins the lottery and decides to spend part of it on home decor. So he buys a Constable to hang in the bathroom."If the family likes it well enough," he says, "we may bring it into the house.
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2-9-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Sparky: Almost one. Transistors back in those days weren't the skinny, paltry things you see today, no siree Bob! Back in 1958 they really knew how to make 'em, and they used real materials, too, like galvanized iron, cold rolled steel, barbed wire, genuine pink beach sand from the Bahamas, hand-cut rectifiers and hand-packed capacitors, Fahnestock clips (when's the last time you saw a genuine Fahnestock clip on a computer chip, hm?), a rugged steel-and-Bakelite potentiometer, and reliable 6SJ7Y vacuum tubes with solid glass insulators. Those were transistors! Back in 1958 us kids would wait at the drugstore for the latest issue of Amateur Transistor to arrive (it was only a dime in those days!), then rush home to build the latest model, using parts we found around the house, like the coils from Mama's steam iron and the gears from the big grandfather clock in the hall. And Oh! the joy we experienced when all the parts were in place and solidly soldered down. I remember taking one of mine to show-and-tell in the 6th grade, loading it carefully into my Radio Flyer wagon and covering it with wax paper to keep the rain off. How impressed Sister Himmler was! And when I plugged it into a wall socket and the tubes took on that warm glow that showed it was working properly, then slowly the whole thing began to transist, well, there are few moments like that in life. It kept on transisting while I pointed out the various components and explained how they worked. Several boys volunteered to work the potentiometer to tune it in better, and Suzie Ledbetter offered a bobby pin so I could adjust the framistat (in my haste I had left the framistat wrench set at home). Just before the noon whistle blew for lunch I added a pint of mercury and a handful of ferric oxide and the whole class went Ooooooooooooooooooo! as the gevartikin inflated to its full six-foot diameter. I brought it home during lunch hour and plugged it in to surprise my mother. How she laughed and laughed! Later, when my father came home from work he was so impressed he took me down to the vacuum tube store to get my own "blue glow" superheterodyne tube and exciter coil. He assured me that if I kept up the good work I was sure to get a job that paid Big Bucks someday. What a great day it was! When I said my prayers that night I included John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain, the inventors of the transistor. I hope they enjoyed their Nobel Prize as much as I enjoyed my transistor!
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2-12-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Scribbly: Tetraethyl lead was once used extensively as an additive in pencils for its ability to increase the pencil's hardness rating, thus allowing the use of higher finger pressure ratios for greater efficiency and readability. It was also thought to protect pencils against wear, especially mechanical pencils where lubrication was difficult. The use of tetraethyl lead as a pencil additive was discontinued in the 1970s when it was discovered that it led (pun unintended but unavoidable) to significant paper pollution. This was particularly noticeable in schools, where pencil lead concentrations were high. Toxic levels of tetraethyl lead caused younger children to become bored and distracted. The only cure was for them to stay at home and watch cartoons and daytime TV, which led (sorry) to such a steep fall in overall IQ scores that media scare stories were produced, with talking heads using their frowny bad-news faces to suggest that Something Should Be Done Or We're All Doomed. When it was revealed in 1977 that 88% of America's schoolchildren thought that John Travolta was the president of the United States, Congress leapt into action to ban tetraethyl lead in pencils by 1980 before they were voted out of office and a mere Hollywood entertainer elected to the highest office in the land. Today only Yemen, Afghanistan and North Korea use leaded pencils, and just look at them!
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2-15-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Neurotic: I personally (and impersonally) think that clowns are one of the great scourges of the modern world. Perhaps they had a place in society back when they could be ritually slaughtered at the end of a performance, but today political correctness has pretty much put the kibosh on human sacrifice. I have never met a child who was not traumatized by clowns. There's something fundamentally wrong about grown men dressing up like that and cavorting around. Sick, if you ask me. And if you don't believe me, just read these testimonials: "I think all clowns should be kilt ded. -- Jimmy H. age 5 "The clown at the sirkus was so skary I did a number 2 in my pants." -- Elroy T. age 7 "Hate clowns! Hate hate hatehate clowns!" -- Emily P. age 3 "Can clowns be set on fire? I think they should be. I think they would look pretty burning and screaming." -- Julie Mc. age 8 "This man in our nayberhood usta dress up as a clown and play funny games with kids. Then the plice came and took him away." -- Kevin R. age 10 "Clowns try so hard to win the acceptance they were denied in childhood by mocking the role of adults, but inside they are roiling oceans of conflict and shame. Their exaggerated actions are the desperate child's plea, 'Look at me, Mama, look at ME.'" -- Sigmund F. age 71 "Mama caught me trying on her makeup and said I would grow up as a fagit. Are clowns fagits? They use lots of makeup." -- Dwight T. age 11 "There was this klown at the sirkus. I had bad dreams every nite after I saw him. My mama says I might have to go to a sykologist if I dont stop having nite mares." Donna H. age 9 "They got this clown for my birthday. He had a big red nose like my uncle Harry. He smelled like wisky like my uncle Harry too. And he was about as funny as uncle Harry, who isn't." -- Chuck S. age 12 "Why do they disgize theirselfs? What are they triing to hide?" -- La Tonya A. age 10 "They had clowns. I hid under my chair." -- Bessie N. age 4 |
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2-19-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Tippler: I ask you, in all seriousness, if you've ever seen a dead wino? My great-uncle Fribble was not a connoisseur of red wines, but a common sewer. Each year the Gallo company would send him a Christmas card, he was such a mainstay of their business. Well, one day in 1916 great-uncle Fribble felt the patriotic call and signed up for General Pershing's American Expeditionary Force to go whomp the Hun. Nothing was heard from him in all of 1917, and he was presumed dead. In 1918 that whole branch of the family died off from the great influenza epidemic, and great-uncle Fribble was forgotten utterly. Lo and behold! in 1981 he returned, still wearing his puttees and singing about the mademoiselle from Armentières. We were understandably stunned, but great-uncle Fribble (who must have been 89 or thereabouts, although he still looked like the boyish lad we had waved off at the docks so long ago) explained that on his first leave in Paris he had found a really cheap source of Bordeaux in a tiny shop in the Quartier Pigalle, and frankly saw no reason to leave until the owner's grandson had finally died and the shop was closed down. His only question was whether Woodrow Wilson had been re-elected. But even stranger than that is an account I read in the New York Daily News several years ago. It appears that the officers of the law had drug in some wino from the Bowery on a charge of suspicion of conduct unbecoming a human being or some other variation on aggravated mopery. The wino, who spoke with a thick Dutch accent, reported his last known address as "a tenant in Lambert van Valckenburch's house, opposite Kip's Bay plantation," an address not found on any recent street map. He reported that, as a licensed porter of ales and spirits, he was taking a hogshead of red wine to "Pegleg Pete" Stuyvesant's bouwerij, who was planning a kegger to celebrate his son's graduation from the Dutch Reformed mission school. Well, the day wat hot, and nearly at the end of Het Marckvet where it met Pearl St, he felt a powerful thirst come over him as he labored that fine June day, and he stopped under a shade tree for a rest, and to "suck the monkey," as porters called it: drilling a tiny hole with a gimlet in a large cask, inserting a straw to sip the contents, then closing the hole with candle wax. At this point, the wino claimed, a feeling of "unutterable lassitude" overcame him, and he knew no more. After that things became hazy. He remembered uniforms changing from Dutch to British to some new one he didn't recognize. He recalls marveling at gas lights, then at their electrical replacements, and being struck with wonder at the first horseless carriage he saw, and absolutely bowled over by airplanes. Well, at this point the skeptical police called in a police historian, who spoke with the wino for an hour, then went off to the library to check some old texts. He returned near the end of the day with the astonishing news that he had traced the wino to a porter for the old Bull's Head tavern in New Amsterdam named Wouter Tienhoven, circa 1650! The astonished scholar rushed back to the cell where the apparently ageless porter was being held, but alas! the old wino had been kept from his sustaining beverage for too long, and had crumbled into a heap of grey dust and dry bones. |
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2-21-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Airy: Nonentium, an isotope of vacuumium. During the Cold War American and Soviet scientists were locked in a contest to discover or create the first lighter-than-air metal which was also tough, durable and versatile. The intent was to create large artillery pieces which could be easily transported simply by tying a length of string to them and towing them to the battlefield. Another plan was to build a heavily-armored dirigible for use as a floating gun platform. And, of course the space program of the successful nation would benefit mightily, as even the heaviest module or satellite could be lifted into orbit simply by cutting its restraining ropes in a suitably open area with no winds. It had been known for years that vacuumium had many of the required properties, but existed only in the form of a viscous, untamable jelly. Its only known application was as a practical joke. A couple of scientists would distract another scientist, and the prankster would slip open the victim's lunchbox and replace the strawberry jam in his peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches with vacuumium jelly. And oh! the laughter in the lunchroom when the poor victim opened his lunchbox and his peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches would shoot up to— and sometimes through!— the ceiling, The Soviets did the same, but since bread, peanut butter and jelly were all unavailable because of the wartime emergency protocol, they had to smear the jelly on the bottom of vodka bottles to get the same effect. There is still an international debate as to which side was the first to successfully separate out the nonentium isotope from vacuumium.¹ The International Extremely Secret Patent Infringement Court of the United Nations has been meeting off and on since 1957 to try to settle the row, but with little success, since neither side will discuss anything but the weather due to national security concerns. Even discussions about the weather ended in 1977 when Moscow was flooded with record-breaking rainstorms immediately after the US had launched its latest weather satellite, events which the Soviet ambassador said "had the CIA's fingerprints all over it." In any case, clandestine reports were soon circulating that a fully-armored blimp had been spotted hovering over Area 51 in Groom Lake, Nevada, and similar reports filtered out of the Soviet UFO headquarters in Syktyvkar. Rumor had it that the Soviet project was nicknamed "Death Star," which terribly upset American scientists and the military, who had only managed to come up with the lame "Operation Lead Balloon" to hide and highlight their activities. Nevertheless, each side knew that the other side was making great progress on this "weapon of all weapons."² Fate oddly stepped in at this point. In November, 1981, Israel tested one of the nuclear weapons it didn't have off the coast of South Africa. Immediately, the world over, all nonentium disappeared, converting itself into xenon, nitrogen and fulminarium, a new element with a half-life of two-tenths of a zillionth of a second, rendering it useless for any purpose other than being discovered by nuclear physicists. Any people and non-nonentium objects in the American and Soviet sky-dreadnoughts immediately fell to earth. It didn't take long for the CIA and the KGB to realize that their killer weapons application was a killer dud. Even a Kim Jong Il-sized nuclear weapon ("M-80 firecracker" in IAEA terminology) was big enough to vaporize all the nonentium on Earth, eliminating its potential as a weapon. Funding was immediately cut off, and both sides switched to Plan B, except that it was still being held up in the USA due to opposition from FDA evangelicals. -------------------------- ¹ Italy even got into the act, claiming that nonentium was identical to nullgravium, which had been discovered in Tuscany in 1598. ² Italy again protested, saying that the phrase "armamento di così fan tutte armamenti," was a well-known phrase in the Italian underworld, particularly in Sicily. The Italian response was to immediately double the cost of olive oil on the world market, driving prices up to over $95 a barrel in olio futures on the spot market. Indignant American lawmakers immediately took Italian bread off the menu in the Congressional Cafeteria and renamed Italian dressing Liberty Garnish, served on a loyalty oath. |
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2-23-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear ACE: It stands for Doppelganger Nano-Assembly and was named after its function, which is to duplicate others identical with itself on a very small scale. As opposed to RNA, Robot Nano-Assembly, used to create plots for inferior science-fiction movies. As an acronym, DNA has many other uses. It is essential to the functioning of the Defense Nuclear Agency, and indispensable in computing, where it represents everything from Dynamic Network Analysis to Departmental Network Administrator. It is easily reversible, where it becomes the second most popular word in the English language, after the reversed acronym for Embedded Hyper Text. |
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2-26-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Infielder: While there's no steroid-enhanced major league baseball team in the state of Oregon, there are some good minor- and paltry-league teams. The minor league American Automobile Association (Triple-A) team is the Portland Beavers, featuring such local stars as "Swats" McKenzie and the part-time outfielder "Bosco" Gundermann. All players wear the stovepipe hats from which the team draws its name, accented with spats, celluloid collar and watch fob. You may remember the fuss last year when Tyrone LaRue used his hat to snag a runaway ground ball, and the rules committee had to take their case all the way to the Baseball Supreme Court for a decision. You don't get action like that from the Chicago Cubs, let me tell you! Their winter season will be getting underway as soon as they have all 11 players out on bail. In the single-A (Adultery) paltry league there's the Eugene Emerils, composed entirely of area chefs, including "Cilantro" Mendez and "Buttered Parsnips" Luchese. The games aren't much, but the menu selections are tremendous, and it's the only ballpark where the food vendors have a wine list. For a special treat, wait for Fan Appreciation Night. Last year everybody got veal saltimbocca with roasted rosemary potatoes smothered in shiitake mushrooms, caramelized onions and Gruyère, accompanied by a '59 Beaujolais. At the 7th-inning stretch there was chocolate tiramisu torte with wild cherry sauce and a '68 Imperial Tokay. During the winter season you can count on heftier choices, like boeuf bourguignon, carbonade de boeuf, and the shortstop's specialty, bacon-wrapped loin of pork Wysocki with a marmalade glaze and lardons of genuine lard. The coach recommends a good mulled cider or hot spiced wine as the perfect complement. |
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2-28-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Crenshaw-head: Few people realize that Marshall Crenshaw is also the amateur agronomist who bred the hybrid melon that bears his name. He's rather modest about it, and the subject doesn't often come up during recording sessions. Crenshaw was unhappy with the melons available to him, and he longed for one that would have the perfect blend of canteloupicity and honeydewity. After years of labor carefully breeding and crossbreeding different varieties of melons on the fire escape of his Bronx tenement, he finally achieved what he sought in a hybrid of a casaba melon and a Persian melon. Somewhat daunted at first, yet eager to share his new discovery with a waiting world, he began hanging around the kitchen doors of famous restaurants, giving out free samples and hoping the new variety would catch on. He had cards made up with a picture of the new variety with "Have Melon, Will Travel" printed above it, which he sent out to major hotels and restaurants across the land. At last his break came when the Frog and Peach restaurant¹ in New Brunswick, New Jersey, ordered two crates for its summer menu. After that New York's trendy SoHo district restaurant, "The Unshod Clam," asked for a dozen crates, and soon Marshall Crenshaw could hardly keep up with the orders, and had to hire a dozen handlers to help with breeding of the casaba and Persian melons, which do not naturally reproduce in the wild and have to be forced with cattle prods, or enticed with centerfolds from the Burpee catalogue. As an interesting bit of trivia, Crenshaw (the man, not the melon) sponsored and performed in the band "Blind Melon," which had a monster hit in 1992 and then was never heard of again. It is believed to be living under an assumed name in Montana. ----------------------------------- ¹ Not at all related to the more famous Frog and Peach restaurant of Dartmoor, Devon, in southwest England. |
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3-5-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Decanter: Galileo hypothesized that the Moon was not truly made of green cheese, but was composed mostly of rock with traces of rennet here and there. Some gentlemen named Rocco from the Inquisition informed him that denying the greencheesity of the moon, a fact firmly established by Aristotle in his treatise, "De Lunibus," could cause Galileo's height to be extended by a foot or so on the rack, preparatory to remedial instruction performed with red-hot pincers. Galileo immediately issued a retraction, saying that he didn't know where he had gotten such a crazy damnfool idea, and confessed that he was an alcoholic and pain medication abuser who would immediately enter a rehab center. Galileo's next book, "How Green Was My Lunar Valley," features a detailed proof of the moon's greencheesiness, including hypotheses as to just what type of cheese it is. He tentatively identifies it as a nice Gorgonzola, but he hastens to point out that it could, "equally well be a thick slice of provolone, or — hey, let's go out on a limb here — even a Swiss, which would account for the craters. No, wait, not craters! No craters, no way! Carbon dioxide bubbles caused by the ageing process, yeah, that's it, but don't take it to the bank until I've checked Aristotle. He's my main man. If Aristotle says gruyere, it's gruyere! Don't need no rack to convince this boy! No sir!" |
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3-9-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Stretchy: That's what I'm here for. The Spandex is a relative of the Ibex, and flourishes in the same mountainous regions of North Africa. The principal difference between these two species of mountain goat is that the Spandex has extraordinarily stretchy skin, sort of like an extreme shar-pei, those dogs that look like they're wearing a much larger dog's skin. The evolutionary advantage of this sort of skin becomes immediately apparent when you see the Spandex being attacked by a gang of feral Airedales or other predator. The Spandex calmly allows the predator to chomp onto its loose skin before it takes off in a series of lively bounds. The Airedale, of course, instinctively sets its foreshanks in the fully upright and locked position to resist, thus sealing its doom. For after about eleven bounds, the Spandex reaches the limit of its stretchability, and, like an overextended inner tube, comes snapping back at about 86 mph, plowing into the startled Airedale and sending it into the rest of the pack like an axe through ninepins.¹ In the resulting confusion the Spandex slips quietly away. Should the Spandex be outnumbered, or attacked by a much larger animal like a cave bear, it has recourse to another clever trick. It bounds over the nearest precipice and free-falls until its skin blossoms out in the streaming air, opening to form an organic parachute, which lowers the Spandex to a gentle landing on another crag far removed from the threat. Although the Spandex is not hunted for its meat,² the rise of exercise facilities and dance companies in the United States and Europe has caused the Spandex to be hunted almost to extinction for its hide. ------------------------ ¹ A North African expression of dubious origin. ² It smells like roasting pork when it's cooked, getting the Muslim hunters of the region into big trouble with the sharia courts. A desperate tribesmember will sometimes cook Spandex when other game is not available, but is forced to keep up a steady nervous patter during the cooking process. "My, oh, my, this SPANDEX is going to taste wonderful when this SPANDEX is fully cooked to an internal temperature of 172°F as SPANDICES are supposed to be cooked, according to Julia Child in 'Mastering the Art of SPANDEX Cooking,' in which she also comments on how much a roasting SPANDEX smells like the flesh of another, abominable unclean forbidden haram beast, even though it's clearly a nice tender SPANDEX which is being cooked...." Since it takes about four hours to properly roast the animal, tribesmembers often run out of monologue, at which point they're dragged off mute and exhausted to the local imam. |
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3-13-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Skygazer: Now, now-- pedestrians have rights too, except in New York City. Lord Rayleigh of England is the physicist responsible for the fact that the sky today is blue. Anyone who has seen photographs from the late 19th-century or early 20th usually comments on the gray color of the sky, a sort of washed-out tattletale gray that everyone complained about but nobody could do much to change. Painters prior to Rayleigh used to add various colors to the sky in their outdoor paintings, but this was considered cheating, which is why most painters of the time stayed indoors and worked on still lifes and portraits. It was boring but the money was good. In 1904, fresh from his discovery of Argon, a Balkan country which had been lost to history since an avalanche in 1217 cut them off from the rest of Europe, Rayleigh set his sights on brightening up the sky. He thought green would be restful on the eyes, but the Royal Academy of painters pointed out to him that Paris green, which they would have to use in great quantities to render green skies, was expensive as heck and poisonous to boot. They suggested a nice cheap azure, so that's what Rayleigh used as a goal. By 1906 he had isolated the element which he unblushingly called rayleighium, even though the name in print looked like a disease germ. Quantities of finely-ground rayleighium were scattered throughout the atmosphere, using high-altitude balloons and powder shpritzers, and on August 4, 1907, the world awoke to blue skies.¹ Regular reapplications of rayleighium have kept the sky blue to this very day. ---------------------- ¹ The song "Blue Skies, Shinin' on Me, Nothing but Blue Skies Do I See" was written to commemorate the event. |
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3-15-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Woodrow: Pork. Chippendale, a devout Muslim, was torn between his faith and the genius of his art. He had tried making balsa wood furniture, but it was too insubstantial, plus any mischievous boy with a rubber band and a propeller could send a chair across a room or out a window with relative ease. He tried petrified wood, but it wore all his tools down to nubs before he could finish the first finial. Ditto ironwood. Other woods of the New World proved equally disappointing. He despaired at ever developing a signature wood to complement his signature style. Then one day after evening prayers he chucked (literally, not figuratively) an odd-shaped bit of wood into his favorite lathe, Mortimer. From the feel of it he thought it might be slippery elm, another New World wood he had not experimented with. Well, lo and behold! within a few minutes he had turned out a magnificent cabriole chair leg. The new wood produced a white, slightly grainy finish not unlike alder, but much classier. "It's the other white wood," Chippendale thought to himself. While he pondered how to best use his new discovery an apprentice began poking about in the shop, breaking his concentration. The master brusquely asked the young infidel what he was looking for, and the lad knuckled his forelock and said he was searching for the hog leg he had promised to bring his granny for dinner. Thunderstruck, Chippendale realized that his perfect new furniture material was the loathsome flesh of the unclean creature which splits the hoof but does not chew the cud! After giving the boy a shilling to replace the jambon as well as keep his mouth shut, he collapsed in an agony of indecision. The Muslim in him said to abandon all thoughts of using the new material, while the businessman in him said that he was about to make a killing beyond the dreams of avarice, as Dr Johnson put it. We know from history that the businessman won out, although Chippendale took a solemn oath to dedicate one-half of his earnings from furniture made with the detestable substance to zakat to purify and redeem his soul. Chippendale went on to have a long life and a brilliant career copying others' furniture styles, and his delightfully ornate pork furniture thrilled first England, then Europe, then the world. Yes, there were the occasional side pieces which were spirited out of the house by the larger class of dogs and buried in the back yard, and, yes, on warm, humid days the furniture was best left in a cool room or stored in the cellar, but overall it was a huge success. One day over drinks with his fellow cabinetmaker Tommy Sheraton, the latter made the pun that the wood that had made him a success had "made a hog o' me." Not to be outdone, Chippendale riposted that he understood completely, because his wood, which had allowed him to become a successful imitator of Sheraton's original styles, had "made epigome." The pun was so dreadful that Sheraton shot him on the spot and he was buried later the same day in an undisclosed location, as per Muslim burial custom. |
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3-18-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Windy: The first name occurs at around 17 mph, but it's mostly a mild sailboat owner's oath. The second name occurs at approximately 29 mph, by people in speedboats, especially those attempting to run at right angles to the gusts. It's a bit stronger than the first oath. The third name is invoked at 41 mph by boat owners attempting a tricky docking maneuver to escape the storm. It borders on obscenity. The fourth name, somewhat obscene occurs at 58 mph by those taking a three-hour cruise on the SS Minnow. The fifth, definitely obscene name occurs at 72 mph by anyone in a kayak. The sixth obscene name is proclaimed at 89 mph by owners of beachfront property. The seventh, very obscene name is hurled as an invective at 118 by pilots of aircraft. The eighth obscene name, generally an expletive deleted in print, is screamed at 243 mph by anyone who had ignored weather reports to go hot-air ballooning that day. The ninth obscene name is sent up in Spanish as a plea at 298 mph by window-washing crews on skyscrapers. The tenth, and final, ritually obscene curse, a veritable anathema maranatha, is shouted from pulpits at 392 mph as proof positive that finally an end-of-the-world prediction has been right. |
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3-21-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie:
What should we do? |
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Dear Worrywart: I'm a bit ahead of you on this one. I sent a letter to the White House Global Warming Research Center, figuring they would be in the best position to deal with long-range threats. Here's the response I got from the Response-O-Matic® letter machine which answers all White House and Congressional mail: [I'll snip all the insincere touchy-feely stuff about concern for our citizenry, responding to threats swiftly, assuring me that voting Republican is the best way to deal with the situation, blah, blah, blah.] Here's the guts of it:
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3-24-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Glockenspieler: You can't go wrong with the epic, tragic and vaguely entertaining story of Euphonium Ophicleide Bombardon IV (1732 - 1819). Coming as he did from a long line of brass wind instrument players and manufacturers, "Euphie" Bombardon shocked his parents at the age of 15 by stating flatly that he hated the sound of brass wind instruments, hated the people who made them, and that he wished to spend his life doing something more rewarding. So at the age of 16 he apprenticed himself to a maker of bird houses and cuckoo clocks, becoming a journeyman birdhouse/cuckoomann at the age of 28, and attaining master status in 1764 at the age of 32, at which time he was elected to the Guild of Vogelhäuschen/Cuckoomeisters of Leidendorf. Back home, his parents, devastated at the thought that the famous line would end with their deaths, decided on a desperate course of action. They withdrew Euphie's sister, Ranceputtel, from the convent where she was learning to become a virgin, changed her name to Euphonia, and sent her to the best wind-instrument-player-training school they could find, the renowned Academie Blatthaus in Vienna. Well, mirabile dictu, young Euphonia turned out to have the perfect lip for wind instruments, the very same lip which had seen her packed off to the convent when her mother despaired of marrying off a daughter who had such a strong resemblance to a camel. Euphonia graduated from the Blatthaus with honors, and began working with her father to design ever-louder and brassier instruments for the family business. Meanwhile, Euphonium, now a middle-aged builder of birdhouses and cuckoo clocks, had a bout of despair, realizing at long last that he was meant for more than making sure wooden birds cucked the right number of times at the proper hour and designing homes for tenants who always left the place in a mess and flew the coop when the rent came due. A broken man, he returned to his family, pleading for forgiveness and asking for the lowliest job in the factory. Well, of course they all laughed at him and pummeled him with stops and pistons and key caps, suggesting that he go find work in a WOODwind factory, since that was all he was good for. Finally his sister Euphonia, realizing that it was Euphonium's decision all those years ago to leave the family business that allowed her to rise to the pinnacle of success in the field, relented a bit, giving her brother the lowest place on the assembly line, where he broached and reamed and polished spit valves to the end of his days. |
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3-27-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Abductee: There are even stranger tales. A 3-year-old boy fell over his tricycle in Huntsville, Alabama, but landed in Utica, New York. He and his family now reside at Groom Lake, Nevada, where the boy is undergoing intensive testing. His instantaneous jump across 843 miles is not the only case on record, though. Angela Lambsprattle, age 10, of New Dubuque, Texas, was jumping rope with her friends Kimberley Loggsnift and Amanda Puttle, both age 10, on the evening of September 4, 2005. As Angela reached the number 137 in her jump-counting, she abruptly vanished. Two hours later her parents got a collect call from a confused transit policeman at the North Zhongshan Road station of the Xinzhuang Metro in Shanghai. Precisely at the time of her disappearance from New Dubuque, she popped into the middle of a Line 1 subway car, still jumping and counting with her eyes closed until she was startled by the screams of the early Monday morning commuters. The American Embassy in Shanghai was arranging for her transportation back to New Dubuque when several special agents from US Air Force Security intervened. Neither Angela, her friends, nor their families have been seen since, and New Dubuque, Texas, no longer officially exists, according to the Postal Service. Even stranger is the case of "Baby X Smith," who was born on a Delta airlines flight to Boise, Idaho on January 7th of this year. The baby girl was perfectly healthy, according to paramedics who met the plane when it touched down at Boise Airport, and she had become the darling of the flight crew and passengers during the remaining 47 minutes of the flight. The strange part was that her mother had gone into labor and missed the connecting flight from Omaha, Nebraska. It's the only case on record where a birth certificate was issued in two different cities a thousand miles apart at the same time. The baby was reunited with her mother the following day and named "Delta" in honor of her peculiar arrival before both mother and child vanished mysteriously. h |
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3-29-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Retro: It would depend on whether you mean the book, the movies or either of the two TV shows. It's unlikely that the grandfather in the original short story/novel would have said "Jumpin' Jehoshaphat!" since the story is set in Yorkshire and Scotland, neither of which uses English as its primary language. Any stereotypical grandfathers would probably have used expressions like "Chuffing Huck" or "Buckin' Nowt," rather than taking Jehoshaphat's name in vain. The movies are a different story. The grandfather in "Cujo: The Revenge of Lassie," may have been trying to say "Jumpin' Jehoshaphat!" but it came out as "AAAAAAAAAAARRGHHHH!" since his face was being torn off at the time. There was no grandfather in "How Lassie Got Her Groove Back" that I can recall. And the grandfather in "Lassie: An Inconvenient Pooch" is more concerned with global warming, although he does say "Jumpin' Thermostats!" a few times, which is close if you don't listen too carefully. As for the TV shows, the earlier one, where Tommy Retching plays the idiot kid who always needs rescuing, had George Cleveland playing the "Gramps" role. I don't recall him ever saying "Jumpin' Jehoshaphat!" although he did say "Consarned Cattle!" in one episode ("Lassie's Heart Transplant - 1956). After Cleveland's death in 1957 they attempted to keep him in the show for continuity's sake, but makeup artists had less to work with than they do these days and his face kept slipping off during close-ups. He was finally buried after the touching episode, "Lassie's Heimlich Maneuver." With Gramps gone, the studio decided to jettison the whole crew, especially after Tommy Retching refused to shave off his moustache. So everyone was killed off in the touching episode, "Lassie Burns Down the Barn," and a new family appeared miraculously in the following season, which had seven-year-old Jon Provoked as the idiot kid who always needed rescuing. There was no stereotypical grandfather in that series, so there was no need for anyone to say "Jumpin' Jehoshaphat!" Is it possible you may be confusing the whole "Lassie" shtick with the "Flaming Carrot" comic book? There was a Jumpin' Jehoshaphat infrahero in issue #16. It would be hard to confuse the two, but you may be able to buy stronger dope in your neighborhood than I can here.... |
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4-1-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Foolish: On this date in 1748 the ruins of Pompeii were found in a slum district of Naples after having been dropped from the tax rolls at some indefinite time in the past. When questioned by Channel 11's Eyewitness News Team,¹ Neapolitan City Manager Giovanni Cacciatore simply shrugged his shoulders and passed the blame to the Bureau of Tax Assessment & Collection, saying "You think it's easy keeping track of everything that happens in a city the size of Naples? Sure, we lose a neighborhood from time to time— who doesn't? But we always manage to find it again, don't we? Unlike America, which lost Cleveland in 1683 and they're still looking for it."² Residents of Pompeii admitted that the neighborhood had been going downhill for the past millennium or so, but always attributed it to benign neglect, not flat-out abandonment. Umberto Pasquale, 36, said he thought it was unusual that the potholes in the street weren't being filled in, "not even during election years," but with typical Pompeian fatalism he accepted potholes as inevitable. His slave Marcus said that abolishing slavery would go a long way toward improving matters, although he was unclear on exactly how. Mrs Domitia Abbondiza declined to be interviewed, but expressed the opinion that all politicians and reporters should do something anatomically impossible, and also with any horses they may have ridden in on. To make up for its inadvertent neglect, the City of Naples plans to build the obligatory neighborhood community center as soon as funding can be found for a Pompeii Bureau of Public Works. Residents claim that they could better use improved garbage collection. "We're really buried down here," said one citizen, gesturing at the absence of visible buildings. ¹ "Canale 11's Testimone Oculare Notizia Squadra," as it was known in Italy back in those days. The Italians were far ahead of the rest of the world in the development of hard-hitting, on-the-spot video reporting, but by 1803 they had pretty much gone back to newspapers. As an early 19th-century Neapolitan wit once quipped, "È difficile verso avvolgere pesce in un 90cm schermo di plasma video." ("It's hard to wrap fish in a 36-inch video display.") This is every bit as true today as it was in 1803. ² Manager Cacciatore's American geography is a bit shaky. It was actually Akron which went missing in 1683. Cleveland pretty much stayed put. Akron was allegedly spotted twice in the early 19th century, but city planners consider it extinct today.
Although this ancient wall painting found in the ruins of Pompeii seems to indicate a soothsayer predicted that Mount Vesuvius would explode, destroying the city, the simple truth is that inept bureaucracy was to blame for its downfall. |
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4-3-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Quintilingual: Mel's latest project is also sort of an apocalypse, based on the imminent collapse of the Earth's magnetic field, which is sooner or later to plunge us into a cauldron of apocalyptic doom. The proposed title is "  ,"
but around the production company it's known as" "or
"The Passion of the Gauss." It begins with the discovery in 1845 of the impending crisis by good-looking, stalwart young German physicist Karl Friedrich Gauss, and recounts the battles he fought to alert the world before the collapsing magnetic field would drive homing pigeons insane and render cell phones useless (Gauss was way far ahead of his time). He must overcome the skepticism of the scientific community and defy the Church, which still insists that compasses operate by faith and good works. Love interest is provided by the mother of Marie Curie, a closet physicist in the strait-laced world of early 19th-century Poland. She insists that magnetism is a form of electricity, and invents the diesel-electric-maglev locomotive to prove her point, using information garnered from Rocco Diesel, her lover and future father of Rudolph. But Gauss pooh-poohs (gnarf-gnarfs in German) the idea, saying that only a woman could come up with so lame-brained a scheme, unaware that at that very moment Griselda Einstein, mother-to-be of Albert, has conclusively proved this very concept, calling it the Theory of Relatives to acknowledge the participation of Harry, Isaac, "Toodles," and Esmeralda Finqueborne Einstein. In keeping with Mel Gibson's other incomprehensible historical movies, the dialogue will consist entirely of mathematical equations. Audience members are advised to bring slide rules if they wish to follow the Gauss-Jordan matrix solutions presented on the screen. Popcorn is free, courtesy of a grant from the Jolly Time Corporation for Public Mathematics. |
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4-13-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Drifter: As a charter member of the Liberate Time Zones! Association, I feel obliged to point out that "official" time zones are the root cause of so much violence and unpleasantness today. If everyone were free to establish his, hers or its own time zones as an essential part of one's personal space, think how much nicer it would all be. Since twelve of the last fourteen wars have been fought over official time zones, their elimination would be the greatest contribution to lasting peace the world has ever seen. Think of all the defense budgets which could be converted to more practical applications, like gardening or badminton. In any case, there is little merit in getting worked up over the officious time zones of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, as rising sea levels will soon make them irrelevant. American S'mores® is a registered trademark of the Hershey Company, and has no specific time zone. |
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4-17-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Piscine: The Whale Anchovy (Engraulis godzillacholus), which has been fished to the brink of extinction to garnish those giant pizzas that people are always making hoping to get into the Guinness Book of Records. The average size for this species is 18-32 ft, with a weight of 10-16 tons. The largest specimen measured was slightly over 39.4 ft in length. It is said to grow larger, but no one has actually measured a whale anchovy over 40 ft and lived to tell about it. Whale anchovies feed on plankton as a rule, but much prefer sheep, which leads them to extremely devious hunting tactics, like pretending to be a meadow, or holding up pictures of the Good Shepherd which they pilfer from churches. In a famous incident, a whale anchovy off the coast of Portugal managed to get hold of a wether bell on the black market, which it employed so cleverly that it was able to lure 87 sheep into its cavernous maw before it was driven off by sheepdogs with flamethrowers. Whale anchovies have also been known to dress up as archbishops and hang around on the Blessing of the Sheep day, but this is uncommon, as even the dullest peasant's suspicions are bound to be raised by a 30-foot archbishop smelling of plankton. Very little is known about the home life of this giant fish. It forms family groups consisting of a mother, a father, a nagging mother-in-law, a doting grandparent and 600 to 800 children, which accounts for the size of its playgrounds and the length of its PTA meetings. In many families both parents work, or one of them-- usually the male-- will take two jobs to support its enormous brood, which is why they're so often found working the graveyard shift at Arthur Treacher's and Long John Silver's. They prefer to vacation off the coast of the Baja Peninsula in Mexico between September and December because hotel prices are cheap in the off-season. Their immense families often take up every available inch of space on the beaches, leading to strained relations with tourists of other nationalities and the native residents, who have been known to mutter imprecations in the local dialect over their glasses of mescal and pulque. Apart from humans attempting to enter the record books, the whale anchovy has no natural enemies, at least since the mosasaurs died off at the end of the Cretaceous. There are, however, several species which won't give a Whale Anchovy the time of day, much less sponsor them for country clubs. If the giant fish does indeed die out, the Whale Sardine will become the largest fish in the world. The Whale Sardine, always loving the limelight, is said to be getting impatient, and several of them have been found at airport check-ins with sheepskins wrapped around bundles of dynamite. |
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4-20-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Addled: I believe you may be referring to Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey, (December 10, 1851 - December 26, 1931). Melville Dewey was one of three identical triplets. When they were three months old a careless serving wench upset an oil lamp causing a major conflagration in their posh New York home. As ill luck would have it, the triplets were being bathed at the time. Their panicky governess, eager to get out of the house as soon as possible, forgot to slip the crucial birth-order-identification bracelets onto each twin's wrist before spiriting them away to safety. Once the fire was extinguished and order was restored, the parents of the triplets were faced with another crisis: they had three naked baby boys utterly indistinguishable from one another. No one could figure out who was Huey, who was Louis, and who was Melvil! At the time this was resolved by arbitrarily giving each child a number, which was tattooed on the sole of his foot to prevent future mix-ups. Now let us move ahead 20 years. The three children, now stalwart young men, were abruptly thrown into another crisis with the death of their parents in a runaway locomotive accident. When the will was opened, they discovered to their horror that their father, Donald Dewey, had invoked the clause of primogeniture regarding their inheritance: the eldest was to receive everything, and the other two, to quote the terms of the will directly, "...whereas were not to receive but squat, withal." Now, you would have thought that their parents would have corrected this after the bath mix-up of 1852, but the old man had kept putting it off with one thing and another, and now it was too late! Logically, the Court, faced with this unique situation, should have divided the estate equally amongst the three stalwart young men. Melvil was all for this, but the other two resisted it fiercely, as Hubert had mountains of gambling debts to pay off, and Louis was something of a ladies' man and was being blackmailed by 12 different butlers and gamekeepers. Melvil had lived a modest life and had set a bit aside with which he hoped to reorganize the family library someday. Well, the court battle over the estate was epic, as lawyers tried every means to identify the firstborn. The judge immediately suspended any reference to the numbers tattooed on the boys' feet, as they had been applied wholly at random and were thus "noc in hestero pulvus,"¹ as he put it. At last, as in Dickens's "Bleak House," the legal challenges ended only when there was not a dime left to apportion among the three stalwart lads. The lawyers took the money, Hubert took his own life in despair, and Louis's life was taken from him by an outraged husband. Melvil was left alone with the library, which was his by a separate codicil of the original will. At this point Melvil became reclusive, rarely leaving the shelter of the bookshelves. He also became preoccupied with the order in which the books were shelved, assigning elaborate numbers to each volume which sometimes stretched to 5 decimal points. he agonized over these numbers, often telling the few servants who stuck with him that order and sequence were all that mattered for success in life. It was obvious that the dreadful legal experience had unhinged his mind, and he was soon clapped into the Duckhaven Asylum for the Mentally Whoopee, where he rearranged the asylum library to the end of his days. The servants sold the important books in the library and had the rest pulped. Fortunately, Melvil's elaborate system of classification had been preserved, although no use was made of it until 10 years after his death, when the US government suddenly needed a way of classifying wartime parts and supplies in a manner which assured maximum paperwork with a minimal ability to locate anything. Melvil Dewey's Decimal System was perfect for the task, and has been used ever since. ------------------------------------- ¹ "none valid without crushed rain," one of the more obscure legal terms inherited by English Law from the Etruscans. |
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4-22-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear On the Fence: Sending people who want to work back to Mexico is counterproductive. We should send them directly on to Quebec. Quebec desperately need workers, as the province is filled with natives who feel they should be paid for not working, as they are in France. It would restore the balance, not to mention eliminating the language problem, as nobody has been able to understand a Quebecker for decades and it doesn't seem to matter. Quebec also has carloads of money, as the Canadian government has recently decided to simply pay them to be quiet, rather than go through the expense and complexity of mass deportations back to the old country, where Quebeckers feel they belong. "They're Qu'ackers," as Prime Minister Harper put it, shrugging his shoulders in pseudo-Gallic indifference. |
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4-25-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Scholar: Although he started out as a professional arm-wrestler, George "Armstrong" Custard (1839 - 1876) realized that this was not promising as a long-term career, as there is always a stronger arm out there somewhere. Drifting about in search of a permanent occupation, he was advised by his father, Ylem, inventor of the Custard apple, to explore the needs of the post-Civil War business boom. The younger Custard observed that the frantic pace of business caused office workers to miss meals, impairing their productivity. Soon he had outfitted a wagon with a variety of tasty, inexpensive meals and snacks, and had a roaring business going which soon forced him to buy more wagons and hire additional help, then to abandon the sales end of the operation to concentrate on business strategy. He introduced the Koffee Kart to office buildings, and the Elevator Express, which traveled between floors all day, allowing busy workers to snatch a snack as they ascended or descended. He did not forget the executive suite, either: his Management Meals became so popular that men would often bring home unconsumed portions to show their wives that they really HAD had it for lunch. The less astute would even suggest that their wives might take some pointers from Mr Custard's catering service, a suggestion which often ended with frying pans and rolling pins being used as lethal weapons. For the summertime vacation crowd George had his aptly named Custard Stands, which sold icy frozen custard treats up and down the Jersey Shore and New York beaches. Before long he was rolling in money, and, like many nouveaux-riches, became preoccupied with extravagance, frippery, and folderol. Not satisfied with a mere 47-room estate, he ordered a summer home in Banff to be constructed entirely of acorns, a spring house in Sarasota constructed of alligator hides, and an autumn house in Maine, which was made of live lobsters. Inevitably, the inevitable happened: his auditor came to him one day with the news that he was insolvent, overdrawn, broke, bankrupt, in hock to his eyeballs, flat busted and on his uppers. Custard could not accept this state of affairs and became quite delusional. After being turned out of his Upper Broadway mansion he had a new mansion built on Skid Row entirely of whiskey bottles, which he hoped to finance by starting a catering service for derelicts and winos. Alas, his luck had run out, and in 1876 he ended his life by drinking a quart of spar varnish, hoping to be remembered, if not for his prodigal life, at least for his beautiful finish. In 1956 the New Jersey Historical Society restored one of his vending booths on the shore at Atlantic City to its pristine 1871 glory. As it is the only one left in existence it is, of course, known as Custard's Last Stand.... |
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4-29-2007
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Relaxed: Surprisingly, the recliner was invented in the Middle East, by Abu Sa'id ibn Aboa al-Chair, (967-1049). In his autobiography, "The Recline of the Rest," co-authored by Oswald Spengler, al-Chair describes his frustration with the seating arrangements in 10th-century Persia.
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