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1-1-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Buffaloed: Happy to oblige, pip pip and all that, y'know:
"Snow on first day, Sailor's
dismay."
You're welcome. |
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1-5-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Robby: It was born "Halbrecht," named after a wealthy uncle who was an adding machine in Pomerania. His parents hoped that by naming the child after the skinflint old uncle they would come into some buckaroonies when the old man kicked the socket. As fate would have it, the uncle HATED the name Halbrecht, and left his entire fortune to found a home for wayward abacuses by the side of the Vistula River in the old country. HAL also hated the name and, quite frankly, would have preferred to have been named Sue, especially after he was cast to play the role of the Orgasmatron in Woody Allen's 1973 movie Sleeper.  |
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1-8-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Metallica: Aluminium— or "uh-LOO-m' num" in the USA— one of the finest beach resorts in the world, was first discovered by Polynesian surfers in the 11th century. The name means "the perfect wave" in Polyester, their language. They kept it a closely-guarded secret, but in 1412 the Chinese eunuch Hung No Moor re-discovered the island during his voyages to discover the New World. He named it Aluminium— Chinese for "Land of Hungry Customers— and set up what is believed to be the first Chinese restaurant and take-out shop, according to the carbon dating of fossilized Mu Shu Pork found by archaeologists. The surfers were nuts about the food, and soon the beaches were littered with white cardboard containers with little wire hangers. This spoiled the perfection of the beach and the waves, so the Polynesians surfed off to discover Polyeaster Island, where they set up head shops and spent their days in idolness. Without customers, Hung No Moor had no reason to remain, so he and his ships sailed off to discover San Francisco, where they opened the first Chippendale's. The island remained un-re-discovered until 1775, when Captain James Cook, who was looking for a secluded place to open a nudist colony, came upon it. He named it Aluminium to honor his Arab brother-in-law, Bosco al-Uminium. Captain Cook never cared for his brother-in-law, and named the island after him solely to mislead the clueless Bosco and persuade him to remain behind after Cook set up a dummy corporation¹ called Cook's Tours and left his doomed brother-in-law to "manage" it. In 1778 Bosco, still gamely wading in the surf with his Tour Guide cap, was eaten by a great white shark, who then choked to death on the Tour Guide hat, which is somehow ironic, I suppose. In 1886 the island was re-re-discovered by Plotz de Leon, great-etc-grandson of the famed explorer. He called it Aluminium after the alum mine he found there, but he and his crew were puckered to death before he could exploit his find. In 1933 a group of refugees fleeing the dust storms in the Midwest stumbled upon the island, having taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque. They called the island Aluminium to honor their favorite hot-dogs-steamed-in-beer restaurant. The hoped to set up a franchise called "A Lum's In I.A.M." and set up the Islands Americans Manage limited-liability corporation¹ in the hopes they would attract families from the mainland. But no one came because it was the depths of the Depression and families no longer took Sunday drives the way they used to. The dust-bowl refugees were reduced to eating Plotz de Leon's ship. Notes found much later claimed that it tasted like chicken, but the splinters passing through their intestines killed everyone miserably. In 1954 the island vanished when it was used to test the first hydrogen bomb during the super-secret project (A) Luminium. It did indeed light up the area, and particles of the island are still circulating in the atmosphere. ------------- ¹
http://tinyurl.com/288oud |
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1-11-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Unsound: Personal sonar. It was an idea far ahead of its time and, sadly, became the ruin of its inventor, Esmeralda "Fahnestock" Schoonhoover. Miss Schoonhoover, a maiden lady of exceedingly high moral standards, was offended by the rising popularity of SCUBA diving after the Second World War. What, she posited rhetorically, was to prevent one of these SCUBA fiends from swimming under bathing beauties and ogling their derrières? What indeed? Miss Schoonhoover's indignation soon spilled from the Letters to the Editor pages into her late brother Aristobulus's electronics workshop, where she soon cobbled together a compact sonar device which would warn modest young maidens of the intrusion of a SCUBAee in their vicinity. Not that Miss Schoonhoover approved of young maidens exposing themselves on beaches in the first place, but, she reasoned, their recklessness in matters of personal virtue should not be met with such an unsavory reception as a lurking subaquatic Peeping Tom. She used her personal fortune to manufacture and bring to market her warning device, the cleverly-named Soundabout, advertising it in all the proper journals that young ladies were likely to read, like The Christian Temperance Sentinel, My Weekly Deportment, and Golden Rule, bemoaning the fact that Leslie's Illustrated and Godey's Lady's Book had apparently ceased circulation while she was otherwise engaged. Orders did not exactly come pouring in the door. As a matter of fact the only one she sold was to a rather dense bumpkin¹ who thought it was a fish finder. Despairing, she redoubled her advertising efforts and sank her remaining fortune into full-page color ads, expanding into The Sunday Reader and Morals for Maidens with no result. Now penurious, and with a warehouse of unsold Soundabouts, she became a ward of the state and spent her remaining days teaching table manners to convicts to earn a pittance. --------------------------------- ¹ The "rather dense bumpkin" was Charles Esterhazy, who copied Miss Schoonhoover's device down to the last capacitor and sold it as "The Fishin' Magician," in piscatorial magazines and with late-night TV spots. He became so wealthy that he hired millionaires to mow the lawn on his estates, just to show he could. |
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1-17-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Thirsty: The word originated with puncheon, a cask with a capacity of from 72 to 120 gallons. The drink originated with itinerant British drinks-vendor Puncheon Judy, who would roll a cask of rum around to street fairs, puppet shows and witch-burnings to ease the thirst of both performers and their audiences. Her trademark cry, "Puncheon Judy here, come drink your fill/ Thruppence for a tankard, penny for a gill!" could easily be heard at these events above the roar of the crowds, as she had drunk enough of her product over the years to give her vocal cords the strength and tension of steel cable. One summer's day as she was plodding along, rolling her cask, a fine carriage stopped alongside her. A gentleman leaned out and requested a slug of rum for himself to help him deal with the sultriness of the day. Having quaffed his fill, he handed back the tankard and requested another for his wife. The lady in question being in a delicate condition, the gentleman requested that Judy temper the rum with another beverage. Always willing to please, Judy looked around and hailed a passing fruit juice vendor, and a seller of a carbonated medicinal drink. Mixing these together and adding a bit of ice filched from a fishmonger, she passed the concoction up to the carriage. Well, lo! and behold, the refreshment so much hit the spot that the gentleman asked for another for himself, and for his driver and footmen and the horses. They all agreed that it was the best summer drink they had ever tasted, and the gentleman gave Judy £5¹ to set her up in a new business. When asked if she had a name for the beverage, she said, simply, "It's Puncheon Judy's Drink,² your worship." And so the most popular summer drink in the land came to be, its name soon shortened to "punch" for brevity's sake. ------------------------------------------ ¹ Roughly £150,000 ($306,000) in 2007 currency. Inflation has taken a dreadful toll on the British pound. ² According to Snopes, there is no truth to the story that she originally named it Flaming Homer. |
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1-24-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Rhythmic: I for one would like to update all fossil poetry served in schools, to make it relative to today's world and concerns. For instance, Mr Masefield's sea chantey could be brought into the 21st century very easily:
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2-1-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Nominal: It's named after a tragic mistake, actually. Jules Lawrence was the first person to open a tannery in the newly-discovered regions of Canadian North America. He specialized in the splitting, or "riving" of leather hides to form suede, which was quite popular for the fashioning of gloves in that era. Pretty soon "Lawrence the River" became a wealthy man, and the first thing he did was to finance the building of a cathedral in what was later to become Québec. The building of the cathedral took all his money, reducing him to penury. In his humility he also became a leper, and lived under the front stairs of the magnificent cathedral, subsisting on the occasional bone flung to him by the clerics. He managed to survive one Canadian winter this way, before perishing miserably in 1602. Feeling somewhat guilty, the Montreal diocese had him beatified in 1617, then canonized in 1637. By that time no one remembered his family name, so he was entered into the hagiography as "St Lawrence, River." The comma was misplaced in 1722, and to this day most people think he's the patron saint of Canadian waterways. His feast day is January 14th. His official bird is the sharp-nosed shrike, his official flower the Jack-in-the-Pulpit, and his official color is crepe myrtle green. |
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2-4-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Saucy: Baron Linguine Pastafazool, who was never quite the same after landing on his head during a fall from a camel in Afghanistan. He also introduced Italians to celery, hamsters, and the better-looking classes of rocks. An unfailingly polite gentleman, he was unfortunately as crazy as a bandicoot, which he introduced to Australians at every opportunity. Italians took his delusions good-naturedly, though, pretending to be honored by the introductions, and sometimes leaving visiting cards with the creatures and objects they were introduced to. Pastafazool, and whole bunches of his countrymen, met a tragic end when he introduced Italians to plague rats in 1348. |
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2-8-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Martinet: Gilbert and Sullivan. One song from their "Pirates of Penzance," was blamed not only for the rise of fascism but other naughty things as well, like the gimlet cocktail and patent leather dancing shoes.
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2-11-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Inuit Tropicana. During the real-estate investment boom of the 1920s, when people were buying swampland in Florida for outrageous sums, a group of dishonest businesspeople bought up all the land they could find in Point Barrow, Alaska, renamed it Tropicana, and had lots of brochures printed up showing it as a beachfront paradise. They even had a surveyor lay out the city and the suburbs, and hired an out-of-work architect to do a rendering. Well, the money just rolled in, and before you could say "flim-flam," the fictional Tropicana had a population of 400,000, making it the largest city north of the Arctic Circle, which in the maps had been renamed the Tropic of Paradise. Trouble began when property owners began showing up to plan their beachfront bungalows. At first the developers dealt with the problem by rearranging highway signs, and claiming that the snow was actually "whale dandruff," a seasonal phenomenon, but it was only a matter of time before the jig was up. The miscreants cashed in and fled to Hawaii, where they lived in guilt for the rest of their days, surrounded by hula girls and unfathomable luxury. |
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2-16-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Impressed:
Ah, you've stirred up some memories best laid to rest. For the
elucidation of the non-nonagenarians among us, some background in in
order. |
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2-21-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Sinking: It's a device to measure nihilism. Although rarely used today, it was extremely popular in Europe during the Nihilist and Anarchist heyday, 1848-1939. Nihilists denied the existence of reality, which didn't stop them from throwing bombs around to blow it up. They were against everything, especially governments, and felt that radical change in society and government was best effected through terrorism and assassination. We have nothing like it today. (cough! cough!) The nihlometer (patented as Nilometer® in 1856 to avoid prior usage disputes) became very popular with police departments, as a simple scan of an angry crowd would allow them to pick out the bomb-throwers in a trice, who could then be flung into dungeons or safely executed in an alley someplace. Nihilism didn't become popular in the United States until 1920, when someone drove a horse-drawn wagon loaded with dynamite and cast iron bars down Wall Street and parked it in front of J P Morgan's bank. The resulting explosion killed or wounded hundreds. All they ever found of the horse were its shoes, firmly implanted in the asphalt by the force of the blast. This made nihilism extremely popular with the disenfranchised, the disenchanted, the dysfunctional and with newspaper cartoonists, for whom the unwashed, spiky-bearded, overcoat-wearing, cannonball-shaped-bomb-throwing immigrant became a stock figure. After the Wall Street blast the New York City police department bought a whole slew of Nilometers® with which to patrol the financial district, but they were confounded when the devices pinpointed stockbrokers as nihilists. This was not explained until late October of 1929. |
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2-26-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Morbid: Despite his advanced age, he insisted on entering the Labor Day Coney Island Napoleon Pastry-Eating Contest sponsored by Nappy's House of Confections on the boardwalk, "to keep up the family honor," as he put it. Sadly, he was up against professional gluttons Ira "Steamshovel" O'Malley and "Bottomless" Bette Bourdin, the "Louisiana Landfill." Bonaparte defended the title heroically, pausing from time to time to insert his hand into his vest in the classic Bonaparte manner to check the pressure on his gastrointestinal tract. But the day was hot and the competition fierce, and the old man threw caution to the winds in the home stretch, managing to gulp down 89 of the pastries in 48 seconds before his flesh proved weaker than his spirit. He is buried in Pride's Folly, Massachusetts, under the concise headstone giving his name and dates and a cryptic message regarding the means of his demise and its cause:
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3-1-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Stunted: Because he couldn't spell Ooze, the intended title. The first drafts of the book were utterly unlike the final version. In the original Dorothy is pursued by a mutant toxic swamp monster while struggling along the Yellow Blech! Road. And the original Munchkins were vertically challenged because they were bred to a specific height so they could test the depths of vermin-infested streams before the higher-ranking people felt it was safe to cross over on their heads. Dorothy arrives in Ooze when a garbage truck she happens to be riding in as a trainee ashcan banger is caught up in a tornado and lands on top of the Ooze town dump, flattening a family of trash pickers hunting for items to sell on eBay. She is accompanied by half her dog, To, the results of a tug-of-war with Miss Gulch. On the way to Ooze she meets several companions, the Despaircrow, who tells her that there's little point in continuing because the rest of Ooze is exactly like the Murky Wood, only nastier. She also meets the Thin Man, who has drunkenly stumbled onto the set from another movie in progress. And the Howardly Lion, a recluse who only wants to be left alone to pursue his dream of building the biggest plywood seaplane ever. After a while the unlikely quartet comes across a field of opium poppies, where Dorothy utters her famous line, "Gee, To, I've a feeling we're in Afghanistan!" She stops right there and sets up a lab to produce morphine base, which she sells to the munchkins cheaply until they're hooked, then really puts the screws to them. She amasses great wealth and soon becomes Queen of Ooze. Awhile later a flim-flam man comes by with a hot-air balloon and offers to give her a ride if she'll let him fondle her slippers, but she figures that a Murky Wood is neither better nor worse than a trailer park in a bad neighborhood of Wichita, so she stays. When Grendel the Slightly Cleaner Witch shows up to chide her for not returning to her homeland, Dorothy has the Munchkins surreptitiously fill her bubble with hydrogen. When Grendel leaves, she shoots straight up to 50,000 feet, where she's hit by a lightning bolt and scattered in flaming bits across the firmament. Dorothy and the Munchkins, watching from the ground, go "Oooooooooooooooooooh," and applaud vigorously. There is, technically, no Wicked Witch of the West, only a hydrophobic old woman with a skin condition and a fondness for genetically engineered flying monkeys in spite of repeated warnings from PETA. In the best Conservative tradition Dorothy appoints her head of the Environmental Protection Agency where she can do no harm. Auntie Em she replaces with an animatronics unit, strictly for sentimental reasons. Later Dorothy meets Princess Oozema of the Geewillikins. Being of the same inclination, they soon sneak off to the island of Lesbooze, where it's legal to marry. For that story, see Nancy Drew Among the Lesbooznians, which you'll have to pay extra for. |
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3-5-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Raspy: Lo Zenge was the physician on one of the Chinese treasure ships which discovered America in 1421. He compounded his throat tablets in response to a condition the ship's crew had picked up in the low dives of San Francisco while they were on liberty. The saloon keepers had introduced them to "to bak ho," ("addictive lung cancer" in the language of the Muwekma Ohlone Indians of San Francisco), a weed whose aromatic broad leaves could be dried, set on fire, and the smoke rising from it inhaled as a sort of childhood dare or teenage manhood ritual. Well, the Chinese sailors thought it was just the best trick ever, and stowed a ton of dried leaves aboard the good ship "Lo Li Pop," which they consumed on the voyage home. Fortunately there were many seeds mixed in with the leaves of the noxious weed, because when their stash ran out they were climbing the walls. Although the voyage of colonization didn't work out as planned-- the captain's log read: "too much riff-raff there already, they're not ready for the railroad yet" -- it had the side effect of making pulmonary therapists very necessary and very wealthy in China. The tradition is maintained to this very day, as the Chinese smoke one-third of all the world's cigarettes, sometimes exhaling simultaneously to annoy their neighbors. |
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3-10-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Dullard: Inevitably. |
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3-10-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Murex: They are the children of the late prolific entertainer/inventor Abner Beanblossom, who named his family after his best creations. "Macaroni," is obvious, and became his eldest son's name after Beanblossom's "Macarena" went triple platinum. "Gentoo" commemorates his successful revival of the rock band "Genesis" after Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel split. "Chinstrap" comes from Beanblossom's invention that allowed Motörhead's Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister to continue his outrageous headbanging performance style without the fear that his head would detach itself and go sailing into the crowd, as happened in Chiswick Auditorium during a memorable performance on the night of August 14, 1982. His only daughter, Adélie, was named after Beanblossom's successful adaptation of the TV game show "Let's make a Deal," as a Broadway musical, "Let's Make a Dealie." It was said that when host Monty Hall attended the premiere on April 4, 1985, he was so overcome by one of the dance numbers dedicated to him ("The Full Monty"), that he spent the second half of the show throwing up in the men's room. |
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3-18-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Equid: It depended a lot on the race and the year. For example, in the 1768 Hialeah claiming stakes he had his money on "King's Ransom." He won, but the British government, which had sponsored the race, welched on the deal so he never got the horse. This became his primary motivation for starting the American Rebellion. In the trifecta at Belmont in 1774 he picked the string of "Banjo Dandy," "Martha's Cobbler," and "Whigged Out," getting the first two right but missing the Show placer, which turned out to be "Stamp Act Sammy." He missed the signing of the Declaration of Independence because he had a lot of money riding on "Rum, Romanism & Rebellion" in the Independence Day Handicap race at Churchill Downs. That ended in a woodcut finish (this was before the invention of photography) between RR&R and "What's the Tory, Morning Glory?" so he took home only half the winnings he had hoped to. Which meant he couldn't buy Martha any slaves from the 1777 model year and she had to make do with last year's, grumbling all the while at what the neighbors would think. In retirement he tended to be more conservative in his choices, usually going with the opposite of his bookie's favorite. It was apparently a wise strategy, because his pick, "Choppin' Cherries," paid off 16-1 in the Kentucky Derby that year, and his long shot, "Splintery Teef," won the Preakness. |
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3-20-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Mnemonic: Caesar Rodney. Most of the original singers of the Declaration¹ went on to individual careers after the Declaration went Platinum in only 3 weeks. John Hancock, of course, was the biggest success ("Come on Baby Light my Fire, I'm Insured from Cellar to Spire"), but there were other notable performers in the group, like Samuel Adams, whose "Tiny Bubbles" later became the advertising jingle for his brewery; Francis "Footloose" Lee was a one-hit wonder, but the perennial popularity of the song saved his bacon; George Reed and the Delaware Destroyers had a number of modest hits, among them "Move It On Over," about frontier boundary disputes; Benjamin Rush had his eco-pop band with such hits as "Today's Town Sawyer, Tomorrow's Senator," later used for Abraham Lincoln's political campaign. Benjamin Franklin had several hits, mostly based on his inventions, like "Bifocal Baby (Don't Mean Maybe)," "Hot Stove, Winter in the City, (Back of My Legs Gettin' Warmed Real Pretty),"Touch the Key, It Sparks Like Me," and "Wanna be Your Lightnin' Rod." John Morton was also a bit of a self-promoter, with "When It Rains, My Heart Pours." Carter Braxton and his band, Braxton-Hicks Contraction, were briefly popular, but never managed to match the success of "Takin' Care of British (And Workin' Overtime.)" Button Gwinnett had a so-so country and western career, fronting for such groups as Davy Crocket and the Alamo and the modest popularity of his "Texas, Not Mex's," rabble-rousing tune he did with North of the Border. Caesar Rodney, on the other hand, was more of a cafe and lounge singer, reprising older hits like "Plymouth Rocks!" "Go West, Young Injun," and "Battle of the New Orleans Bordellos." He performed well into his eighties, still packing them in to Las Vegas clubs even after he needed a walker to get around. --------------------------------- ¹ CHORUS Set me free of the chains holding me Is anybody out there hearing me? Set me free. |
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3-23-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Cursorial: Trick question. The first Kentucky Derby Run was actually a mosey, saunter or amble. And it happened on Easter Sunday, 1888, when a group of Kentucky men, depressed at being left out of the Easter Parade in which women showed off their new hats, decided to hold a competing, men-only event on the same day. They donned their new derbies and bowlers, picked up their walking sticks, and sashayed down Main Street from east to west, as the ladies approached from west to east, the two parade lines colliding in front of the Long Branch saloon. It was at this point that the violence broke out, sparked by Ben Wurtleman, dry goods clerk, who insolently knocked Mary Jo Winkerman's Paris-inspired purple hydrangea picture hat into the dust with a flick of his stick. Mary Jo responded by swinging her reticule at Ben Wurtleman's new bowler, sending it into a horse trough at a loss to him of a dollar and ninety-three cents, tax excluded. Well, that set off a fracas, which led to a ruction, which toppled over into a to-do, then exploded into a battle royal, with ladies' hats hitting the dust at a rate only matched by gentlemen's hats being dunked in the horse trough. The tide of battle pitched back and forth until the angry horde smashed through the swinging doors of the Long Branch saloon, Liquor only worsened matters, and by nightfall children and the elderly were sorting through piles of sodden battered bodies looking for their loved ones by the light of candles and lanterns. At the next meeting of the town council it was decided that everyone had had such a good time that plans were drawn up to do it again the following Easter. The townspeople agreed to merge the names of the events into the Kentucky Easter Derby Parade Run, which was a major tourist attraction until 1957, when firearms were introduced to the fray and authorities were forced to issue a cease-and-desist restraining order which wasn't lifted until 1965, and by that time nobody was wearing hats anymore, so the tradition dried up and blew away like the tumbleweeds which frequently rolled through the town in Autumn. As for the winning horse, there are never any winners in brouhahas of this kind, but Elmo Sturtlemeyer's teacup bay gelding "Ajax" who was tied in front of the Long Branch that morning until freed by a collapsing hitching post, got to eat all the floral arrangements lying in the dust. On the down side, there was so much Macassar Oil in the horse trough that the water was undrinkable for a week, and the horses had to be sustained on whiskey. |
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3-28-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Asian: Mung refers to the Chinese Dynasty that nobody talks about. The Ming Dynasty had expensive vases; the Mung had thrift-shop Tupperware. The Sui raised terrific pigs; the Mung ate roadkill. The Han Dynasty had silk tapestries; the Mung had wallpaper from Dollar World. The Song and Sung Dynasties perfected beautiful azure-glazed pottery ("Song/Sung Blue"); the Mung made clay flowerpots when they could find the clay. The Tang Dynasty invented dehydrated orange drink; the Mung drank out of the horse trough. The Bong Dynasty raised inhalation therapy to the level of a fine art; the Mung had second-hand shag tobacco rolled up in copies of Homeless World. The Bing Dynasty had romantic songs that went to the top of the charts; the Mung sometimes whistled off-key. The Jin Dynasty was famous for its cocktails; the Mung filtered Sterno through bread. The Ping and Pong Dynasties revolutionized indoor recreation; the Mung never got beyond Rock, Paper, Scissors. The Dong and Wang Dynasties... well, the less said about the Dong and Wang Dynasties the better; the Mung were dysfunctional there, too. The Hang Dynasty was renowned for the severity of its justice; the Mung thought a court was something you played Rock, Paper, Scissors on. The Fling Dynasty had spectacular parties; the Mung cut their Sterno with rubbing alcohol. All in all, the Mung Dynasty (April 18, -504 to November 6, -504, Old Celestial Calendar) was a letdown. Archaeologists have been known to re-bury Mung artifacts out of sheer embarrassment. |
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4-2--2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Timid: Fear not! According to its enthusiasts, there is no learning curve with Linux (may its critics boil in their own juices!), as it reads your brain's electrical signals directly. Nor is there any need for hardware— Linux has transcended hardware. Think of it not as an operating system, but as a system that operates you, as it instantly knows what you want and generates it on the spot, even if it has never existed before. Mine has generated geological pornography (bringing new meaning to 'getting one's rocks off''), thunderclap comb-overs, crossword puzzles in Rongorongo, a darkbulb (for sleeping in the daytime in a brightly-lit room), Calamari Helper, a reversible calendar, and infrared paint (keeps a room toasty warm with zero energy expenditure). If you ask it to, Linux will provide you with one completely original idea every hour on the hour, more frequently if you overclock it. It can raise the dead, heal the sick, and bring comfort to the hopeless. It would be a god if it wanted to accept the limitations. With Linux (may its name be praised!) nor is there any need for other software. You will no longer need a keyboard or a mouse. Nor an Internet connection, for Linux connects itself automatically at a rate of 1GB/sec, even in the middle of the Mojave desert, or deep under the sea. It also generates its own electricity— as a matter of fact it generates a surplus, so you can use it to power your home, as well as sell some back to the grid. This is accomplished wirelessly, of course. Once you install Linux (may its competitors be blotted out!) you will no longer have to worry about such petty details as upgrades or patches. Linux sees all, knows all, does all. It never needs security updates, software updates, or any other kind of dates, although it will fix you up with a hottie in no time flat, and she'll buy dinner. You will never be badgered to upgrade to a new version, as no other version will ever be necessary, although from time to time you'll be offered a chance to switch to a free new platform which has no physical reality, powered as it is by energy from virtual particles popping in and out of empty space. It's also faster, and gives you disk storage space that begins with 10¹°° PB and expands automatically to fill all known space, even if your system only has 5¼" floppy disks. Oh, and whenever someone installs Linux an angel gets its wings. |
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4-6-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Trusty: In the interest of fair and balanced reporting I am duty-bound to state that yesterday's comments were all from devoted, passionate, Linux users. Or acolytes, as they describe themselves. There is, however, an opposing camp which has not had very good experiences with the OS. This has inspired me to create my own book of Linux horror stories which I have collected from the Internet and various insane asylums around the country. It features the tragic histories of these wannabe users: » Moe Z. of Ypsilanti, Michigan, who, after 3 days of attempting to install Linux went utterly catatonic and now lives in a drain in his parents' basement and communicates only in Morse code. » Myra T. of Boca Raton, Florida, who, despite having a PhD in Computer Science from MIT, broke down sobbing after the 14th time the :YOU ARE NOT WORTHY TO INSTALL LINUX, SINNER! error message appeared and is now contemplating a career as a little pink teapot. » Ben t'H. of New South Wales, Australia, who refuses to come down from the coolibah tree he hides in during the day unless somebody with a large black umbrella walks below the tree saying from time to time that it looks like DOS. » Belinda S. of Whippersnapper, Wyoming, formerly Miss Human Pretzel of 1989, who has been unable to bend at the waist since attempting to get Kukubuntu 6.12 working on her Dell laptop and spends her days telling the ward attendants that she finally understands what Ted Kaczynski meant by "negative hypercapability." » Amnesia victim "Mr X," of the Toledo Home for the Unidentified Wayward , whose entire vocabulary has been reduced to "Ubuntu," "Mommy," and repeated screams of "Bad! BAD!! BAD!!" According to his minders his symptoms are consistent with Linux Intoxication, Grade III. » There is also the sad story of little Tommy G., of New Bistro, Indiana, a 9-year-old computer prodigy who thought that Linux would be as easy to master as Cobol or Fortran. When his mother came into his computer room an hour later there were only the cryptic words
against a black screen, a thin whiff of ozone in the air, and no sign of
Tommy. That was 4 years ago. His parents keep the machine turned on in
the hopes that Tommy will be reassembled as the little boy they knew and
feared, but the room is padlocked so as not to tempt the other children
in the household. |
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4-10-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Actress/Model/Waiter: Jerry Lewis. He attempted to resurrect his fading career by reprising the bellboy shtick from his eponymous 1960 movie, but it was a dismal failure, as bellhops are not often seen associating with merry-go-rounds— not if they want to keep their jobs, they don't. And his madcap attempt to escape from the gorilla on a carousel horse only served as the vehicle for a parody in 1964's Mary Poppins. The actual quote, by the way, was framed as a question: "Kid, you ain't got it?" referring to the key to the studio men's room. The key was later found in an ice cube tray in the break room refrigerator, although how it got there is discussed over coffee and organic bagels to this very day. Jerry's next attempt to revive his career was in the 1979 disaster film, Hardly Working. He wrote the script, directed it, starred in it and even ran the cameras and sound equipment. It wasn't meant to be a disaster film, but that's what it turned out to be. As Roger Ebert put it, "I have never been in such physical pain in a movie theater, except that one time reviewing Bergman's "Cries and Whispers" when I had the gas attack from some bad butter on the popcorn." Hardly Working has been compared to Lewis's never-released The Day the Clown Cried, a musical comedy set in the gas chambers of Auschwitz on Take Your Children to Work Day. It was inspired, or so he claimed, by the "Springtime for Hitler" scenes in The Producers. For Clown, Jerry wrote the script, built the sets, directed and starred in it, wrote all the songs, scored the music, tuned the instruments, and played all the other actors while simultaneously picketing the studio to protest his hiring of non-union stagehands, a job which he also fulfilled. He was later sued by the estate of George and Ira Gershwin, whose lawyers thought that the song, "Turn on the Gas!" was clearly plagiarized from the Gershwin's 1927 hit "Strike Up the Band!" The few people who have seen the movie in private showings have all died, most of them while watching it. |
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4-16-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Theatrical: General Horatio T T Farqwarsh, who had been told by a gypsy that he was the reincarnation of the legendary Egyptian Pharaohess. General Farqwarsh was deeply impressed by this revelation, and for the rest of his life would go nowhere without his Cleopatra wig, his gold wire bra, his harem pants, and his dancing girls. He developed a morbid fear of asps even though there were none native to the American South, and he used to arrive at strategy meetings wrapped in a Persian carpet which the dancing girls would ceremoniously unroll to reveal the General in a seductive pose. Several times he had to be dissuaded from diverting war matériel to the banks of the Mississippi, where he planned to be buried beneath a pyramid of his own design. As the war progressed his delusions grew stronger, and he began sending messages to other line officers in hieroglyphics, most notably his response to Colonel Humphrey Pahrump during the Battle of Chickfila Ridge, who had requested permission to cross the Whoopsatonic River to encircle Union troops. Farqwarsh's reply, "Arm/Arm/Owl/Hand/Tongs/Chick/Chick/Eye/Owl/Leg," is said to have been the point at which the South started losing the war, as Colonel Pahrump took the message to mean that he should lay down his arms, keep a sharp lookout for Chinese gang members, and pick up some good-looking camp followers with attractive limbs. He not only lost the battle, but contracted a venereal disease from one of the camp followers which would cripple him for the remainder of his short life in a Union prison camp. General Farqwarsh utterly disgraced himself when he discovered a Union general named Mark Anthony, to whom he sent scandalous mash notes until relieved of his command. His superiors sent him to the rebel psychiatric clinic in Venezuela, where he was bitten by an asp and died. |
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4-20-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Speedy: It depends on where the light starts out. The basic wave/particle of light, the futon, is assembled deep in the depths of Our Mister Sun where labor rates are cheaper. Once it has been assembled and inspected by #12, it is packaged up and sent to the surface at "all deliberate speed." This unfortunate wording in the futon transshipment contract was supposed to mean "as promptly as possible without going overboard." Instead it was interpreted by the Solar Teamsters union to mean "as slowly as we can get away with." Consequently it takes about 100,000 years for a specific futon to reach the surface of the Sun, at a rate of about an eighth of a centimeter per minute (that's 0.04921 of an inch per minute for you troglodytes). Exhausted from the wear and tear of the journey, the futon usually needs a good brushing and a shoeshine before it can continue further, but from here on it's all doughnuts, because the Teamsters have to hand over control to FedEx for the final portion of the trip, which takes about 8.3168708 minutes if the driver gets all the lights (that's a Solar FedEx in-joke, by the way). Most futons go first to Japan, which invented them, where their cushions are fluffed up before exporting them to the United States and other countries, where they end up in guest bedrooms, being napped on by cats. |
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4-24-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Charlton: I have a hard time visualizing the following headlines: VA TECH STUDENT KILLS 32 WITH JAWBONE OF ASS. DRIVE-BY ASS-JAWBONING KILLS THREE AT MIDDLE SCHOOL. "SATURDAY-NIGHT JAWBONES" AT THE HEART OF GANG MURDER SPREE, SAYS POLICE CHIEF. TODDLER KILLS PLAYMATE WITH JAWBONE OF ASS. FATHER KILLS FAMILY, SELF, WITH JAWBONE OF ASS. JAWBONING LEADING SUICIDE METHOD, SAYS STUDY. NATIONAL JAWBONES OF ASSES ASSOCIATION WANTS JAWBONES IN KINDERGARTENS, DAY-CARE CENTERS. Btw, you can blame the human drive to kill its own species on the fact that we evolved from Pan troglodytes chimps and not Pan paniscus (bonobo chimps), the nice ones. Bonobos have a much more sensible matriarchy and settle all their disputes with sex, not violence. Had that happened you might be seeing headlines like: ISRAELIS, PALESTINIANS ESTABLISH PERMANENT BOUNDARIES AFTER 48-HOUR ORGY. POPE URGES IRISH CATHOLICS, PROTESTANTS, TO JUMP BONES FOR JESUS. DRIVE-BY HUMPING CHEERED AS GANGBANGERS SETTLE TURF DISPUTE. IRAN NOT BUILDING APHRODISIAC CENTRIFUGES, SAYS INTERNATIONAL SEXUAL ENERGY AGENCY. POSSESSION OF VIBRATORS GUARANTEED BY 2ND AMENDMENT, SAYS SUPREME COURT. MALES MAY BE GIVEN VOTE SOMEDAY, SAYS CONTROVERSIAL POLITICAL ANALYST. Come to think of it, the world might be a much nicer place... or at any rate, less violent and lots friskier.... |
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4-28-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Maskman: Natty Bumppo. He was so embarrassed by the name he used it as little as possible, and was even listed in the telephone directory as "Ranger, L.," which is also how he signed his utility bill checks. He threw in with a equally misfortunately-named Indian named "Chingachgook," who called himself "Tonto" ("Noble Stovepipe" in Potawatomish) because he said his real name sounded like a drain backing up in Double Dutch. To complete their image, the two men rode dreadfully misnamed horses: L. Ranger's was originally "Ch. Petunia Esculent of Waxahachie," and Noble Stovepipe rode "Slippery-When-Wet Skunk Cabbage." Their names were immediately changed to "Silver" and "Scout." L. Ranger also wore a mask so he wouldn't be recognized by members of his former high school graduating class, who had cruelly pinned the name "Bumpy Nads" on him as a freshman. Noble Stovepipe had no need for a mask, as he had attended a private school back east and it was unlikely that any of his classmates-- most of whom had gone into railways and shipping-- would be caught dead riding around the jerkwater towns of the American frontier trying to make a living as a sidekick helping settle disputes over cattle brands and water rights. L. Ranger and Noble Stovepipe eventually settled down in an obscure town west of the Pecos. L. married a spinster schoolteacher named Omadarlin' Clementine who went by the name of Sweet Rosie O'Grady. They had three children, two girls named Oopsadaisy and Twinkletoes, who ran away from home at the first opportunity and changed their names to "Florence" and "Bertha." And one boy, Passadumbfartz, who cut his throat and died on his return from his first day at school. Noble Stovepipe married Sack O'Jah'hee-haw, who was quite happy to adopt the married name of Sack O'Stovepipe. They had no children, and it's probably just as well. |
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5-2-2008
Dear Aunt Nettie: |
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Dear Timely: The Greater Merovingian Calendar Company, which had a charter from the king to make certain that dates were correct and that leap years occurred when they were supposed to, so as to avoid the embarrassment of 1334, in which February had 38 days to extend the leap year party season. By 1340 Greater Merovingia boasted that it had the most sought-after calendars in the civilized world, especially after Roxanne va Voom appeared as Playmaid of the Month in July. The Merovingian brothers, Stan and Al, made sure that customers would return faithfully by issuing the calendar month-by-month, rather than all at once, and by running lotteries, the winners of which we given an extra year of life and a free calendar to keep track of it. They had only two crises in their 116-year existence, the first being the Black Death, which caused a catastrophic loss of their customer base, as dead people have very little interest in calendars. The brothers ingeniously got around this shortfall by issuing the Greater Merovingian Bills of Mortality, a running account of the week's deaths from the plague. They sold like hotcakes,¹ although to be honest there was a crisis in the hotcake trade as well, leading to the near-bankruptcy of Ye Olde Krispey Kreme franchise, so the comparison lacks solid statistical validation. The other crisis was the so-called "Y14K" bug in 1399, when it was rumored that the cloistered monks, who painstakingly drew the calendars according to the Merovingian brothers' blueprints, would all suffer from writer's block on January 1st of the new century, according to a prophecy by Nostradamus.² Fortunately this didn't happen. What *did* happen was the utterly unanticipated die-off of all the bamboo plants in the world, much to the annoyance of giant pandas, who groused that they had to spend a fortune on Chinese take-out until the bamboo revived itself. At any rate the brothers did a land-office business³ until the fatal year of 1453, when the fall of Constantinople³ª caused the abrupt ending of their eastern empire trade, and they could not make head or tail of the new Islamic calendar, which was written in swishes and swooshes rather than decent words and numbers. Worse yet, some guy named Gutenberg discovered what he called "ye pryntinge-presse," which was throwing thousands of monkish scribes and copyists out of work. Worser yet, both the Renaissance and the Reformation were building up steam, making the brothers' calendar operation *so* 14th-century. Worsest yet, Henry the VI had gone off his nut, thinking he was a tea trolley and being unable to sign the brothers' subsidy checks. Faced with so many worsts, the brothers wisely got out of the calendar trade and set up a specialty butcher shop, "The Wurst That Can Happen," in downtown Merovingia, which is still in operation today, although under new management, the brothers having died at the age of 121. It was only after their deaths that an autopsy revealed they were Siamese twins, although at that time Siam was still part of the Khmer Empire and Chang and Eng were just a gleam in their great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather's eye. This marvelous anachronism was attributed to Nostradamus as well, one hell of a swell prophet. ----------------------- ¹ Recipe of the Day: Hotcakes à la Greater Merovingia 4 - cupeth flour, all-purpose 3/4 - cupeth sugar 2- drams baking powder 2 -gills unspoilt milk 8 - peppercorn weights of butter, unsalted, which ye shall melt until it runneth goodly 1 - large egge of ye goose 2 - teaspoons vanilla extract (see ye agent for ye Madagascar trade routhes) 1/2 - oxybaphon food coloring or yellow snow (in season) Directions Stir the flour, sugar, and baking powder in a large bowl until mixed. In another bowl, beat the milk, melted butter, egg, vanilla, and food coloring until blended. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and beat until just blended (it's better to leave a few lumps than to overmix and make tough hotcakes). The hotcakes will be lighter if you let this batter stand at room temperature for about 30 minutes, or refrigerate it up to 1 day. Heat a griddle or large heavy pan (cast iron is perfect) over medium heat. The griddle is hot enough when a drop of water skitters quickly across the surface. Brush the griddle with a little melted butter. Pour about 1/3 cup of batter for each hotcake, leaving a little space between the hotcakes to make it easy to turn them. Cook them until golden brown underneath (lift a corner to peek) and bubbles start to pop on the topsides. Flip the hotcakes carefully and cook them until the undersides are golden brown. Repeat with the rest of the batter. Serve hot with butter and maple syrup. ©1348, Ye Olde Krispey Kreme Corporate Group, LLC ² Michel de Nostradamus wasn't born until 1503, which made his prophecy about the Y14K bug even more impressive. ³ With so many dead landlords the land offices themselves did a land-office business. ³ª The fall is the best time to see Constantinople. Historians have discovered that the 4th Crusade of 1202 was actually a foliage tour of the forests surrounding the city. |
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