Dear Dr. Babooner,

I struggle with a harmless compulsion that many others despise. I’m upfront about it and have even sought help from a bike-to-your-location therapist (The Cycle Analyst), but still they roll their eyes and find someone else to talk to whenever I enter the room simply because I’m a pun worshipper.

My wife says I have taken this too far and have limited our options because I will only buy goods and services from pun-named outlets. Why is that so wrong? Pun-based businesses need customers too.

So what if my favorite Hawaiian resort is Here Today, Gone to Maui?
My preferred oceanside bar is Rum With a View.
My favorite bodega is Juan in a Million.
I buy my plants and Fronds of the Family.
I always get a cup of coffee at Pony Espresso.
I’ll stop for a bottle of wine at Life’s a Cabernet.
I shop for furniture at Coucho Marks.

There are plenty of shopping choices for me out there. I have a satisfying life and I don’t feel constrained at all. If anything, it’s a fulsome prison. But when I try to explain myself, she groans. And not in a good way.

Should I change my habits, or continue to stop at every pun shop I see?

Sincerely,
Mel Arky

I told Mel that going window shopping with him would be a pane in the glass. But that’s just one opinion.
What do you think, Dr. Babooner?

Last April we enjoyed an early, warm Spring, so naturally my expectations were raised for this year and I made it a point to get the patio furniture out as soon as possible.

A weekend of grilling burgers and eating potato salad in the great outdoors was certainly going to be possible before the end of April.

After all, if God didn’t mean for humans to sit on the deck, why did he invent beer coozies and all-weather swivel rockers?

I guess we have these things because they look so interesting and downright sculptural under eight inches of wet snow.

Describe an outdoor spot where you could sit for hours.

Having had enough of persistent ice and prolific snow, I have taken a weekend pass to travel to the Kepler 62 exoplanets in search of a more hospitable home.

How could I not be excited by Thursday’s NASA “rollout” of these beauties? Worlds slightly larger than Earth (more room for me!) are orbiting close enough to their suns to have liquid water – a necessary component to support Kardashian-based life forms like ours.

Yes, there could be creatures on these worlds as strange and puzzling as the ones that inhabit Earth. Even moreso, since some of the scientists examining the scant traces we have seen of these planets (virtually nothing but a blink) have supposed that they are “water worlds”, completely oceanic environments as inhospitable and off-putting as the Kevin Costner movie of the same name.

Could life-forms like us live in these places? We’ll probably never know, but Lisa Kaltenegger of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy said “it might even be cooler life than we have here. Looking at the oceans, we find a lot of interesting life-forms there.”

Perhaps some people will find that intriguing, though I’m the sort who doesn’t care for shellfish and cringes at anything slimy. On second thought, I’ll probably stay home.

But that’s before the marketing effort kicks in. I have no doubt the Kepler Exoplanet Resorts Corporation will find a way to spin the total absence of land, not-quite-powerful-enough sun, and arduous to-and-from travel times (1,200 light years!) into selling points.

After all, every vacation involves some heavy lifting. And if it was easy to go, everyone would already be there.

If you were a fish, what sort of fish would you be?

Several major news organizations sent out false reports yesterday in their haste to be the first to tell you something had happened.

But the thing they said had happened hadn’t happened, though perhaps it will soon or maybe by the time you read this, it already has. But yesterday, when they said it had, it hadn’t.

Getting a scoop has long been the goal of many a serious journalist. The bigger the story, the harder it is to get out in front of everyone else. So when the margin of victory is minutes or even seconds, it’s understandable that some of the top contenders might flinch, hoping that someday a sizable number of people will remember that their organization was the one to deliver the earliest news.

If people remember such things.

So now I have a news flash of my own. Time May Not Exist!

I’m pretty certain I’m the first one out with this story, because I just learned it from a Discover Magazine article that was printed in 2007. And in the article, they quoted a lot of smart people who were talking about time a long time ago, and the consensus seems to be that “a long time ago” doesn’t actually mean anything.

There’s more! The closer you look at time the more confusing it becomes and the less certain you are about everything. And so it seems like everything that has happened and will happen is accessible, with the right technology.

So I’m going to claim the scoop on this particular headline:

Scientists Have Just Conclusively Proven That Time Is Artificial And Everything Exists At Once!

Of course this hasn’t happened yet, but when it does, the explanation will further illuminate how “yet” is a meaningless concept. Details to follow.

I’m happy because journalism just got easier! It appears you can write any headline you like and simply wait for it to come true.

What story would you like to break?

Dear Dr. Babooner,

Two years ago I found a childhood friend on Facebook. Delighted, I sent him message after message until he finally friended me.

Now that we know each other again, I am appalled. While I recall us being compatible as 8-year olds, his current political views are so far from mine that seeing his knuckleheaded posts in my Facebook News Feed makes me feel like I am stuck in his basement on a rainy afternoon, playing with his stupid toy soldiers in a pointless game of mock war where we blow things up for no reason and gleefully attack defenseless civilians and I can’t leave because I have to wait for my mom to pick me up but she’s getting her hair done downtown and won’t be here for another two hours and it’s too far to walk home.

Now that I think of it, maybe we weren’t compatible as 8-year olds either.

Dr. Babooner, I’m a noncompetitive and tolerant person. My ideas are no better than anyone else’s. I’m willing to be friendly and open with all people, even if we don’t agree. And I’d like to think that my philosophy of acceptance, my devotion to clear reasoning and my general aura of non-insanity can gradually change people’s hearts until they think about things in exactly the same way I do, no matter how wrong they were at the start.

However, I really, really want to instantly and permanently “unfriend” this new/old acquaintance so I won’t be exposed to his moronic ideas every single day. If I have to read another one of his rants, I’m afraid I’ll become a screeching, spittle-soaked lunatic, shouting for a posse to visit equal parts justice and humiliation to his unsuspecting head. And if I do that, how can I hang on to my self image as a non-judgmental person?

Sincerely,
Seeing Unsympathetic Political Epistles Rouses Inklings Of Rage

I told S.U.P.E.R.I.O.R. to spin the rationale. Rather than telling yourself you’re dropping this “friend” because his ideas are unacceptable, tell yourself your doing it to spare him the stress of having to read your own “incorrect” thoughts. That way, you can remain tolerant and nice, while he stays a shallow and unredeemable dunderhead.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

Inexplicably, today is the birthday of two famous men named Mann – Theater mogul and philanthropist Ted Mann in Wishek North Dakota in 1916, and hip flutist Herbie Mann in Brooklyn, in 1930.

Both Mann men made something big out of rather thin soup. Through talent and timing Ted Mann is known today in the Twin Cities for having his name on a performance space at the University of Minnesota – the Ted Mann Concert Hall. Mann got his start as a University of Minnesota student when he rented the struggling Selby Theater in St. Paul for $100 per month and proceeded to return it to financial health by doing all the booking, ticket selling, popcorn making, etc. by himself. His empire expanded to 25 theaters across Minnesota, and later to Southern California where he made a fortune. At one time he owned Graumann’s Chinese Theater, renaming it Mann’s Chinese Theater, of course. Late in life is rumored to have said about his journey, “Not bad for a sod kicker from the sticks.”

And if that’s not strange enough, Herbie Mann became a star playing jazz on the flute – an achievement that no longer seems possible in an American music scene dominated by self-indulgent pop vocalists. The flute isn’t loud enough or dangerous enough to get much attention today. Still, you have to admit this looks (and sounds) pretty cool.

If you were granted the ability to successfully launch any business venture, or become a star while playing any musical instrument, what would you choose?

Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden.

Hey, Mr. C.,

They called it an April Snow Day today at Wilkie High, which is amazing! I’ve been a sophomore a long time so I can tell you for certain that This Almost Never Happens. It’s a good sign that 2013 is something special.

Anyway, before my mom left for work today (why is it they almost NEVER cancel work?) she told me that as long as I’m going to be home alone I should wash all the dishes that have been piling up by the sink. Why that should be MY job is something I’ve never been able to figure out. I don’t cook the food, so what kind of logic says I should have to clean up? Mom has always told me I need to be responsible for my messes, but she’s the one who takes out all the pots!

Anyway, I was cruising around online last night and found this story about Japanese people and pottery. It turns out they started making cookware eons ago so they could prepare fish for dinner. That’s not very surprising or interesting, but the thing that got my attention was this line:

“Archaeologists have found that charred shards some of the world’s oldest ceramic pots still contain residues of the food that was cooked in them.”

So that means getting the dishes absolutely sparkling clean like my mom wants to be all the time them is totally, totally the wrong thing to do if you’re thinking about scientific research! It’s the crusty stuff left in the bottom that’s going to tell researchers from the future what they need to know about us.
So how are people in the year 4545 going to learn anything about pizza if I don’t leave some tomato sauce and cheese stuck to the pan? They might think we lived on burgers instead, but everybody knows that’s not true!

And besides, mom always calls the dirty dishes “a science experiment”. And any scientist worth her (or his) salt is in it for the long run, so why not let the dishes sit until they can be decoded by an expert?

Mom says I’m lazy, but I think letting the dishes sit is my only real chance at being immortal. More people should take a hint from me – it’s pretty selfish for us to keep things so clean when the evidence is everywhere that the future has nothing to learn from tidy people.

I’m thinking of starting an organization called “Slobs Leaving A Permanent Document About Sloppy History”, or S.L.A.P.D.A.S.H. – a club for concerned people who don’t want to erase our story with reckless overuse of soap. My social studies teacher, Mr. Boozenporn, says the future is going to be all about forming affinity groups online.

Pretty cool idea, huh? I think I’ve found my cause in life!

Your pal,
Bubby

I told Bubby he has a promising idea there – uniting dish slobs everywhere in a noble crusade. But he’d better make certain all his recruits live with like-minded dish slobs, or the movement is going to self-destruct.

Who does the dishes at your house?

Today is the birthday of blues harmonica player Blind Mississippi Morris. He arrived on the planet on this day in 1955, in Clarksdale, Mississippi as Morris Cummings.

His artistry is the subject of this short documentary.

Blind Mississippi Morris from Bill Totolo on Vimeo.

Blind Mississippi Morris lost his harmonicas and a valuable microphone when his truck was robbed three years ago. It was just one in a series of losses and disappointments which included losing his eyesight to glaucoma, his childhood to institutionalization, and a home to foreclosure. He has also parted company with at least a dozen wives along the way if this article is to be believed.

Turning fifty-eight today, Morris began playing harmonica when he was four and has now become old enough and has suffered enough trouble to comfortably wear the persona of a genuine Old Blues Guy.  It’s reassuring to know such characters still exist in the digital world.

What was the first musical instrument you remember playing?