According to various stories making the rounds in the early going yesterday, the latest despot-snuffing news had many authors and an assortment of modus operandi.
It was Obama with a robot in the pantry.
It was insurgents with a handgun in the hall.
It was a Frenchman with a missile from a gantry.
It was a bomber who was very, very small!
It was his butler with dagger and a bludgeon.
It was his driver with a penknife and a spoon.
He was frowned upon to death by a curmudgeon.
He was hoisted by his heels under the moon.
He was forced to read the text of all his speeches.
Every word had been tattooed upon his arms.
He was thrown into a pool alive with leeches.
He was stuffed with cantaloupe from Jensen Farms.
They were trying very hard to apprehend him.
They expected him to have a day in court.
‘Twas a pity, then, to prematurely end him.
Time ran out, as it so often does, in sport.
I have not played “Clue” in many years, but I always thought heavy candlesticks should be registered.
An elaborate text came in from the North Woods. Here’s an approximate translation from the original Ursus Textish.
Bart - The Bear Who Found a Cell Phone
Hey, Bart here.
I’ve been hearing that people are doing a victory dance over some guy shooting a great big bear not far from the Twin Cities. There’s lots of “gollees” and “gawrshes” about the bear’s height and weight – almost 650 pounds and taller than 7 feet.
True. Fella was unusually big. But he wasn’t a freak, he was a forecast.
We bears have been watching you, and can see that we’ve fallen behind in a some pretty important contests. All the wild animals have. Yup. You’re winning the temperature contest and calling the shots in the air quality contest (though we just won a small victory). And you’ve been getting bigger physically while we’ve stayed kinda the same.
All that stuff you’ve been saying about how “massive” and “enormous” and “gargantuan” this poor dead bear is – well I’ve got uncomfortable news.
We bears have been saying the same thing about you for years – ever since we woods-dwellers noticed that you two-legged comfort-junkies were having trouble squeezing through the doors of your Winnebagos. It was in the mid-90’s when word got out that an average human wouldn’t fit in a normal sized tent anymore. Talk about making a bear’s job easier! You being bigger meant it was easier to spot you from far away, simpler to hear you coming through the underbrush, and a lot less taxing to chase you down. And surprisingly, the more you ate, the more food you left scattered in your wake.
Here’s a joke we bears tell each other:
Question: How do you find a hunter when he’s downwind?
Answer: Follow the Doritos!
But then it hit us – with an average male bear weighing in at 250 pounds and an average American male human at 190 pounds, it wouldn’t be long before we’d have to run from YOU! Especially if we stumbled across you when you were feeling obsessive about your cubs! (I hear there’s a bunch of Cubs in Chicago who will never grow up!)
Anyway, let this be a notice to you. Black bears are on the move, size-wise. With our habitat shrinking and yours getting bigger, we realize that someday we’re going to stand toe-to-toe. When that day comes, you’d better hope we’re not standing ON your toes, because our only chance for survival is to get bigger, hairier, smellier, and nastier. If humans are gonna respect something, first they gotta learn to fear it.
Moose are disappearing and the bears are bulking up to get ready for a confrontation around our homes and yours. Come December, we’re going to skip the hibernating and launch our own series of protests – Occupy Tool Shed, Occupy Bird Feeder, Occupy Camp Ground, Occupy That Paranoid Place Inside Your Head That Never Ever Sleeps.
There’s a bear in the woods. And he’s HUGE!
Your pal,
Bart
I thanked Bart for giving me a good chill in the lead-up to Halloween. But I don’t think we’re really headed for a showdown with the bears, do you?
Today is the anniversary of the day in 1860 when 11 year old Grace Bedell wrote a letter to Abraham Lincoln, a homely candidate for President of the United States.
Hon A B Lincoln…
Dear Sir
My father has just home from the fair and brought home your picture and Mr. Hamlin’s. I am a little girl only 11 years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have got 4 brother’s and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husband’s to vote for you and then you would be President. My father is going to vote for you and if I was a man I would vote for you to but I will try to get every one to vote for you that I can I think that rail fence around your picture makes it look very pretty I have got a little baby sister she is nine weeks old and is just as cunning as can be. When you direct your letter direct to Grace Bedell Westfield Chatauque County New York
I must not write any more answer this letter right off Good bye
Grace Bedell
Clearly, Grace Bedell was the first-ever modern political consultant, recognizing that looks matter when it comes to moving the American electorate. That is a dubious distinction. But we know Grace Bedell is the Mother of Political Consultants, because she got results. The candidate who would become president answered her just four days later:
Grace Bedell, Aghast at a Bare Face
Miss Grace Bedell
My dear little Miss
Your very agreeable letter of the 15th is received – I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughters – I have three sons – one seventeen, one nine, and one seven years of age – They, with their mother, constitute my whole family – As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affection if I were to begin it now?
Your very sincere well wisher
A. Lincoln
That was a fence straddling answer if there ever was one – responding to a request with a question. But Lincoln must have taken her seriously. He grew a beard shortly afterwards and now we can’t picture him without one.
There is no record of Grace Bedell responding to Lincoln’s answer, though one account describes a meeting between the two shortly after the election, when the president-elect’s train passed through her town.
Wikipedia credits the Schenectady Gazette for Grace’s account of her face-to-face meeting with Lincoln.
“He climbed down and sat down with me on the edge of the station platform,” she recalled. “‘Gracie,’ he said, ‘look at my whiskers. I have been growing them for you.’ Then he kissed me. I never saw him again.”
Today, a presidential candidate having a private moment and a kiss with an 11 year old girl would automatically throw the election to his opponent. But 1860 was a different time. Four years later Grace wrote again, this time to ask Lincoln for a job with the Treasury Department.
I have heard that a large number of girls are employed constantly and with good wages at Washington cutting Treasury notes and other things pertaining to that Department. Could I not obtain a situation ther?[sic] I know I could if you would exert your unbounded influences a word from you would secure me a good paying situation which would at least enable me to support myself if not to help my parents, this, at present – is my highest ambition.
Nice try, but this one met with considerably less success then the beard –o-gram. I guess you don’t get everything you ask for, even if you take the time to put it in a letter. And remember, being an 11 year old girl is much cuter and more influential (with politicians) than being a 15 year old girl. Timing is Everything.
When has someone taken your advice and benefitted from it?
It turns out I am going to be in the same room with Royalty today, but I don’t think Bubby knows that. Still, this breathless message arrived late yesterday:
Hey Mr. C.,
Everybody at Wilkie High is talking about the King and Queen of Norway being in town, and how cool is that? Some of us were daydreaming how we might grab a bus downtown and maybe run into them, be our super extra charming selves, and maybe get deputized into the royal posse and brought back to Norway as sort of their pet Americans.
Kinda far fetched, I know, but when Mr. Boozenporn lectured on Norway yesterday, it sounded so cool! It almost made me want to find it on a map, but then I decided it would be more fun to learn about that later. Maybe after I arrive. Did you know that they have jobs there? They do! Because they produce oil and stuff. So if me and my friends were Norwegian teenagers, we might actually be thinking about getting jobs when we’re done with school instead of just living in mom and dad’s basement, maybe.
Then last night I had this dream that I went to Norway and became a Scandanavian Oilwegian, and I sent thousands of dollars back home to my folks to help them pay for their health care.
Don’t get me wrong, I love America. But I love money too, and it sounds like in Norway they’ve got some that ordinary people are allowed to have. A lot of the people speak English too, and the countryside is like Minnesota, so I’d feel pretty comfortable right away. Even a lot of the stuff is the same as here. Somebody told me if I go to Norway, I had to ask somebody to show me all the Fords. Don’t know why that’s so important, but apparently they’re all over on the west side of the country!
Anyway, if you happen to see the King and Queen of Norway and they say they’re looking for some American Youth to take back with them, please spell my name right.
Your friend,
B-U-B-B-Y
I told Bubby it was not likely that the Norsk Royals would adopt him or take him home to work in the oil fields. They are not here on a mission to accumulate stray American youth. And if he thinks he might someday move far away to a place where there are jobs so he can send some money back to his poor old mum and dad, he should start in a place that’s more reachable and less exotic, like North Dakota.
I spend so much time doing my work-from-home job on the computer, I’ve set up a desk in my bedroom so I can take quickie naps when a work lull allows for it.
Lately I’ve been having this recurring dream where I become lost in a storm. Unsure of my bearings, I don’t know what to pay attention to anymore.
My world is transformed into a blizzard of information bits, all of them flying past my head in a swirling cloud of text and images that seems driven by some unyielding, spontaneously generated wind. Too tiny to catch but too big to ignore, each individual know-flake feels terribly significant until I look closely enough to see that it is made up of absolutely nothing. As I stumble through these mounting piles of apparently urgent but ultimately pointless distractables, I have a growing sensation that I am missing something crucial that I will never, ever find.
I always wake up the same way – tangled in the electronic device cords that form a hot, dusty web in the tiny space between my desk and the wall.
What does it mean?
Desperately,
Digital Dreamer.
I told Digital Dreamer she should stop sleeping in the same room with the computer. Your brain and the Internet are just two different types of electronic networks, and it is not healthy to bunk your precious noggin so close to all that commotion. Try resting next to a houseplant instead.
But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?
Today is the (supposed) anniversary of the (rumored) incident involving Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev hammering for emphasis with his shoe during a diatribe at the United Nations in 1960.
I was 5 years old at the time, so I don’t remember many of the details, but it did make a significant impression on me that a guy could get so much attention by taking off his shoe and banging it on a hard surface. When I tried it at the dinner table, I found out the rumors were true!
Did the incident really happen? Accounts differ. Some say he merely waved the shoe while pounding the desk with his fist. Others note that he couldn’t have removed the shoe while sitting at his U.N. desk, because the desk was too small for him to reach under there and he was too fat to bend over while seated. One account claims the shoes were new and painful, so he took them off before sitting down. When he got wound up and wanted to drive home the point, he noticed a shoe nearby and took advantage of the situation. A crime of opportunity.
Khruschev’s tirade was the most famous angry thing (possibly) done with a shoe up to the Richard Reid “shoe bomber” incident in 2002. In both cases, there is no video evidence to verify the incident for future generations, though You Tube is full of attempts to re-create Khruschev’s rant.
Whether or not it actually happened, for Cold War kids like me, the bogeyman became an angry old bald man banging his shoe, telling us the kids will become Communists and shouting “We Will Bury You!”. And now I have become an angry old bald man whose feet hurt. Coincidence? I don’t think so!
It took me by surprise when I learned that Monday is Columbus Day – the observance has completely fallen off my IHR (Internal Holiday Radar), a sixth sense that triggers the release of euphoric chemicals that flood the body when a day off is about to happen.
That’s probably because I’ve worked every Columbus Day since I was in the sixth grade. I would have missed it entirely this year had I not found myself in a conversation about what might or might not come in the mail next week. I admire their work, but the people of the U.S. Postal Service are the last ones to know when a holiday falls out of favor.
It’s pretty obvious that on the October holiday/observance landscape, Columbus Day is on the decline while Halloween continues, ominously, to rise. Though if you’re Native American, Columbus Day IS Halloween – a chilling reminder of the closeness of death.
Randy Newman summed it all up in this song, performed in Stuttgart.
Not a huge ovation, but the Germans in the audience have likely become accustomed to the complicated feelings that accompany true accounts of European history. But you have to credit Mr. Newman for boiling it all down to the essence.
Here’s a list of days off for federal workers from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management:
Friday, December 31, 2010 – New Year’s Day
Monday, January 17 – Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Monday, February 21 – Washington’s Birthday
Monday, May 30 – Memorial Day
Monday, July 4 – Independence Day
Monday, September 5 – Labor Day
Monday, October 10 – Columbus Day
Friday, November 11 – Veterans Day
Thursday, November 24 – Thanksgiving Day
Monday, December 26 – Christmas Day
With so much pressure in Washington for the government to save money, how long before someone proposes a schedule of unpaid holidays to go hand-in-hand with the elimination of Saturday mail delivery? Anything to get those federal employees off the clock! We have lots of candidates. Here are some in October alone:
International Day of Older Persons ―Saturday, October 1, 2011
International Day of Non-Violence ― October 2
World Habitat Day ― October 3
World Teachers’ Day ― October 5
World Post Day ― October 9
World Mental Health Day ― October 10
International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction ― October 12
World Sight Day ― October 13
White Cane Safety Day ― October 15
International Day of Rural Women ― October 15
World Food Day ― October 16
International Day for the Eradication of Poverty ― October 17
Boss’s Day ― October 17
Alaska Day ― October 18
World Development Information Day ― October 24
United Nations Day ― October 24
World Day for Audiovisual Heritage ― October 27
Nevada Day ― October 28
How wonderfully ironic it would be to force people to take a day without pay to observe the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty!
What holidays would you like to add to the calendar?
Here’s a fresh note from our perennial sophomore, Bubby Spamden of Wendell Wilkie High School.
Hey Mr. C.,
I know people your age like to gripe about us high school kids because we’re “soft” and “lazy” and “ungrateful” and we’re addicted to our “gadgets.” I know I’m guilty on all counts. But my Life Skills teacher, Mr. Boozenporn, says you guys weren’t all that different when you were in high school. He says every generation is accused of being dumber and weaker and less excellent by the generations that came earlier. And while overall test scores may be down a bit, the pressure to be super as an individual keeps going up and up and up.
What do I mean?
There’s this girl – Brianna Amat. She managed to get on the football team at Pinckney High School in Michigan because she’s such a good kicker on the girl’s soccer team. Fair enough, I guess. But then she went and got voted to be the Homecoming Queen and got to go out on the football field at halftime and get a tiara put on her head while she was wearing her uniform! And then when the Pinckney Pirates were one point behind in the second half (because she missed a point-after in the first half), she kicked the field goal that beat their archrival, Grand Blanc!
So she managed to corner two of the most prized roles in high school in the very same night – homecoming queen and football hero. The only top roles she left on the table are The Kid Who Always Has Money and The Kid Whose Parents Are Never Home. That’s pretty amazing. It means she’s probably got, like, a record percentage of other students at the school with a crush on her. And it lifts up the bar for anybody else who wants to be really, really celebrated.
People say kids today are a lot more open to all kinds of people doing different things they aren’t “supposed” to do. That might be true, but I don’t think anybody else will ever be able to equal Brianna’s feat, even though I know for a fact that there are a couple of guys at Wendell Wilkie High who would very much like to be Homecoming Queen. No big deal, they just really feel comfortable in tiaras.
Anyway, I guess the point is that not everybody my age is good-for-nothing. Some are good-at-everything. And some, like Brianna Amat, are living out pretty incredible stories.
Your Pal,
Bubby
I told Bubby that forty years ago, as both homecoming queen and football hero, Brianna would have been required by unwritten high school law to date herself. So I’m glad to see things have changed. Compared to the old days, there are many more opportunities for high school kids to get that feeling of being celebrated today. Brianna gets our attention because she happened to corral two of the classic favorites.
What was the high school honor you most wanted to win?
The winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics are three American scientists who asked some important questions and wound up getting answers they didn’t expect.
Hubble's snapshot of the backyard, courtesy of NASA
As a result they gave us this confounding image of a universe that is expanding rapidly, with stars and galaxies rushing away from the center at ever-increasing speeds.
How’s that?
For folks (like me) who write news stories and summaries, Nobel week is a challenge and an education. In trying to explain how a prize was won, we’re called on to distill and decipher other people’s complicated multi-million-dollar research. Do you really think I can, with little knowledge or understanding of the field, step in and do a better job explaining a major technical principle in fewer words than the scientist who has spent his or her life struggling with the same information?
Some topics don’t like to be compressed.
But try I must. So why not take it all the way down to the minimum? Here’s a challenge – boil the expanding universe down to three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second, and five in the third.
Go.
Galaxies racing
faster away from center
Mama will be pissed.
Dark Energy is
The unseen motivator
Behind the madness
The whole universe
Receding away from you
It’s not personal
The spaces between
the words in this haiku are
bigger. What’s up, huh?
Leave your own haiku, or just explain how the universe will end.
During a recent conversation with my son, I inadvertently let it slip that I think his children, a pair of girls aged 14 and 12, are selfish little heathens who exhibit all the social decorum one would expect from a pair of hungry wolverines.
One example: They put their elbows on the table, lower their faces to a scant 2 inches above the plate and proceed to gnaw and inhale their food, always accompanied by a cascade of grotesque slurping and chewing noises reminiscent of a National Geographic special about the food chain on the African savannah.
In response to this observation, my son said “manners are dead”. “I’m raising these children to be ‘natural creatures'”, he said, “wild and free and unencumbered by the petty rules of society.”
And he pointed out that Emily Post herself considered good etiquette to be a style of behavior intended to help other people feel comfortable. If his children feel comfortable eating their pizza as if they have just buried their faces in the warm entrails of an exhausted antelope, what right do I have to judge them?
He suggested that it was bad manners for me to even bring this up, and especially uncouth for me to pretend that I just let the criticism “slip” when in fact I have been brooding over this for years.
Dr. Babooner, while there may be some truth to the assertion that I have been thinking about this for a long time, it was never my intention to attempt to correct the atrocious behavior of these young barbarians. They are irredeemable. I would sooner try to convince voracious Asian Carp to swim back downstream.
But if etiquette is all about helping others relax, why must I always be the one to sacrifice? How come no one changes his or her behavior to help ME feel comfortable?
Sincerely,
Crabby Gramps
I told Crabby Gramps I was alarmed by his use of the world “irredeemable”. That strikes me as a shockingly final judgment for one to level against young relatives. And frankly, I said, his son is correct. Etiquette is dead – finally killed by the Internet in the same way table manners were done in by the State Fair, along with the table itself.
As for feeling “comfortable”, that must come from within. If you are looking for someone else to MAKE you feel comfortable, you are likely to wait for a very long time. Rather, C.G. should just decide to approach dinner with the mindset of a wildlife biologist. Observe and take notes. These are fascinating creatures who cannot be tamed!
You might also just “let it slip” that any “wild and free” creatures roaming in your house will have to wear radio collars and ear tags for the duration – for their own protection, of course. And one can never rule out the judicious use of tranquilizer darts.
But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?
