September 30th, 2010
Say goodbye to the stiff upper lip... Tell, calm, cool and collected to take a hike. Whoop it up! Laugh, scream, cry and holler! And when tons of stuff stuffs up your nose, blow it loud and blow it proud! Show your heart and show some tears... of joy and sorrow, in awe and pride. Just let it out!
The bottom of a Kleenex box
Get rich, that is the best way you can help the poor.
Wallace D. Wattles
Classifieds
Tired of waiting in line to pay for your groceries? Why not hire me? I'm Lenny The Waiting in Line For Groceries Guy. I will meet you at the checkout of any major supermarket and hold your place in line until it is time to pay. For only 100$/month you can have my cell phone number. Box 30.
For rent: one for rent sign. $2/day. Box 11.
For sale: one for sale sign. $4. Box 11.
I am conducting a scientific study of the mating habits of my neighbour across the hall, Jim Sleevy. If you have had "relations" with Mr. Sleevy in the last 72 hours please send me a detailed description of the acts that were committed. Remember, this is for science so be very specific. Box 69.
Looking for big dicounts on electronic items? Me too!
For rent: badger costumes. Ideal for Halloween or attending Brock or University of Wisconsin games. Go Badgers!
The Mystery of the Lost Lenore
Listen to Part Seventy-Five
Click on the picture. (2:51)
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This Week's Rambling Incoherence
The Golden Book Encyclopedia informs me that, although half a billion years ago trilobites were the earth's leading animals, now we are firmly ensconced in the Age of Man. I'm not sure this is necessarily a good thing. While I don't personally know any trilobites I'm guessing they're probably a fairly sedate bunch, given to calmly swimming around and not really messing with each other's stuff. Of course neither one of these things can really be said to be true of humans.
I don't know about you (in so many ways) but I don't think I'd mind hanging out with trilobites. They seem, while not really friendly (I'm going by the picture in the Golden Book here), at least benign. During the several million years that trilobites ruled the earth it must have been reasonably calm. I can't imagine a lot got done but I'll bet the swimming was good.
The Golden Book, contrary to my own inclination towards the trilobite, seems to be fairly fixated on the superiority of man. As proof of their assertion they offer up the evidence of our "better brains" , which we used to work up a scheme for communicating. "Being able to talk to one another made it easier for people to work together." (Golden Book again) I think that should read: "could have made it easier".
I hardly need to point out that before language it wasn't really possible to yell or hurl abuse at people, or to accuse them of gross incompetence. There was just a lot of grunting and squealing previous to that. No doubt some of it was pretty ill-natured but it still seems preferable to me. I'd rather hear: "unk grrrr nnnhhh!" than "Way to be, loser!" any day of the week. After all you can pretty much take "unk grrr nnhhh!" any way you like.
Besides the spoken word, the GB sees fit to lord over the animals writing as another of man's"great accomplishments". Once again this doesn't seem like such a vast improvement to me. After all somebody used writing to create Saved By the Bell? And that's not something you can rightfully hold against the trilobites now is it?
Hugh Briss
The Boy Who Cried Wolf
Once upon a time there was a boy who cried wolf.
It didn't seem to matter what time of day or night it was or what was going on. Things would be going along swimmingly and then, all of a sudden, the boy would cry out "Wolf!". It was very annoying.
So, one day, some guys beat him senseless. That fixed him.
E. Watermuldar
The Tapir
You're a strange animal. That's what I know.
Simone
Part Three
The shop itself was quite small and the ceiling seemed extraordinarily low. Simone was 5' 8" and yet she felt like ducking. There was a high wooden counter at the end of the shop and behind it the ink-stained badger in an apron peered over the tops of his pince-nez at her.
At first Simone wondered if she knew him from somewhere but she realised that it was only that he bore an uncanny resemblance to Badger from the Wind in the Willows. She decided against mentioning this, sure that he must have heard it a thousand times, and merely indicated that she had come about the job.
Mr. Turble, as the badger's name turned out to be, was maybe not the friendliest badger Simone had ever met but he was attentive and polite and moreover he hired Simone on the spot. She was to start work the next day.
Her duties, Mr. Turble explained, would consist of collating, sorting, punching and, to some extent, helping with the binding of a project the badger was currently working on. He did not enlighten her as to the nature of this project and he showed her nothing of it. Her new employer merely pointed out her work station and showed her the storeroom where all the materials were kept. They would begin the work in earnest tomorrow.
That evening Simone hardly slept a wink. She spent most of the night staring at the ceiling of the garage and only drifted off in the morning as her bus pulled out onto Osborne.
Had Simone been living in a regular apartment at that time she would surely have been late for work but because of her less than usual arrangement, getting to the print shop on time only entailed remembering to get off at her stop (and she could have safely forgotten that as Raymond was driving again today, Larry still sick, and he knew where she needed to get off). There are, as I have said, advantages to living on top of a bus.
Mr. Turble was just opening up as Simone arrived. He handed her a grey smock to work in and they got down to business. The first job that Simone had to do was to collate a bunch of uncut sheets. It was relatively easy work for a girl as motivated as Simone was and it only required a little attention to page numbers. At first that was absorbing enough but as the day wore on Simone began to read what was printed on those pages. That may have been a mistake.
As there were four actual book sized pages to a sheet and two of those were upside down Simone could only read a sentence or two at a time without noticeably slowing down her work. Mr. Turble was working away on something across the room but as it was her first day she didn't really want to stop or even slow down to read more. But what she was able to read was piquing her curiosity.
The sentences she was able to read seemed unconnected to one another. They didn't even seem to be about the same subject and so Simone surmised that the many pages of the book were not a novel or prose work on one single subject but perhaps a collection of essays. Perhaps by a selection of authors.
By the time four o'clock rolled around and it was time to go home Simone had read a total of maybe eighty sentences and she'd read those probably eighty times. It was just enough information to be thoroughly confusing. Maybe tomorrow she would ask Mr. Turble what it was they were assembling. That night on her way home she decided to go visit her old employers the squirrels and see if they had a final cheque ready for her.
To be continued...