The UFO letter

The truth is way out there

Oh, look what I found in the archives! While rifling through a stack of old print-outs (yes, some of them even had perforated tractor-feed margins), I discovered one of my unpublished letters to the editor. We all know what happens to our unsolicited expressions of concern, outrage, agreement, etcetera: nothing, usually. As a rule, unless you're writing to a small local newspaper, your letter to the editor will vanish without a trace. Despite examples like that of one of my mentors, who actually got a letter published in the New York Times, writing to a newspaper is usually a waste of time (although the process of venting might be salubrious).

In this instance, however, my unpublished letter garnered a surprising response from the editor of the Letters section: “I really LOVE this letter. But I'm still not going to publish it. Sorry. We just don't have space for stuff like this.” I was charmed, of course, and regretfully but stoically set my missive aside.

The Internet, however, has plenty of room for “stuff like this”! Therefore today I share with you not only my previously unpublished letter, but the original letter to the editor to which it was a response. The year is 1998:

UFOs are real

Re “The reality of UFOs,” letters, March 1: It is amazing that we are still discussing whether UFOs exist. It has been more than 50 years since the UFO crash at Roswell, N.M., not to mention sightings over the past several hundred years. My own observations and interest go back to 1953, when, with several other skeptics, I co-founded one of the first “flying saucer” groups in the United States. Our club was called Civilian Saucer Intelligence and was based in New York City.

Whether the letter writers are part of the government disinformation coverup, I do not know. I do know, as do millions of others, that UFOs exist.

I recommend that doubters read “The Day After Roswell” by a former Pentagon official, Col. Philip Corso (Ret.). It contains a foreword by Sen. Strom Thurmond. It is doubtful that a man such as Thurmond would lend his name to any hoax.

G.E.H.F.
Sacramento

Upon first reading this letter, I naturally reacted to the writer's use of “skeptic” in a way I found original and amusing. In his mind, “skeptic” obviously meant someone who refused to accept the debunking of flying saucer stories and was ready to embrace the notion of aliens joy-riding their round spacecraft all over the earth. I sat down at my PC keyboard and banged out the following:

Dear Editor: Little suspecting the dramatic events about to transpire, I was minding my own business while reading the Letters to the Editor in Friday's paper (March 27). I found “UFOs are Real” especially fascinating, particularly his speculation that letter writers who scoff at flying saucers might be “part of the government disinformation coverup.” Naturally I was trying to figure out what government disinformation was being covered up.

Of course, I was somewhat distracted by the irritating noise of a helicopter flying overhead. I could tell from the sound that the chopper had those extra-wide blades that are quieter than most. These are great for stealthy night missions, especially when the helicopters are painted the right color.

It was a relief when the chopper noise stopped, but shortly afterward my doorbell rang. On the front porch I found a tall man wearing a dark suit. I couldn't see his eyes because he was wearing opaque sunglasses.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, very politely, in a clipped voice that reminded me a bit of that actor Tommy Lee Jones. “I see that you're reading the Letters section of today's paper. Would you mind if I point out some things about the letter about UFOs?”

“Wow!” I exclaimed, “I was just reading it. What an amazing coincidence!”

The man gave me a tight little smile. “How fortunate,” he said. “Did you notice where the writer referred to 'the' UFO crash at Roswell, even though there are presently three alleged crash locations? Doesn't this suggest that the evidence is a little bit questionable?”

“You got me there,” I admitted, “although you know people found metallized fabric unknown to modern science anywhere on this planet except among balloon manufacturers. That's pretty compelling evidence. And the descriptions of alien bodies match pretty closely the appearance of the test dummies that the Air Force was tossing out of planes in parachute experiments in those years. I think this proves the degree to which aliens are willing to disguise themselves to fool us into thinking they don't exist. And don't forget that millions of people believe in UFOs.”

“Interesting point,” said the man. “Of course, millions believe in Islam while millions of others believe in Christianity. At least one of these groups has to be wrong. And millions of people believe that The X-Files is a documentary. Facts aren't really subject to popularity contests.”

“You got me there,” I admitted, “but how about that book that the writer mentioned? It's by a retired colonel and was endorsed by Sen. Strom Thurmond. That's pretty impressive, you know, with an endorsement by an authority like Thurmond.”

“No disrespect intended, sir, but these days 95-year-old Sen. Thurmond isn't even much of an authority on what day of the week it is. Besides which, he has issued a retraction of his book blurb, which was written because of his acquaintance with the colonel, not because he approved the unseen contents of the book manuscript.”

“You got me there,” I admitted, “but I'm sure that your cool and reasoned explanations must have some flaw in them. It's not as if retired colonels or other UFO enthusiasts would make up stories, delude themselves, fake alien autopsies, or observe bogus anniversaries in Roswell just to make money, acquire fame, or spice up their humdrum lives. I'll have to think about it.”

“Please do,” the man said. “And don't forget to write a letter to present these explanations to the public. As a concerned citizen, it's the least you can do, right?”

“Of course,” I agreed, but when I started to say something more, I noticed that he was suddenly gone. Anyway, I've been thinking about what he said and I've concluded that the man in the dark suit must have been wrong. UFOs must be real, because “The truth is out there.” I know, because popular media, tabloid television, the National Enquirer, and David Duchovny tell me so.

Dear Abby, dinner party planner

An apple distance record?

I have always read Dear Abby for the humor. I still do. Of course, when the column's originator, Pauline Phillips, was writing it, I felt as if I were laughing with the columnist. These days, however, it's more often that I laugh at the columnist. This morning, Jeanne Phillips struck again:

DEAR ABBY: I just found out my husband was arrested for being with a hooker. My in-laws (whom I love and adore) bailed him out of jail. No one said a word about it to me. I don't know how to confront all of them with the fact that I know about this “dirty little secret.” What should I do? — BETRAYED WIFE

DEAR BETRAYED: First, visit your gynecologist and ask to be treated for every STD known to man. Then invite your in-laws to a “family dinner,” tell them the cat is out of the bag and ask why this was kept from you. And while you're at it, ask your mother-in-law (whom you love and adore) how SHE would feel if your father-in-law had possibly exposed her to an STD and it had been kept from her. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

This is extraordinarily good advice, no? No. Give it just a second's thought. A second second shouldn't be needed. Just imagine Betrayed's adored in-laws sitting down for a cozy family dinner at Betrayed's invitation, only to discover that the first course is an accusation, served with a side of recrimination. Will we ever get to the just desserts*?

The notion of raising the topic at a family dinner is just absurd. Jeanne is apparently not bothering to read her own advice before publishing it. Can't she afford a competent minion to save her (and her advisees!) from herself? Surely Betrayed would be better off in a less structured setting, like sitting down with the guilty parties for coffee (perhaps even at a coffee shop, if a public venue were desired in hopes that fear of “making a scene” would keep reactions mild and voices low and under control; Betrayed knows her family better than Dear Abby). Once everyone is settled, Betrayed could share “good news”: “All of the lab tests are back and I'm pleased to announce that each one was negative. George didn't infect me with any sexually transmitted diseases, so I'm much relieved!” Alternatively, Betrayed might instead need to announce, “Good news! My gynecologist says that the gonorrhea I contracted from George is responding to treatment.”

In either case, the rest of the script writes itself. And there's no danger of leaving a lovely roast untouched on the dinner table. There's also less risk of having edged cutlery too close at hand.

Jeanne concluded her misbegotten advice with the homey aphorism that “The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.” Maybe so, Jeanne, but there appears to have been quite a bit of rolling in your case.

---

*Yeah, I know all about “just deserts” versus “just deserts,” but when it comes to lost causes ... So don't even bother.

A failure of imagination

Non carpe diem

If it weren't Saturday, my reaction would have been different. Cartoonists like Stephan Pastis have confessed that Saturday is where weak comic strips go to die—or at least to be overlooked. If Scott Adams had scheduled the Dilbert strip to run on a Monday, I would have perceived it as the first installment in a promising new story arc, with four sequels to anticipate. Since, however, it appeared in Saturday's newspaper, the strip was evidently considered a dud, or at best a squib with a small pop. Here's the key panel:

Dilbert replies that his pointy-haired boss should not have high expectations for Dilbert's first draft. The reader can now emit a short, dry chuckle and move on. Unless Adams surprises me on Monday, however, this is a missed opportunity. Isn't the creation of content-free responses to awkward questions a significant corporate survival skill? Consider the following hypothetical question, which we can anticipate in general form if not in specific:

Q: What are your plans for NOUN? We can't afford to let our competition get ahead of us on NOUN.

Really, now. How difficult could it be to answer that question? Try this on for size (and impenetrability):

A: I'm glad you asked that. Our planning task force has a subgroup specifically devoted to NOUN and will be rolling out a timeframe for NOUN implementation that will maintain our competitive edge. We have been aware of the importance of NOUN for quite some time and have allocated resources for appraisal of NOUN options from our future projects initiative. We feel that we are ahead of the curve on NOUN and will be able to respond quickly to rival NOUN implementations.

You can't go too far wrong with that, can you?

Q: Are you ready to VERB? Your master plan does not address VERBing anywhere.

You already have the idea now. The answers write themselves:

A: Actually, the master plan has provisions for seizing opportunities for creative departures in new directions, implicitly including VERBing. You may be unaware that [random name] has specialized training in how to VERB and can bring those skills on-line in the near-term to establish our presence in VERBing in a high-profile and significant way. This is especially true because [repeat name] is the nexus of an inter-departmental strategy team that can facilitate cross-division implementation of VERBing options where those options are most appropriately tailored to enhance high achievement relative to our success metrics.

That speaks volumes, no? (No.)

With all of his experience in corporate bureaucracy, Scott Adams could easily have cobbled together a sequence of four superficially responsive non-responses for a series of strips. Alas, it looks like a missed opportunity.

I suppose it would be fun to add a couple of examples with more of an educational orientation, but I used all of those up in our latest accreditation report.

The unfunny uncle

Who won't shut up

Most families have one. It's the relative who just has to share his “latest” joke (although, unfortunately, it's more likely a “late” joke — as in dead). He is a reliable blight on family gatherings and there's always jockeying for position at dinner tables and picnic blankets so as not to be the one who has to sit next to him.

This week—God knows why—Bill Donohue decided he should demonstrate his comedic talents. I was immediately and powerfully reminded of my unfunny uncle. And—just to make the package complete—you can tell that Bill is powerfully proud of his cleverness. The preening just oozes from his prose:

Bill Donohue's Open Letter to Maureen Dowd

March 23, 2012

My Dearest Maureen,

In today’s New York Times, you write the following:

“The church insists it’s an argument about religious freedom, not birth control. But, really, it’s about birth control, and women’s lower caste in the church. It’s about conservative bishops targeting Democratic candidates who support contraception and abortion rights as a matter of public policy. And it’s about a church that is obsessed with sex in ways it shouldn’t be, and not obsessed with sex in ways it should be. The bishops and the Vatican care passionately about putting women in chastity belts.”

I have a confession to make. While some may think you sound like a delusional weepy woman, don’t listen to them. You see, I was in on those meetings with the bishops when we hatched plans to stick it to women and sabotage the Democrats.

This, you see, is side-splittingly funny because Donohue is pretending to be a sexist bastard. See how good he is at it?

We met over drinks. Plenty of them. Except for one bishop who said over time women could become our equal, all of us agreed that you gals need to be kept in your place. As you properly note, this means being subjugated to the lower caste, just the way we snookered Mother Teresa.

Now this part is funny because we've all heard that Mother Teresa eventually admitted that she lived a life of acute clinical depression. In case you've forgotten the details, here are her own words: “In my heart there is no faith—no love—no trust—there is so much pain—the pain of longing, the pain of not being wanted. I want God with all the powers of my soul—and yet there between us—there is terrible separation. I don’t pray any longer.” This is not, of course, the lesson we are supposed to learn. As Mother Teresa became more inured to her condition of dead faith, she prostrated herself before God's will: “I want it to be like this for as long as he wants it.” God didn't bother to answer back or ease her pain, but Teresa's reward is secure, since she's on the fast track to canonization by the Vatican. It's the perfect posthumous consolation prize after decades of misery.

Naturally, the heartwarming story of Mother Teresa's life makes her the perfect foil for Bill Donohue's winsome sense of humor.

You are only partly right about the Democrats. In fact, starting last year our goal was to rig the Republican primary so that Romney would win. Why? Because then we could pull his Mormon strings without being accused of running the government. So far, so good. Just don’t tell Mitt.

Not even Twain could have penned a more cleverly wry paragraph. Why, at times it almost sucks you into believing it and forgetting the writer's satirical purpose. Gasping for breath in the wake of uncontrollable laughter, we soldier on:

We are obsessed about sex. Indeed, when I meet with the bishops, it’s the only thing we talk about. Admittedly, it sometimes feels like I’m at a frat party, but boys will be boys. There is one difference: at frat parties, chastity belts for women are never discussed, but with the bishops, nothing is more important. The goal is to make a “one size fits all” belt, one that is not removable. Velcro works for all sizes, but it comes off. Not to worry, my dearest Maureen, we won’t give up. That’s because, quite unlike the stately New York Times, we’re obsessed about sex.

One wipes the tears from one's eyes while shaking the head in stunned admiration at the clever juxtaposition of bishops and chastity belts. The Velcro punch-line has all the impact of a sudden blow to the stomach.

I say without fear of contradiction that Bill Donohue's mastery of humor is all but unparalleled in the annals of political writing. We shall seldom—if ever—see its like again.

So give thanks.

April 1

Where fools rush in

“Fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me ... you can't get fooled again.” —George W. Bush

I have no use for April Fool jokes. They are, as a rule, nasty little things. Most of them are—mercifully—painfully obvious and stupid. They do rather little harm. There is, however, a particular type of April Fool joke that I find especially noisome. Jokes of this type are crafted, perhaps unthinkingly, to sound completely true, without even a hint to give the hearer a sporting chance of penetrating the ruse. These are just callous excuses to slap an unwarranted label of fool on someone. There is scarcely a better way to get me to put you on my list of persona non grata.

Examples include such choice items as

• “Jenny won't be in class today. She's in the ICU after a car accident.”
• “Grandpa fell down and broke his hip!”
• “I just heard on the news that there's a fire in your apartment complex!”
• “My doctor told me yesterday that I have melanoma.”
• “Did you check your in-box? There's a memo from district office about layoffs in our department!”

Now how would you feel after expressing alarm or concern, only to have someone grin like an idiot and then yell “April Fool!” at you? Yes, I want to slug people like that (but I don't—usually). I actually experienced two of the above “jokes” and my response to “April Fool!” was an understated “Jerk.” In both cases I froze out the inane prankster for an extended period of time. One was a cousin. It was a small loss.

A form of humor based entirely on telling lies and then insulting the people who believe them. What's not to love?

Boycott Ellen!

In for a Penney, in for a pound

Ellen Degeneres and JC Penney have mortally offended me!

No, I'm not talking about that silly whining from the harpies at One Million Moms (who are no better at counting than they are at living in the 21st century). My objection is to the mathematically inaccurate television ad in which Ellen dons 19th century garb and asks a milliner the price of a hat. When the lady informs her that the hat costs “fourteen pounds and ninety-pence,” Ellen responds with, “Okay, so fifteen pounds.” The lady firmly disagrees, but Ellen persists and finally gets her to admit that the stated price is as good as fifteen pounds.

Not!

The British pound was not divided into 100 pennies (the “new pence” of 1971) until the 20th century. Before that, a pound was divided into 20 shillings, each of which was worth 12 pence. If you do the math, that's 240 pence (old pennies) to the pound. If 19th-century English hat shops had been in the habit of shaving off a penny to make prices look lower, a one-penny reduction in a hat costing 15 pounds would result in a price of 14 pounds, 19 shillings, 11 pence—or £14/19/11 in the notation of the day. My penpal in Birmingham (England) used to send me letters in the 1960s whose stamps were labeled in pence, e.g.,  4d (“d” was reserved to the old penny and was replaced by “p” when the new coinage was introduced).

My trust in Ellen is shattered and I will never again take her advice on matters monetary.

Wherein I fail

The Impostor Fantasy

My friends and acquaintances are very helpful in keeping my ego in check. They are ever ready to assure me, especially recently, that I am no good at false modesty. As someone who strives to excel in every endeavor he undertakes, it is understandably greatly disappointing that my self-deprecations are so unsuccessful. For some reason, friends and family do not accept my frank admission that I am a dilettante and poseur. It is a puzzlement. I ponder wearily how to remedy the situation, but inspiration fails me. I confess that I do not know what to do.

I felt like a fraud.
So I learned to fly an airplane.

When did this all begin? I am not certain. Perhaps the most recent spate of failures began when I told some friends I had stumbled into writing a novel. It was a purgative event, rendering the pent-up demons of old family feuds into a fictional form, exorcising ancient controversies by reducing them to narrative form. Much-told tales had been written down where others could see them and smile. Tragedy had been tamed into a tragi-comic story, which I shared with several friends.

At 50,000 feet I thought:
“A fraud is flying an airplane.”

I explained to people that I wasn't “really” a novelist—just someone who had written a novel-length manuscript. After all, I'm just a math teacher and not a littérateur. People scoffed. One particularly sly friend pointed out that using a word like “littérateur” was a dead giveaway. Clearly I fancied myself an author. In response, I confessed that I was an author: an author in the field of expository mathematics, with contributions enshrined in a number of texts and supplements and magazines—and a couple of writing awards to my credit—but not really a fiction writer.

So I crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat.
I docked at Cherbourg and thought: “A fraud has crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat.”

This was deemed evasive. Did I not intend to seek a publisher for my quasi-memoir? I confessed that I was interested in shopping it around. The first readers had been extravagant in their praise (of course, they were friends), raising my expectations and causing me to dare to think the story had commercial prospects. I had even sought an agent. This was, clearly, proof positive that I was now a fiction writer—and my biggest fiction was my pose that I was not.

So I took a space shot to the moon.
On the trip home I thought: “A fraud has circled the moon.”

I failed at finding an agent interested in my manuscript, but instead I found a university press that was eager to look at it. Several months passed while their reviewers read it, but eventually my novel was accepted for publication. When I met the professor who was the editor-in-chief, I ever-so-modestly mentioned that it was an extraordinary stroke of good fortune for a non-novelist—a math-teaching non-writer—like me to get his manuscript accepted. The good professor scoffed at my characterization: “You wrote a novel. It's being published. You are, by definition, a novelist. In fact, you should be thinking about future writing projects.”

I had to grin. A professor of foreign languages was lecturing a professor of mathematics about what is true “by definition.” He had me there.

So I took a full page ad in the newspaper and confessed to the world that I was a fraud!

One of my colleagues dimpled when I recounted my recent failures at modesty. “Oh, Zee,” she said. “Don't you know about ‘fishing for compliments’? You're just trying to get people to tell you how wonderful you are.” I would, of course, have denounced this vile calumny, but it seemed to hit pretty close to home. Yes, perhaps I protest just a little too much. If I'm really anxious about being a dilettante in foreign fields of endeavor (and risking embarrassing pratfalls), wouldn't it make more sense to stop drawing attention to it? If only I were a naturally taciturn person—

I read the ad and I thought: “A fraud is pretending to be honest.”

During the late seventies, I had a Jules Feiffer cartoon posted in my graduate student office. The “impostor fantasy” amused me greatly, as well as speaking to deep-seated fears. Naturally I was reminded of it and was pleasantly surprised to discover it still resided in my decades-old files. It gave me renewed inspiration:

I felt like a fraud, so I wrote a blog post...

Catholic spin cycle

A faithful parody

The more-Catholic-than-the-pope fringe of Roman Catholicism is faithfully represented by the ultra-ultramontanes of RealCatholicTV, where Michael Voris shares his overweening smugness in a series of videos titled The Vortex. In recent installments he has decried the collapse of Catholicism in Ireland and reported that contraception has brought humanity to the edge of destruction. Voris would not know the meaning of “subtlety” if it hit him in the face with a sledge hammer forged in the white-hot intensity of a million suns. His antics would seem to put him beyond parody, but nothing daunts the truly brave humorist.

Enter Steve, the eponym of Steve Likes to Curse, a blog of peculiarly skewed and irreverent humor. This month he's unveiled a series of Vortex parodies that are wickedly on target. Sporting a helmet-hair wig every bit as authentic as Voris's and styling himself “Michael Whirly, B.F.D.,” Steve presents The Whirlpool (“where fibs and fabrications are pulled under and drowned”). Check out his denunciation of atheists (“stupid retards who only care about fornicating with members of their own sex and smoking drugs”).

Keep an eye on the background animation for the floating washing machine. Then take a look at some of his other videos. He sincerely pities “those silly Jews” and their “obsolete” religion. Consider how specifically he cites scripture as he lusts for an opportunity to stone Emma Watson as a witch. At least, I think stoning is what he wants to do to her. It is a wonder to behold.

Perhaps you have never wasted precious minutes of your life watching Steve's original inspiration, the egregious (I was going to say “inimitable,” but that obviously no longer applies) Michael Voris. You can get a rush of schadenfreude while marveling at the accuracy of Steve's portrayal as Voris wrings his hands and laments over the sorry state of the modern Catholic Church. (Steve does look down a bit too often at his cue cards, I admit, but he also doesn't flub his lines quite as often as Voris either. It's a trade-off.)



One thing does, however, confuse me. Steve says he has just observed his blog's fifth anniversary, but has yet to attract much notice:

After five years, the first four of which I posted at least one article a day, every day, Steve Likes to Curse’s popularity and exposure are still minimal. On a good day, this one gets around 100 hits. Most days it gets between 40-50. And yet this quiet little website of mine has changed my life. What must it be like for someone whose blog gets thousands of hits a day?

Something is wrong when a treasure trove of humor like Steve's blog gets so few visitors. Go give the nice man a little love.

I believe in a higher power

Even Homer nods

The all-knowing Shphinx (a.k.a. Mooch with a towel on his head), sometimes falls just a bit short in his oracular pronouncements. This was quite evident in his declaration concerning the solid, low-temperature state of water.

No, it's not H₂O squared. It's H₂O cubed.

Mooch should have said “to the third power” in the third panel.

Accidentally accurate

Oops!

Cartoonist Lisa Benson takes aim at the Democrats' opposition to the the Republican budget plan proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan. You know: the notion that we will save Medicare (and the nation!) by destroying it. Of course, if you're really gullible—or perhaps really dim—you might believe that converting Medicare to a voucher plan is a good idea. And good luck chasing after private insurance with those shrinking vouchers.

The only thing really missing from Benson's cartoon is an appropriate label: Step One! Tossing the GOP budget proposal over the cliff is merely a good start.

Step One!

Why wait till 2012?

The San Francisco Chronicle's “Bad Reporter,” Don Asmussen, neatly pots the crazy Minnesota congresswoman with an anticipatory cartoon. I'm just concerned it will give Bachmann ideas. Run for president a year early? It's just crazy enough to work!

Home boy

I've never been “home”

President Obama poked some gentle fun at several targets during the White House Correspondents Association dinner last week. He tweaked Biden for his use of profanity and Jay Leno for his recent ratings. And he tossed a barb in the direction of the birthers, the wacky people who refuse to accept the evidence of Obama's birth in Hawaii:

It's been quite a year since I've spoken here last—lots of ups, lots of downs—except for my approval ratings, which have just gone down. But that's politics. It doesn’t bother me. Besides I happen to know that my approval ratings are still very high in the country of my birth.

The fringe element that populates the Free Republic website seized on the president's comment:

gooleyman: Am I the only one to notice that Obama admitted on this video that he was not born in the United States.

He actually admits he wasn’t born in the United States.

Some folks can't quite grasp the concept of a mocking comedy routine—even when they're the butt of it (or perhaps especially when they're the butt of it). These crazies were also excited when Michelle Obama spoke in August 2008 before the a conference of LGBT delegates at the Democratic convention (“The World as It Should Be”):

Barack has led by example: When we took our trip to Africa and visited his home country in Kenya, we took a public HIV test for the very point of showing the folks in Kenya that there is nothing to be embarrassed about in getting tested.

Oh, my God! She said her husband's “home country” is Kenya! Oh, no!

I hope that the president's health care reform package includes increased coverage for psychiatric treatment. The birthers need help from competent brain-care specialists. The concept of “home country” is neither obscure nor difficult to understand—and it is not identical to “birth country.” I have reason to know.

The following paragraphs are a short excerpt from a novel I wrote last summer (still unpublished as of this writing, but I'm working on it). The manuscript recounts the travails of a contentious Portuguese immigrant family living in central California. (By a strange coincidence, I grew up in a contentious Portuguese immigrant family in central California. Weird!) This particular episode includes the following exchange between two pre-teen cousins:

“Tia Odette told me that my avô came to this country when he was still single. He was engaged to a girl back home.”

“In the Old Country. The Azores.”

“Yeah, back home,” said Ferdinando.

Paul thought it was interesting how they had picked up the expression “back home” to refer to a place that neither of them had ever seen. They had learned the phrase from their grandparents and it was a natural part of their language.

It's true. All my life I heard family members referring to the Azores as “back home.” I've said it myself.

But I've never been there.

People who misunderstand this expression out of ignorance or idiocy are probably beyond help. The lights are on, but no one is home.

"The Simpsons" did it

Where's the scoop?

The San Francisco Chronicle went berserk when Mark McGwire finally admitted to having used steroids to pump himself up during his baseball career. The weirdly wonderful Bay Area newspaper splashed a transcript of McGwire's remarks as its headline story, and accompanied it with an opinion piece by a sports columnist. On the front page!

Like I said, the Chronicle went berserk.

Normally this is the sort of story that would not hold my attention. My inclination is to snort in disgust and turn the page. If especially exercised, I might mutter, “Don't these idiots remember that they have a sports section?” (That's the part of the paper where game reports and box scores are conveniently sequestered so that I can conveniently dispense with them all by discarding that section of the newspaper.)

I put mendacious McGwire out of my mind and would probably have forgotten all about it except for a paragraph I encountered in John Ortved's The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History. Here it is, from page 253, where Ortved is discussing the celebrities who flocked to lend their voices to episodes of The Simpsons:

Of course, boys being boys, the real draw was always the sports figures.

Larry Doyle: The biggest hullabaloo was when Mark McGwire came in. That was when loads of people who didn't have any reason to be in the recording booth ended up there. All the girls and all the guys were there. He seems like a nice guy, but he looks like a monster. His arms are as big as your legs—that's not an exaggeration.

And I guess we now know why that was, don't we?

Juxtapositional humor

Trailing off in a joke

I don't think of myself as someone who follows the Mark Trail comic strip, although I glance at it when surveying the comics page. Its appeal escapes me and its survival mystifies me. Mark's current adventure involves taking a little boy camping in the woods (not too sure about the wisdom of that) and saving the boy's puppy from poachers who were using it for bait to attract alligators. Oh, and the puppy knocks over a wobbly car jack and traps the little boy under the car.

Note to parents and guardians: Do not let Mark Trail take care of your children or pets.

So now Mark needs to perform yet another rescue. He's desperately hunting for something with which to lift the car and save the little boy. He dashes off to a nearby abandoned store, breaks in, and finds—wait for it—an old jack! (Yay!)

But look at the climactic panel from the strip for December 12, 2009. See the artist's signature bubble? To what exactly is Trail referring when he says “old jack”? This may be the best joke to appear in the Mark Trail strip in quite some time. Is it deliberate? (What do you think?)

My fling with Stephen Fry

A celebration of Fry Days

I suppose it was meant to be. We were each minding our own business, never imagining how the stars were about to align. And then ... it happened.

Stephen Fry used his Twitter account to mention something that was completely and entirely unrelated to me. And promptly set off a stampede to my blog.

You will understand, I hope, that when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less. Therefore, when I say “stampede,”, I intend it in the rather limited sense of (drum roll) a thousand hits in one day.

Let's face it. That's quite a red-letter day for an nth-tier blog. And I hardly even noticed. I was having a very nice weekend fussing over personal projects and enjoying the days just before the start of fall semester. Then I noticed that my Sitemeter widget was indicating a total of 300,000 hits (since 2005, when I launched Halfway There; my first-ever post was uploaded on August 27 of that year, so we have a birthday coming up). The run-up to 300,000 had occurred several days earlier than I had been expecting. I soon found out that Stephen Fry was responsible. It was all his doing!

So what did Stephen do that was so special? He tweeted a mildly obscure remark from the movie War Games, sparking a rush to Google UK to discover the meaning of the string CPE1704TKS. It turns out (certainly to my surprise, and probably to the surprise of anyone else who's been paying any attention), my post on War Games is the No. 1 entry for searchers on Google UK. (Well, I'll be buggered!)

The twittering hordes are still coming to Halfway There in numbers well above my usual modest rate of traffic. Nevertheless, rush hour is clearly over. The numbers are ebbing and will soon be back to normal. I know, however, that I will never forget that magical weekend that I shared with Stephen Fry.

And he doesn't even know I exist! [sob!]

Say, I wonder what Hugh Laurie is doing these days?

Pining for Palin?

A mule for Sister Sarah

Jeanne Phillips inherited the Dear Abby column from her mother, Pauline Phillips, several years ago, after a transition period during which she and Pauline were coauthors. Jeanne also seems to have inherited her mother's sensibilities. Her answers to her correspondents' questions are not that different from what we might have expected from Pauline. Sometimes, though, you wonder if Jeanne's spider-sense is as strong as her mother's. Do you think Pauline would have run this letter, which appeared on July 10, 2009, in Jeanne's column?

Dear Abby: I live in a small town in Alaska. A relationship with a woman I loved more than I have ever loved anyone has ended. I'm left with only pain, misery and suffering.

I keep trying to move on, but everything I do makes me think of her. I have asked friends for advice; they all tell me to “man up and get over it!”

It's frustrating to be told to “get over her” and accept what is. I know brooding isn't helpful, but it's a natural byproduct of pain. What I need to ask you is this: Is it worth putting your heart and soul on the line with the likely possibility of having them crushed? I hope so, because without hope, then what is there to live for? That thought scares me more than anything I have ever experienced.

— Heartbroken Up North

Dear Heartbroken: Of course it's worth it, because without risk there is no reward. I am speaking with the voice of experience. You have plenty to live for. Falling in love is like prospecting for gold. Sometimes you strike the mother lode on the first try, but most times you have to keep digging. I don't know how small the community you live in is, but if it's so small that most of the eligible candidates for romance have been eliminated, then you should consider relocating.

One other question: If you had chosen to run the letter, would you have answered it the way Jeanne did? Here's one possible alternative response:

Dear Heartbroken: Get over it, Todd. Wasilla is too small for her and she's moved on to a whole new set of advisors. You're history. And she belongs to the world now. Well, the fantasy world of right-wing wish fulfillment in which abandonment of one's post is seen as a brilliant feat of political positioning. But don't worry. Your lost love is sure to rake in megabucks for giving pandering political speeches to angry plutocrats and you're certain to glom on to some of that during the divorce proceedings. (Hint: Don't try for custody of the kids. You won't get enough child support to make it worthwhile, especially if random grandchildren keep popping up.)

That's one possible answer, anyway. Perhaps you have a better one (in which case, please leave it in the comments!).

Of course, I could be wrong about all this. Perhaps the writer is just a smitten Republican voter who can't get over the loss of his charismatically tongue-tied idol. Or maybe Jeanne fell for a hoax letter from students at Yale. They used to write to Ann Landers (Jeanne's aunt), but the Landers column is defunct and Jeanne is the new game in town.

I play the fool

Is it April 1 yet?

Something was jammed in my mail box in the university math department break room. I bent down to take a better look. A sorry-looking old football had been wedged into it. When I pulled it out, the ball plumped up a bit to an approximation of its normal inflated dimensions, but it was obviously not up to full pressure. I fished out a memo or two that were also in the mail box, tucked the errant football under my arm, and started down the hall to my office.

I was in a curious sort of academic limbo in those days. Although I was no longer a graduate student in the doctoral program, I had been hired by the department chair as an instructor. I was still hanging out with my friends in the grad program, but I was now quasi-faculty. It wasn't a bad job and I knew some people were hired year in and year out as lecturers, making it possible for the real faculty members to do as little teaching as possible. That kind of insecure year-to-year employment didn't appeal to me for the long run. I had other plans. In the fall I would be leaving for a job with the California legislature, a prospect I regarded with mixed emotions.

The first former classmate I met in the hallway said a cheery hello to me and remarked, “Great idea, Zee! Count me in!”

Huh?

I reached the door to the stairwell and started the ascent to the next floor. A grad student was pounding rapidly down the steps. He gave me an unwelcome but friendly punch on the shoulder.

“I'm on board, Zeno! Definitely!”

Weirder and weirder.

I exited the stairwell at the next landing and started down the corridor. This was TA territory and my office was on its periphery. The occupants of my former TA office whooped as I went by.

“Hup, two, three, four!” they cried.

Oh, right. I had a damned football under my arm.

I was not particularly amused. I stashed the football in a desk drawer in my office and put it out of my mind. Later that day I returned to the mail room. In those days before e-mail, it was possible for important things to show up in memos written on actual paper. Still, I was surprised to see several slips of paper in my box. They were the torn-off bottom halves of a mimeographed form that had been tucked into the grad student mail boxes early that morning. I tracked down the top half in the wastebasket. I instantly recognized the style of a former office partner, although he was pretending to be me:

Date: April 1, 1978
Subj: Math Dept Intramural Touch Football Team
From: Zeno Ferox, interim lecturer

Wouldn't it be a good idea for the math dept grad students to join the fun and form an intramural football team? I would be willing to serve as the manager and my former office partner, who has experience with high school JV teams, has volunteered to be the coach. If you're interested, tear off the form below and leave it in my mail box. See you on the gridiron!

---

To anyone who knew how little I cared for sports, it was an obvious over-the-top hoax. Of course, that was also its charm. And hadn't I been seeing walking the hallways with a football tucked under my arm?

The grad students cheerfully joined in the fun and pretended to believe that I had solicited them to join a campus football team. They filled out the forms and tucked them into my mail box. And here's what the form said:

Please indicate how you would like to participate in our new math dept intramural football team by filling in the appropriate information. Would you like to be

a linebacker?

Height: _____ Weight: _____

a cheerleader?

Measurements: _____-_____-_____

a tackling dummy?

IQ: ______



---

There were a couple of other items, too, but I forget. The prank itself, though, will never be forgotten.

And the old football? The friend responsible refused to own up and so never reclaimed his ball, which was evidently an artifact of his younger days. The ball sits today as an odd souvenir atop one of my many bookcases. On the rare occasion when someone spots it, the old story gets retold.

April Fool, Zeno! You're a football team manager now!

My fellow Americans

Probably an 8-year term

There is a flurry of interest in the national media about the president's hair. In a dull period of world peace and universal prosperity, it's understandable that such an issue should seize the attention of American journalists and political pundits. Is President Obama going gray? It happened to Bill Clinton! Inquiring minds want to know!

Some people dismiss the significance of the graying of our presidents. After all, the median presidential age upon assuming office is about 55 years. During a man's progression from 55 years of age to 59 (or to 63 in the case of a two-term president), the choices about one's hair are reduced to “go gray” or just “go.” Absent hair dye or a wig, you're either bald or gray by the time your fifties have run their course.

That's why i was not particularly shocked by Don Asmussen's graphic journalism in the San Francisco Chronicle. President Obama may be only 47 right now, but it's clear that he is already on his way to Anderson-Cooper-ville.


Nevertheless, it gives me pause when I dare to mock the national media. Perhaps it is I who fail to appreciate the significance of Obama's life transition. We should consider the possibility that the burdens of presidential office are uniquely powerful hair-whiteners that go beyond the effects of mere natural aging. That would explain, of course, why major national media outlets would devote so much attention to the matter.

I must admit, though, that I fear to face the implications of that possibility. I have done a bit of investigation myself and the evidence is unambiguous and compelling. There is an excellent chance that I was secretly president of the United States during the past eight years. Hair doesn't lie.

I'm melting!

Pip, pip, Cheerio, and all that

It all started because my morning newspaper was missing. Either my local carrier had screwed up or a passerby had “borrowed” it. People may not subscribe to newspapers much these days, but I've noticed they still like to pick one up from my driveway every so often (especially after a major sporting event; hell, you can have the damned sports page—just leave me the rest of the paper).

The absence of a newspaper at breakfast is a major crisis. Sure, there are heaps of magazines all over the place, but a newspaper is what I want. In its absence, I absentmindedly started perusing the cereal box. That's how I discovered that General Mills was promising me that I could lower my cholesterol: “You can lower your cholesterol 4% in 6 weeks.”


This concerned me. In fact, I was in a near panic. Could this be true? If so, I must be doomed! It's a simple matter of doing the math. If six weeks suffices to lower one's cholesterol by four percent, then what prodigies might be accomplished by a more lengthy regimen? I did the math:

I have been eating Cheerios for over fifty years, give or take a few months to account for irresponsible (but short-lived) dalliances with Frosted Flakes, Sugar Smacks, and Kellogg's Corn Flakes. Every time, though, I returned to my one true love. In round numbers, fifty years contains over 400 six-week periods. At the end of each six-week period, General Mills says one's cholesterol drops to 96% of what it once was. With 400 applications of this factor, we obtain

(0.96)⁴⁰⁰ = 8.1 × 10⁻⁸.

In other words, my cholesterol is down to approximately a twelve-millionth of what it once was, back when I was a chubby-cheeked youngster. How can my body even function under such impoverished circumstances? That's how I know I must be doomed. Surely General Mills would not lie to me!

But then I remembered that my doctor would certainly have commented on such an usual cholesterol level during my routine lab tests, which occur annually. My physician is not entirely delighted with my sedentary lifestyle, but he's always been quite complimentary about my exceedingly good cholesterol numbers. I told him it must be the luck of the genetic draw. High cholesterol has never been a family trait. We metabolize it well.

I went back to the cereal box and read the fine print: “A clinical study showed that eating two 1½ cups servings daily of Cheerios cereal reduced bad cholesterol when eaten as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol.” Ah, yes—“as part of a diet”—the old escape clause.

Perhaps I'll read the cereal box's back panel again on Sunday, as a reminder, when my weekday breakfast of cold cereal is usually supplanted by a three-egg omelet containing two kinds of cheese, ham, olives, and avocado. That should keep me safe from wasting away to nothing.

Candidate equivalencies

Hey, all my friends are doing it!

I laughed heartily when the locomotive version showed up in my in-box. Now it's made its appearance over at Pharyngula. Many other versions are on display at Fark. Well, if everyone else is doing it, how can I resist? Running with the crowd and trying to blend in is my absolute favorite thing to do. (Right.) Still, this time I couldn't resist. The real gag, of course, is the one devoted to Sister Sarah. The others are subject to more nuanced interpretations. I have some in mind. What are yours?