Monthly Archives: March 2012

Marooned, Cast Away, Stranded, and Forsaken

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Kathleen Fox

Here's a potentially serious drawback to Kindles and Nooks and other e-book readers that some of us didn't think about before we bought ours:

Suppose you were on a vacation cruise, well supplied with books that didn't take up much space in your luggage because they were all on your e-reader. Then the ship sank and left you stranded on a deserted island. Before long, you'd have no more battery—and no more books. About the only use for the device would be to reflect the sun's rays onto some dry tinder in hopes of starting a fire.

Which brings us to today's important question. If you were ever marooned in the middle of the ocean, and you could have only one book, what would you like it to be?

When this question came up in a group recently, one person creatively opted for her own journal. Another voted for the Bible. A third practical soul suggested the Boy Scout Handbook.

The Bible wouldn't be a bad choice, actually, regardless of your religious beliefs or lack thereof, simply because of its length. It would have enough complex drama, history, and thought-provoking content to keep an inquiring mind occupied for a long time. Just finding all the contradictions would take weeks. The Book of Revelation alone ought to be good for at least a couple of months.

Though the Boy Scout Handbook might be more useful. So might 1001 Quick and Easy Campfire Recipes for Fish. Or better yet, Boat Building for Dummies.

My choice, though, would probably be a big, fat, unabridged dictionary. Instead of just one story, it would potentially hold an endless supply of them. I could browse for fascinating new words, make up word games, and even learn a few handy phrases in other languages to be prepared for possible rescue by a ship whose crew didn't speak English. I could even find rhyming words to write sad songs about being lost and lonely.

When it wasn't being used linguistically, the book could also serve as a chair, a table, or a shelf. And if I did manage to build an escape raft, it would be heavy enough to serve as an anchor.

Of course, after a few years as a castaway, even if I were rescued I'd probably have long since lost my sanity. But at least I'd be talking to myself with one heck of an impressive vocabulary.

Categories: Just For Fun, Words for Nerds | 3 Comments

The Orangutan and the Face Cream

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Kathleen Fox

"Why do you have a pair of pliers on the bathroom counter?"

To the man who shares my life and bathroom space, it apparently seemed like a reasonable question. And, of course, I had a perfectly reasonable answer. "To squeeze the last of the face cream out of the tube."

For some reason, he thought that was the funniest thing he'd heard since the joke about the orangutan and the zookeeper. Funnier, actually. He hadn't laughed nearly that hard when I told him the joke. Come to think of it, he didn't actually laugh at all. He just groaned and rolled his eyes. It was that kind of joke.

But back to the pliers. Their presence in the bathroom made perfect sense to me. The face cream—nighttime moisturizing lotion with Retinol—is expensive. Not in the fifty bucks a half ounce range or anything like that, but not cheap, either. It comes in a metal tube. When it's almost empty, there are still several applications left at the top of the tube. Not having hand strength anywhere close to that of an orangutan, I can't squeeze them out with my bare fingers. Hence the pliers.

This brings us to the crucial question. Is squeezing the last possible bit of stuff out of the tube with pliers practical and frugal, or is it obsessive and cheap? Or, even worse, is it simply odd?

In my opinion, it's merely sensible. No different from using a spatula to scrape the last peanut butter out of the jar or storing the jar of salad dressing upside down to get the last couple of servings without having to sit at the table holding it over your salad for 17 minutes until it oozes out.

You just squeeze the top of the tube slightly with the pliers, and there's another application of lotion. No muss, no fuss, no wear and tear on the fingers. There you are, and Bob's your uncle.

Which brings us around to the orangutan and the zookeeper. (I know, I know. Admit it. You only read this far because you were looking for the joke.) There was an orangutan who was amazingly intelligent. Not only did he learn to communicate fluently in sign language, but he learned to read as well. One day the zookeeper came by and saw the orangutan reading two books at once—the Bible and Darwin's Origin of Species. The zookeeper asked, "Why are you reading both of those together? Isn't that confusing?"

The orangutan signed back, "It is, a little. But I'm just trying to figure something out. Am I my brother's keeper, or am I my keeper's brother?"

Ole and Lena and Paddy Went Into a Bar . . .

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Kathleen Fox

Okay, it's nitpicking and grammar nerdish of me, but I can't help it. It isn't "St. Patty's Day," people. If you must be informal, it's "St. Paddy's Day."

Since March 17 falls on a Saturday this year, I suspect the consumption of green beer may hit record levels. Which around here isn't necessarily a bad thing. We've had such a dry winter that we can use all the moisture we can get.

Despite all the celebrations in honor of his day, about the only things most of us know about St. Patrick are that his birthday was on March 17 and that he is crediting with driving all the snakes out of Ireland.

Both of these are wrong. Most of us have probably suspected the truth about the snakes, which is that, Ireland being an island and all, there were never any snakes there in the first place.

But since March 17 is St. Patrick's Day, it's logical to assume, as I did until I looked it up just now, that this was his birthday. Nope. It's actually the anniversary of his death. The day seems to be accepted by scholars, though there's some confusion about the year, which was somewhere in the late fifth or early sixth century.

He was a real person, though, a missionary and an archbishop. As a Christian, he was committed to eradicating Druidism and other beliefs that he would have considered the worship of false gods. No doubt he wouldn't appreciate his name being plastered all over the place accompanied by pictures of leprechauns. What he would think of all the green beer, of course, is another question.

I think it's great to celebrate the Irish on St. Patrick's Day, even for people who are as Norwegian and as Lutheran as Ole and Lena. There's nothing wrong with wearing green and sporting buttons that say things like, "Kiss me, I'm Irish." Maybe it even does a little to make up for the days when the more common sentiment would have been "No Irish need apply."

But the man was an archbishop, for goodness sake. (At least one can hope it was for the sake of goodness.) In his lifetime, he would have been called "Father Patrick," or maybe "Your Grace." I doubt that his parishioners ever slapped him on the back and called him "Paddy."

And even if they had, they—or at least the few of them who were literate—surely wouldn't have spelled it "Patty."

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Categories: Words for Nerds | 1 Comment

Watching the Watcher

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Kathleen Fox

The large furry creature was lurking in the dark hallway. I couldn't see it, but I knew it was there. I could hear it breathing. It was 3:07 a.m.

At times it slept; I could hear it snoring. But even then, I couldn't turn my back on it and go back to sleep myself. I could feel it out there: watchful, waiting, alert for any movement I might make. It was between me and the kitchen; between me and the telephone. There was no way I could leave the bedroom and slip past it in the dark without it catching me.

I knew this, because at 1:37 a.m., when I got up to go to the bathroom, I had nearly stepped on it.

On her, rather. Lucy. The chocolate lab of mature years and generous girth who is staying with us this week while her owner is out of town.

This is a new experience for me. I've never lived with a dog in the house before. Lucy is placid, obedient, and impeccably mannered, but even so, it's been an adjustment. She's patient, though, and so far she seems to believe I can be trained.

Parts of the routine of having a dog in the house are relatively easy to adapt to. I've learned that getting up from a chair to go to another room for just a minute means Lucy will heave herself up on her arthritic joints to follow me, so she can flop down onto the floor wherever I am. I've learned that even if you do it as noiselessly as possible, opening a bag of dog food is magical. It instantly makes a tail-wagging dog appear in the kitchen, even if a millisecond ago she was at the other end of the house. I've learned that a walk with a dog is a stop-and-go exercise. Who knew there were so many places to stop and check the P-mail?

There are even some advantages to having a dog in the house. When I mutter to myself over my keyboard, I'm not talking to myself; I'm talking to Lucy. Also, taking her along early in the morning to get the newspaper offers security against mountain lions. Not that Lucy could take on a mountain lion single-pawed, of course. But if her doggy presence wasn't enough to keep one at a distance, at least I could easily outrun her.

Still, I'm not sure I could live with a dog on a full-time basis. I could get used to the routine and the responsibility. What I can't handle is the guilt.

The long sighs she emits from time to time as she lies stretched out on the floor in my office while I'm working and paying no attention to her. Having to pull her away from a particularly entrancing smell so we can actually finish a walk the same day we started it. The long-suffering patience she shows at mealtimes—ours, not hers—when she sits at a polite distance, pretending not to watch every trip our forks make from our plates to our mouths. And especially, the sad, reproachful look we get when we leave the house, shutting her up in the utility room and telling her she has to stay.

Not to mention the vigil she keeps in the hallway at night, sleeping with one eye open, too obedient to come into the bedroom but ready to spring—or at least to lumber—to her feet the second she hears us get up.

I'm doing my best to manage the guilt, though. If Lucy wants to guard the hallway all night, I can't stop her. But I don't need to stay awake watching the watchdog. From now on, I'm sleeping with the door shut.

Categories: Wild Things | 4 Comments

A Better Mousetrap

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Kathleen Fox

"Utah man’s shot at mouse hits roommate."

As a newspaper headline, this one certainly did its job of catching my attention. It wasn't immediately clear, however, whether the victim was the roommate of the man or the mouse. Finding out that and other details required reading the whole article.

Apparently this man spotted a mouse in the pantry of his apartment. His reflexes possibly being faster than his thought processes, he hauled out his gun and shot at the critter. The article didn't specify what type of firearm, but surely anything bigger than a .22 pistol would have been serious overkill.

Not surprisingly—mice are small targets, not to mention quick—he missed. The bullet went on through the wall into the adjoining bathroom, where it hit the man's roommate. In the best tradition of old Western movies, it was a shoulder wound.

The shooter was 27, old enough that one might think his brain would have matured into a certain minimal level of common sense. When he spotted the mouse, then, why didn't he do what any reasonably functional adult would do and simply set a mousetrap?

Well, maybe he didn't own one. Maybe he couldn't find one. Maybe, like so many of us, he had a couple of mousetraps somewhere, probably in the kitchen junk drawer. Amid the clear tape, masking tape, duct tape, scissors, screwdrivers, pliers, odd nails and screws, matchbooks, string, paper clips, rubber bands, bag clips, broken refrigerator magnets, pencil stubs, and nonworking pens, a couple of insignificant mousetraps could easily get lost.

Or maybe he was out of peanut butter to use for bait.

It's also possible that the "small, empty balloons and burnt tin foil" the cops found in the wastebasket had something to do with his decision. To me those items sound like evidence of a children's birthday party where somebody left the potatoes on the grill too long. Since the man was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia, however, apparently in the world of law enforcement they are evidence of a different sort of activity.

At least the story had a happy ending for somebody. With one roommate hauled off to the hospital and the other to jail, the mouse could enjoy undisturbed occupancy of the pantry. With plenty of space and plenty of food, it may have even decided to sublet to a couple of roommates. Slower ones, preferably.

After all, if the shooter got his gun back when he was released on bail and came home, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have more than one furry little target to share the risk.

Categories: Wild Things | 2 Comments