First, a few short questions/observations, speculations:
How did St. Joseph become the patron saint of baby aspirin?
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The iguana hymn:
“I ain’t iguana grieve my lord no more…”
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We visited our daughter Cait in Old Chatham, NY. While staying at the local Travel Lodge, we found the bathroom stocked with “Green Heritage Pro” toilet paper.
How many of you would want heritage toilet paper? In smaller type, the wrapper noted it as “Resolute Tissue.”
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The recommended temperature for cooking in an oven is almost always set in 25 degree increments. This is a social convention with no basis other than a reflection of our base-10 mathematical system (seeing 100 as 10 squared), divided by an inherent instinct to cut any quantity in half, then half again.
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As of a year ago, from what I’ve read, no one had yet definitively determined the origin of the word “cocktail’ to describe a mixed alcoholic drink.
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As I’ve grown older, someone has come in the night to steal my fingerprints.
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Why the terms “queen” and “king” for wider bed sizes? At one time, were all monarchs morbidly obese?
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Linda has, over the past couple years, broken her kneecap and wrist while doing nothing in particular. Previously, she fractured a bone in her foot while crossing the kitchen floor. I suggest for her nickname: Hopalong Casualty
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In the early decades of the 20th century, the term “Tijuana Bibles” referred to small volumes of dirty jokes.
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Bird flu virus was recently found in raw milk in CA.
Suggested cartoon:
Photo of RFK Jr., proponent of raw milk, with a caption sliding above his head:
“Bird Flu over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
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From an article I read a few week back:
In mammals, “Between the fourth and fifth gestational months, the number of neurons in the nervous system just explodes almost exponentially and synapses form at a rate of about a million per second, an incredible number when you consider there are almost 100tn synapses in an adult human brain.”
Too bad adulthood seldom turns this to intelligence.
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Now, a tale told by Jenny, central character of my current attempt at a novel. I have no idea why she introduced this, sad and human as it is:
Antilagrea was chained to a cliff, like Prometheus, because she had opposed someone important, or someone who thought he was important and could not be brought to account. She was Greek. The Greek gods were easily and often angered, but no god chained her there. An old man, Palleus, did that. He was not Greek, had come from somewhere else and settled. One day he found her, his servant and mistress, eating honey from his private store. He dragged her to the cliff in shackles, clamped the shackles to a ring in the cliff-face. Was the ring there for shackling maidens, or had someone else put it there, a mountain climber, or a hunter who wanted to hang meat to dry? Palleus left her to the elements, but a shepherd’s boy saw her and took pity. Many a shepherd’s boy, intent on tending his flock, would not have cared, or if he had cared would have shunned the responsibility. But this one (his name has escaped time because he was but a shepherd’s boy) climbed to help her. He could find no way to undo the shackles or pull loose the ring, breaking his shepherd’s crook in the effort. His failure unnerved yet excited him. He left his sheep, ran to town and shouted for help. The local blacksmith gathered his tools and climbed the cliffside, clipped the shackles and set Antilagrea free. What did she do? She crawled back to Palleus, the old man who had chained her to the cliff, apologized for her transgression and begged forgiveness. The blacksmith returned to his forge to find the fire cooled, setting back his work by a day. The boy’s sheep had wandered off. Two were eaten by wolves, another fell into a ravine. The shepherd beat him to paralysis for abandoning his flock. Palleus and Antilagrea shared supper and gazed at the stars. The stars gazed back.
lickhaven 