Tuesday, Jan. 22, 42 A.B.
Fretful Blather
I've been feeling kinda jittery today, kinda anxious. Apprehensive, even. Downright touchy.
I'm not sure why.
Maybe it was the sudden appearance of The Nature Tidier. I just happened to look out my window and there he was - the guy the city sends around periodically to tidy up the area in the center of the boulevard I live on. He had a long stick with a clawish cage on the end of it. I thought he was using it to pick up the pine cones which the numerous pine trees out there had failed to pick up for themselves. When we went out later, though, all the pine cones were still there. So: What was he picking up instead? Alien eggs? Was he really a city employee at all or was he one of those Air Force officials who are working 24/7 to prevent mass panic??
Of course I was jittery, anxious, even apprehensive and downright touchy long before Tidy Man showed up.
Maybe it was because I've made a few mistakes here lately and I... I don't know quite how to make up for it.
For example, two days ago I quoted Jester as saying "Maybe if you got yourself a decent prothesis, you could rise to the level of a stinking Siamese." Turns out this wasn't what he said at all. The term he actually used was prosthesis. He was trying to say that life might be better for me if I added an artificial sixth toe to my feet. Prothesis refers instead to the addition of a phoneme or syllable at the beginning of a word, as in the Spanish word espina ("thorn") derived from the Latin spina. He was NOT saying that life would be better for me if I slapped a superfluous e on my front. So: Exactly what am I gonna do when UPS shows up with the crate of e's I ordered?? Just sit with the lights turned off and hope those fragile vowels are packed in enough dry ice to keep them fresh during the return trip???
Another recent mistake: On January 15th I sent out a notify entitled "The Ides of Blather." Some people might have concluded from this that January 15th was the Ides of January - like March 15th is the Ides of March. It wasn't. According to the ancient Romans, the Ides is the 15th day of March, May, July and October but the 13th day of all the other months - including January. I didn't know this when I sent my notify out. I found out afterwards. And ever since I found out, I've been afraid that an ancient Roman is going to show up at my door and beat the hell out of me for misrepresenting his noble calendar. Given this, it's no wonder that I'm so jittery, anxious, apprehensive, and touchy. The miracle is that I'm not also worried.
What really seems to be weighing on my mind, however, is that fact I mentioned in my Jan. 19 entry. Remember the one I mean? "30,000 different music CDs are released in the U.S. each year." I haven't been able to get that out of my head. After all, there are only 8760 hours in a year. If a typical music CD has an hour's worth of music on it, I need to have more than 3 CDs playing every minute of the day and night just to get through all of them once!
It also means that more than 3 CDs are being recorded at any given moment without my help or supervision. How do people manage?? What else might they be doing that I don't know about???
BRB: I need a good swig of whiskey to quell the tremors in my hands....
I hope I feel better tomorrow. Quite honesty, though, I doubt that I will. If the above things were all the things going on right now, maybe - MAYBE I'd be able to stop hyperventilating come the dawn of a new day, but as it is....
Well, how calm can YOU be after learning all I have the last few days? Go on, learn the following things and tell me!
- US troops in Afghanistan are washing their clothes by hand and hanging them out on lines to dry. These clothes, of course, are stamped with a camouflage pattern. How will they ever find them again?
- The pumping and recharging of groundwater in the Los Angeles basin causes the ground to rise and fall by up to 4" every year. Imagine: An entire city of 467.4 square miles slowly panting like some weird sort of wild animal trying to conceal what it's doing! How creepy is THAT?!
- Muslims make up about 20% of the world's human population - but fewer than 1% of its scientists. Until they, too, have to work their butts off to get their papers accepted in various scientific journals at the same rate as the rest of us, is it any wonder so many have the free time required to run terrorist organizations?
- Kennewick, Washington has been taken over by tumbleweeds. According to my paper, every conceivable nook ended up with a tumbleweed in it thanks to a recent windstorm. "Some of them were as big as Buicks," said Jill Raebel, a resident whose home was swallowed up. Many believe they came from the nearby Hanford nuclear reservation but officials rushed to reassure people by telling them that fewer than 1% are radioactive. Well, what a relief that is, eh?!
- There are now 96 million VCRs in the United States. There are 25 million DVD players. This means that there's only about a 25% chance that my VCR will find a DVD player to go to the prom with come spring. Have YOU ever tried to console a heart-broken VCR?? WELL, HAVE YOU?!?!
I'm... I'm sorry. It's just that I try so hard to do the right thing, and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and... and...I just blew it again, didn't I?
*Sigh*
(©Now by DJ Birtcher after accidentally ® it sixteen times
and trademarking it another eleven)
OMG! I just found out that tumbleweeds are now releasing CDs!!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!