Words of Danny O'Bigbelly My idea of a good time

OK, we all know,  I am a wuss, prone to ask for sympathy when I have to deal with a mere foot-o-agony for a few days when many other folks have problems that are much worse and aren’t going away any time soon.

But you didn’t know how deep the wussiness goes. Let’s plumb the depths a little bit further. I don’t think we have enough line to make it all the way to the bottom, but it might still impress you.

Several days ago, when I was out in the yard, I saw a small rodent run under the gutter conduit. I moved the conduit to see if it had constructed a burrow underneath and when I started to pick up the shielding, the creature let out a surprising cry of rage and started pulling the shielding away from me and back over itself–showing a lot of moxie against an opponent that outweighed it by a factor of more than 1,000 (maybe 2,000). Before it gave up and made a strategic withdrawal to the underside of the porch, I had a chance to get a good look at part of it, and it was obvious to me that it wasn’t a mouse or a rat. Perhaps it was a vole, or a shrew, or even an escaped hamster? It was a mystery. I wanted to know.

So, I bought a live animal trap. My plan was to trap the thing, get some photos, figure out what the heck it is, and then, if it wasn’t something nasty or diseased, release it again. (If I’d wanted to simply kill it, that would have been much cheaper and easier.)

Then, after briefing my wife on the situation, and showing her how the trap worked, I went out of town on a business trip.

You can guess how this ends. Things came up, and my wife utterly forgot about the trap.

I returned from my trip and checked the trap. There was an ordinary but extremely dead mouse in the trap. My guess is that the mouse had gone into the trap within a few hours of when I set it–we have oodles of mice, so I expected we’d cycle through several of them before we caught the mystery creature, if ever. And then, for the next few days, the poor mouse had slowly died what I imagine was a horrible death by dehydration.

This was not part of the plan. There wasn’t supposed to be any killing. We’d worked out the whole plan so that the creatures we caught might actually come out ahead from the whole experience (depending on how much they enjoyed eating the tasty bait). But we didn’t follow the plan.

I find myself strangely upset by the death of this creature, which, if left to its own devices, probably would have perished at the hands of one of the local cats or coyotes before reaching a mouse’s old age anyway–because its death was pointlessly painful and my fault.

So, what’s your story?

[October, 2036]

“Good morning, children,” Miss Frizzle addressed the class of moiling third graders, her fingers lightly resting on her riot control baton. “Has everyone handed in their permission slip for next weeks class trip to the historical recreation of the Cambridgeside Galleria? Splendid. Now, please put down your Learn-o-matic orbs for a moment and welcome our visitor, DannyO. DannyO is here to tell us his memories of the turbulent times at the beginning of the century, long before you were cloned.”

“Thank you, Miss Frizzle. Good morning, good morning. Students, Miss Frizzle has asked me to talk about a particularly interesting and unusual series of events that happened when I was just a little older than your parents. It was a long time ago, and thing were quite a bit different then, before the dawn of the enlightened age and the start of the reign of Empress Chelsea.”

DannyO paused and thought to himself how classrooms had once traditionally had a painting of George Washington over the blackboard, where they now had a floating hologram of Her Benevolence, Lord Emperor Chelsea. And, not for the first time, he marveled at their similarity. “Must be the wig on George,” he thought.

“It’s hard to imagine now, but we haven’t always been at war with Eastasia. In fact, there was a time when we weren’t at war with anyone at all. But Miss Frizzle asked me to talk about something else today. She asked me to talk about the election of 2008.”

“The nation was divided. On the one side, the forces of ‘Anything would be better than the direction we’re going‘ were rallied around a progressive young man named Obama while the mighty coalition of traditionalist ‘We probably shouldn’t step out of the handbasket until it comes to a complete stop‘ aligned behind the teachings of a elder statesman from an earlier time, named McCain.”

“Now, McCain’s running mate was a young woman named Palin. Yes, I see you’ve heard the name! Her great granddaughter is now chancellor of the Alaskan prefecture and guards our northern flanks against an invasion of the cyber-Mongols. But don’t be worried — they haven’t attacked for a dozen years, and probably never will again. Ever since we completed the strip mining of Alaska in 2029, there hasn’t really been anything there worth fighting for.”

“But I’m rambling off-topic again, and I only have another minute or two. And I want to leave time for answering your questions.”

“The most astonishing thing happened in mid October of that year. With the economy in ruins, and the nation tearing itself apart in endless arguments over which candidate looked better behind a lectern and which candidate had more reprehensible associates in the distant past, McCain and Obama met secretly and discussed a plan for uniting the nation. Nobody knew where the plan came from, although there has been endless speculation. I certainly don’t know. I was spending all my time on TBD, and things were going badly for the Red Sox, so my attention was elsewhere.”

“Ignoring the announced agenda, they used the time scheduled for the final debate to reveal their plan. Instead of running against each other, the announced that they would unify their forces and attack the real problems facing the country. The young, charismatic communicator named Obama would lead as nominal president, while the older, craftier, but less polished McCain would serve as his vice president, as the position was then called. Sort of like their predecessors, Bush and Cheney.”

Miss Frizzle pushed the silent alarm button under her desk. She knew help would be there in a moment. If she could distract the children for a moment, the reeducators would arrive before the children formed any lasting memories of Bush/Cheney. But right now there was nobody else–it was up to her to protect them.

“Mr. DannyO, could you tell us what happened after the announcement? And please do not mention their antecedents again, if you don’t mind,” she added in a cheerful voice that carried, to DannyO’s perceptive ears, a hint of carefully balanced menace.

[October, 2008]

So, what are you going to tell your great grandchildren, or second-generation clones, about the 2008 presidential campaigns?

Before you read any further, I feel that it is only fair to warn you that I haven’t really thought of anything good to write about, and there may be suckage as a result, because in eight minutes I’m going to press submit no matter what happens to be on the screen.

I like a little time pressure–keeps the mind focused.

A few days ago, someone (and it would take too many precious seconds to go through the logs and figure out who) posted a question about eating breakfast or skipping the meal entirely. I never skip, because then my stomach would growl all morning, sounding like a lawn mower run over a length of chain, but it planted the seed of an idea.

Each meal of my day has a very different character, molded by different constraints. Breakfast has to be easy to make and quick to clean up, because it is severely time-constrained. Lunch is usually a surprise, because I never look at the cafeteria menu ahead of time, and sometimes it’s moderately awful–but it’s beyond my control, so I don’t really see this as my problem. Dinner is more free-form–more time to cook, more time to clean up afterward, so it could be anything from microwaved leftovers to a four-course extravaganza. And then there’s eating out–adding yet another dimension of variety, but which, for the sake of simplicity, I will treat as a digression.

But back to breakfast. I have a feeling that most people aren’t eating what they want for breakfast, because they’re also time-constrained. Sleep trumps cooking, at that hour. Cooking in the dark just feels funny, and I can’t cook properly unless the kids are awake and providing background noise. Perhaps you have similar limits?

So, here’s the question–if you had sufficient time, and all the necessary equipment and ingredients, what would you cook yourself for breakfast? No fair going out, unless that’s really all you do. And no fair getting someone else to do the dirty work. I want to know what you would do. Is a bowl of cereal all you really desire, or have you always longed for something more complex?

And that’s eight minutes. Have a great morning.

Someone (I’ve lost track of who) posted a challenge, on TBD, for people to write a story using only six sentences.  Here’s my entry.  It wasn’t the best, and it wasn’t even the longest, although I will claim it is the best and longest that didn’t use ridiculous constructs and run-on sentences.

“The first time I visited this bar was exactly one year ago today, although I doubt you’d remember,” said the small man in a grey suit, as I placed his beer on the counter in front of him.

“Would you like to to know why I can remember the date so precisely?” he asked, after a moment.

I nodded silently and put down the glass I was drying.

“One year ago today, I buried my wife in the cemetery behind the little church, Saint Mary’s — the same church where I married her — two blocks down, on Pine,” he said, and took a small sip from his beer before continuing.

“One year doesn’t seem like such a long time ago, sometimes — you know, I still set the table for two sometimes, when I’ve had a long day and I’m not thinking straight — but other times it feels like she’s been gone forever and I think I’m starting to forget things about her.”

“Did you have any children?” I asked, as he looked down at the bar and slowly shook his head.

Scientists have determined that humans only use something like 15% of their brain capacity. I’ve heard lower numbers–some as low as 5%–but my guess is that those experiments were done on blue-collar republicans, American Idol fans, and people who read novels available only at the grocery store.

This raises the question of what the other 85% is doing.  It must be doing something.

I know what men use the other 85% for–fantasizing continuously about every woman they see (or every man, for natures bachelors). It’s subconscious. We don’t choose to do it, it just happens, like breathing.

When I was 20, I could mentally undress a woman, re-dress her in whatever slinky evening wear was most fitting for her body type, skin, hair, and eye coloration, mentally take her out to dinner, slowly seduce her, mentally undress her again and re-dress her in lingerie, mentally undress her again, fantasize about making love to her, and then mentally put her pyjamas on, imagine sleeping next to her all night, cooking her breakfast, and putting her in a cab home, all in approximately the time it takes to blink. The only time my mental facilities were taxed at all  is when the entire womans soccer team would jog past my dorm room window at the same time.

Twenty-five years later, I find this ability has diminished somewhat, along with several other mental processes.

I have heard similar stories from many, many men. I assume that all women know this for a fact.

I’ve always wondered what women do with the other 85% of their brains.  Whatever it is, they don’t leave many clues behind.