Pep Pills

Hello World, Happy Columbus Day! I hope that the legendary navigator's spirit of adventure lives on, as you explore new wonders, discover greater happiness, and claim a brighter future full of everything you've been searching for. Even better, you shouldn't have to launch three ships and hundreds of men, plus travel thousands of miles to reach your goals, however lofty they might be. (But if you do, please tell Queen Isabella that I said, "hola.") Of course, nowadays Columbus has been all but forgotten by just about everybody but fusty academicians, and relegated to the exploration catch-all of historical has-beens, from Roald Amundsen to Amerigo Vespucci, and everyone in between. I took the day off from work anyway, and enjoyed a nice long weekend, not the least of reasons to be grateful to these valiant explorers and their legacy of vision, bravery, and scientific achievement. Not to mention, the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, and that's not just the Magellan Blue Gin talking, believe me. We have our friends at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to thank for the following Revelation that they shared with us in a letter with this startling opening salvo - ====================================================== I, Jehovah, Even Your Holy God, Speak Holy Word to Now Hear, Lest Thy Land Be of No People Soon: I, God, seeth world conflict soon to be all nation of full nuclear power unholy one way, if such way of hasty retaliation happeneth. I am He that speaketh this order of holy message way holy will of God of all nations on world; telling all to have no aggressive way at all, lest aggressive unholy nation cease to exist. ====================================================== Now, I will admit that I'm not a Mormon, and I don't even play one on television. But I can't help but wonder why the Almighty Father in the heavenly firmament seems to speak to a fallen humanity like The Lone Ranger's faithful companion Tonto (or perhaps Tarzan) by leaving out all articles and prepositions, so that it sounds like English is not only not His first language, or even His second, but some alien dialect He's never heard before. Personally, I'm inclined to prefer my Omnipotent Being to sound more like the mellifluous tones of Morgan Freeman, or even George Burns, and leave the rest of the semi-literate gibberish to the likes of Hop Sing from "Bonanza" and other cultural stereotypes of his ilk, Kemo Sabe. Speaking of things that make no sense, I couldn't help but notice this arresting review of the PBS show "Market Warriors" in the Best Bets section of our local newspaper - ================================= Bob Cirillo joins the pickers as they arrive in Pasadena, California, for the popular monthly flee market ================================= Well, it's undeniably true that calling a tag sale by the name of "flea market" appears to fly in the face of all logic, but frankly, trying to turn it into a "flee" market instead only seems to make matters considerably worse. In fact, it makes me want nothing so much as to flee in the opposite direction, with my coat-tails full of tags and fleas, flapping behind me, and don't spare the garages, by golly. And while we're on the topic of tempus fugit (that's Latin for "my garage has fleas") we had our own major chronological anomaly at work earlier in the week, which was not only unexpected, but inadvertently amusing in its own way. Anyone can tell you, and perhaps I better than most, that the time clock in my building always runs slow - and I don't mind saying that it's amazing to me that you can pay well over $1,000 for one of these gadgets, and it can't even keep time as well as a plastic quartz watch from the dollar store. Apparently it had finally gotten so far off the mark that they called the crack Engineering team to come over and make the necessary adjustments, with the expectation that it would then line up more in harmony with the time in the real world, and not continue marching to its own drummer, at whatever slower time it happened to settle on in its own wayward brain. In actuality, this had the no doubt unintended result that instead of lagging behind the rest of humanity on a sluggish but consistent basis, the time clock went from being 10 minutes slow, to one hour and ten minutes fast, at a stroke, in the middle of the day. I noticed it when I punched out at 5:00, and it registered as 6:10 instead, when I knew that it had been at least the right hour, if not the right minute, when I punched in at 9:00 earlier in the day. I wasn't surprised when I came in on time the next day, but punched in at 10:10 anyway, because I wasn't expecting it to miraculously repair itself overnight. But I was surprised later, when the entire day came and went, and I punched out at 6:10 just like the day before, without any corrections having been made in the interim. In fact, it continued that way for the remainder of the week, with everybody punching in and out an hour and ten minutes later than real time, which out in the world of actual business, people would recognize that for what it really was, namely, defeating the whole purpose of a time clock in the first place. We've already started an office pool to see which happens first: if the Engineering trolls come back to adjust the time, or if the time clock just continues to run slow enough that eventually it loses an hour and ten minutes to come back to where it should have been to start with. The smart money's on the clock in this scenario, I can tell you that. Meanwhile in news of a more local flavor, alert readers may recall earlier in the year when an old broken tooth necessitated a visit to the oral surgeon, where to ward off complaints from the excruciating pain, they eagerly offer prescriptions for serious controlled substances, that magically take away even the most relentless pain, like turning off a light switch. I already have a second broken tooth that hasn't bothered me yet, but I carry my left-over magic pain pills with me when we travel, just in case of emergencies, so I don't find myself 100 miles from home with agonizing tooth pain and no relief in sight. A couple of weeks ago, when I was unpacking from our excursion to Cold Spring, it was the first I realized that what I had taken with us on the trip, rather than being my magic tooth pills, was instead an identical bottle full of Clindamycin from the Animal Hospital, from when one of our cats had an infection. Did I laugh! Now, that's what I call an idea that was good in theory, but failed miserably in the application. Sort of like the time clock at work, of which I am reminded that "close only counts in hand grenades." Garcon, more Magellan Blue Gin, if you please! Elle