A Huge Iceberg Split From Antarctica. (They Just Grew Apart.) [NYT] @KendraWrites

"What color are icebergs?" my son asked me one evening.
"Green, I think" I told him. He nodded and wrote it down; he was doing his homework at the kitchen table.
Two days later I was called to my son's school for an appointment with the principle -- Mr. Abernathy. I wasn't too concerned about it when I went into his office; my boy is pretty levelheaded and doesn't get into much trouble.
"Sit down, please" said Mr. Abernathy, a man with rusty brown hair and a mole on his chin.
"What can I do you for?" I asked him jocularly. But he didn't smile back.
"You told your son that icebergs are green, is that right?" he asked me.
"Yeah" I said. "I read that in some novel somewhere or other. Why, is that a problem?"
"Yes it is" he told me. "A serious one."
"How so?" I asked.
Mr. Abernathy got up from his desk and pulled down a map of Antarctica, on which a little white speck off the coast was circled heavily in black. 
"This is the Great Loose Tooth Iceberg, recently calved from the East Coast of Antarctica. It's bigger than the island of Maui. Does it look at all green to you?"
"Not particularly" I said, feeling a hot blush creeping up my neck. "I guess you'd call it off-white."
"Certainly not green" he replied grimly. He pulled on the map to snap it back up and then sat at his desk again. I noticed he kept a long chain of tangled paperclips on it. 
Not understanding what this was all about, I sat mumchance. Finally Mr. Abernathy cleared his throat and spoke.
"With the current global crisis, calling icebergs green is totally inappropriate. It teaches impressionable children that icebergs are harmless, possibly charming, fairy tale things to be made fun of or passed over lightly. This kind of anti-climatism is no longer tolerated at this school. Do I make myself clear?"
I could only gape at him.
"What in the Sam Hill are you talking about?" I finally said. "You make it sound like my boy committed a hate crime or something."
"A crime against the climate" said Mr. Abernathy, his chin mole quivering with outrage. 
I'd had enough of this idiocy. I stood up.
"Fine" I said. "I'll just take my son out of your school and put him someplace else."
"Sit down, sir" said Mr. Abernathy harshly while pushing a red button on his desk. "You will never see your son again. He will be reassigned to another family unit where he will hopefully unlearn all the anti-climactic poison you have been feeding him all these years." I sat down, aghast. What was happening here? My throat went dry with consternation. 
Two burly men, dressed in Sherwood green sports jackets and brown neckties, entered the room and lifted me bodily from my chair. I clawed desperately at them and finally managed to poke one in the eye with my thumb. He let go, and I swung around to the other goon to slash at him with my car keys. Then I was out the door, running down the hallway, looking for my son's classroom. 
When I found it I crashed through the door to confront his teacher, Ms. Larkins. 
She was so beautiful when startled that I asked her to marry me.
"Of course, Anthony" she said. "I've been waiting for you to ask me for years." 
"They're coming to take me away now" I told her. "We don't have much time. Do you mind a civil ceremony?"
"Not at all, darling" she replied softly. 
So we were married by the hall monitor. I only had time to give her a single tender kiss before the goons were on me, dragging me away.
"Take care of my little boy!" I cried to her.
"Which one is he?" she screamed after me. But I never got the chance to tell her. The goons knocked me unconscious.
When I awoke I was sitting in a hotel lobby. Wearing a big white apron and a chef's toque. 
"Oh, there you are" said a tall thin man, who was obviously the concierge. "The colonel wants his iceberg lettuce salad immediately."
"Roquefort or thousand island?" I replied stupidly, my head still reeling.
"Just oil and vinegar, as you very well know" replied the concierge tartly.
Then it hit me . . . iceberg lettuce is green. And I began to laugh.
This was all part of the initiation ceremony for the Freemasons. The Grand Lodge had accepted me! I gave the concierge the secret handshake, he helped me to my feet, and we walked arm-in-arm into the beautiful Swedish Rite hall, where Ms. Larkin and my son were waiting for me, dressed in their ceremonial sashes . . . 

Comet 2I/Borisov

On Dec. 7, the extrasolar comet now known as 2I/Borisov will make its closest approach to the sun.  (from the NYT)

BEFORE

I tripped on the sidewalk in front of my son's house and broke my ankle, so they put me in the hospital first and then in a private rehabilitation center for a week before allowing me to go back to my son's house. That's why I missed all the initial hullabaloo about the comet crashing into the earth in December. They only let you read USA Today in the rehab center, and that rag wouldn't know a news story if it hit them in the face with a sack of nickels. When I found out about the comet I immediately talked to my son.

"This thing really gonna hit the earth?" I asked him at breakfast.

"Looks like it" he said glumly. "Please pass the yogurt."

I'd seen all the movies about this sort of thing, so I quietly packed my suitcase with plenty of warm clothing and my old Boy Scout hatchet. Then I bought two dozen cans of sardines and stewed tomatoes down at the Dollar Tree Store. There didn't seem to be a run on basic supplies yet, so I got a couple rolls of toilet paper as well. Then began my watchful waiting. People didn't seem too upset or hysterical about it. I had a few old friends come over to visit me, shake hands, and say how pleasant it had been to know me -- to which I replied 'Ditto.' My son kept going to work each day and to play with his dog in the evenings.

"Why aren't people going crazy about this terrible thing?" I asked him one day at dinner.

"We're all pretty much burned out with our jobs and the stress of social media" he told me. "It'll be a relief to become extinct in a blinding flash. Is there any more of that colcannon left?" 

When the big day arrived I stayed in bed, with my best Sunday suit on, and said a long prayer. My son decided to go in to work as if nothing was going to happen. I must have dozed off, because I was awakened by a loud rumbling that shook the house so bad I was rolled right out of my bed onto the floor. I squeezed my eyes tight shut for the end, but all that happened was I became aware of a strong scent of peppermint and the faint sound of "woo-woo" repeated over and over again -- for all the world like the silly exclamation Hugh Herbert used to make in the old Warner Brothers movies. 

AFTER

When I picked myself up off the floor I looked out the casement window, but couldn't see anything much beyond gray mist. So I went up the stairs into the kitchen and out the back door. The smell of peppermint was much stronger, but not unpleasant. My son's dog came up to smell my leg, then coughed up a small bag of sunflower seeds. The mist lifted to reveal things pretty much the way they had always been. But there were some differences. Sparrows were running around in endless circles on the driveway. The lawn was all dandelions -- the yellow so blindingly bright it hurt my eyes. I went to the front of the house and found the carcass of a dead narwhal in the street, covered with bumper stickers that read "My child is an honor student at Tuttle School." Then I saw the mail lady coming down the street like nothing had happened. I decided two could play at this game, so I greeted her nonchalantly when she gave me a handful of junk mail.

"Turned out to be a nice day for this time of year" I told her. "Hope they move that dead narwhal soon."

"Yeah, I don't think this good weather will hold too much longer" she replied. "There's a dead rhino on your neighbor's roof down the street. That'll be hard to get down." She gave me a smile as she continued on her way. Rhino? What rhino? I walked down half a block and sure enough there was a white rhino on Ted Schaeffer's roof -- it was almost split in half. 

My watch had stopped at exactly 2:15, and when I went back in the house I noticed that none of the clocks, on the microwave or on the wall in the hallway, were working. They all read 2:15. That must have been when the comet struck. Where exactly did it strike, I wondered to myself. I turned on the TV, but Oprah was on every single channel, talking about the benefits of cooking with grape seed oil, so I turned it off and sat quietly in a chair until my son came home.

"We survived!" I greeted him. He didn't look particularly happy.

"I know" he replied. "And I got laid off today. Shit!" 

Crazy Henry Writes a Cookbook.

"Putting peanut butter and grape jelly on a clump of uncooked ramen noodles does NOT make for good food!" I said heatedly to Crazy Henry, when he kept pushing this concoction on me for lunch one day last year. We were at his place, supposedly to pack up his turtleneck sweaters to take down to the Goodwill Store. He has about thirty of them. He needed my help because, as he freely admitted, he couldn't trust himself to do it alone -- he loved those turtlenecks too much. But once he started growing a beard they just got too difficult to pull on in the morning. His beard bristled out as stiff as porcupine quills.

I thought it a very poor return on my willingness to help him get rid of the turtlenecks to offer me such an outlandish meal. So Crazy Henry made himself an uncooked ramen with pbj and ate it in front of me with such relish that I grudgingly asked for a bite, just to see how bad it really was. And it wasn't half bad, at that. So he made me one, too. The combination of brittle, tasteless noodles and thick cloying peanut butter with grape jelly was strangely satisfying -- so I asked for a second one, with a glass of milk.

"With crazy recipes like that, you oughta write a cookbook" I said to him jokingly. And that was all the encouragement he needed. With a sparkle and a twinkle, or a sprinkle, in his eye, he forgot all about the turtlenecks and showed me dozens of index cards on which he had written down his strange and uncouth recipes over the years. Most of them he had never actually made -- like his raisins steeped in anchovy butter. They came to him in dreams at night, he said. So he wrote them down and threw them in his nightstand drawer, usually forgetting about them in the morning. But now that I had praised his ramen pbj, one of his latest dreams, he understood at long last his true calling. He would write "The Turtleneck Cookbook."
"See, I'll be photographed wearing a different turtleneck for each recipe I demonstrate!" he told me happily.
"So we're not packing them up to take to the Goodwill?" was my only response. I'd seen these sudden frenzies come upon Crazy Henry before. They petered out in a matter of days -- sometimes in just a few hours.

But this time Crazy Henry fooled me completely. He went to his Aunt Smedley, who was the city mayor at the time (before she got kicked out of office for running an influence peddling racket in the Ukraine) to ask for help; she, in turn, got him something called a Young Entrepreneur Grant -- which enabled Crazy Henry to hire a professional photographer and a ghost writer for his cookbook, which was snapped up by the first publisher he offered it to. But they did change the name of it. Instead of "The Turtleneck Cookbook" it became "Bad Food Today!" And was a runaway success. In fact the book did so well that Crazy Henry opened up a Bad Food Academy in Scranton, Pennsylvania (the city offered him an old abandoned shoe factory, rent and tax free.) He taught classes there for about six months, having his profile written up for the New Yorker and letting Sixty Minutes do a segment on him. 

I was pleased with his success, of course. And I didn't try to butter him up, now that he was rich and famous, either. "I never thought you could pull it off" I told him frankly. "And I still think you're going to mess things up one way or another -- you always do."

The perks of finally having a rich friend who was generous were great. I freely admit that. Crazy Henry bought me a fly fishing rod that took some guy out in Montana two years to make --  out of Chinese bamboo, shellac from Myanmar, and cashmere thread smuggled out of Bhutan. I broke it on my second cast. When I told Crazy Henry I'd broken the darn thing he straightaway went and bought me a set of antique polo mallets to put in a big vase and display in my living room. That's what I call thoughtful. 

Just as Crazy Henry was getting ready to put out a second cookbook -- "More Bad Food" -- the other skillet dropped, so to speak. He found out about some crazy medical condition called Pickwickian Syndrome. The condition moved him so much that he publicly dedicated all future profits from "Bad Food Today!" and "More Bad Food" to finding a cure for Pickwickian Syndrome. But he didn't set it up as a tax write off, which he could have done, and so it came to pass that he never made another nickel from his cookbooks. And when Pickwickian Syndrome was proven to be a hoax to scam good-hearted donors, like Crazy Henry, he was laughed out of Scranton and dropped by the media like a hot potato.

I offered to sell the antique polo mallets he had given me, if he needed the money, but he just shook his head sadly and said thanks, but no thanks. Then I saw that old sprinkle in his eye again, as he asked "Do you know what happens when you cook a pot of barley and mung beans for too long?"
"No" I said breathlessly. "What happens?"
"I dunno" he replied. "Let's go find out!" 

Verses from Stories in Today's New York Times -- Democrats’ Plans to Tax Wealth Would Reshape U.S. Economy -- Global Trade Is Deteriorating Fast, Sapping the World’s Economy -- India Isn’t Letting a Single Onion Leave the Country.

It's time to share the wealth, you guys;

it's time to spread the jam --

so ev'rybody gets enough

 to roast a leg of lamb.

Ms. Warren and old Bernie

will squeeze blood from plutocrats,

and make 'em sorry that they ever

wore white silken spats!

When I get mine -- you betcha! --

I will dance a blithe gavotte,

and fish for carp the live-long day

upon my spacious yacht!

@arappeport  @thomaskaplan

************************************

"Buddy, can you spare a dime?" the World Bank soon will ask.

Vaults are shrinking, hollowed out just like a vacuum flask.

Economies around the globe are tanking right and left;

inflation and the stock market are playing at grand theft.

The reason for this trouble is that leaders, more or less,

think that they can make more money from a printing press.

They'll soon find out the hard way that disaster always stems

from treating their taxpayers like complacent ATMs.

@petersgoodman

**********************************************

No onions for the Afghans and no onions for Dubai;

tis enough to make a doughty Pashtun start to cry.

India is hoarding all her bulbs, and not one slice

is getting out of country for glum Pakistan to dice.

 Her neighbors are complaining, but she doesn't care a peel;

domestic onion prices must come down  -- and that's the deal!

But don't be disconcerted, Mr. Modi, if a fleet

comes demanding onions -- not the radish or the beet.

Wars are fought for lesser things, so pray do reassess  --

and curry eating peoples will your name forever bless!

@gettleman  

Verses from Stories in Today's Washington Post -- RNC solicited money for Trump’s reelection with forms that look a lot like the official census -- Ivanka Trump’s 3-year-old son dressed up as a Star Wars Stormtrooper. Mark Hamill was not pleased.. -- A study says full speed ahead on processed and red meat consumption. Nutrition scientists say not so fast.

When raising money for their party, members scruple not

to use all sneaky means around (until, that is, they're caught.)

Republicans and Democrats (as well as other groups)

will ding you for your last red cent (and even use shock troops.)

And don't forget the poll tax may come back at any time;

Dark money irregardless, politicians crave your dime.

@bellwak  @britsham

************************************

 Actors, with their swelling heads;

writers with their ego;

artists by and large don't show

intelligence, amigo.

The spotlight never grows the wit

of poet or of starlet;

in fact the opposite is true --

it shows their inner varlet.

@nina_zafar

*******************************************

You never know, with studies,

who is right and who is wrong.

Is summer sausage good for you,

or is it a swan song?

Depends on who you're asking;

and the axe they have to grind.

They're talking at cross purposes,

and I could lose my mind!

The best bet with these eggheads

is ignoring all their studies,

and eating anything you want --

including muddy buddies!

@lreiley

"Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?"

Another Giant Rat

We met at the Barnes & Noble in Roseville. She was buying P.G. Wodehouse; I was sampling Ron Chernow. It was fall, and the books were turning blazing shades of yellow, orange, and red. At the coffee bar I told her I couldn't get enough of P.G. Wodehouse as a teenager. She told me she liked my suspenders. We suddenly agreed that pumpkin pie spice hot drinks were really not a thing. I paid for her hot chocolate. We sat together at a table that was too small for a kindergartner, let alone two shy tongue-tied adults. Our knees kept colliding.

Suddenly the front door banged open; a gang of rough looking men, badly shaved, burst in. They wore garish green nylon jackets, embroidered with considerable skill to show white bowling pins being knocked over by flaming skulls with glowing red eyes. These disreputable men looked about in grim anger. It was clear to see they were after blood.

My new friend stood up. So did I. She clung to me, shaking. Her hair smelled like Turtle Wax. I held her tightly, my body aching to reassure her of my sudden love.

"Those men" she whispered to me. "They're after me. Please don't let them find me."

I led her by the hand to a back exit of the store. We hurried through a shoe store and a coin laundry to emerge in the parking lot near my car. I drove her home. We sat on her couch and talked deep into the night. No, that's not right. We mostly held each other and nuzzled like horses in complete silence. She was like no other woman I had ever known. I could read passion in her eyes, but her body was cool to my touch and her kisses were awkward and tentative. She let her teeth get in the way. So we parted that night with bruised lips, and determined to be married the next day.

Her name was Storm. Storm Brunswick. She wouldn't tell me what those men in the green nylon jackets wanted with her. She told me very little about herself the next day, after we were married in the county clerk's office and drove to Marquette in the U.P. for a brief honeymoon amidst the hoarfrost and rainbow smelt. 

Our first night together was magical. And tragic.

The motel room was paneled with newly resined pinewood. We could hang up our clothes simply by pushing them against the wall. Despite her name, Storm was very shy. She wanted to be held, and that was all. I figured she had never been with a man before, so I was very patient. We both fell asleep as the first fat moonbeams broke through the curtains. When I awoke several hours later, she was not in bed with me. Instead, I heard an ominous rolling noise -- as of something caroming blindly around on the floor in our room. I switched on the light to find a black bowling ball hurtling about -- seemingly under its own power. When I finally managed to grab it I could smell Turtle Wax. 

"Storm, is that you?" I asked in bewilderment. In reply, the bowling ball quivered and tears dripped from the finger holes. I didn't understand what was happening, but I took the bowling ball, which I was convinced was actually Storm, back to bed with me. When I woke up in the morning, she was there beside me again -- more beautiful and vulnerable-looking than ever. I finally taught her how to make love, and we rejoiced silently in each other's physicality until late in the afternoon. Then she told me her story.

(Here the manuscript ends, with a shaky postscript that can just be made out as: "The world is not yet prepared for this story." The document itself, with no name on it, was found inside a battered violin case sold to a Mr. Alan Vanestartt at an estate sale in Upper Sandusky, Ohio. He in turn donated the violin case and its contents, which included a cheap red plastic shoehorn and a packet of millet seed for canaries as well as the manuscript, to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute -- where it is currently in use as a doorstop.) 
  

The Soft Thud of Exploding Udders

The 'Phony Peace' came in 2029. It only lasted for 9 months, and then there was war again all over the map. Even a war in Antarctica. All the penguins were gassed, by mistake, and maybe that's what started the real Peace.
Anyway. By 2031 a genuine Peace began to creep across the world, country by country, until all the politicians were beaten into plowshares and soldiers disobeyed their superiors and marched out to plant pigweed everywhere, so orphans and widows could harvest and eat it. Then the soldiers disbanded to go back home and work in the Post Office. This was a very good thing because people began writing personal letters to each other again, telling about the weather and retailing mild inconsequential gossip about family and mutual friends.
Responsible people took over the reins of government, without a shot being fired or an oaf being hired. Everyone drank much more apple juice, because apple trees sprouted spontaneously and grew to the size of a a two-story house in a matter of weeks on millions of acres of land that had once been military bases.
People everywhere were willing to try new things to become better stewards of the earth. All the coal mines closed. Oil wells were capped. Millions gave up dairy products, because of the amount of methane that lactating cows produce. Dairy farmers just let their herds out of their pens to roam free across the countryside. With no one to milk them, the poor things lowed in agony until their udders burst. I still remember those soft summer evenings when I was courting your mother, when there would come the soft thud of an exploding udder in the distance. It made us thrilled at the prospect of the coming perfect world in which to raise you children.
@mradamtaylor  

They met at a GM plant. On their wedding day, they joined the picket line. (WaPo) @bellwak

CRAZY HENRY GOES ON STRIKE

"I've decided to go on strike" said Crazy Henry to me, at exactly 2:15 p.m. on September 4th of this year. We were at the Brothers Deli out in St. Louis Park. It was my treat, naturally. I had the matzo ball soup with an egg cream and Crazy Henry got corned beef on rye, slathered with horseradish/beet juice sauce. I love that they keep bringing you bright green sour pickles as soon as your bowl is empty. I could live off of those sour pickles and that matzo ball soup for the rest of my life. I'm sure the sodium would kill me off in a couple of weeks.

"I'm going on strike" he said as he finished up the last of the coleslaw. "Can I get a chocolate egg cream?"

"Sure" I said. "Get anything you want. Waddya mean you're going on strike -- you don't even have a job right now."

Which was true. He'd been working for his aunt, who's the mayor, at some social media job -- but when some nosy reporter found out he only had a vocational school education and wrote a big story about it she had to fire him to save her own neck. He got money now by running a so-called Hugging Booth down on the Nicollet Mall. He carried around a card table, which he would set up on the sidewalk with a sign that said "Free Hugs -- Donations Accepted." And since he looked pretty harmless and let his black hair fall over his eyes in bangs he got a few touchy-feely women who wanted a hug and then would put a dollar in the jar he kept on the table. He said the manager of the downtown Wells Fargo bank came by one time and asked for a hug and then put a twenty dollar bill in his jar -- but I'm not prepared to believe that. 

The cops didn't hassle him much, he said; as long as he moved his card table every half hour or so they left him alone. 

I tried to get the waitress' attention so I could order Crazy Henry his chocolate egg cream, but she kept ignoring me like I wasn't there.

"That's what I'm going on strike about!' said Crazy Henry. "I'm going on strike against that rude waitress that won't come over here! I absolutely refuse to pay for anything I've eaten!"

"You're not paying for anything anyway" I pointed out. "This is my treat, and you know it. Now, do you want the chocolate egg cream or not?"

"No" he said resolutely. "I'm on strike against the Brothers Deli until they give in to my demands for more attentive help!" 

"Suit yourself" I said. I got up and paid the bill and we went out to my car. I noticed Crazy Henry took a half dozen sour pickle spears with him, wrapped up in a napkin.

At his place I explained that he was not on strike by not going back to the Brothers Deli -- he was boycotting the place, not striking against it.

"Oh" he said meekly, looking so crestfallen that I decided to try and cheer him up by asking about his monkey search. He used to have a pet monkey, but it got run over by a beer truck months ago. He really misses it -- although it was not housebroken and kept trying to bite everyone, including me. So I asked if he had found another monkey dealer willing to break numerous laws to sell him an illegal animal. That cheered him up, all right.

"I have a lead on a ring tailed marmoset" he said happily. "I might be able to go pick it up tomorrow."

"Where?" I asked.

"Panama" he said.

"Who's gonna man the hugging booth while you're gone?" I asked, more as a joke than anything else. But Crazy Henry took my question seriously.

"I may have to do hugs down in Panama to make enough money to fly back with my marmoset" he said pensively. "How do you say 'free hugs' in Spanish?"

We looked it up on Google and this is what we got:  "Abrazos gratis -- aceptan donaciones." 

Crazy Henry wrote it down on his wrist, and then I helped him pack.

He was back a week later, beaming with joy. But it wasn't a ring tailed marmoset he brought back.

"That" I told him when I met him at the airport "is not a ring tailed marmoset. That is an iguana."

"The man said he just needed to be fed some unripe bananas and he'd fill right out and get his fur back" said Crazy Henry. 

"I think your brain has gone on strike" I told him derisively as we put the ugly reptile's cage in my trunk. The darn thing glared and hissed at me as I closed the lid -- I could tell it was cursing me with some kind of Central American witchcraft. It was evil.

On the way back to his place all Crazy Henry could talk about was how he had read up on ring tailed marmosets; their diet, their sleeping patterns, their mating rituals, and so on. I finally turned to him and said "You can't ever turn that ugly old iguana into a ring tailed marmoset no matter how hard you try to fool yourself. Get real, man!"

Crazy Henry was quiet for a few minutes. As we pulled up to his place he turned to me and said very earnestly: "I've decided to boycott reality."

Most sensible thing he's said to me in years . . . 

For they shall be comforted

And again, blessed are all they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
3 Nephi 12:4

When the skies seem leaden and my prayers bounce back to me,

when my spirit's heavy with oppressed redundancy --

I pray a little longer and recall in days gone by

that God has been my helper when the world has gone awry.

There's comfort just behind the blackest clouds that pass my way,

and though I feel to mourn I know my sorrow will not stay.

Happily I testify that though I now eat dust,

the Lord alone in mercy has repaid all of my trust.