Dr. Moriarty is Alive and Well and Trying to Drive Me Crazy

The author, on his pinewood soapbox.

I read with Grim Satisfaction (my usual breakfast companion) the following paragraph from the online Wall Street Journal this morning:

To protect them [moon rocks] the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has strict security protocols befitting a heist film. It isn’t just paranoia. Over the years, some pieces of the moon have escaped NASA’s gravitational pull. One night in 2002, three interns absconded with a 600-pound safe full of moon rocks from Apollo missions. The rocks were retrieved, but couldn’t be used for scientific research. The interns pleaded guilty and the ringleader was sentenced to more than eight years in prison.


"Ha!" I said to No One In Particular (another one of the merry band of breakfast companions I keep around) "It says here that NASA can't keep track of their moon rocks -- they're disappearing like jelly off a dog's nose."

 I wiped the crumbs from my mouth and went out to the patio to watch the finches natter over the nylon sack of black thistle seeds I put out for them -- and some very intriguing thoughts came to me, which I am happy to share with the general public on the understanding that it's pure peculation . . . uh, I mean percolation -- no, that's not it either . . . ah, it's pure speculation. I knew it started with a plosive.

That jamook that got eight years in the slammer for boosting moon rocks back in 2002 -- he's out of stir by now, and it doesn't take a Stephen Hawking to figure out that he must be the one responsible for the aggravating and mysterious thefts that occur with tedious regularity around my household. Some of my more impudent children claim I am merely becoming absentminded, with a growing tendency to misplace things. Cutting them to the quick with my osprey-like gaze, I haughtily remind them that after a lifetime of pickled herring and canned sardines my little grey cells are stronger and more astute than ever. No, miene leiben Kinder, the only logical surmise is that someone is systematically stealing small inconsequential items from me in order to drive me mad. And, whether it's the moon rock guy or some other diabolical creature, they are coming close to succeeding.

Consider, for instance, the Case of the Missing Postage Stamps. Once a month I buy a book of 20 Forever stamps; I have a wide and varied correspondence with persons of consequence; most of them enjoy stamping OVERDUE in red ink on their missives to me -- quite the wags, no? 

Once I have the stamps in hand I slip them into my thin greasy wallet and then transfer them to the top drawer of my bedroom desk. This routine never varies. Yet on several occasions during the past year when I have opened the drawer for stamps they are nowhere to be found. Did I use them all up? No. Did I move them while searching for my adult coloring book? Nope. Eaten by silverfish? Hardly likely, since I treat all my furniture with formaldehyde on a regular basis. 

As my quest widens I begin whimpering mild obscenities in Sindarin and pulling out thatches of comely brunette hair from my throbbing scalp. I finally collapse, utterly spent, on the chaise longue, giving myself up to despair while gibbering like a kelpie. It is not a pleasant sight, and if it occurs when one of my children are visiting they rub cayenne pepper in the wound by nonchalantly opening a few drawers in the kitchen until they pull out the book of stamps -- somehow moved to the new location by a person or persons unknown, bent on my mental demolition. 

Or how about the strawberry yogurt in the fridge? I put a new container in and within 24 hours, or less, it is no longer there, and so I forget all about it -- distracted as I often am by finding the solution to Hilbert's Sixteenth Problem (the solution, by the way, is that the butler did it.) Then, three months later, that same container of strawberry yogurt, now crawling with corruption, reappears in my fridge on the top shelf, right behind the prune juice. Don't tell ME that's not an inside job!

I'm going to get to the bottom of this if it's the last thing I do. I give fair warning to the fiend, whoever you are, that is trying to break me -- you've met your match, Dr. Moriarty. I've set out a series of subtle alarms and traps throughout my apartment to nab you -- a hair entwined around a doorknob, a Victor mousetrap laid cunningly in a kitchen drawer -- so you'll not escape my clutches for long! And when I have you I'm phoning for the FBI, cuz you'll undoubtedly be on their Most Wanted list -- just as soon as I can find my blasted cell phone. By ginger, it was here just a minute

 ago . . .

Now where did I put that One Ring?  Sauron's gonna be mad.



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

Well, I’m done writing for the day. Been up since 6, shaved, showered, and covered my body with CeraVe ointment per my dermatologist’s orders, went shopping for potato bread and shrimp-flavored ramen noodles, wrote my postcard to the president, wrote my scripture poem, and then picked an article out of the WSJ to base a feuilleton on. I have decided to change my moniker from poet to feuilletonist -- a fancy French word for ‘writer of small pages.’ That is what S.J. Perelman called himself, and if it was good enough for him it is good enough for me.

That took me until noon, when I broke for some ramen noodles with Brussels sprouts and a sliced tomato, with a stale fudge brownie for dessert -- washed down with a glass of mixed lemonade and Shasta’s Mountain Rush (a Mountain Dew knockoff.) Then I reviewed and edited my feuilleton and sent it out to the WSJ reporter whose story I used for inspiration and to a few of my intimate pals like yourself.

So now I have the entirety of a Saturday afternoon and evening yawning before me like an abyss. What shall I do with myself now? Obviously, one thing is to write this afterpiece -- I still have some energy and focus left, so I’ll use it detailing so much minutiae that it will make your eyeballs fall out with tedium.

I’m trying to discourage the sparrows from feeding on my patio, so I’ve switched from putting out cracked corn to black oil sunflower seeds -- it is two dollars cheaper per bag than cracked corn, and I thought the sparrows wouldn’t like it and so make room for some of the other songbirds around here. But those little brown guttersnipes decided, after a few hours of hopping around the tin pan I filled with sunflower seeds, that they would give it a whirl -- and now they’ve eaten all the sunflower seeds. Oh well, I still get parti-colored finches, ringneck doves, and quail, to feast my eyes on. The sparrows are like those inevitable in-laws you can never get rid of for long and so you just learn to live with them until you can figure out how to murder them without getting caught.

I finally got my cable box set up, since basic cable is part of my rent whether I want it or not, but it has proven to be a rotten way to waste time. Here’s what’s on basic cable right now:

PGA TOUR GOLF

THE JAMES BROWN SHOW

30 F0R 30 (MADE FOR TV MOVIE -- MADE FOR HELL MOVIE IS MORE LIKE IT)

2019 WOMEN’S PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

SPORTS OVERFLOW UTAH

COOK’S COUNTRY

LO MEJOR DE VENGA LA ALEGRIA

A BIOGRAPHY OF AMERICA

ANCIENT ALIENS

THE INSPECTORS (A BYU FLAVORED SITCOM)

FUTBOL CENTRAL

2019 FIFA

STREET OUTLAWS

BONES

LAW & ORDER: SVU

LOCAL PROGRAMMING

RAWHIDE

HOY EN LA COPA AMERICA

BUGSY MALONE

QVC -- OIL COSMETICS

So there’s no chance I can veg out on cable in my recliner.

I can read my Kindle, of course -- but after an hour or two I always start to nod off, even when I stick my feet in cold water while trying to read.

I could take a walk, except my bowels are not reliable today -- like many days for the past couple of months, dammit.

I almost wish I was in some kind of messy relationship again, like with crazy Marilyn my ex Amy or my son Stephen -- at least they ate up my time and made me appreciate moments of quiet and calm. Right now I am looking at about six more stale hours of  peace and quiet before going to bed with an Advil PM.

Geez, maybe I better just write some more.

Lift up your head and be of good cheer;

Lift up your head and be of good cheer . . . 

3 Nephi 1:13

Pull up your head and be of good cheer;

the Father and Son will ever be near.

To some it seems foolish to make such a boast,

but they have not striven for the Holy Ghost.

All that I know, and all I should speak,

is Christ gives me joy and makes sorrow weak.

As mountains can pierce the darkest of clouds,

so solace from God can cleave mortal shrouds.

and they did speak unto their fathers

. . . , and they did speak unto their fathers great and marvelous things . . .

3 Nephi 26:14

My children tell me so much

with just a look or just a touch.

I pray unceasing for their care;

they offer me a wisdom rare.

Could I but listen with more heart

my spirit's ascent would sooner start.

Freedonia's Going to War! Memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I ran through the hallways of Valley Villas this morning, sportively yodeling: "Freedonia's going to war!"

This, of course, is a hallowed reference familiar to all Marx Brothers aficionados, from their greatest film -- DUCK SOUP.
My elderly neighbors, barely out of their Temazepam-induced cocoons, timidly opened their doors a crack to see what that madman Torkildson was up to now, and I blew kisses to them as I skipped past. My euphoria was induced by a paragraph in the venerable New York Times this morning, thus:

Iran shot down a United States surveillance drone early Thursday, both nations said, but they differed on the crucial issue of whether the aircraft had violated Iranian airspace, in the latest escalation of tensions that have raised fears of war between the two countries.

 At last something to stir up an old man's curdled blood! I could get out my marshals baton and strategize from my armchair. Unfortunately my baton was not where I last remembered putting it, in my sock drawer, so I had to make do with a capless Bic pen. Still and all the same, it's exciting to think of Uncle Sam squaring off against those lugs in Tehran. We'll beat the sirwals off 'em.

The reason for my unseemly glee at the prospect of destruction and bloodshed is simple -- I had some of the best times of my childhood during the Cuban Missile Crisis back in 1962, when America and Russia rattled sabers over Castro's megalomania. 

The whole thing began in October of that year, when President Kennedy got on TV to announce the gravity of the situation. My parents immediately assumed the worst -- a habit they had cultivated during the Great Depression and never saw any reason to give up.

"I told you to have a fallout shelter put in the backyard" my mother said bitterly to the old man. "Now we'll all die, roasted to death by atom bombs!"

"I knew that Irish kid would mess things up for us" dad replied hoarsely. "We're as good as dead right now."

You might think that such an attitude on my parent's part would affect me adversely, but little boys do not scare as quickly as they smell opportunities to run amok -- which was what I was sensing right then. 

And I was right. For the next few days, until Kennedy was able to assure the American public that old Khrushchev had blinked first, discipline and schedules went completely by the board in the Torkildson household -- and beyond.

Nobody woke me up for school; fresh underwear was waived for the duration; and I was allowed for the first and only time in my young life to make my own breakfast. Mom was too sunk in despairing gloom to supervise my victualing, so I stirred enough sugar into my corn flakes to jolt a golem. 

Dad refused to go in and draw beers for his parched and doomed customers at Aarone's Bar & Grill. He planted himself in an easy chair in the living room, bingeing on Planter's Peanuts and Baby Ruth bars -- and letting me dip my mitt into his stockpile of snacks whenever I wanted. 

Things were coming unglued at school, too. Instead of the dreary study of cursive writing that had blasted my hours as a third grade scholar, we suddenly began an endless series of entertaining acrobatics that had us dropping to the floor and rolling under our desks. It was better than a game of tag. At one point a boxy Magnavox was wheeled into our classroom so we could watch, in Miss Grimstead's portentous phrase, 'history unfolding before your eyes.' This from the same woman who had once contemptuously referred to television as a 'boob tube.' Heady stuff for a nine-year-old, yessiree Bob!

A topsy turvy atmosphere prevailed among my friends in the neighborhood. School night curfews were forgotten, as parents gathered in anxious knots on front lawns and porches as weather permitted, chain-smoking and whispering the latest tittle-tattle about the likelihood of Minneapolis being on Moscow's Hit List. I regaled my pals with gruesome tales of what happens to a human being when they become irradiated with neutronium rays -- turning a glowing green and walking around stiff-legged, grimacing as they uproot trees and pull the heads off pigeons. My gullible friends glanced uneasily at each other, silently speculating about which of them would become the neutronium monsters and which would become the victims of neutronium monsters. 

I was having a high old time of it. The end of the world seemed like the start of a new life for me. A much better one. 

But my hopes for a premature and permanent emancipation came to nothing. In November of that year Washington and Moscow came to their senses and averted nuclear insanity. I was immediately shackled with all the arbitrary rules and burdens I thought to escape. In my case, the Bastille had not been stormed and pulled down. 

So I couldn't help thrilling to the strident noises coming out of Washington and Tehran today -- reminding me so poignantly of a time long ago when I ran madly with the Lord of Misrule. 

And of course there's nothing really to be worried about this time around, is there? We've got a totally competent administration in Washington to deal with those crazy mullahs. I plan on sleeping like a Duncan top tonight -- with the help of a Temazepam capsule or two. 

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

Addendum:  A strange bit of hocus-pocus has occurred with the above quoted paragraph from the New York Times. Between the time I started writing this reminiscence to the time I posted it today -- about 3 hours, from 10:30 am to 1:30 pm (MST) -- the entire article, under the headline "Iran Shoots Down American Reconnaissance Drone as Tensions Continue to Increase," has disappeared from the online edition of the paper. Instead, it can now be found at outsidethebeltway.com -- a website with no obvious ties to the New York Times. The author is listed as Doug Mataconis. I've tweeted him about this conundrum, and am awaiting his reply. I don't know who to ask about this at the NYT, but I'll find someone there to ask as well.

The word of God was liberal unto all

 The word of God was liberal unto all . . . 

Alma 6:5

The gospel doesn't cost anything.

It costs everything.

God tallies up our smiles,

but never our bank balance.

It's not free advice

offered by some kibitzer;

It's living water pure 

and refreshing;

but you do have to provide

your own cup.

Driving a Motorhome Without a License. Part Two.

Readers may recall from my last installment that I narrowly escaped being disemboweled by my clown partner Steve Smith (aka TJ Tatters) when he discovered I couldn't drive the motorhome we were living in as advance clowns for the Blue Unit of Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Combined Circus -- The Greatest Show on Earth. Temporizing like mad, I had promised that instead of sharing the driving chores I would undertake to cook such succulent meals for us that the late Escoffier would turn slowly in his grave, basting in a juice of supreme jealousy.

My first assignment, at Smith's insistence, was fried chicken with mashed potatoes.

A simple request, you may say -- except for a gnat in the ointment. I didn't know how to open a can of pork and beans, let alone attempt to fricassee a fowl and homogenize spuds. As a child I was only allowed into the kitchen during clearly delineated feeding periods. My presence there at any other time was deemed mutiny, and treated accordingly.

Of course today I am considered a five-star chef; my pickled herring souffle having won the Grand Prix at the Lichtenstein Shinola Runoffs -- but back in 1973, when this saga takes place, I was a babe in the culinary woods. 

So I would have to bluff my way through this first meal together, as well as many others to come.

And I did a creditable job of it, if I do say so myself. Remembering my mother's methods (and curse words) as she toiled over a volcanic Kenmore, I emulated her every move and technique, as far as I could remember. I dredged the chicken pieces in flour spiced with paprika and garlic salt, slid them into a frying pan full of hot oil, and managed to extract them before they carbonized. That the spattering oil left me pockmarked like a smallpox victim is neither here nor there -- all geniuses must suffer for their art. 

The mashed potatoes proved more challenging. Not that I didn't already know, in a vague sort of way, the alchemy of the thing -- you boil up a bunch of potatoes, then mash them together with lots of milk and butter and salt. But I came a cropper during that first attempt by adding way too much milk and butter, winding up with an appetizing pot of vichyssoise and not mashed patooties. 

Smith took it like a good sport. He devoured the chicken and said kind things about the potato soup while slurping it down lustily. It was then that I learned something of his home life as a child. His mother was not inclined to cook, and when she did the results were not gratifying. Smith said that her mainstay for dinner was something called a potato chip casserole -- basically crushed potato chips with cream of mushroom soup poured over it and then covered with Velveeta and popped in the oven until the whole thing started to bubble slowly like the La Brea Tar Pits. His breakfast during his grade school years was usually Oreos washed down with a bottle of Coke. 

And so, glory be, I discovered that Smith's taste buds were so attenuated by the lousy or non-existent home cooking of his youth that I could throw a slab of raw bacon on a plate, covered in ketchup, and he would gamely try to gnaw his way through it.

The other miracle to occur was the advent of the Crock Pot. I picked up one of those babies at a JC Penny's the first time I laid eyes on it, and used nothing else for our meals for the rest of that season. Just toss in a hunk of meat, some potatoes and carrots, add a cup of water, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and six hours later there was dinner waiting for us after a hard day of buffoonery. It worked like a charm -- except when I tried it with a large quivering piece of liver. That abomination came out grey and rubbery, like the namesake of the horror movie "Donovan's Brain." That night we dined with the Colonel at a strip mall across from the trailer park where we had parked the motorhome.

By the end of that season I was a dab hand at slow cooker meals, and Smith, who had begun the season as gaunt as a scarecrow, had filled out like a zeppelin ready to cross the Baltic. 

My coffers now filled with circus gelt, I bid Smith an affectionate adieu and proceeded to get the nod from Salt Lake for my two year mission, in, of all places, Thailand -- where I never had to cook my own food, not even once. All the missionaries were supplied with a maid who did the housework, laundry, and especially the cooking. So I let my cooking skills atrophy while I reveled in tom yum and bami mu daeng. 

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna take my slow cooker down to AAA Trading & Pawn on Center Street here in Provo to see if I can get enough coin for a portion of kai yang served on a banana leaf at the local Siamese eatery . . .  

Postcard to the President

Driving a Motorhome Without a License.

One of the first stories I read online in the New York Times this morning, after finishing off a noggin of spinach juice sprinkled with brick dust and crushed dilithium crystals as a digestif, had this compelling lead paragraph:

ALBANY — The New York State Senate approved a bill on Monday to grant driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, a deeply polarizing issue that had splintered Democrats and stirred a backlash among Republicans in New York and beyond, who have already vowed to highlight it during next year’s elections.

"Good for them" I said out loud to a nearby box of Kleenex; "they deserve a break."

Falling back into my recliner (or what I thought was my recliner; it was actually the laundry hamper -- rather damp and malodorous, but comfy all the same), I descended into a warm hazy reverie about my early attempts at becoming a licensed motorist back when you could still shoot a megacerops for sport.

As a child our family had one car, and that one car belonged to dad -- otherwise affectionately known as the Old So-and-So. He did not suffer passengers gladly. I walked a block to grade school, a half mile to high school, and when I wanted to go see a movie with my friends downtown he generously flipped me a quarter for bus fare. Under such spartan conditions you'd think I would want to learn to drive and get my own jalopy asap -- but that was not the case. I enjoyed walking and even took an interest in the bizarre bus patrons I rubbed clavicles with -- I recall a wizened crone who sat next to me with a paper bag overflowing with green crab apples; she munched them contentedly as we sped down East Hennepin Avenue (always pronounced "Ees Tennapin" by the locals.) I sampled one at her invitation, nearly swallowing my lips at its astringency. 

So when the time came to take Driver's Ed as a sophomore in high school I spurned the offer in favor of a course in Mandarin Chinese calligraphy -- much more useful, to my way of thinking, than learning how to whiz around like Barney Oldfield. (If you're not getting these references, it's okay -- I picked up a lifetime supply of 'em while watching Mack Sennett films at the Minneapolis Film Society and reading an omnibus of S.J. Perelman, and they have only grown more obscure as time goes by and my brain ossifies.)

Fast forward 7 years to a mellow fall day at my parent's house, where I was cadging room and board while I hunted up some scarce moolah to finance my upcoming LDS mission. I was giving mouth to mouth resuscitation to my bank book when the phone rang. It was my old circus pal Steve Smith -- we had clowned together with Ringling and then gone down to Mexico to study pantomime for a season before parting ways. He had a job offer from Ringling to do the advance clowning and he wanted me along as his partner. I told him that was mighty white of him (we were both whiteface clowns -- so don't have a conniption fit) and asked what the salary was. With prudent saving for a year, it was enough to set me up for two years of proselyting on my own, so I jumped at the offer.

"We start in November" he told me. "And the show is giving us a motorhome to live in for free! You can drive now, can't you?"

"Um, of course I drive -- just got back from a road trip to Bemidji. I drive like a manioc -- uh, I mean maniac . . . hee hee hee" I ended the sentence with a high pitched giggle reminiscent of Peter Lorre's chuckle when wrapping his fingers around Fay Wray's throat.

Of course I didn't drive -- but if I told that to Smith it might mess up this sweet deal. I could learn by the time we had to go out on the road. It was just a harmless fib, n'est ce pas?

Well, long story short -- I didn't learn to drive by November, but I dasn't tell Smith that. So when it came time to pull out of Winter Quarters in Venice, Florida, in our 32 foot behemoth, I gallantly told Smith he could do the honors. We drove up towards Jacksonville, and I figured that Smith, who was a Type A Alpha Male all the way, might just decide he would do all the driving himself -- so I would be off the hook.

But the backstabbing little squirt pulled over at a rest stop, yawned prodigiously, and told me he was going in the back for a snooze and that I should proceed to take us into Jacksonville. I gamely engaged the gears and eased us out into traffic, where I weaved erratically from lane to lane at an exhilarating 25 mph for several minutes until a state trooper flashed me to the side of the road and promptly read both Smith and I the riot act. Smith had the presence of mind to offer the trooper a sheaf of Annie Oakleys -- free circus tickets -- and he let us off with a severe dressing down. 

Then I caught h-e-double toothpick from Smith for my egregious deception -- but we managed to patch things up when I promised to do all the cooking for the two of us, thus saving us both a fortune. 

"Okay, Tork" he said grudgingly. "I'll drive us to the nearest Publix and we can get the fixings for fried chicken and mashed potatoes tonight. You can handle that, right?"

"You betcha!" I replied enthusiastically. And, as it turned out, a trifle too optimistically. 

But I'll continue with that particular story another day.

Facebook Reveals Cryptocurrency Libra as an Alternative to Bitcoin

Facebook Inc. formally announced plans to launch a cryptocurrency called Libra, promising a secure blockchain-based payment system backed by hard assets and designed for mainstream users.

WSJ

Libra, Libra, burning bright,

let's hope Facebook has been right

framing thy stability

on a stormy cyber sea.

In what distant banks and vaults

will they keep the smelling salts

if thy wings are clipped anon

and our dough becomes all gone.

And what fiscal cunning art

will keep hackers far apart

with their dreadful hand and feet

from an awful uber-cheat.

What the hammer and blockchain

that will forge it all in vain;

who will smile in furnace blast

if this money trend don't last?

Libra, Libra, are you sure

you are really so secure?

William Blake wrote poetry;

I'll invest in him, not thee.

Four Years Ago President Trump Was Seen as a Sideshow. Now He Is the Show.

Four years later, as President Trump kicks off his campaign for a second term on Tuesday with an eardrum-pounding, packed-to-the-rafters rally in Florida, no one doubts that he is the dominant force in the arena today, the one defining the national conversation as no president has done in generations.

Peter Baker, NYT.

When in the course of human affairs

the President puts on astonishing airs

it behooves citizens to reconsider --

is he a scoundrel, a fool, or a quitter?

To some he's a hero defending our land;

to others a poseur who loves to grandstand.

History someday will settle his hash;

but right now he typifies ev'rything brash.

He's leading us captive, of that I am sure.

But is it to glory or just a detour?

He's seeking to guide us for one more last term.

I wish that the thought did not cause me to squirm . . .