“Dude! C’mon! We gotta see this!”

“See what, dude?”

“The surf on the North Shore, dude! Fifty footers!“

“And how are you going to get to see them?”

“Drive out to the beach. How else?“

“And how are you going to do that, when the beach is closed?“

“Whaddaya mean, closed?“

“Pollution, dude. Even if those fifty feet are clean, the smell will …”

“Will you get in the car already?!?“

“OK, dude, but the traffic’s going to be horrendous. And if we can’t get there ’cause the road’s been blocked, don’t blame me.”

“Get real, dude. What could block the roads?”

“Water and rocks, dude. You do know what you call a really big wave when it clobbers the shoreline, don’t you?”

“What?”

“SIR-f.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Dear readers, Your Friendly (and Peaceable) Neighborhood Amoeba would like to introduce you to our new friend Seth.

Seth’s personal story is remarkable. He comes from a long line of noble and virtuous people – according to one source, that line goes all the way back to the beginnings of humanity. The Seth patriarch grew up in a turbulent household, scarred by the eviction of his parents from their first home and the violent death of his eldest brother. Moreover, his mother, who bore 56 children, was constantly either pregnant or nursing or both, and with all those kids screaming to be fed or changed or taken to the movies or be given the car keys for a night of cruising the Negev, the noise must have been unbearable. Consequently, Seth the First developed a powerful, almost ferocious, devotion to the principles and practices of peace on Earth.

A devotion that has been passed on to the descendants of Seth down to the present day.

Our Seth has a hard time understanding how the goals of peace on Earth and good will to humankind can be achieved by blaring slogans at top volume from loudspeakers in shopping malls. As far as Seth is concerned, the way people behave in the malls, with all the pushing and shoving and yelling and grabbing, is proof that the high-decibel approach to attitude adjustment isn’t working any better in America than it did in Iraq, and it’s time to try something else.

Seth has opted for the personal approach. When he perceives a violation of the true spirit of the holidays, he walks up to the person responsible and says, in a quiet voice, “Please stop. You’re giving me an earache.”

Oh. Did I mention that Seth is 6′ 5″ / 195 cm, 275 pounds / 125 kilos, built like a tank and probably stronger? That he holds a 10th degree black belt in karate, is a master of seven other self-defense codes, and has been known to tie steel bars into knots with his bare hands?

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. Anything you say, sir.”

With our new friend around, we’re looking forward to a far quieter and more reverential Yuletide.

For the wages of din is Seth.

Don’t make us go over there.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

As Quilly has already related, we spent much of today (1 December 2009) at the beach.

Yes, yes, we know, we know. If it’s any consolation, in another month or so we’ll be in hats and mittens just like so many of the rest of you.

It was a work trip for me. Yes it was. I was collecting seaweed species that may be new to science for identification and laboratory cultivation.

It was a photo shoot for her. One of the photos was of a green caterpillar, inching its way up a dead stick.

“Oh, look. An inchworm. How cute!”

We’re lucky it didn’t bite us.

Really.

Y’see, in most of the world, inchworms are harmless little things, going around measuring marigolds (prior to devouring them) and inspiring Hollywood crooners, not to mention Muppets, to promote the idea that aesthetics are superior to mathematics. (Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba could say something about “teacher furloughs” at this point, but as this has been a consistent refrain on this blog lately, he will refrain.)

In Hawai‘i, the Land of Aloha? They’re killers. The insect equivalent of a bunny rabbit with fangs. In the language of the entomologist, the Hawaiian inchworm is an “ambush” or “sit-and-wait” predator. They lounge around on the botanical equivalent of a streetcorner, whistling nonchalantly and trying to look inconspicuous. Until a fly or moth or similar variation on the theme of Meals on Wings comes within reach, and then … WHAM!!

You don’t believe me?

Shame on you.

Of course, the marigolds are all for this. They’ve got advertisements on all the major websites of the Inchwormnet, showing posies with crude hand-lettered signs:

EAT MOR BEETALS

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Well, Reg, can’t say that I’ve heard a lot about the public school furlough days lately.”

“Told you they’d get used to it, Syd. It figures that folk would squawk when the furloughs first hit and they had to change their plans. We stay the course just a little bit more, and those same people will be telling us to keep the furloughs in place, ’cause they don’t want to have to change their schedules again. Which suits us just fine, of course. We have to pay enough to school our own brats, don’t wish to have to pay for anyone else’s.”

“The people are so easily led, aren’t they, Reg.”

“That they are. Not to mention distracted. Throw them the promise of a few bogus bargains, and they’ll curl up at your feet in the cold and wet to have a chance at getting some. Amazing how the promise of $100 off an item that was marked up $250 two weeks before Thanksgiving will make people forget about furloughs.”

“And then there’s that golfer. Guy cracks his SUV into a tree at 2 in the morning and gets a bloody nose out of it, a simple numbskull piece of driving, and there’s nothing else on the news. When they’re not busting themselves shopping, in more ways than one, John Q. Public is trying to figure out Tiger’s dirty little secrets.”

“Bless their filthy little minds, Syd. The more time they spend minding the business of Mr. Woods, the less time they have to mind ours. But you know the story that really warmed my heart?”

“You have a …”

“Syd, I’m ashamed of you. You know I have a soft spot for children. Especially ours. So you can imagine my joy when I heard that another struggling elementary school was being bought out by a private concern that specializes in children of means and sending them to the only schools that matter. The private schools. Our schools. And the staff were happy about it.“

“That is good news. Cognac?”

“That’s top drawer stuff, Syd. Don’t mind if I do.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Y’know, dude, in an ideal world …”

“Not until I see your ante, dude.”

“What’re you wantin’ with my auntie, dude?”

“Right here, dude. Up close and personal.”

“Dude, you just might be a pervert.”

“Dude, you just might be a moron. I ain’t dealin’ no cards until you put your money down.”

“In an ideal world, dude, wouldn’t have to be no dealin’. Or fleecin’, neither. Brotherly love and all that.”

“Who you calling a …”

“All right, all right, brotherly respect. Sheesh.”

“Well, dude, hate to clue ya, but it’s an I deal world, far as I can tell. Gimme that red paperclip and see if I can get a house out of it.”

“Or a mountain of red ink. My luck, any paperclip I got my hands on would have the mortgage foreclosed on it.”

“You just don’t got the proper attitude, dude. Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash. Then play for more. Your whole life could be waitin’ behind door number three. How you gonna know if you don’t deal?“

“I thought you were the one dealin’, dude.”

“I am, dude. But I still ain’t seen your ante.”

“She’s out shopping, dude. Helping to paint Friday black. Speakin’ of dealin’ …”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Well, dammit, dude.”

“You shoulda thought of that before it started raining, dude.”

“Don’t rain on my parade, dude, things are already bad enough. I broke the key to the beer fridge.”

“Damn!!“

“You shoulda …”

“Oh, shut up. I suppose you want me to run out and see if we can get a replacement made.”

“Would you, dude? That’d be gnarly. Here, you’ll need this.”

“A plane ticket, dude? To Istanbul?!?“

“The lock was made in the Middle East, dude. It’ll only take a Turk key.”

==============

Happy Thanksgiving from The Amoeba (“He”), The Quill (“She”), and The Dudes. (Reg and Syd are at at a table at the far end of the room, going “Bah, Humbug!” and talking grand strategy with Jack.)

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Well, dude, I guess I won’t be offering an apartment for rent on craigslist anytime soon.”

“I guess not, dude. On account of because all you have to offer is chewing gum for rent, on craigslist or anyplace else.”

“Ewww, dude. Chewing gum for rent?“

“Why else would you be leaving it on the bedpost overnight? Speaking of ewww. I suppose I should be grateful you’re not leaving it on the mailbox. What’s wrong with craigslist, anyway?”

“You mean crookslist, dude? Lookit this. Dude lists an apartment for rent, gets three inquiries from responsible-looking tenants, and then finds out they’re trying to scam him. It’s a dangerous place, this craigslist. Who can trust it?”

“In this world, dude, you can’t even trust the trust company.”

“What’s a …”

“Later, dude. But aren’t you overlooking a couple of things in this story?”

“Like …?”

“Like, here’s a person in Honolulu trying to rent an apartment and getting inquiries from people who claim to be professionals, from places so far away that it’s practically impossible that anyone will know them. But they do claim to be professionals, professors even. And they name their University. Two minutes on Google and you’ll know whether that University has Professor So-and-So on its faculty, and probably get a contact phone or email – which had better match what the inquirer sent you, or wee oh wee oh wee oh. Why didn’t …”

“OK, that’s one.”

“And the other is, where did you get this story?”

“Um, the newspaper.”

“Right. The editorial section, no less. Where did you find it?”

“Online …”

“Because you can’t find the print version with a microscope any more. And why is that?”

“Because they’re selling papers to amoebae?“

“Very funny. You’d better hope that OC’s not in a command-X kind of mood.”

“CONTROL-X!!“

“Even with Vista?”

“Only when you don’t want it to.”

“I rest my case. No, the papers haven’t shrunk because they’re selling to protozoa. They’ve shrunk because nobody’s paying them to advertise their stuff any more. And that’s because …”

“Because why?”

“Because all the ads are going to craigslist, dude! That editor’s going to hit craigslist every chance he gets, fair or not. Before his job goes the way of all the journalists who he had to fire and are walking the streets these days.”

“D’ya think it’ll work? People will dump craigslist and pay the paper for ads again?”

“Dunno, dude. I’d like to believe people would listen to us and learn how to use craigslist safely. But they might see that chewing gum and think again.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Hey dude!”

“For the last time, dude. I am not a scarecrow!”

“Oh, lighten up, willya? It’s almost Thanksgiving!”

“It is?“

“Yeah, dude. You know, fourth Thursday in November? Same time every year?”

“How come all I see are Christmas decorations, then?”

“Look, can I help it if the sellers want Black Friday to come early this year?”

“In this economy? Those people will be lucky if it comes late. In 2010!“

“Well, hell, dude, you’ve got to give them credit for giving it the old college try.”

“You’re right, dude. They’re really trying.”

“Of course, dude. Why else do you think their rugby side’s undefeated going into this weekend’s match?”

“Why can’t they have a regular football team like everybody else?”

“Because they’ve got to try harder to survive, dude!”

“Dude, it’s a real trial, figuring out what all this has to do with Thanksgiving.”

“I was hoping to find out what you’re feeling thankful for, dude. Before I realized I was talking to the ghost of Ebeneezer.”

“I never knew him. So you’re giving thanks on this second segment of Merry Thanksgivoween, are you, dude?”

“Yeah, dude, I am.”

“I was hoping, if you were going to be giving stuff out, it’d be a bit more substantial. A Hummer, for instance. I’d love to be given one of those.”

“Sorry, dude, they ain’t makin’ em any more, and I’m fresh out. How about I give you a nice Hawaiian punch, instead?”

“Doesn’t that stuff come in funny colors, dude?”

“So do the stars, dude!”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“So, dude, how’s the house hunting?”

“How should I know, dude? I ain’t never seen a house in camouflage going after big game, and I’m not sure I’d want to.”

“No, dude. The big game’s in the house, on the big screen in the living room. Or it would be, if we had a house to put it in.”

“Riiight, dude. And just how many decades of Payperblaug do you reckon it’ll take you to make the $570 grand you need to buy a doll house in Honolulu?“

“Doll house, schmal house, dude. Luxury box for me, thanks. Hell, I’ll take the whole stadium. Speaking of big screens. Gnarly!“

“Dude. I hate to admit this, but I’m impressed. When you go off the deep end, you don’t just jump, you tie weights to your ankles. A stadium?!?“

“Same money as your doll house, dude. Even has a roof. Here. Read.“

“‘Pontiac Silverdome sells for $583,000 …’ But, dude, the yearly electric bill for that place is probably bigger than that!”

“Well, we’d probably have to be a little careful, that’s all. Turn off the lights when we left a room, no watching soap operas on the Jumbotron, stuff like that. At least until we got the solar panels installed.”

“Man. I’d heard that Michigan was in tough shape, but I never reckoned it was this bad.”

“Well, dude, that’s what happens when you have one money-maker in your economy, and it goes belly up.”

“Like cars, dude?”

“Yeah. Or tourists.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Like wow, dude. I wonder what the prize was.”

“Prize for what, dude?”

“For winning the New Word of the Year Award, dude!”

“They’re giving out awards for new words? Who is?”

“The, um, New Oxford American Dictionary, says here.”

“Somebody’s sales projections are down, I see. So what’s the word?”

“Unfriend.”

“That’s a new word? I don’t think so, dude. Tolkien used it in his writings, like, three decades ago. And it says here that the word was first used in Scotland in like 1275 CE.”

“Tolkien, schmolkien, dude. Facebook’s where it’s at these days. Some dude gets obnoxious, and you wanna kick him outa your space, you click a button and unfriend him. It’s new, and it’s gnarly.”

“I thought that was defriend, dude, not unfriend.”

“But, dude, I want to have a D friend.”

“Only if she comes by it naturally, dude. And she doesn’t keep her personality where you appear to be keeping your brains.”

“Dude, that’s unfriendly!“

“Go ahead, dude. You think you can push that button faster than I can, you got another think coming!”

“Yeah?“

“Yeah!“

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba has just found out that, since April 2009 in the Untied States of America, about 4,000 people have died, and about 98,000 have been hospitalized, from influenza virus 2009 H1N1 (“swine flu”) and related illnesses.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the figures, I read, at least partly out of concern that too few of We the People are seeking to be vaccinated against this flu virus. Of course, a lot of those people aren’t seeking to be vaccinated because they’ve already tried, discovered that there was no vaccine to be had, and have given up …

Yo. People. Don’t quit on us, OK? We’ve got to keep a certain level of hysteria going on this swine flu business, or we’re going to lose the vaccine makers we’ve got to more lucrative pursuits, like making Viagra knockoffs, and we won’t have any vaccine for anybody. You gotta help us out here, gotta keep standing in line for this stuff.

Well, folks, I hate to be quoting fairy tales at you, but this swine flu story has been at the top of the news for, like, a year now, and while there’s nothing pleasant about 4,000 dead, there’s something of a gap between that figure and the decimation of the population that was forecast in the first reports.

After all, in that same time period (extrapolating from 2005 figures), approximately 27,000 people lost their lives on the nation’s highways, and another 1.4 million were injured.

And I have seen no calls from the CDC for a vaccine against stupid drivers.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Hey, dude!”

“Who you calling a scarecrow, dude?”

“You’d rather I called you a stuffed shirt?”

“Sure, dude. That way, when I’m feeling insufficiently padded, I can fix it by knocking the stuffing out of you.”

“Hey!!“

“No, dude, that belly’s foam padding. Lot better than hay. Doesn’t itch so much.”

“Sheesh, dude. You remind me of my gym teacher.”

“But, dude, I thought you liked your gym teacher. Even if he did call you Junket. He didn’t make you take any tests.”

“Not on paper, anyway – but he was one mean dude with a stopwatch. Remember how we used to pass tests by complaining that they were unfair? Like, when they asked questions that weren’t in the book?”

“Too hard, you mean, dude. Especially for those who didn’t read the book.”

“Same as you, dude. You got as many do-over tests as I did, and we passed ‘em ’cause they were easier.”

“Simple economics, dude. Why work when you don’t have to?”

“Well, dude, we really must have been on to something. Says here that now whole states are doing it.”

“So I see, dude. Uncle Sam says to your State, ‘you don’t get any of my money unless Junior can read’. So the State makes the test so easy that a monkey’s nephew could pass it. He does, of course. That way, the State gets Uncle Sam’s money and gets to furlough teachers all at the same time. It’s brilliant!“

“And because it was my idea, that means I’m brilliant!”

“No, dude, it means you’re a scarecrow.”

“Hey!!“

“I don’t really care what you’re stuffed with. You can join all the other scarecrows who can’t read their high school diplomas, flopping down the yellow brick road and singing their theme song.”

“Which is?”

“If I only had a brain, dude. What else?

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Dude?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t get it.”

“You called me over for that? I thought you wanted to talk about something new.”

“I don’t get it, dude, but I can pass it on to you. Here. Let me sneeze in your face … ah …”

“Nice try, dude. Y’wanna talk about somethin’, or can I go back to what I was doin’?”

“It’s about these furloughs.”

“What about ‘em?”

“Well, the teachers negotiated ‘em more than a month ago now. And it wasn’t exactly a secret that they were coming. But nobody said or did anything about ‘em until they actually happened. And now everybody’s in a uproar. How come?”

“Because, dude, being graduates of the public schools themselves, people didn’t figure out the high cost of babysitting until they actually had to pay it. Now, of course, they’re all chanting “education” when all they really want is to get their kids out of their kitchens.”

“And now it says here that the state’s Republican party wants to end them by renegotiating the teacher’s contract.”

“So they can fire some people instead of giving them all short time. Which just happens to be what they wanted to do in the first place. Lovely negotiating tactics.”

“But in the meantime, the rest of the state’s workers got contracts with furloughs too. So if the teachers go back to school on Fridays, they won’t have any schools to go to ’cause all the other workers are out on furlough.”

“Same answer, dude. They renegotiate that contract so they can fire people like they wanted to in the first place. Bottom line remains the same. Except that state employees will join the parents who got sacked from their jobs because they had to stay home with their kids.”

“But, dude! The money guys are saying that the recession’s over. Couldn’t they just raise taxes just a little bit to keep these folk working?”

“Republicans raise taxes to keep a pack of Democrats in jobs? Dude, are you getting enough sleep?“

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

He and She were on their way home from a local sport-motif eatery, where the food was good but the noise … well, let’s just say that they were grateful for a table on the lanai by the water.

He: “You do know what they call a TV that’s hooked to a really loud sound system, don’t you?”

She: “What?”

He: “Hi-Def.”

She: “What??“

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

OK. I am curious.

No. Not Yellow. Or Blue. Or even George.

I’m curious about this fad that’s shown up in a lot of online (and, I presume, TV and print) advertising lately. The fad for running single words into two or more lines. I’d like to know where it came from and, if I step on it hard enough, can I kill it?

Like in the ads for the energy drink (not the most potent one, water):

TH
AT’S
G

Or the ones for the latest exercise in useless environmental handwaving:

HOPE
NHA
GEN

I can only assume that, late one fine 11th hour before a deadline on Madison Avenue, a stressed graphic artist tried to run too many letters into too small a text box, thereby:

A. Revisiting the joke about planning ahead that has to be at least as old as the wooly mammoth;

B. Reliving the experiences of a gazillion ten-year-old kids and their first experiments with fonts in The Software That Shall Not Be Named®.

The graphic artist, being desperate, pitched his broken-word “design” to the client – who bought it.

And now it’s spreading faster than H1N1.

It has to be stopped. Has to be, I say. Before it catches on in the blogosphere.

I mean,

CAN
YOU
IMA
G
INE
IF
SOM
EON
E
TRI
ED
TO
WRI
TE
A
WH
OLE
POS
T
LIK
E
THI
S?

Hey. Let’s try this out on Twitter …

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.