October 28th, 2010
Nevertheless, whatever the evolutionary logic may be, if you do something excellently, someone will be around to make fun of it. You can count on it.
Louis Menand
Classifieds
For sale: collection of napkin rings found in the ruins of Teotihuacan featuring the visage of the great comic, Shecky Green. All 100 sold as a complete set. $45 OBO. Box 19.
Lost: small wooden sled. Answers to the name of "Rosebud". No reward. Box 198.
Mark it on your calendars (or collanders if you can't avoid the strain): October 28th - The Return of Uncle Glennie. Creepy stories at ATOMIC, 167 Logan Avenue. Doors open at 7:00PM. Stories: 7:30- 8:00PM; 9:00- 9:30PM.
It is cold, bring a sweater. Knock three times at ground level to be considered for entry.
The Mystery of the Lost Lenore
Listen to Part Seventy-Nine
Click on the picture. (3:31)
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The Parable of
The Badger and the Weasel
Once upon a time there was an imaginary weasel. Well, she wasn't really imaginary but she wasn't really a weasel. She was a small children's toy weasel. I guess technically she was a weasel she just wasn't the kind of weasel you would find out in the wild unless some kid accidentally dropped her there.
Also, at approximately the same time there was a stuffed toy badger. Probably more than one actually but only one who directly figures in this story.
The weasel, who's name might have been Sharon and the badger who I'm going to call Stan even though his name was Thor (Thor just seems too improbable a name for a badger and I would like this to be at least borderline believable) were the very best of friends. I could fill in this paragraph with a lot of description about all the things they used to do together but really, who has the time? Just take my word for it - they were friends.
Anyway, one day Stan got a job with the government and it, the job, paid really well. As a result he and Sharon started moving in very different social circles and rarely saw one another.
This bugged Stan quite a bit and he started to really resent Sharon. He started leaving long, irritating and slightly passive aggressive messages on the mat outside the tree where he thought she lived. But she didn't live there and as a result she never got them and continued to think that Thor, I mean Stan, was basically an okay guy when really he was kind of a prick.
The End
Moral: The White Pages are still pretty useful.
Simone
Part Six
Over the next few days Chester, and to a lesser extent Leonard, took a terrible razzing at the hands (or paws) of the other squirrels. It seems that Chester had done a fair amount of bragging about his peanut windfall before the two squirrels had found out how tiny it really was and so the others, who had always been a little jealous of his capacity and abilities, had felt that it behooved them to mock him for his hubris. Chester took it hard.
Chester began to withdraw into himself even more. He no longer even hung out with Leonard. He moved into a tree far away from the other squirrels. There he would sit glaring down at them and grumbling to himself. It was clear he was becoming less and less squirrelly.
As time passed the others noticed that Chester had begun disappearing for days on end and when he was around he was spending more time on the ground. He also seemed to have lost his interest in nuts. Instead he seemed to have begun eating grubs! This was beyond what the other squirrels considered acceptable squirrel behaviour and they began to openly abuse him.
Daily they would pelt him with rotten acorns and hurl taunts of "Nut Hater!" and "Non-Twitcher!" at him (this last is considered very insulting by squirrels as their continual twitching is considered a distinctly squirrel thing and is a point of some pride).
Leonard told Simone that he did not participate in this abuse but out of concern for his former friend followed him deep into the woods on one of his forays. There on the edge of the zoo grounds he saw some thing very disturbing.
Chester was up against the chain link fence engaged in conversation with someone Leonard couldn't quite make out. He edged closer. Now from his perch high above he could see the ground bound Chester and his conversational partners. They were a couple of badgers.
The badgers wore short sleeve white shirts and black ties and they had, pinned to their chests, name tags. Leonard knew immediately what they were and suddenly things began to make sense. Chester's shunning of trees, his taste for grubs, the digging (Simone was slightly confused as she didn't remember Leonard mentioning any digging earlier) - he was being recruited. Horrified Leonard fled through the tree tops.
To be continued...