Use common sense!

"Stop right there! Whaddaya, crazy? This is a cartoon!"

Explaining ironing to the dog.

I was ironing a shirt the other day when junior varsity dog Nipper wandered in and gave me that dog look that says, "Huh?"

Most of the time he sees me doing something he's used to seeing me do -- looking at machines, annoying senior varsity dog Tralfaz, blabbing with Mrs. K, cooking FOOD, eating FOOD -- but this was something he couldn't grasp. Taking a hot thing and smooshing a fabric with it because... huh?

You couldn't explain it to him in a million years. He doesn't even know what's up with clothes. Fabrics are just something fun to rip up; he doesn't know why we use them. He does know that when it's cold and I'm putting extras on, he might be going outdoors. But it's not like he slips into a suit and tie to go there.

Ironing is a little weird anyway, I guess. After Nipper gave up on me I thought about it. I used to iron a lot more when I had to dress for the office, particularly twenty years ago, when people didn't go to work wearing the same thing they wore to bed. But here I was, pressing some summertime shirts. Why? I work from home. Whom am I trying to impress? Clearly not the dogs.

Iron Chef! Ha ha ha never mind

By this point in my ironing I was wondering why I was doing it at all. Seriously, what was the point? People should be glad I'm wearing anything. It's hot out there. Maybe just a big hat to protect my scalp. Otherwise, nekkid editor comin' through!

But I have to admit I like the look of a nice, crisp shirt, on me, or on someone else. Unless that's my shirt on someone else. Hey! Gimme back my shirt!

The question is, why do we like the look of ironed clothes? Dirty clothes are repellent because they might indicate disease or stink or vermin, but my shirts were perfectly clean, and looked it. Just wrinkled. Why iron?

Here's where your evolutionary psychologist takes over and proves that an ironed shirt acts on us the way a simple landscape would on our ancestors, who would be able to perceive threats that would be hidden in a more... wrinkled landscape. Or something. Maybe the ironed shirt acted like smooth skin, indicating someone more appropriate for mating with than someone with wrinkled skin. Sounds like nonsense to me, but if we can spread the idea around, maybe all the guys won't keep coming to work in what they woke up in.

I think we do have a natural preference for order over chaos, except when we are teenagers. It's why we have so many pieces of furniture devoted to having a place to put things, so many closets in our homes. It's why even if you like messy art, like Jackson Pollock or one of the other drips, you don't chuck it in a room with a bunch of other crap; you hang it on the wall where it is lighted properly and away from other objects. An ironed shirt shows a person who is willing to do a dumb job like ironing, or paying someone to do it, because he prefers order to disorder. Or something like that.

One thing I do not do and never have is iron jeans. That was not unusual in the pre-grunge days -- the eighties liked things slick and shiny -- but I find it as pointless as ironing sweatpants. No, I draw the line at jeans.

The dog still doesn't get it. He ate a recipe for pasta salad yesterday. Not the pasta salad, I mean he chewed up the paper it was written on. Ironing will have to be one of those weird people things he doesn't understand. And I'll never understand those weird dog things.

Expository themes.

The other day I was listening to the Gilbert Gottfried podcast interview with Sid and Marty Krofft, the puppeteers who made all those outlandish Saturday morning kids' shows in the 1970s. After hearing about them and their work I felt a little bad about giving them such a hard time. But I'm comforted by the fact that if they even knew, they most assuredly wouldn't care.

It did put me in mind of the fact that at least three of their high-concept shows -- Land of the Lost, Lidsville, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, and the Freudian nightmare that was H.R. Pufnstuf -- used their theme songs to set up the shows. Because if you just turned on Lidsville and you saw the kid who played Eddie Munster running around with people dressed like hats, you would wonder what in hell had been in that coffee this morning. But if you heard the opening theme, you'd know that the problem was not with you.

I think the expository theme song a good idea for a show, especially one that has an abnormal setup. A show like Friends or The Courtship of Eddie's Father or The Gilmore Girls or The Golden Girls can have a theme song that just sings about how we are pals and pals are we and whatnot and you really know all you have to know. You don't have to have someone explain to you why these people are friends. In the early seasons of The Brady Bunch, when a lot of the plot lines came from the blending of the two families, it was helpful to have a theme song to tell you that the females were one family and the males another and now they all have to live in a house with three bedrooms, except for Alice's bedroom, which is under the stairs, like Harry Potter's.

I'll Greg to block, Peter.

Theme songs like that are of the "How It Happened" variety, giving you a background in the show, so you know how these characters got into the situation in which we find them. Probably the most famous of these is Gilligan's Island, or possibly The Beverly Hillbillies -- in both cases, without the theme song you would be baffled by the goings-on because you'd be too busy wondering how these people got into this preposterous situation. Fresh Prince of Bel Air follows the Hillbillies line, of course. Dusty's Trail, which was just the Gilligan's Island characters on a wagon train, also had a theme song that explained the show, although it was a lot harder on Dusty (also played by Bob Denver) than the Gilligan theme was on Gilligan. Maybe that's why it lasted just one season. The Patty Duke Show also explained that Patty was going to be playing herself and her identical cousin with a phony accent, although it didn't put it quite that way.

Other themes of this variety include those for Diff'rent Strokes (although it's circumspect, and the brothers' mom's death is not mentioned), F-Troop (although mostly about how the captain was posted there), and Branded (a rare drama entry that explains why Chuck Connors is being hassled all over the place). One I didn't think of but my wife did: The Partridge Family, and that's just because of one verse only played on season 1:

Five of us and Mom working all day
We knew we could help her if our music would pay
Danny got Reuben to sell our song
And it really came together when Mom sang along

The rest of the theme is just about traveling and singing and happiness.

Other theme songs set the situation but don't explain how the people got into it. The Flintstones introduces the family, but it would be completely bizarre if you didn't have the cartoon showing you the "modern stone-age family" in action. George of the Jungle tells you who George and his friends are, and that he is clumsy, but not how George got in the jungle in the first place.

A little further from a proper setup are songs for The Jetsons, which only gives you the names of the characters, and Batman, which gives you... well, Batman.

The Odd Couple opener gives you the setup for the show in speech, not in music. The music has no words. In this regard, and its being set in Manhattan, it is completely identical to Law & Order.

Other shows had songs that just set up the mood without telling you anything much about who the protagonists are or what they want. They include:

Laverne and Shirley (25)
Cheers (28)
Moonlighting (23)
Secret Agent (3)
Friends (1)
The Greatest American Hero (2)
Welcome Back, Kotter (1)
The Monkees

And you know what's interesting? All of these theme songs were hits. The number is where it charted on Billboard -- except the theme from The Monkees, which was not a hit in America because it was not apparently released as a single in the US. That, children, is irony.

But most TV shows, like the radio shows before them, just used music to set the mood with no words at all -- everything from I Love Lucy to The Dick Van Dyke Show to Bones to Get Smart! to Hawaii Five-O to Miami Heat follows that template.

There being an Internet, and I being on it, I was sure that this ground had been covered before, and I figured some site like TV Tropes had listed all the show themes that explained the premise of their show. And I was right! That very site has an article called "Expository Theme Tune," and I wondered whether they included any I missed. Indeed, the Live-Action TV subpage has a few I should have known, including "How It Happened" classics like Charles in Charge, The Nanny, Green Acres, and Mystery Science Theater 3000, and situation-setters like Mister Ed and The Addams Family, among others.

What surprises me about this topic was not that so many shows had expository songs but that more high-concept shows didn't. Shows like Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie used animation to tell you what they were about; The Munsters used a simple domestic scene with the characters. ALF showed scenes of the family videotaped by their alien friend. Mork & Mindy also just had scenes from the pilot and expected you to get the idea. It seems natural that visual cues would be used in a visual medium, but there's a lot of fun to be had, especially in comedies, with theme songs that tell a story. And it helped with syndication in the old days, where people would be less likely to have come in on a show from the beginning.

Now, with binge-watching and episodes available online as well as plot summaries all over the Web, it's much less necessary to sum up the show at the top of every episode. But it's a shame. Wouldn't our pop culture have been poorer with no Gilligan's Island theme? I think so. And if not for The Flintstones, what would we sing on the bus?

What is Mr. Reese up to?

Maybe consumerism is a bad thing. Pope Francis says so, and defined as he does, emphasizing how it leads to the disposability of  everything, including one another, it makes sense. On the other hand, the dazzling array of choices available to the consumer makes consumerism more appealing than ever. It's like TV -- back in the 1960s and 1970s, when TV was limited but universal and the programming was mostly dumb and samey, the smart people saw it as the "idiot box" that would doom society. Now that TV is smarter, the same people think it's fine that we're glued to the screens all the time. I'm not sold that it's improved enough to justify this change on the hearts of the intelligentsia. Two words: "Real" "Housewives."

However, that was all a means of getting us to our topic for the day, which is related to the crazy choices for all kinds of consumer goods, including breakfast cereals and candy. And that leads us to this:

Reese's Puffs, a joint effort between Reese's home company Hershey's and food giant General Mills. Would we, in the dim past, have ever expected these two titans to join forces? No, of course not. Hershey's would not have had the means to bring a cereal to market, and General Mills would have come out with some dopey peanut butter mess that no one bothered to try. Truly this is an age of wonders.

So hell yeah, I bought a box and ate it. One of the best things about it was the back of the box, which gave us a tour of why on earth people might legitimately not love this cereal:

I'm not sure which one of these covers me, for I can't say I loved Reese's Puffs. I did like them quite a bit. One of the best things about them is that they are not super-sweet; unlike other cereals they were not like eating milk-drowned candy for breakfast. I think this is because they are at heart Kix, another General Mills cereal, famous for being "Kid-Tested / Mother Approved" (the slogan they've used since 1978, although you note that it doesn't say that it passed the kid test). Kix is notable for lower sugar than other kids' cereals, and in my experience, correspondingly lower enthusiasm. Still, it was better than old-folks' cereal like raisin bran or Grape-Nuts, so if that was all Mom would get, it would have to do. 

At my age Kix is about as sugary as cereal ought to get. The Reese's Puffs are the same way, but with the added bonus of genuine PB and chocolate taste. So I did like them -- it did not rise to love, though. As always, I turn to the Cereal Project and its suzerain, Mr. Breakfast, who tells us that the cereal has been around since at least 1999. Well, I didn't have this blog in 1999, so I didn't have the excuse to eat it as a service to my readers; also I did not have a coupon, which are suddenly available on Coupons.com, so I think they're making a push for the brand. Anyway, it was good, I liked it, but I don't think I'll bother with it again. 

My lack of enthusiasm may come from me being spoiled by the vast array of caloric Reese's comestibles out there. If you look on the Hershey's product site for Reese's, you'll see EIGHTY-SIX different things sold under the Reese's name. When I was kid there was exactly one (1) -- a package of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups with two cups in it. Reese's Pieces weren't even a glimmer in E.T.'s giant eye yet. We never imagined there would be such a thing as a white chocolate Reese's:

Weird, isn't it? It's like what Evil Kirk would eat in the Mirror Universe.

And how was White Reese's? Just okay. I think it was better in the idea than the execution. I like white chocolate all right, but it does not work with all flavors, and I think it just doesn't play that well with peanut butter. It seems to go better with fruit flavors, I think. But that's totally personal opinion, and others may find it works fine.

Anyway, that's the state of play right now in Reese Town, and God knows what they'll come up with next. Spumoni Reese's! Reese's Whiskey! Reese's Pizza! Who knows? It's the wild west out there.

Armed and trivial.

This week on Trivia Corner we examine 10 incredible fun facts about those thingies coming out of your shoulders--that's right: Your ARMS!

1. A car's airbag deploys and inflates in .04 seconds. The only safety device faster is your mom's arm whapping you across the breastbone.

2. Carpal Diem = It hurts when I seize the day.

3. The original name of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda was Spleen & Sponge. Other attempts at product names were Noggin & Hatchet, Thumb & Screw, Colon & Lathe, Ankle & Wrench, and Ass & Adze, before the arm was finally selected, along with a hammer.

4. A seven-armed octopus is not a septopus; it is a differently abled octopus.

5. The first draft of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms was entitled Enough with the Arms. Correspondence between him and his editor reveals other titles they considered: Get the Arm Outta Here; Armen't Ya Glad the War Is Over?; Hit the Road, Arms; Arms! Feh!; and The Legs Can Go Too. Finally Hemingway's editor suggested he stop drinking absinthe.

Took a while but he dried out.

6. The bone in the upper arm is called the humerus--so never let anyone tell you that you don't have a humerus bone in your body.

AMAZING FACT! Pope Hilarius also two humeruses!

7. By some accounts, when the serpent met Eve, he said, "Don't be a-scaert o' me, mate! I'm perfectly 'armless."

8. The word armistice comes from the Latin arma (shoulders) and solstitium (solstice), arma having come to refer to weaponry (as in the terms armor, army, armada) and solstice coming from sol (sun) and stare (stand). So armistice means shoulders sun standing. And we think other languages are weird.

Another work by Hemingway.

9. When Hamlet says "to take Arms against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them," he's not talking about fighting, he's talking about swimming.

10. There is a condition known as Saturday Night Palsy, numbness in the arm caused from passing out with the arm over the armrest of a chair, compressing the radial nerve. Similarly, Honeymoon Palsy is caused by someone sleeping on your arm, compressing the radial nerve. Saturday Night Honeymoon Palsy is when a drunk person or persons passes out on your arm overnight, I guess.

Bob the Mage, ch. 12.

[Author's note: It is Fiction Friday! again, Taco Tuesday's kid brother, with it brings chapter 12 of our fantasy novel, Bob the Mage. As noted before, I wrote Bob in my ill-spent youth ago -- my one and only completed fantasy-world book -- and am editing and refreshing it and posting it here. As chapter 11 ended, incompetent magic user Bob and his friends Astercam and Bourbon the Barbarian had been picked up by a Tegoran ship, having survived days at sea after escaping Big Evil Island. Bob is wanted in Tegora, but boarding the Tegoran ship was a matter of survival -- which turned into a cruel joke, as the ship is commanded by his nemesis Bugsby the (possibly reformed) pirate, along with former Tegoran army enemies Karkill and Chokolost. Will they kill Bob immediately or have a mock trial and then kill him?

Previous chapters can be found at these links: chapter 11,

chapter 10, chapter 9, chapter 8, chapter 7, chapter 6,
chapter 5, chapter 4, chapter 3, chapter 2, chapter 1

And remember, if you're enjoying the book, tell someone! Post a link! Tweet about it on Twitter! Tweet about it to the neighborhood sparrows! If you're hating the book, write me a letter! (frederick_key at yahoo) I'll dedicate the book to you to get you to like it! Maybe!]

Bob the Mage

by Frederick Key

Chapter 12 

I suppose you’re thinking that after Mormor’s chamber of horrors that there wasn’t much these pikers could do to scare me. You’d be perfectly wrong. They were no Mormor, it’s true, but these three lunatics were perfectly capable of scaring a skinny, helpless mage.

Karkill was ready to zap me on the spot, and Chokolost was stretching his throttling grip, and Bugsby dropped words like “keelhaul” and “sharks” and “plank,” but they all muttered that they had to do things by the book, per the rules of the Tegoran navy. Plus, they wanted that reward, and it would be easiest to get if the wicked Bob were executed after a fair and well-transcribed trial.

Okay, then I’ll live until to get to the mainland, I thought.

“Fortunately,” said Bugsby, “a trial can be legally held aboard ship, with the crew serving as jury. So we try him, hang him, pickle what’s left of him, and go get the booty! I mean, reward.”

As I learned, regulations stated that the trial had to be held in daylight, I guess as a means of discouraging impromptu nighttime mob justice or mutiny. I was clapped in irons and dragged to the brig. A sleepless night awaited me. I lay there, the dark wood of the cell like a coffin, my meager magic clamped off by all that iron, listening to the gentle creak of the ship. The pirate-slayer I’d been imprisoned in creaked like an old man. The Seaworthy had creaked like any second it would shatter into toothpicks.

I had no ideas for escape. I was about ready to give up on what I laughingly called my existence, and probably would have except that A) these guys were being total jerks and shouldn’t get their way, and B) Suzy was still stuck in that big stupid evil skull castle and needed me.

Two sailors arrived with the dawn to haul me out. They spoke not a word but pulled me along to the deck, where a red sunrise awaited, and they chained me to the foremast where everyone could get a good look at me. I said nothing, just tried to think, but my brain it that state was as good at thinking as your average pumice stone. The sailors going about deck duties stared. I recognized a couple of ex-pirates, but any hope that they might show some kindness to an old shipmate was lost.

Even Kevin snarled at me when I said I was glad he’d survived, and was that a new leg? Chic. I’d hoped to ask him if they’d found out that the Tegoran pirate-hunter had not really been magically alerted to the Seaworthy by me, as Bugsby had claimed when we were captured, but neither Kevin nor anyone else would talk to me. I had more friends in Mormor’s dungeon than on this deck.

The sun was burning quite nicely as the men were called to trial. I soon looked down on forty assorted seamen. The sea was shining, little white caps waving at me, bye-bye. Astercam and Bourbon were dragged on deck, but they were chained as well, and muzzled. The crew must have waited for the giant barbarian to pass out or he’d have cracked a bunch of heads. I supposed he and Astercam were under arrest for abetting an enemy of the king or something. I wondered if I’d be alive long enough to find out.

“Mateys,” said Bugsby, his good eye piercing the sailors to their hearts, “you see before ye the most contemptible cur on the seven seas. No, not me, him! Bob, the most evil seadog a man could meet. I can barely list his crimes here. But I will. He used wicked magicks against a ship of Tegora. He betrayed, treasoned, and said nasty things about King Maximo of Tegora (may his pet wombats sing his glory or somethin’). He has fought as a pirate against ye, and is unrepentant. And worst of all, he has failed to follow orders!”

The sailors gasped.

“Arr, mateys! Furthermore, we have reason to believe he kidnapped a princess, and summoned a horrible two-headed sea monster! I call for the death of this wicked wizard Bob, in a quick but painful manner, as befits a horrid, mangy, dirty, nasty, unclean, despicable vermin, who would throw his own sweet mother down a flight of stairs for the fun of hearin’ her thump at the bottom. What d’ye say?”

They cried yea (or arr) and waved their grog.

Bugsby sat, and Karkill stood before the group.

“Men, warriors of the king,” he said, “I come before you today not as a loyal servant of the crown, nor as a fellow veteran, but in my capacity as a user of magic.” He pulled a bouquet of roses from a sleeve as a demonstration, and tossed it to the crowd to a smattering of applause. “It is not generally known, but we in the craft have a long tradition of unsworn but unshakeable loyalty between master and apprentice.”

News to me. Simon the Unsteady would have fallen over laughing at that.

“This mage chained up here has broken that sacred trust. He used the knowledge I gave him and turned against me and the king. There’s only one punishment fitting for such a maggot, and you know what it is!”

“DEATH!” came the response.

Karkill shot out some confetti, took a bow, and left the stage for Chokolost.

Chokolost was looking splendid that day, groomed and polished, exuding an aura of strength the way an old fish exudes stink. He cast an iron eye on all present, fixing it on me at last. There it lingered for some time. I gave a personable grin. It didn’t help. He turned to the crowd and spoke.

“My fellow servants of the crown,” he said, “our esteemed captain and the mage warrior Karkill have ample reason to detest this villain strapped to the mast, for all he has done and is believed to have done, but it is my duty to relate to you the details of his verified and proven treason against the crown.”

The jackass must have been taking eloquence pills or something, I thought.

“He and I were sent on a confidential mission for his majesty, King Maximo the Seventh (may he stub not a toe). We and other soldiers and mages were sent to find the ancient magical artifact known as the Gallstone of the Gods. We journeyed through perilous lands, reaching at last the labyrinth where the stone had come to rest. When ordered to open a magically sealed door, our treacherous wizards tried to stall, clearly terrified. It was fear of the monsters within the labyrinth, I thought then. Now I think it was fear of our sovereign getting hold of the Gallstone of the Gods.

“When their dithering became dangerous, with our entire party exposed on a mountainside, I used the means at my disposal to motivate them. Sure enough, this Bob proved totally capable of opening the door, but first he cast a spell of confusion on my men, and my mule, causing them all to fall off the mountain and perish. Only he and I were left then, and it took all my strength and cunning to keep him from deserting.

“We wandered the labyrinth for hours, or days, and it may be that he was purposely keeping us lost. But my flawless sense of direction led us to the Gallstone, which was guarded by a hideous and ferocious monster! I made ready to take it on in single combat, when this mage winked out his magic light and plunged us into darkness! As I cried out for help all I heard was his footsteps running away. And later I would find out he was running away with the stone!

“I battled the monster fiercely, and in end it tripp—that is, I struck it a critical blow to its tiny brain with my sword. Wounded and alone, I wandered again for days until I found a way out.

“I eventually returned to Tegora, where I was forced to admit defeat to my superiors. Then I was given some shocking news. Lefro, one of the useless mages from our quest, had returned to the city with the Gallstone, expecting a reward! We arrested him for desertion and persuaded him to explain how he had gotten the artifact. He confessed that Bob had given him the stone and sent him into town with it to get the reward, which they would split. Perhaps they planned to meet in Purgor, for that was where Bob was found hiding.

“Our attempt to capture Bob there was thwarted by his magic arts, and he sought to escape on a pirate ship. We have had many weeks of searching since, but now at last we have the blackguard. Those of you who sailed with Captain Bugsby previously know some of his crimes on the seas, but I can tell you this—Bob is a thief, a liar, a deserter, a coward, and a self-serving practitioner of the dark arts, and the sooner he is dead the better the world shall be!”

What a speech. I was about ready to call for my own death. At least I knew now how Lefro had come to be in the Purgor police station, blaming me for everything under the sun. I hoped that the rotten little stinker was cooling his heels in some dinky cell back in Tegora.

Bugsby once again stood before the assembly. “Now, as ye know, the law requires that anyone who wants to speak for the defendant may open his gob now. Anyone?”

“Mmm! Mmmm!” said Astercam, rattling his chains and struggling against his muzzle.

“Anyone? Anyone at all? Well, then, mateys…”

“MMMM!”

“…I say that it be time we put it to a vote…”

“MMMMMMM!”

“…as the law of the sea under yon Tegoran flag requires. All in favor of death for this scoundrel, say ARR!”

“Just a moment, Captain Bugsby.” It was the first mate, Sanford. “The old man wants to say a word.”

“He probably has an itch or something. Now, as I was saying, all in favor…”

“No, sir, it definitely looks like he has something to say. And the law states that anyone, even another prisoner, may speak for the defendant.”

“Arr!” Bugsby stamped around for a few seconds in frustration, emitting almost visible fumes. Then he said, “Oh, all right. Unchain the old fart.”

So Astercam, or as I’d come to think of him, Good Ol’ Astercam, was set free and given the floor.

“Thank you,” said Astercam, “and a lovely deck it is, too. Is this Gomblian teak? Looks rather like it with the dark striations—”

“GET ON WITH IT!”

“Men of Tegora!” said Astercam. “I do not come here to praise the virtue of my friend Bob, nor to excuse him for his crimes. In a somewhat twisted manner, for example, the tale told by Chokolost is true. Bob told me all about their unhappy quest. Why not? We were stranded on an island and he had no reason to lie. But he also told me how the villainous Lefro stole the Gallstone from him, throwing Bob from a cliff and making off with the artifact, along with Bob’s food stores, leaving him to perish in the wilderness. Bob left Chokolost in the labyrinth, yes, but he had every reason to believe that the man was dead already.

“Consider this, too: Chokolost accuses Lefro and Bob of fearing to let Maximo the Seventh (may he, uh, something or other) get hold of the Gallstone. Then why would they conspire to turn it in for a reward? Please, sergeant, do not contradict yourself so.

“No, Lefro, Bob, and the third mage on the expedition were not afraid of the king’s power. They were foolish and ill-trained (yes, Karkill, I said ill-trained!) and were forced to try something beyond their powers. Their punishment for failure was to be hurled off a mountain, which killed one mage and almost killed Lefro. Bob’s time in the service of the military of Tegora was a tale of mismanagement and poor personnel decisions, that is a fact, and as bright as your buttons and your ship are, I’m sure you all have had some experience with this. C’mon, am I right?

“How would any of you like to be executed on the spot for failing to tie a triple half-hitch? Or for missing a stain with your mop? I think we need to understand the conditions our friend Bob, a nearly powerless mage, was under and realize that for him, his actions were not treason nor meant to be, but merely the desperate actions needed for survival.

“I tell you, this trial is a mockery! This man is no evildoer, no summoner of monsters and bad weather! Believe me, we were in dire straits and I would know if he had any powerful magic. He is simply a poor man pressed into awful servitude, trying to cling to life. If he is guilty of anything, then I say, his accusers are guiltier still for having driven him to it!”

Sailors were nodding and rubbing their chins. Great speech! I thought. Gods shower blessings on Astercam!

“And now,” he said, “allow me to explain a little more in depth. We must consider the questions of jurisdiction and relevant codes. You see, there is no one ‘law of the sea,’ as many sailors tend to be believe, but rather a long history of maritime development of such laws. Probably the first was propagated by the Emperor Zaschnuch, some three thousand years ago, when the Risnigans rules the eastern part of the Joma lakes system. The large bureaucratic apparatus beneath the emperor was not inclined to meddle in the affairs of the wealth-bringing traders of the lakes, but such lawlessness as pervaded the lakes system had begun to threaten colonies and trading partners. With the rising popularity of the koonie bark as a flavoring, the Risnigans…”

And that was all she wrote. After fifteen minutes of the history of maritime law, the Risnigan empire, the koonie bark trade, the Elfin tribes’ ocean explorations, Zaschnuch’s family intrigues, the Kraken Question, and the spread of legalese on the wave, the sailors were calling for Astercam’s death. He had done the worst thing he could at a trial like this: He sucked the entertainment value right out of it. They chained him up again and put three muzzles on him, on the theory that you can’t be too careful.

As for me, Astercam’s brilliant defense had been annihilated by his academic pontification. I don’t think a single sailor even remembered the defense part. All they knew was they had bad feelings now, and those feelings were connected to the weenie on the mast, and if it weren’t for him they might be doing something fun, like sleeping or playing with their ditty bags.

Bugsby spat on Astercam and took his place again before the crowd. “Anything to say before the final vote?” he asked me.

“I’m innocent?” I croaked.

“Anything relevant to say?”

“For the sake of love,” I said, tired, “have mercy.”

So much chin music to this crowd. They roared for blood. Specifically, the stuff I was full of.

🐙🔱

[Well, looks like this is definitely the end for Bob, doesn't it? Come back next week to find out if he's hanged, stabbed, shot, strangled... or if these sailors really get mad!]

Out where the suburbs end.

Recently I had to drive alone out of state, and on the way back I took the side roads instead of the highway. It was hot, but a beautiful day for driving. Everything was green. The crops were coming along fine in the farms I passed. Small town schools were closed, hibernating in the hot sun. Cows were just hanging around, doing their thing. Not too many other cars about. Once in a while I would come to a stop sign or traffic light, and we might have a total jam -- two cars in front of me. They would go their way, I mine, and happy travels to you.

I love it.

Sometimes when I'm tooling along, looking at the high-numbered houses on the low-numbered roads, I can almost touch that sense of longing that C.S. Lewis talked about, mostly in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, and also in The Weight of Glory:

the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name.

In my case this longing could easily be mistaken for nostalgia, for there are elements of nostalgia present in these trips. You see houses that time has forgotten -- neat and in good repair, for if time had remembered them they would have been ravaged -- but no one has ever said, "This is so 1960s. Tear it down and put up something modern." You can see houses in rows that each reflect the different decade in which it was built, going back up to a hundred years, each one in fine shape. Some look like the houses of my childhood, some of styles that came later. So I do get a twinge for those houses of my youth, it's true.

But nostalgia alone can't strike me this way. There is no Golden Age for me, as I have never had a period of my life that was not full of fear or loss or disappointment, and I'm too honest to think there ever had been. I miss the eighties, but I was young then, and everyone misses youth -- but I thought for sure we were going to have World War III (all the smart people said so).

Nostalgia can be sweet, but is not enough to cause the feeling I describe. And for the record, I hated long country drives when I was a kid. BOOORRR....RING. So I'm not harking back to a fondness for those.

It's not a time, but timelessness, that opens me up to Lewisian feelings on these trips. As in the Lewis quote above, it's extraordinarily hard to convey this feeling to others, but you know it if you feel it. To Lewis, who had experienced it in childhood and then walked a long road through paganism and atheism, it came to mean that desire for a home we have never really known, the place we really belong that is no place in this lesser world. It was a scent from a feast of things better than you could ever eat, a scent that was itself better than anything you could consume on earth. For him it was a sign that we are not in our real homes in this world, but that we have hope we will get there someday.