Doors.

It was a glorious spring weekend here in the Hudson Valley, or at least in my part of it, and I hope it was where you are too -- if you're in the Northern Hemisphere. If not, I hope it was a glorious autumn weekend.

I was sitting on the porch for a while with senior varsity dog Tralfaz, the junior varsity Nipper being out with my wife, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. I got to thinking about how often I used to sit on the porch before we had the dogs, and the answer was: not at all. Never. It was one of those things we anticipated doing when we bought a house with a porch, and then never did it. 

In fact, I almost never went through the front door at all. In the mornings I would go out and get the newspaper, and then I stopped getting the newspaper because it was awful, slanted garbage. So I might go out the front door on Saturday to get the mail, but the rest of the time I was going through the garage, because if you want to go anywhere in this town, you're driving.

When I was a kid, a lot of families never used the front door. You could always count on someone being in the kitchen, so you'd go around to the back or side of the house and knock on a screen door. Some families' houses were so casual, with kids running through all day in the summer, that you could just go in unannounced. If I'd walked into the Clusky house (name changed to protect the innocent) and started making myself a sandwich, Mrs. Clusky probably would've just said, "Hi, Fred, there's some coleslaw in there if you want." I only saw their front door being used once, when my friend and his brothers and me helped a wheelchair-bound relative through it because the back stairs were too steep.

In my book Faster & Closer, one of the characters noticed the irony:

Unlike everyone else she knew in town, Tina and her family always went in and out of the house by the front door. Having a detached garage was one reason, certainly, but her mother said that any other entrance was for tradesmen. (The weird thing being that, like at her friend Mary Beth’s house, the only person Tina had ever seen enter through the front door was the man from the cable company.)

In mu current neighborhood, the families that regularly use their front doors are those who have dogs or little kids, or those who packed so much crap into the garage that they can't park their cars in them. Say what you will about my lousy storage skills, I've always left room in the garage for the cars.

When we got Tralfaz I rediscovered the front door, because that was the way out to his bathroom and his gym. In fact, neither he nor Nipper have ever navigated the stairs that lead to the garage, so when we drive them somewhere we have to meet them around front like a car service. 

It's been a boon to rediscover the front door, I must say. Sitting out front with the dogs, we've gotten to share smiles and waves with neighbors going by. It's shaded in the afternoon and evening, sunny in the morning when you want more warmth. And I guess all that fresh air isn't going to kill me. At least it hasn't yet.

The Sunday before Palm Sunday.

Only two weeks to go to Easter! Every week the pews have been filling up as people remember that they have a religion and a place to go practice it. And that's good! Maybe a few will stick as long as Pentecost.

I thought I should do something positive for my faith during Lent, like read the entire Bible. At the rate I'm going I'll... start any day now.

Fortunately some brilliant writer has the TL;DR version of the Bible out on social media. You know my slogan: MSMSA (Make Social Media Social Again). Here it is so you, too, can say you read the Bible this Lent:

I want to thank whoever put this together, as it's the kind of idea I might have come up with for this blog but would not have executed so well.

Longtime readers, who by virtue of that have paid for sins, may know that I often try to do some Bible reading at Lent and Advent. One year I read all four Gospels; another, the Epistles. One Advent I read all the Psalms, another all of Isaiah. It was interesting, it was sometimes challenging, it was enlightening, and it was easier when I was taking the bus to work. I would read a lot on the bus.

Lately I've been relying on a Bible app that gives me a random chapter every morning and a biography of the saint of the day. It's been a means of looking at the parts of the Bible I might never have dared read before. I must confess, when some sections come up in the rotation -- like in Chronicles, with long lists of names, or Deuteronomy, with things measured and sorted for verse after verse by cubits -- I die a little inside. After that, a chapter from a Gospel or Epistle is like meeting an old friend in a strange town.

I must always bear in mind that the Bible is a history of a people, in addition to its many other purposes, and must by nature have these lists of names and laws and instructions. It's common to ancient histories. Heck, in Homer's Iliad he lists pretty much every schlub fighting for either side before he gets into the action, and then he tells us how each one of them died. The Jews were an even more literate and more meticulous people, so their histories are even more detailed.

Which means to me, modern reader? A lot of the Old Testament is a slog. I've been known to skim.

Maybe I should just say "We did the things" and be done with it.

Tough chicks.

NO SLEEP. ALL PEEP.

Bad affirmations.

Every day in every way, I get one day older.

There are no problems, only opportunities to fail.

Pain is just weakness leaving the body, so don’t bother consulting medical professionals. I’m sure it’s nothing.

Mediocre is just half-bad.

You are a human being, not a human doing. So stop all the doing for a while. You'll just lose a lot of traction, is all.

Opportunity knocks. You're probably in the can.

I took the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference. It sucked like you would not believe.

Those who dare, lose the college fund.

Keep your head down.

When one door closes, you’re stuck outside. Don't try breaking a window or we'll call the cops.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent unless they’re in a position of power over you or are just really good at it.

Even the worst day lasts just 24 hours.

You are surrounded by idiots.

Most businesses fail.

Decide you will do mighty things right after breakfast. Then you can go pout on the sofa after lunch.

Be bold, and many people will come to tell you to stop being an asswipe.

Laugh and the world edges away from you nervously.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but his mortgage is paid.

If you don’t leap, you’ll never fall.

The nail that sticks out is the one that gets hammered.

It just doesn't matter.

Today's jerk with his head stuck in his wastepaper basket is tomorrow's snotty supervisor.

Every cloud has a mass of droplets or frozen crystals. Looks like rain.

What doesn’t kill you probably cripples you for life.

Cheese.

Poison, he cried!

Can you really develop an immunity to poison by taking little bits of it at a time?

I'm not talking about you, Christian.

Okay, what are you driving at, Fred? you ask. You’re either expecting to be poisoned or you want to kill someone by sharing a drink full of poison that you’re immune to, right? Like iocane powder in The Princess Bride? Or like in that story “Fly Paper”by Dashiell Hammett?

To which I say, “You can’t prove anything!”

Yeah, that Hammett story didn’t turn out too well for the would-be killer. The plot hinged on the fact that flypaper contained arsenic at the time, so it didn't turn out well for the flies, either, I imagine.

I got to thinking about this poison immunity thing not because of any lethality I wished to accomplish or expected in my own life, but rather from a rumor I thought I’d heard that apple seeds contain arsenic. Like Bill Clinton, I have the longstanding habit of eating everything from the apple but the stem. (Although he claims he only does it once in a while, the weakling.) So does that mean I am immune from arsenic poisoning? Since arsenic is a metalloid, can you even eat your way to immunity from it? Or is like taking iron pills to become immune to stabbing? To the Internet!

As Snopes tells us, apple seeds contain amygdalin, a cyanide compound, so I was wrong about the arsenic. I think my confusion came from the fact that apple seeds taste nutty, like an almond, and I thought arsenic was the bitter almond smellin' stuff mentioned on TV detective shows; actually it was cyanide. Which actually is sorta crap too, as it turns out.

But never mind; the question now becomes, am I immune to cyanide poisoning?

Probably not. Apple pits usually pass through the system undigested because of the hard outer shell. And they’re kind of small. So there's very little cyanide in there, even if you could use them to build up an immunity.

All right, so can you really even become immune from poison at all? I’m sure you’re all immediately thinking of A. E. Housman’s immortal poem “Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff,” wherein he defends his pessimism in the last section:

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
–I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

There were a lot of Mithridateses; Mithridates V was poisoned to death by persons unknown, so legend has it that M6 made himself immune to poison by taking little bits at a time, as Housman wrote. The story goes that even when he wanted to poison himself after defeat by the Romans, Mithridates’s immunity prevented it.

A decade ago the ever-interesting Straight Dope column addressed the question as to whether you can really build up an immunity to poison, and the answer is: Maybe. The column cited reports of arsenic eaters who claimed immunity, and herpetologists who claimed immunity to snake venom. It also noted that it may be possible to become immune to the less awful poison in poison ivy.

But no, it looks like the idea of developing an immunity to man-killing poison is a mostly myth. I had better stay away from eating anything for breakfast that requires a Safety Data Sheet.

I’ll stick to bacon and coffee. They may kill me, but it will take a long time.

Cleanliness court.

Mr. Key, please tell the court what you were doing last weekend, about which you were bragging to your friends.

Well, your honor, I would hardly call it bragging; I merely mentioned that, last Saturday, with grim determination and no thought of the danger to my own personal person, I cleaned the refrigerator. And freezer! And I even vacuumed the coils. 

You sound pretty proud.

No, no, sir, not at all, although it was a good job of it. Lots of dog hair on those coils. And some even in the fridge interior! Uh, could we strike that from the transcript?

No. Now, we have called you today to ask some questions about this effort of yours. You understand that Cleanliness Court is very interested in people performing such public acts of cleaning.

Oh, sure. Maybe I can share some tips with you. Fire away!

When did you purchase this refrigerator, Mr. Key?

Um... Let's see... I think it was the end of November. 

November of what year?

Uh... November 2017. So, a year and four months ago. 

And how many times would you say you have made a thorough cleaning of this appliance?

Oh! Well, I have to say, yes, uh, that is, I have cleaned it many times.

Many?

Yes, that, uh, is if you, uh, count, you know, uh, dusting the top.

So, Mr. Key, we are free to presume that this is the first time in 16 months that the interior of the appliance has been cleaned with anything approaching rigor or thoroughness. 

Uuuuuhhhh............................. yah.

Now, is it not true that you work in medical copy sometimes, and thus are familiar with the general recommendation from home health experts and appliance manufacturers that refrigerators be cleaned at least quarterly, and if contaminated with spoiled or recalled food, be decontaminated immediately?

mumble mumble

Please repeat the answer with clarity. 

I said yeah, I know, but --

And haven't you on at least two occasions sung paeans to the importance of refrigerator cleaning on that silly blog of yours?

You read my blog?

Let's face it, Mr. Key. You have missed five quarterly cleanings since this refrigerator came into your possession. It's amazing you're still alive.

But... but it looked so clean.

You're going to get a warning this time, but we will be looking into this again in July. See that your refrigerator is clean -- including the butter dish -- and the freezer and ice maker as well. 

mumble mumble rub the whole thing down with raw pork you geezer

Speak up, Mr. Key!

Yes, your honor.

Now, about your dishwasher....