Another wall to paint (and some new stars)

Nope, not saying a thing, nada, zip, silencio.

. . .I have endured the onslaught of rapacious snickering, whispered accusations of mental instability and questionable taste in undergarments — and for nothing more than merely expressing my opinion that a wall is rarely worth a second word.

Oh the humiliation suffered!

Cast out from the mainstream of society, forced to skulk about in the musty fringes of the unwashed mutants – my very sanity dribbling down the front of my salsa-stained shirt. (At the darkest, lowest moments of my banishment, I took to referring to myself as “Mr. Hasselhoff” and insisted my compatriots sing Hail Britannia in Yiddish whenever I entered a room.)

Oh no, Frau Battle you’ll get no comments from this fellow. I’ve learned my lesson.

It reminds one of that venerable philosopher /mathematician/ logician Sir Bertrand Russell, who, while observing an unusually contentious late evening meeting of the Royal Academy of Sciences on the complexities of quantum field theory, suddenly stood up and blurted out, “I sure could go for a snow cone right ‘bout now!” The august assemblage was immediately hushed.

Take for example last year’s Winter Solstice celebration,(free buffet and dancing ’til Midnight) a debate betwixt me and a certain disagreeable and dyspeptic druid dwarf over what I felt was an error in his presentation of Zoroastrian canasta etiquette, quickly devolved into a regular roadhouse melee, prompting the arrival of the local constabulary to return order to affairs and issue a stern warning to that short reprobate. (Alls I’ll say is that I did NOT throw the first punch.)

Is this discussion about the wall, or have we gone on to the stars?

Take for example last year’s Winter Solstice celebration,(free buffet and dancing ’til Midnight) a debate betwixt me and a certain disagreeable and dyspeptic druid dwarf over what I felt was an error in his presentation of Zoroastrian canasta etiquette, quickly devolved into a regular roadhouse melee, prompting the arrival of the local constabulary to return order to affairs and issue a stern warning to that short reprobate. (Alls I’ll say is that I did NOT throw the first punch.)

The NUMBER 8
While in a upright, standing position, employee will have a red velour Fez placed securely on the head.

Employee will then be required to calculate the Reimann-zeta hypotheses (with the use of a self-adjoint operator, on the real parts of the zeroes of ζ(s) when applying the criterion on all Eigen values)while simultaneously listening to a reggae version of Richard Wagner’s “Die Walküre” performed by a sextant of Tuvan monks playing harmonicas.

The duration of the punishment shall be a minimum of 24 minutes 12 seconds, with a maximum duration not to exceed the time required to complete a full game of non-Euclidian Yahtzee.

Upon completion of punishment, raisins and goat’s milk will be served.

Further, it would be my greatest pleasure to accommodate your request to recreate the Chateau Nuef du pape “Bubble rodeo” of June 27th.

Regretfully, I cannot, in full, do so, prohibited as I am by her Majesty’s Sartorial Rules for a Gentleman’s Appearance (Codicil 7b.) which explicitly forbids the wearing of any corduroy after St Belvins’ Day – July 1st. (referring to the veneration of the Earl of Blevins’ heroic display at the battle of Marriot, during the War of the Sheratons in 1792. Whilst wearing nothing but corduroy spats and a straw boater, St Belvins did attack and dispatch a battalion of Hilton archers, suffering not a scratch, save for a slight pang of an unpassed kidney stone brought on by a sustained diet of Yorkshire pudding, butterscotch tripe and mallowmar cookies. )

By way of compensation, I would be more than willing to offer a private performance of “Dance of the Enzyme Fairies,” a select act from my newest operetta, “Stuck in Kafka’s Pants – A Meditation on Covalent Bonding.” Musical score by Phillip Glass, libretto by the late Billy Mays.

Répondez s’il vous plaît using the agreed upon cipher by midnight on the Autminul Equinox.

Reverently yours,
A Null Hypothesis

Mother has already finished sewing the gentlemen’s waistcoats and has moved on to the traditional native American head dresses. The Nipples of Venus are on back order. And Froedrick the gardener is working his gnarled phalanges to the bone dressing up the estate in fine Madame Louis Lévêque roses, honeysuckle and a particularly fragrant species of imported Sardinian peat moss.

I record one setback.

Sadly, we had to sack Cliff, our metallurgist – a fine fellow — hail and hardy he, but possessing an incommodious affinity for dressing up like Martin Luther and thrice monthly nailing some of our ducks to the barn door while muttering something about a “Mallard Reformation.” Disheartening really, as a good, reliable metallurgist is a rare find in these parts.

Stay well tuned for further news as it is in the offing.

He wants to go fishing. I said I’d prefer not to.

All the stevedores had a good Bennington chortle last weekend when Freud’s half-brother Cecil unexpectedly burst into the salon in the middle of an epic skeeball tourney and proclaimed, con brio, “Malacology is destiny!”

Dear dependably anomalous Cecil — who wrote his PhD thesis on the inherent epistemological fallacies in Abbot and Costello’s, “Who’s on First?” sketch. (As I recall, it was among the first at the Sorbonne to use the “pop up” book format.) Frankly, I didn’t even know the lad was in town – last I heard he had a full-time staff position at CERN, working up an experiment that would have logical l positivism and irrational pessimism slam together in a matter /antimatter interaction that would, in theory, produce a burst of gamma radiation and the lyrics to every Patsy Cline song ever recorded.

Never court a jester is the lesson here.

Sturm und drang Tuesday night as we were – again — late because Godel (“Herr Warum”) keeps forgetting the combination to his locker (I know, I know, say what you will about that myoptic little number cruncher, but he does do an hilarious impersonation of Don Knotts that is spot on!). Heedless to say, Lady Jingles was not pleased with our temporal deviance. It took nearly four quarts of organic Chamomile and a taser to get her to put that saber down.

When Em tweets I twitter. She’s right, we’ve been having far to much fun on her dime. Since there are bigger fish to fry, I guess it’s best to focus our attention on matters that are better served under the lense of a microscope.

Thank you Em and MYDAR. I found the banter both enjoyable, fun and most of all, very informative. Not to worry though, we’ll meet again, if for no other reason but to dissect another bird of prey.

Over and out.
if for no other reason