The late Dave Maleckar

Well, okay, the reason I’m late is I had some errands this morning and I had no prewritten verbiage to post and I’ve not yet sunk to the level of serving up “best-of” rants from the previous decades although as a legacy blog I would certainly be entitled to do so like Family Circus or Hi and Lois which to call them comics is to completely disregard the root meaning of the word and actually why were they ever included in the funny pages although so was Rex Morgan MD, which admittedly was at least as funny as Beetle Bailey.

Not my circus

How much fun a barrel of monkeys would actually be would depend on how tightly they were packed and how long they’d been in there. Would this barrel be jam packed? Chock full? How much fun would it be to open a barrel of angry ravenous monkeys? No fun. I don’t even want to think about it. Also, under what system of measurement is the barrel anybody’s standard unit for a quantity of monkeys? Because I happen to know that crabs are measured by the bushel and while they too are eukaryotic bilaterally symmetrical critters, they’re nobody’s simile for hilarity.

Echinodermata

This may come as no surprise: “The starfish does not have the capacity to plan its actions.” Instead, its rudimentary nervous system simply allows for the leg with the strongest stimulus to move the whole creature toward the nearest food source. Starfish evolved from bilateral ancestors, but they only grow out certain parts. Wikipedia explains this better and funnier than I could ever could: “Mapping the expression patterns of genes that express differently across the body axes suggests that one could think of the body of a starfish as a disembodied head walking about the sea floor on its lips.”

A Common Error

It is normal to perceive faces in the knots and grain of wood, or cracks in plaster, or soap bubbles. This phenomenon is called pareidolia and we are told by science that it allows us to quickly recognize patterns and run away if we think we see a tiger. Science says nothing about thinking a potato looks like Elmer Fudd. Anyway. Can I be forgiven if sometimes when exposed to images of a bloated orange shape topped with wisps of something yellow spewing vile garbage from a hole in its anterior surface I momentarily mistake it for a human being?

Palermo Pachyderms

While Sicilian Dwarf Elephants would be a great name for a soccer club, it was an extant species until about 200,000 years ago when they were eaten all up by Cave Hyenas. A full-grown Sicilian Dwarf Elephant would come just about up to your waist and weigh around 300 kilograms, too heavy for a house pet but perhaps manageable outdoors if you have a big yard. But a single Sicilian Dwarf Elephant would probably get lonely so you’d want to host a family. Don’t forget plenty of fresh drinking water and a sturdy fence to keep the Cave Hyenas out.

Are velcro shoes next?

Why is it that when a man reaches a certain age he finds himself walking girl dogs? I don’t mean dogs which are girls. I mean the type of dog which when you look at it you think probably it belongs to a girl. Yet here you are holding a tiny little leash taking tiny little steps around the block. It’s not just me. Check out the sidewalks in your neighborhood or go to the dog park. Young guys with Pitties and Shepherds. Geezers with Schnauzers or Dachshunds. Or French Bulldogs. Cripes. I never dreamt it would be French Bulldogs.

The Prune Song

You’ve probably heard a lot of loose talk these days about disinterring the remains of Frank Crumit and extracting his DNA to produce a clone in order to record new versions of songs he originally committed to wax in the days of acoustic recording and so enhance the audio quality of those renditions. I want to join the growing groundswell of opposition by stating clearly my belief that this is a terrible, terrible idea. The limited sonic spectrum and dynamic range as well as the surface noise and scratches and pops are part of the charm of these vintage recordings.