A game of inches

I'm amused by big stuff like the world's biggest pencil or watering can. I like absurdly little things, too, like tiny bibles or those dogs you can put in a teacup. So I don't know how I missed this up to now: Wichita Falls, Texas, is home to the world's littlest skyscraper. It's a four story brick building, about 10 feet across and 18 feet deep. Unimpressive, but the good part is the guy who built it in 1919 bilked investors out of $200,000, having them sign off on blueprints specifying the skyscraper would be 480” tall. Which it is.

Nothing possible is worth doing.

I've been over this before: I keep thinking about what a terrible mistake it's been to outsource all the very best aspects of life. Other people act out our stories, tell our jokes, perform our music, play our games, teach our children, nurse our dying. Don't talk to me about efficiencies of scale and specialization. We're not termites. You can paint frescoes and pick potatoes with the same two hands. And yes- it's impossible to be expert, or even competent, at everything. Don't let that stop you. Just being alive is impossible; everyone fails at it within a few decades.

Thank me later.

Probably, right after I die, people will look back over these rants and see that taken as a whole they point the way to an all-encompassing philosophy that combines rationality and universal bonds of filial affection in such a way that once adoption of these ideas reaches a critical tipping point a virtually eternal epoch of global happiness becomes not only possible but actually inevitable and smiling crowds of blissful humans work together in orchards and pastures and gardens to produce without backbreaking toil everything they need for their simple joyous lives. I'm pretty sure that's what going to happen.

How we roll

You know how in crummy movies the Eiffel Tower is outside every Paris window, and every day in New York includes a ferry ride? Similarly, if you live in New Orleans, you get used to people making the assumption that your life is one endless crazed street party. But it's simply not so. This year, for instance, the city fathers have very sensibly suspended Mardi Gras festivities for a week in order to accommodate the serious business of hosting the Super Bowl, which involves parades, live music, skads of food and drink, and ecstatic crowds filling the streets. We're versatile.

Perspective

Dark matter is a kind of cosmic spackle that fills all the gaps in the universe. Nobody's seen it (it's dark), but it's the best way to explain the discrepancy between how much the whole universe seems to weigh and how much all the visible things weigh when they're added up. Less than 5 percent of the universe is actual normal stuff like you and me and the galaxies. Dark matter is 23 percent, and the entire rest of everything, 73 percent, is something called dark energy. What I'm saying is, cut yourself a great big piece of king cake.

Witness Protection

Good morning to you too. I'm pretty good, thanks. Why are you on my porch? Why, no, I haven't heard any especially good news, at least not so far today. What you got? You've come to warn me that unless I carefully follow a set of very specific printed directions which you are willing to provide, immediately following my death an invisible supernatural entity of infinite power will subject me to the most sublimely horrific tortures, agonies beyond all imagining, literally forever? I have to tell you, this is not particularly good news. Is this your idea of a shakedown?

Catsup is also acceptable

I'm a rebel, a loner, I make my own rules. I march to the beat of my own drummer. I answer to a higher power. I'm willing to take the unpopular stance to be true to myself. Ketchup does not belong on hot dogs. Nor mayo on corned beef. A pizza without anchovies is... well, less good than with. Still pretty good, though. I don't want to come off as hidebound and intransigent. Also, if you had half a hot dog you couldn't finish and you had already ketchupped the whole thing, I would still eat it. No big deal.