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.

Concrete thinking

Some vegans don't eat honey because it's an animal product. Some do, because honey isn't secreted by bees but actually manufactured by them and harvested by beekeepers who provide luxurious homes and protection from bears and skunks in exchange, making the whole thing a refreshing example of interspecies commerce, especially since the bees are free to leave at any time. Meanwhile, a study from The University of Texas at Austin and the University of California, Berkeley shows “landscapes with large amounts of paved roads... have lower numbers of ground-nesting bumblebees.” I'm guessing that's because cement is harder than dirt.

Although his sideburns were miraculous.

Everybody knows what today is, right? Of course. Matthew Arnold's 190th birthday. Belongs in the Gallery of Wacky 19th-Century Facial Hair, next to the oft-cited Horace Greeley. A smart guy, probably a nice guy, and somebody whose ideas are worth pondering as we search for the real meaning of this holiday season."To pass from a Christianity relying on its miracles to a Christianity relying on its natural truth is a great change. It can only be brought about by those whose attachment to Christianity is such, that they cannot part with it, and yet cannot but deal with it sincerely."

I could use some Victory Gin.

Oh. Okay. Now I get it. It's doublespeak. When they talk about a right, it means they're taking something away from us. The “right to life” means that certain elective medical procedures are not solely the business of you and your doctor; it's the government that gets the final decisive word. The “right to work” means that after all the strikes called and all the heads busted, you can no longer organize effectively and your grandfather froze his ass on the picket line for nothing. And the “right to bear arms?” We all know what that means.