Excerpt

This is an excerpt from a piece called "Just Say No To Rugs" by Dave Barry, Pulitzer winning humor columnist. He wrote for the Miami Herald till recently (and is now on sabbatical), and has published several books. In my book, he's one of the funniest people in the world.

With all due attribution, I can't help but post this excerpt. It had me in splits for a full ten minutes after I read it. Because I can see myself (and several others I know) doing exactly the same thing, in all seriousness.


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Mousse was a Labrador Retriever, which is a large enthusiastic bullet-proof species of dog made entirely from synthetic materials. This is the kind of dog that, if it takes an interest in your personal regions (which of course it does) you cannot fend it off with a blowtorch.

So anyway, Mike and Sandy had two visitors who wore expensive, brand-new down-filled parkas, which somehow got left for several hours in a closed room with Mousse. When the door was finally opened, the visibility in the room had been drastically reduced by a raging down storm, at the center of which was a large quivering down clot, looking like a huge mutant duckling, except that it had Mousse's radiantly happy eyes.

For several moments Mike and Sandy and their guests stared at this apparition, then Mike, a big, strong, highly authoritative guy, strode angrily into the room and slammed the door. He was in there for several minutes, then emerged, looking very serious. The down clot stood behind him, wagging its tail cheerfully.

"I talked to Mousse," Mike said, "and he says he didn't do it."

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I haven't found this piece of his online, but you can find other stuff he's written (if you don't already know) here.

Seven

Tagged again, darn it.

Like a Rohrschach test, these responses are straight off the top of my head. Let's hope you find them interesting, Shakey!


Seven things to do before I die - not that I expect this to happen - I think I'm immortal, ineffable and so on. Still...

• Get back to playing the piano.
• Travel through the Congo.
• Ditto the Savannah. Kenya, here I come.
• Also Latin America.
• Learn to play the saxophone. Alto sax a la Boots Randolph and Fausto Papetti.
• Win a Booker. Or similar. (Modesty is not my virtue. Practicality and realism are not my mores.)
• Swim with dolphins. Or whales (though preferably not Orcas)

Seven things I can't do:

• Abide cruelty to animals
• Make small talk
• Play bridge (despite years of begging people to teach me)
• Listen to music - any music - without tapping my feet or trying to sing along
• Deal with dishonesty / a particular brand of smarmy sucking-up
• Refrain from making cooing noises when faced with puppies
• Fall asleep without reading for a while (unless excessive alcohol renders me unable to see straight, and even then, I try, while my crossed eyes try in vain to follow my finger across the words)

Seven things that attract me to Europe (really? Does it have to be Europe, or can it be any place that fascinates one? Oh well, going with the flow)

• Language. Spanish, specifically.
• Old looming cathedrals
• History
• My colonial roots
• Wine & cheese
• Adventure, or the hope of it
• Je ne se quois

Seven excellent books:

• To Kill A Mockinbird - Harper Lee
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
• The Great Indian Novel - Shashi Tharoor
• The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
• Impossibility - John D. Barrow
• The complete Winnie-the-Pooh (OK, so it's not "a" book and I'm cheating. Still.) - A. A. Milne
• Falling Off The Map - Pico Iyer

Seven good movies:

• Jungle Book (Disney animated)
• Brokeback Mountain
• The Usual Suspects (speaking of which, almost every Kevin Spacey movie I've ever seen)
• Monsters, Inc. (yes, I'm an animation freak)
• The Untouchables
• Those Magnificent Men And Their Flying Machines
• Beckett

Seven people on whom to inflict this!

• Kraz
• Yesbob
• Shoe Fiend
• JAP
• Maverick
• Shonedeep
• Blah

Behold the Bootle

Yet another silver Japanese car in a sea of silver Japanese cars.




But isn't it sleek and shiny? :)

Apropos of nothing, here are some photographs.

Long straight roads on deceptive blue-sky sunny day (with bitter cold and frosty winds outside), we raced an Amtrak for a while. And out-ran it. But there's something magical about shiny steel train against flat, bland countryside.















The bridge on the mighty river Missouri. Perhaps it's the wrong season, or the wrong place, but it didn't seem that mighty. I've always been fascinated by bridges, though, so this picture is really my favourite from the whole trip.















Blue skies, bay and mud-brown earth. Coffee and music as we speed by. Heaven in a package. Not much of a picture, but go with it, go with it.















The St. Louis gateway arch, designed by Eero Saarinen and completed in 1965, towers 630 feet above the Mississippi river, commemorating America's westward exploration in the 19th century. Taller than the Washington Monument and more than twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty, even the giants from Mount Rushmore, had they bodies proportionate to the sie of their heads would be able to stroll through the arch.
The romance of the arch, however, lies in the idea of pioneering expeditions to the west, in intrepid explorers in boats and on horseback, crossing the river to go where no man they knew had gone before.
The Arch refused to fit into a single frame, no matter how we tried. Here's how it looks from below.















I had thought the view from the top would be something spectacular. It wasn't, in the normal sense of things. But for the first time, I could see the curvature of the earth. I checked this photograph with a ruler, just to be sure I wasn't imagining it. Yes, you can really see the curve.








Photographs courtesey R.