Something's Rotten in Denmark...

Your Thought For The Day:

DID YOU KNOW? Despite the obvious perils associated with such an endeavor, on a 20-degree night, an outdoor hot tub filled to capacity with five inebriated adult revelers is capable of producing enough steam to provide electricity for a family of six. This phenomenon, when coupled with the grace of God, is responsible for the fact that we all escaped relatively unscathed with not so much as a trace of frostbite.


Not a whole lot of news to report today. Yesterday was pretty much a typical Moberly day all in all, complete with shopping at Wal-Mart. The next check-out position over from where we waited in line is the Express Line. We had just finished paying for our groceries when suddenly Sheriff Brill and a SWAT team burst through the front door and arrested Fud Crumpacker for violation of Ordinance 27-B Subsection A; knowingly, with malice and forethought, attempting to bring more than 14 items into a posted Express Line.

Smiling and reading a prepared statement for the Eyewitness News 57 team, an effulgent Sheriff Brill proclaimed that surveillance teams had been in place for nearly three hours, waiting for Mr. Crumpacker "to perpetrate his heinous acts upon the good citizens of Randolph County". Apparently, it is Mr. Crumpacker's third offense of the same charge, and "the Sheriff's Department is up to the job of providing due diligence to its mission statement, the professed 'courteous but firm' administration of equal justice under the law for all citizens, for all offenses no matter how slight".

However, the statement goes on to say that the county will not be asking for the implementation of the death penalty under the "three strikes and you're out" clause, because "that boy is not hopeless... I'll rehabilitate this reckless scofflaw if it takes me twenty years".

I hate election years.

On the way home, I did something I rarely do. I picked up a family of blue-green algae who were hitch-hiking on Route 74. The wife wasn't too happy about it, but she went along with it under the condition that they stay in the back seat, and off the groceries.

The spokes-algae identified himself as Gak the Anabena. He was actually quite pleasant, if a tad malodorous. So deep was his gratitude, he said, that he would be willing to put down roots, with his multi-billion numbered family, in my back yard.

"You wouldn't happen to own livestock, would you?" he inquired hopefully.

I was forced to admit that I did not, although a healthy number of critters of different species inhabited the back acreage of my place.

"Splendid! You know, Mr. Church, blue-green algae has a history of steady nitrogen production, as well as a very strong relationship with fungi, an environmental power player with whom it produces many common lichens. We could keep your meadow green and nitrogenous for many years to come."

I looked him right in the nucleus and said, "Gak, if I allow you to stay, will you promise to stay out of my hottub? I've seen what algae can do to the most scrupulously treated vessels, and I'll not allow you to give my friends jock-itch!"

At this point, I think I heard what would pass for murmuring amongst the multitudes before Gak waved his Golgi Complex calling for silence. "Mr. Church-- may I call you Bubba?-- you see, I think you're laboring under a false presumption. You see, sir, we are really not algae at all, but cyanobacteria. We are associated with those nasty nemotodes only because of our color, not because of our environmental effects. Certainly you're not some bigot who would lump us all together because of our color, are you?"

Well, what could I do, at that point? If I didn't allow them to stay, I would be casting them to the whims of Sheriff Brill's anti-bacterial stereotypes. I simply couldn't live with myself if I did. But, I wasn't about to let them think that I was an easy touch. "Okay, pal, you and your clan can stay, but I don't intend to allow you to send for your relatives. If I see one sign of E. Coli or your fruit-fly cohorts, Drosophila melanogaster, it's Malathion for the bunch of you! Got it?"

I can only hope I was convincing.