Pity The Potted Potoroo

Crop circles crop up all over the world. They're universal. What's different about the crop circles in Tasmania is that they are generally acknowledged to be caused by stoned wallabies. Everywhere else, aliens get the nod.

They just practice good science in Tasmania, which is what you might expect from an island with actual devils. They don't need to make stuff up. We got muskrats, they got Musky Rat Kangaroos. They also got Wombats, they got Chocolate Wattled Bats, the got Pademelons and they got Dorcopsises. We don't even have Michael Jackson anymore.

The circles in Tasmania occur in poppy fields. Wallabies eat poppies, hop around in circles and pass out. That's the working hypothesis, but there are problems. Many Tasmanian marsupials are nocturnal, which is after Science's bedtime. Fortunately for Science, it requires only that a reasonable hypothesis be postulated in the daytime, preferably after coffee, and evidence gathered which would tend to support or disprove it. For instance, it has long been observed that sheep run around in circles when they're high on opium (see "Hobson's Ewephoria: Harmful Habit or Herding Breakthrough?"). If it can be demonstrated that wallabies tend to tilt and topple in a similar fashion, the hypothesis is supported.

But Science also demands consideration of competing contentions. Could a different animal perhaps be responsible for poppy trompling? Other likely marsupial candidates in the territory include the Long-Nosed Potoroo and the Eastern Barred Bandicoot. For potoroo and bandicoot alike, the hypothetical model put forth would predict a poppy-proximal profusion of munchies, primarily--in the case of the bandicoots--grubs, bugs and cockchafers. Many maintain that the mention of munchies has bolstered the bandicoot bandwagon, their beliefs being borne out by reports, in the Ringarooma region, of strewn-about chewed-upon cockchafer chunks (or their wrappers), though research remains inconclusive.

A pity, says potoroo partisan Peter Parraweena, part-time professor of agrobiology at Perth. Proponents of the Potted Potoroo Postulate point to the possible presence of poppies in potoroo poop, but scat is scarce and proof elusive. Gilbert's Potoroo is even scarcer, and is seldom suggested as a source of circles due to its preference for truffles over poppies, and the possibility that it is still extinct.

It is further noted that debauchery rates among bandicoots--but for the oddball arboreal blowout--though largely unknown, haven't grown, and are thought in the main to be waning and way below wallabies'.

In conclusion, few options obtain in the crumpling of crops, and our culprit may well be the wallaby. The preponderance of evidence, including the odd observation of wobbly wallabies, tends to corroborate the hopping wallaby poppy crop-drop hypothesis. Conjecture continues, but the key to the consensus among Tasmanian scientists is the sighting, in each circle's center, of a single woozy wallaby. Science-wise, it's considered a slam dunk.

Elsewhere, though, adherents of the alien invasion theory remain, as always, unabashed, espousing an easy and elegant extra-terrestrial explanation to account for available evidence. An alien ship, they assert, might alight in the opium field, thus producing the circle as seen, and expelling one previously abducted woozy wallaby upon exiting.

With somewhat more vigor than rigor, the advocates of this argument advance a three-pronged analysis. Prong One: You can't trust anything the Government says. Prong Two: the circles are so precise and of such geometric perfection that they must be the product of beings in possession of sophisticated technology, proving the source is alien, and hardly mammalian, and that would exclude frat boys as well as marsupials. Which is unassailably true, assuming that by "sophisticated technology" they are not referring to a stick and a piece of string.

Prong Three will be announced to coincide with the release of the T-shirt.

Scientists scoff. "Whenever I come upon a pile of potoroo poop," says Tasmanian feces species specialist Albert Abawaggabagga, "I conclude it has come from a potoroo, and not a Crap Cloud."

Traveling Light

Nippon Airways has announced a new program of encouraging their passengers to use the toilet before boarding aircraft. This simple step was calculated to save enough weight and fuel to reduce the airline's carbon emissions. (An uptick in methane gas production was not factored in, so it may be a wash for the climate as a whole.) So far the program is voluntary, but I think they'll get a lot of cooperation. The Japanese have been jammed in together for so long that they have developed an admirable sense of community. We're way more lone-ranger here in America and I suspect such a request would cause considerable strain. Nobody tells us what to do.

The only viable approach an American airline could take would be to appeal to our competitive nature. They could set it up like a tournament, double-elimination of course; maybe offer t-shirts to the winners ("I lost weight--Ask me how!"). I know I'd never be in the running because I don't perform well under pressure. There I'd be, worrying not only that I packed too much shit, but that my shit was too packed.

My suspicions about the obstinacy of Americans were confirmed when I went on line to read about the airline's new policy, and found the article followed by a thread of startlingly angry comments. These were all courtesy of the global-warming denial set, who suffer from a condition that appears on the same chromosome as poor grammar and incivility. It's hard for me to imagine getting that worked up about such a simple, straightforward request, but this was a crew all ready to hit the town halls yelling "Hell, no, we won't go." I don't know what you can say about a group that regards constipation as a thoughtful response to the threat of Climate Change Scolding. Almost anything passes as a movement these days, I guess. Well, they're welcome to it. They may not be backed up by science, but at least they're backed up.

My only issue with all of this is that it legitimizes an activity around this house that I had been trying to ignore for some time. Dave has such an enthusiastic metabolism that he likes to monitor it. When he's feeling especially productive, he likes to weigh himself before and after taking a dump. I tend to be dismissive about this little hobby but that's because I, personally, unlike some people I know, have never bounded out of the bathroom (with a new spring in my step) and announced that I just lost seven pounds in three minutes. And if I had, I would have gained it all back by somehow coming into contact with a vapor of potato chip molecules. Those of us who are put together like an ancient stone-age fertility fetish have missed our glory time by several thousands of years, and we can be cranky about it.

The only way I can see this working out for me is at the doctor's office, where I am already in the habit of subtracting a certain number of pounds from what their scale says based on a universal standard (one pound per clothing item, including underwear, and two pounds per shoe). Now, inspired by Nippon Airways, I can also knock off several pounds for Digested Items In Progress. It doesn't really make sense that I'd prefer to think I was 138 pounds and full of shit, rather than 143, but I do. I'll be needing an aisle seat, please.

Things That Go "Just Dump The Bowl In The Bag" In The Night

Hands down, the Halloween costume I loved best was the leopard outfit from fourth grade. And I would remember that costume even if I hadn't peed in it on the way home from the parade. It was a spotted beauty, an all-in-one triumph of plush that zipped up the back, with a separate slip-on head. There was no wire in the tail and no plastic on the face, so all the animation and glee emanated unfiltered from its occupant. I didn't wet myself again until after I was old enough to drink beer.

For the parade, we all marched around the blacktop at John Marshall Elementary, witches and ghosts and fuzzy leopards in Buster Brown shoes. There were prizes, and I was confident I'd be a contender. But, to my horror, the first place went to Cynthia, frothy in pink and white tulle, blond curls bobbing from her recent Toni, a fairy princess with a tiara and wand. Why would anyone, I whined, want to look all foofy like that, if they could have leopard fur instead? Why should that win the prize? It was a startlingly apt foreshadowing of adolescence, which I didn't understand either.

Sadly, I outgrew the leopard suit, and there followed several years of Hobo attire, a costume based on what we had (stick, bandanna, tin cups) and what we lacked (money). My sister Bobbie took me out trick-or-treating and we used pillowcases for the booty, which at least allowed us to outscore the princesses holding out their tiny plastic pumpkins.

As teenagers, we didn't dress up, but Halloween parties started up again in college. I took a page from the hobo handbook by using what I had (vats of eye makeup) and what I lacked (modesty and parental supervision). Gypsy, Mata Hari, Exotic, all were variations on an age-old theme. Eventually my need for this sort of attention waned and I was able to get more creative again.

As an earnest hippie mama in my first apartment, I prepared for trick-or-treat duty from the grownup side of the door. I filled a bowl with polished apples to distribute to a grateful public and waited for my first customer. She was a frothy white angel and she stood before me, three feet tall, feathery wings spread wide, holding out her bag and smiling like a pageant queen. I made suitable admiring comments and dropped a shiny apple into her bag, whereupon she peered inside, looked up and said--batting her eyelashes beneath her halo--"You broke my fucking cookies!" Apples have never been a good idea.

My first Halloween in this house, I was much better equipped to greet trick-or-treaters, and with a large bowl of candy bars in hand, I answered the bell to behold a truly frightening sight. A single child in a cheap plastic mask slouched at the door, backed up by his entire family from older siblings to aunts and uncles and grandparents, none over the age of thirty and all holding out king-size pillowcases like threats. I fed the gaping maws like a finch provisioning a nest of condors, and then the last one gave the pillowcase one more shake, curtly requesting "some for the baby at home." A vision came of the baby, left behind to hold down the fort with the TV, a carton of cigarettes and a sippy-flask. I looked down the street and saw similar hordes on the horizon. Within a half hour I was in a state of panic and searching the pantry for more goods to feed the bag man. I called the neighbors for reinforcements, found them in the same boat and sent emissaries to the grocery store, which was down to crackers and Jujubes.

The next year we laid in an enormous cache of candy bars, distributed them to the fourteen adorable children who came up to the porch, and had several hundred pieces left over. So that worked out.

On those occasions we were invited to parties as adults, we did our best to dress up. My Black Widow Spider was spooky enough. But nothing sent people screaming in terror down the highway like my greatest inspiration: Postal Worker. Behold, and try not to wet yourself.

Alchemy and Ferret Snot

Alarming news from this part of the world: the first case of human-to-animal transmission of the swine flu has been recorded. Right here in Portland a man was found to have passed along the H1N1 virus to his pet ferret. Officials at OSU were able to confirm the presence of the virus in their nasal secretions. It's a pretty stunning development. That's right: the state of Oregon employs a ferret snot collector.

God Bless America! I'm proud to live in a country that employs a ferret snot collector. I've just about had it with people dumping on gummint employees. I admit I was the closest thing to a gummint employee myself, as a letter carrier for the United States Postal Service. We aren't really government workers. We don't get any tax money or anything. But people still think of us a representing the government. We're relatively popular, like national pets; we're like any other scruffular sort that bounds up on the porch, scratches itself, and gives you things you don't really want. We're kind of cute. But I did get weary of walking into a business and hearing the office wag bellow, "Hey, Uncle Sam! Workin' hard, or hardly working?" This, after he has only just clicked onto the spreadsheet he uses as a camouflage for his Facebook page.

There are a lot of people who are somehow able to hate potholes and taxes at the same time--I know!--and these people are inclined to disparage government workers. They think of them as paper-shuffling, tax-sucking Faceless Bureaucrats. When in fact your average government worker is monitoring salmon runs, inspecting meat for cooties, making sure your poop has somewhere to go, and teaching children--not only your adorable children, but also the soiled ones with nits and nasal secretions from down the street. It's a lot of good work, really.

Meanwhile, in the private sector, Americans are also working very hard. The lucky ones are holding down more than one job, in fact. They aren't necessarily manufacturing anything, which we prefer to leave to Chinese workers, who are cheaper. Or building anything, which we prefer to leave to Mexican workers, who are cheaper. No, it's that old innovative spirit of ours that's really coming through for us. Cool thing: where once we had people who were so clever they could make something out of nothing, now we have people who are making nothing out of something. They might start with, say, a little batch of loans; it's just paper, but it represents real property. Then they take that and turn it into more paper, and electrons, and they add in some vapor and fairy shavings and give it a good spin, and now they have a truly large wad of paper and electrons. It's pure alchemy: it's magnificent. No one knows what the hell it is, but it's shiny, and they sell it off to the greedy and gullible, who in turn sell it off to the gullible and trusting, who will now work till they die.

So, okay, it's nothing so useful as a widget, or an analysis of flu statistics. In fact they have made nothing at all of value, except money, but holy moley, what a pile of it. And they have made it with a wink and a nod and the pensions and final fifteen years of thousands and thousands of lives. The beauty part is they don't even have to fork over much in the way of taxes, because they've invested a little of their boodle in politicians and radio mouths to convince voters that it's their taxes that have impoverished them.

I'm not against private enterprise, but I'll take a ferret snot collector any day.

Lady. Just Take The Corn

"Ask me anything about the Code of Hammurabi," our friend Dave said. Dave, at age 33, has just gone back to college. He doesn't make normal conversation anymore.

As it happens, I did have a question about the Code of Hammurabi ("What is the Code of Hammurabi?"). But I decided to study up first, out of a life-long desire to not look stupid. Turns out it's a code of law out of ancient Babylon; it's nearly 4,000 years old, Hammurabi was its author, and he got his authority straight from the sun god. Actually from the sun god via Marduk, who was great among the Igigi, so close enough. There are 282 laws in the code, almost. He skipped number thirteen because it was bad luck. That, of course, makes Number Fourteen number thirteen, but as we all know, you can fool nearly everyone with the right labeling (see "Clear Skies Initiative"). Hammy had his laws inscribed in stone and set up in the town square, written in plain everyday Akkadian, so everyone could understand them. Only two or three people at the time knew how to read, but he still gets points for transparency.

The laws 66 through 99 are missing. It is thought that a fragment of the basalt upon which the laws were recorded was accidentally sheared off when the scribe reached over with his foot to keep a potter's wheel going.

But even with what we have remaining, the law seems exhaustive. The same offense will trigger different consequences depending upon the stature of its victim. Thus there are separate laws for transgressions against a man, or his wife, or his slave, or his ox. Hammurabi even covered his ass. That said, there are many similarities. For instance, they tend to begin "if a man should..." and end with "...he shall be put to death." Some variations apply.

There are penalties for looting (death), robbery (death), theft (death), fibbing about a theft (death), smacking your father (hands cut off), and accidental over-irrigation (somebody owes someone some corn). If a man accuses his wife of infidelity, she can swear an oath and be right back in the game (#131). If someone else accuses the man's wife of infidelity, she must go jump in the river (#132). Similarly, if a female tavern keeper dispenses drinks on a cash-only basis and refuses to accept corn in payment, even if it's more corn than the drink was worth, she has to go jump in the river (#108). This is so even if the customer had been running a tab for months and she already has corn out the wazoo. Evidently the mighty Euphrates kicked some serious fanny, and in ambiguous cases Hammurabi was willing to let the gods sort it out.

Hammurabi even introduced the first tort reform (#2): if a man accuses another man of something, the accused has to jump in the river. But if he is proven innocent (by failing to die), the accuser is put to death, and the accused gets his house. This would have the effect, of course, of discouraging frivolous accusation. As a bonus, in ancient Babylon, if you were a disreputable sort with superb swimming skills, you could make a killing in real estate.

Hammurabi was a man of vision and power. He alone decreed who would live, who would die, and who would go blind, like a one-man Blue Cross of Mesopotamia. On the other hand, if he had wanted a single-payer health plan, Babylon would have had a single-player health plan.

I asked Dave if he'd ever heard of Hammurabi. To my surprise, he had. "It's an award given every year in the masonry field," he said. "The Hammurabi Award." I thought he had to be making it up. Couldn't be the same Hammurabi; had to be a different Hammurabi.

"No, really," he insisted. "It's given for Excellence in Execution."

Same guy.

The Dog's Lunch

Dave has an affinity for terriers, and they look good on him. So when Mary Ann got her new dog Cooper, a pound mutt, we took lots of pictures. This is her first terrier.

Cooper will actually let Mary Ann get some work done. Her previous two dogs borrowed heavily from the border-collie genome, and tended to last about three minutes on a "stay" before they reminded her that it had been about three minutes since she taught them anything. Consequently they both knew several thousand different things to do, fetch, slide down, point at, look for, etc., and it was a miracle she was ever able to get anything done at all. Ultimately in order to have ten minutes to herself she resorted to telling them to open the front door, close it behind them, pop down to the grocery store, pick up some evaporated milk--not the condensed, and the 5-ounce, not the 12-ounce--bag up some arugula, count out the exact change, drop a quarter in the Jerry's Kids box, see who was on the cover of People and report back. And if she was lucky, she was finished wiping by then. Cooper is a little more relaxed.

Our old dog Boomer, also a terrier mutt, was a good fit for us. She was so cute it wobbled your heart. She was so cute as a puppy that when she'd roll over and piddle on herself, that was cute, too. We snapped her up and stocked up on Lysol and called it a bargain. She was affectionate and loyal, but she also had an independent spirit that we appreciated, because we are not the sort of folk who want a dog's undivided attention. It was months before we were able to observe how she got out of the back yard, because it hadn't occurred to us that a fourteen-pound dog could climb a six-foot hedge, hand-over-hand. Then off she'd go on her daily route. Visits included the neighbor man, a set of pre-toppled garbage cans at the end of the alley, and the local tavern, where she'd enjoy a nice bowl of Heidelberg while the proprietor dialed us up for retrieval.

The neighbor man thought she was so cute that he routinely gave her as much food as she would take in. She could maintain that for the amount of time it took to get back home, where she would knock urgently at the front door, run inside and hurl on the floor, presenting us with the neighbor's dinner in virtually original condition. "That's bigger than her whole head," we would marvel in disbelief, and then she'd take two paces and do it again. Fortunately, she never ate the baking powder biscuits. Those were strictly for burying in the back yard. She didn't know how to climb back over the hedge, and so she would knock at the front door, run to the back door, shoot outside and stuff the biscuits in the garden somewhere. Boomer's Biscuit Mulch kept the weeds down for years.

For a dog this resourceful, dry kibble was definitely the food of last resort; she'd take one at a time and crunch it down, lips peeled back in distaste. We went through almost two bags of it in her entire lifetime. Who knows how much longer than seventeen years she would have lived with a proper diet?

I guess it's just as well we never had children, because we probably overvalue the ability of animals to fend for themselves. Consequently, in the post-Boomer years, we have become cat people. We are still the recipients of intense affection, expressed somewhat differently in the form of head-bonking, eyebrow-chewing, and kneecap-gnawing, but now we can go away for up to three days, leaving behind a critter with world-class napping skills and a rich interior life. When we come home, it will be to a very well-rested cat with three days of love stored up and a kneecap jones. Ain't nobody going to sleep tonight.

Evolution, Explained

There still seems to be some misunderstanding about evolution and creation, and I'm just the gal to clear things up once and for all. You're welcome!

The evolutionary biologists are constrained by the scientific method, wherein hypotheses must be tested rigorously and either found to be supported or abandoned. The creationists are constrained by the premise that the Bible was dictated word for word by God Almighty and does not need any editing. It is not true that this is a conflict between non-believers and believers, as there are plenty of theists among the ranks of evolutionary biologists. It would be more accurate to say that this is an argument between those who believe in God, and those who believe in God but do not believe he has any imagination.

There are a number of objections the creationists raise to the theory of evolution:

One. Evolution has never been observed. Whereas this does appear to be the case, at least among humankind since the Scopes Trial, 84 years is not considered by scientists to be enough time to really get the evolution ball rolling.

Two. No transitional fossils ("missing links") between man and the apes have been found. This is patently untrue, and very unfair to Liza Minnelli's ex-husband David Gest, who has only begun to fossilize.

Three. The doctrine of irreducible complexity holds that some entities, such as the eyeball, are so complex that they had to have been created in one fell swoop, and not a sequence of lesser swoops. This illustrates a misunderstanding of the biological mechanism in question. Evolutionary biologists would note that an adaptation is adopted if it confers some sort of advantage to its owner, but this does not have to relate to its ultimate function. There are many examples of this in everyday life. For instance, the very complex device currently being used worldwide to hold up windows that are missing their sash weights was originally developed to allow humans to watch Kevin Bacon on the small screen anytime they wanted to. A similarly complex example is the United States Congress, consisting of 535 individual moving parts, if we include Robert Byrd. Every one of these parts came into being to fulfill a purpose of its own, from the metabolism of lobbyist money into defense contracts to the metabolism of lobbyist money into personal wealth, and yet in aggregate they are able to hold up health care reform.

Four. The creationists reject out of hand the notion that life can arise out of a primordial soup situation involving a few key molecules, water, and a source of energy. However, this can and has been demonstrated in a number of areas, including the laboratory setting, deep-ocean vents, and my shower, where just the other day, using only water, heat and whatever inanimate matter had sloughed off my own body, I was able to remove the drain cover and pull up an entire mammal.