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Eavesdropping
Right now, everyone who sits at my table in the dining room is sick. There’s a bug going around. I had it last week. So, sitting at a table that seats four alone, I found myself eavesdropping on the conversation at the table next to me which, believe it or not, in an LGBTQ+ assisted…
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The Canadian Plan
As we brace ourselves for four more years of racist white supremacists like Stephen Miller, a man who always looks like he just ate a baby, occupying senior un-elected positions in the White House advising the man we did elect in probably the greatest act of self-harm imaginable for our country in its history, our…
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Time Will Tell
Ever since I was old enough to think thoughts deeper than “I want a candy bar,” I have had this very unscientific, wholly subjective feeling (notion, inkling) that most things, on the whole, are just getting better. And nowhere is that more obvious than the area of medicine. As early as 1592, parish officials in…
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Medieval Humor
Imagine yourself inside a Medieval scriptorium. In the Middle Ages (roughly 500–1500 CE) books were written and copied by hand, as Johannes Gutenberg wouldn’t invent the printing press till around 1440. Scriptorium is a Latin word meaning “place for writing;” a scriptorium was most often found in a monastery where manuscripts (handmade books) were written…
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Consider the Anus Radish
Now at first blush, it may seem I chose this topic for its shock value, for its “ewwww” factor, or just because it is silly and intriguing at the same time, so it made me laugh out loud and say quietly to myself “hmmmm.” On reflection, I think all of those things are true. It…
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Philosophus hortulanus esset
Two things animate me. The first actually came second, and the second first. As an undergraduate, I studied philosophy, and that remains to this day my keenest interest. But before that, when I was a teenager, I worked after classes let out for the day at the Armstrong Garden Centers on San Fernando Boulevard in my hometown…
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Catsup vs. Ketchup
As we prepare to celebrate our nation’s birthday tomorrow with hot dogs and fireworks – there is something that is gnawing at me. And that something is ketchup. I mean, am I the only one who is bothered by it sometimes being presented as ketchup and other times as catsup? Is there a difference between…
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Yankee Doodle mistakes feather for pasta?
We all know the Revolutionary War of Independence ditty Yankee Doodle, how it was, originally, a taunt made by the British soldiers of the revolutionary fighters, and how the Americans appropriated it and made it their own, in much the same way as the founders of Bitch magazine for feminists gave their publication a title…
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On Bathtubs and Bunkum
On December 28, 1917, American journalist and cultural critic Henry Louis Mencken, better known as H. L. Mencken, published an article in the New York Evening Mail entitled “A Neglected Anniversary.” In it, he described the history of the bathtub in America, making particular note of how people, believing bathtubs posed a health risk, were slow to…
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Thar She Blows!
I am a fan of Monty Python, if you have been living under a rock and don’t know – the British comedy troupe formed in 1969 in England when Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin joined forces. Of course, I’m a fan of the movies (1975’s Monty Python…
Your mileage may vary.