Trigger Warning: Triggers!

Hello. I was going to write at length about the recent gun rampage in Texas enabled by hypocritical, soulless, pusillanimous, contemptible, invertebrate, expedient, conscienceless, craven, unprincipled, chicken-hearted, self-interested, intellectually dishonest, cowardly, weak-willed, vomitously amoral pro-gun Republican politicians, but I didn’t want to tediously pile on to what everyone intelligent has already said, even if I do actually believe people like Texas Governor Greg Abbott are literally complicit in the deaths.

It’s too much, too soon, not the appropriate time at all for pointing out that Abbott — who says his “heart is with the people of Allen” — is the guy whose brain triumphantly supported and signed into law an act that permits Texans to conceal-carry any firearm they want anytime they want without no license or any hey-how-do-ya-do or nothin’. Nor is it the appropriate time and place to quote the recently particularly reprehensible Megyn Kelly, who had the gall to tweet this: Serious q for gun control advocates: you’ve failed to effect change. Pls face it. You can’t do it, thx to the 2A. We’re all well aware you don’t like that fact, but fact it is. What’s next? Must we just stay here sad, concerned, lamenting? Could we possibly talk OTHER SOLUTIONS? … as though gun-nuts were not the clear and present cause of the current massacres, and as if they haven’t been feverishly talking up “other solutions” for decades as a way to divert attention from the only potentially workable solution because they themselves blocked it, and who will conveniently and baselessly suggest — she’s a lawyer and presumably knows better — that the Second Amendment prohibits any restrictions on gun ownership, which it absolutely does not. No lesser authority than strict constructionist Antonin Scalia wrote in a 2008 decision that no right, including the right to bear arms, is absolute — and all rights are subject to reasonable prohibitions and regulations. This is standing law.

But instead of tediously continuing to beat that dead elephant, I am going to deliver to you a song by the not-famous-enough Roy Zimmerman, who I believe is the best contemporary political-protest folkie out there. I discovered him, and this song, several years ago after I decided to write a song about three words; I had even talked to my friend Eric Brace, frontman for Last Train Home, about collaborating on it. And then I did some basic research and found Zimmerman on the Web, and realized that what I wanted to do had already been done better than I could ever do it. It’s from 2015, when it seemed to many — naively — that nothing could get worse. Here is Roy Zimmerman and “Thoughts and Prayers.” It’s just three minutes. Take the time. I’ll wait for you right here.

Here is our Gene Pool Gene Poll for today. Note to people reading this as an email: To access the poll, you have to switch to geneweingarten.substack.com, and click on this new post.

Speaking of our sick society, I should note I have never been directly injured by random maniacal violence. But I am still deserving of your thoughts and prayers, and expect you to furnish them forthwith, because a major part of my self-expression has been stifled — nay, extinguished — by the onslaught of anonymous street savagery. I used to be a much more effective smart-ass, making comments to anyone else I was with about a nearby perpetrator of bad behavior, but loud enough for the perp to hear. For example, when a fully grown adult — almost always male — rides his bike not in the street like grownups should but instead on a narrow city sidewalk, and then toots his little tinkly handlebar bell to ask you to move out of the way. In the past, I’d have remarked “He should get a tricycle!” a little too loudly as he passed, but now I dasn’t, for fear of getting my head blown off. Weep for my suffering, people.

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It’s been a very busy news week and good things can get lost in the churn, so in case you missed it I want to direct you to a rather astonishing moment spinning off the Trump-E. Jean Carroll lawsuit. Certain moments from Trump’s prior deposition have been publicized, including what is now my favorite, especially when put in the right context and linked to the appropriate photos and videos, which we curate for you here exclusively, linked to below.

A central bizarrely misogynistic oinking point in Trump’s defense was that he never touched Ms. Carroll nor would ever rape Ms. Carroll because “she’s not my type.” Well, at one point during his questioning, Carroll’s lawyer passed a photo of Trump with his then-wife Ivana, along with Carroll and Carroll’s then-husband, John Johnson. Trump took a look at the photo and said he recognized Marla Maples, his other ex-wife, and pointed to E. Jean Carroll, the woman he would never touch or lust for or have sex with because she was not his type. When confronted with this ghastly and potentially costly error, he said the photo was “very blurry.” It’s the same photo you just saw. Check out its spectacular blurriness!

(FWIW, I don’t think Carroll’s lawyer set Trump up, though it would have been a masterstroke. The simple reason is: However caddish and superficial and arrogant a man is, you have to assume he can pick his wife out of a lineup.)

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Federal law requires me to insert some boring but necessary boilerplate here. I’ll make it quick:

After the intro (which you are reading now), there will be some early questions and answers  added on –  and then I will keep adding them as the hour progresses and your fever for my opinions grows and multiplies and metastasizes.  To see those later Q&As, refresh your screen every once in a while. 

As always, you can also leave comments. They’ll congregate at the bottom of the post, and allow you to annoy and hector each other and talk mostly amongst yourselves. Though we will stop in from time to time.

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In important medical news, here are the results of an important study from important scientists in Hamburg, Germany, that importantly concludes — you will think I am kidding until you read it — that scrotums are ugly.

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And here is a magnificent moment in British radio, involving an interview with a New Zealander. Apparently, Kiwi patois can be confusing, even to Brits.

And last, in the in-case-you-missed-it department:

It has been coming into focus why Fox jettisoned their cash cow, Tucker Carlson, and it’s not his egregious hypocrisy and dishonesty in airing claims about a stolen election, claims he knew were bogus. Other Fox personalities did that, too, and still have jobs. It seems to have been largely influenced by one text he sent to an executive at Fox news but that didn’t become public until recently. Here it is in its entirety, courtesy The New York Times.

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I’m sure I’d hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?

Almost everyone focused on the line about how White men fight, which is, indeed, a truly sickening formulation. But to me, that’s not the biggie. To me the biggie is that this text snuffs out for good a reluctantly generous suspicion many people had — me included — that Tucker’s viciously dishonest, hard-right politics were largely a circus act for the benefit of a stupid, gullible, ravening audience; that this well educated, well-spoken, intelligent news guy didn’t — couldn’t — really believe that racist, xenophobic, manipulatively alarmist crapola. Now we know he could, and did.

Mother Jones unearthed a video that it believes was almost certainly the one Tucker watched. Here it is. You can watch it and draw your own conclusions about, say, whether this was a “fight” as Tucker calls it, or an unprovoked mob attack, whether Tucker had any basis for calling the guy “an antifa creep,” whether it was “three against one, at least,” which you might feel is technically defensible but only in the sense that you allow enormous flexibility to “at least,” as in “there have been three mass gun killings in the United States this year, at least.”

But here’s what really isn’t open to interpretation. In the end Tucker does his soul searching and concludes that he is noble because he wants to be a better man than the “antifa creep” upon whom he initially, viscerally, wished disfigurement, dismemberment or death, but about whom he really knows nothing except he’s a Black guy getting beaten up by a White mob. After all his pensive cerebration and self examination and wretched angst-loaded introspection, Tucker still doesn’t get it. He reached inside and came up empty.

Okay, I’m done ranting now.

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Oh, just this second, a news story came in: An anus in Louisiana shot a little girl in the back of the head. She’d been playing hide-and-seek on his lawn.

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Before we retire into your questions and my answers, here is today’s Fud item, the feature in which I defy the endless trend of bloviation in online recipes and deliver one of my favorites in four sentences or fewer. Today, merely two sentence to give you fried green tomatoes.

Slice the tomatoes into discs roughly a third of an inch thick, sprinkle a tiny pinch of sugar front and back on each one. Coat each disc with plain flour, then beaten eggs, and finally plain breadcrumbs; fry in at least a half inch of vegetable oil and flip, until both sides are golden brown.

Okay, here come your questions and my answers. On Sunday’s surprise Gene Pool, I asked for some questions about life, huge or trivial, that have always bedeviled you, and promised to try to answer them badly. We have some coming in, as well as a continued surge of Personal Humiliations. (On Sunday I also linked to the first ten days of the Barney & Clyde comic strip, which you might check out if you haven’t read it yet. )

Q: Re the opening B&C strips -- I have read it from the inception and I don't remember ever seeing another instance of Clyde removing his hat. In fact I'd forgotten that one from the first day. It makes him look 20 years older.

A: Right you are. A lot of things change organically over time during the life of a comic strip, including the art. (Another reader said he or she didn’t really recognize the early Clyde) Here is the original Charlie Brown, for example.

Both Barney and Clyde have changed in appearance, but only a little. The bigger changes have been in the narrative relationships. Cynthia and her stepmother, Lucretia, have reached a entante that approaches, but never quite achieves, love. Barney has softened a bit, due to Clyde’s influence. We see that Duane Butkis is hopelessly in love with Ms. Foxx but too much of a coward to broach it. Grandpa Ebenezer is slowly developing dementia, in a comical and cantankerous way. All of this is natural, as the characters interact and grow. It’s not just comic strips. In the pilot episode of Star Trek, Spock was emotional, even panicky.

If you’d like free Barney & Clyde updates every week, there’s a way: Counterpoint, the syndicator of the strip, has a new Substack that does just that. You can join here Note: They ask for a pledge of future money, but you can just decline it; if you do, they will withdraw their request for your credit card and start the free deliveries.

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Q: In your last Gene Pool, you asked why radio stations give temperatures from several locations in the area, even when the temperatures are essentially identical. Here’s the answer, from me, a broadcast executive (not a meteorologist) who once hosted a weather show: The stating of local names and temps is deliberate, to reinforce the service area of the TV or radio station. Listeners like to hear their hometown’s names on the air. Truly. It’s a marketing strategy that goes back to broadcasting’s earliest days.

A: WOW! Okay, this is a rarity. We have actually gotten an authoritative answer to something, instead of speculation and snark! I accept it. It’s kinda … sleazy, though. No?

TIMELY TIP: If you're reading this right now on an email:   Click here to get to my webpage, then click on the top headline (In this case, “Trigger Warning …”) for my full column, and comments, and real-time questions and answers. And you can refresh and see new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post from about noon to 1 ET.

Q: What would you think would be the most embarrassing way to die?

--Jon Gearhart, Des Moines.

A: Can you think of anything worse than the way David Carradine died, found in a hotel room in Bangkok, having killed himself accidentally by hanging, via autoerotic asphyxiation. 

This cheerful subject reminds me of something a cop in Detroit once told me, when I was at the Free Press.  I’d asked him something like what is the biggest secret that cops know and the general public does not.  First, he put it off the record, and then said that when men are found dead of heart attacks  in a hotel room, a surprisingly large part of the time there is porn nearby and semen on the bed.  The orgasm evidently  triggered the heart attack.  The cops seldom if ever tell the family, because there is no reason to, and every reason not to.   An actually admirable police secret. 

Q: Every time I watch an MLB game one of the announcers reports that injured pitcher Otis Cribbelcrobis is doing better and that the preceding day he had thrown a “bullpen”. They never say where he threw it to. I understand the point but would it be so hard to say Otis threw in the bullpen? 

A: Even better are when these shortenings involve injuries.  They say that a guy “has a hamstring.”   But the best is when a guy “has a groin.”

Q: Semi-humiliation: I was working in a shoe store (anyone remember Fayva?). An older, kind of scruffy looking guy came in towards the end of the day. I swear to this day, he asked if we had any "dirty books." I gave him a puzzled look and said, no, but down the road about two miles on the left you might find some. Well, that was the location of the nearest porn shop. I realized later on, that he was asking for "dirty bucks." Those kind of brown. brushed leather shoes,, as opposed to the white ones I was familiar with. I'd never heard of the brown ones being referred to as "dirty."

A: Yeah, it’s a real term, I checked.   Misheard things can be bedeviling.  I once was in the Metro and passed by a Spanish-speaking woman asking a Metro employee how to get to Boston.  He had no idea what she was saying. My Spanish is paltry, but existent.  I tried to help.  I told her how to take the yellow line to the airport, and told her the airline I thought had regular flights to Beantown.  She listened, and nodded, and seemed Concerned.  As I was about to send her on this journey, it occurred to me she had only a pocketbook, no baggage, which is when I realized she wanted to go to “Ballston,” a Metro stop in the close-in D.C. suburbs.  I amended my advice.  

Your question also reminds me of the old joke about the duck who walks into a bar and asks for grapes.  Bartender says, no, this is a bar.  We don’t have grapes.  Next day, same duck, same bar, same question.   Bartender says, get outta here and don’t come back.  If you do I’m gonna nail your beak to the bar stool.   Next day, duck returns, asks, “Got any hammers?”  Bartender fumes, says no.  Duck says, “Great.  Got any grapes?”  But you knew that one. 

Q: Discovering Clyde's identification (in 2010) as Queen Beatrix was especially funny, because of a hilarious incident when the comedian Hape Kerkeling dressed up as the Queen and drove up to the (German) Presidential Palace in Berlin - and they let him in!  (The real Queen Beatrix was due to show up just a few minutes later.) Clips of the incident (on 25 April 1991) are available all over the Internet (they are very funny, but all in German, of course).  

A: It’s delightful.  I love how aggressive he is.  And he does look faintly like Beatrix. 

Q: You,  and Dave Barry before you, often mention certain words or phrases that would make good band names.  I'm wondering, when did bands start having nonsensical names instead of, say, the Glenn Miller Orchestra?  (Not saying I dislike the nonsensical names; just wondering when and how the trend started.)

A:  I did some research.  Some relatively contemporary band names are “Congratulations on Your Decision to Become a Pilot” and “Flowers From the Man Who Shot Your Cousin,” which seems to be a rather good band.   In terms of the oldest weird name, I can’t say this is definitively the oldest – it probably isn’t – but in the mid 1920s, there was a good Georgia Hillbilly band named The Skillet Lickers.  One of their biggest hits is a song whose title I cannot print. 

Here’s a song by Flowers from the Man Who Shot Your Cousin.

Q: Humiliation: My boss’s mother’s interment was at an out-of-town funeral home. Two other visitations at the same time had the building packed. Determining which roomful of mourners belonged to my boss’s mother was a challenge. I knew none of her family or friends, so I slowly plowed through the crowd trying to spot my boss. Because I’m only 5 feet tall, I saw mostly chests. Looking up towards a face in such close quarters made us both uncomfortable and didn’t help. Plan B, find the guest book, probably on a podium by an entrance. I made my way there and aha! Someone else’s book. I desperately burrowed toward another room and finally found it, the guest book with her name at the top! Hurriedly I signed it, then realized that in my frazzled condition, I had signed HER name instead of my own! Eww! I panicked. Should I cross out her name? Eww! Should I sign my name below it? In the same handwriting? Ugh. I decided to flee the scene. When my boss returned to work, I apologized for not attending his mother’s viewing.

A: Escape is often the best solution. 

Q: This embarrassment was not mine. It was related to me by the embarrassee because it involved my son Aaron.

Aaron had many jobs after graduating college, none in his major or with a future. But on this day he had a freshly earned MBA and an interview for a position at a large research university. The interview by a panel of department and university upper management was nerve-wracking, but had gone rather well, Aaron thought as he left the conference room. He walked down two halls toward the exit, then thought it best to double back to the men’s restroom. The room was cavernous but empty, except for one guy using the stand-up facilities. Aaron recognized him as a member of the interview panel. As my son proceeded to the far end of the row, he heard a loud, long, resounding fart fill the room. There was no way Aaron could pretend he hadn’t heard it. He briefly considered using faked sign language, but the guy already knew Aaron was not deaf. The silence was as loud as the fart. So Aaron said to the man, “Pretty impressive, maybe an 8.5, but probably won’t get you into the semi-finals.” 

Aaron’s worked there for 10 years now. – Connie Akers

A: Your son is a God to me.  

Q: The following tweet from your friend David Simon:

Thought about this for a long time though it's certainly relevant today: Photojournalists should endeavor to publish every obtainable photograph of America's gun carnage from this moment on. We need to see it. We need the visceral affront. Keeping it offstage aids the barbarism.

I feel strongly about this. It would obviously be extremely painful for any parent or family member to allow a photo to be published of a loved one who has been slaughtered, but I think it’s necessary. Emmett Till’s mother insisted on an open casket for her son, and that pictures of his face be published. If the general public saw photos of children who no longer had faces, a lot of minds would be changed. Not all, by any means. The hard core gun worshippers aren’t going to change their minds until something happens to them, but I think this could be a significant step forward.

A: Yes, I saw it and agree with it entirely.  There were videos on Twitter yesterday of the victims of the Allen, TX shooting.  I watched them.  It was stomach churning.  And that’s what has to happen.  Stomachs must be churned. 

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Q: You asked:  "Do we have any way to prove that everyone sees colors roughly the same way? Inother words, lets say Joe sees red as most of us see red, but Jane sees red as blue, and blue as green, etc. She would still call the colors by the right name, because to her the color we think of as blue is “red.” Would we know, and how?"

And to that I say . . . OMG.  I had that very conversation the night I met the man I later went on to marry, after he asked me out for a drink.  I don't remember why it came up, probably related to something I was reading at the time, but I remember the conversation as very charming and his response to my posing that question as, basically, charmed.  He called the next day to recount how charmed he was.  We went on many more dates, got married 2+ years later, produced lovely children, and were together for two decades.  But when we were in couples therapy leading up to our eventual divorce, he complained quite bitterly that he'd always found me "challenging" to talk to and CITED THAT CONVERSATION ON OUR FIRST DATE as an example of how I always "challenged" him to rethink his assumptions in a way that made him uncomfortable and ultimately depressed.  (As I'm sure you can imagine, he used this flaw of mine to justify a lot of bad behavior on his part that I supposedly caused by being so challenging.)  

I don't want to get dumped out of this chat for "challenging" you, so I'm not going to even try to engage, but do tell us -- what do you think?  

A: I think that the color thing is the question from Hell.  I have never been able to get my head around it, and the Web is not helping me.  Does anyone have any actual knowledge about this? I’d even accept the thoughts of a philosopher.

Q: I answered the crossed arms poll, my left arm was on top, but lefty/righty questions are too black and white for me.  I write and eat with my right, but play most sports with my left.  Exceptions involve rackets and a pool cue.  (I’m left footed, too.)  If I wore a watch, it would be on my right wrist in true lefty form, as it was before my first mobile phone.  I said lefty in the poll.  Is that right?  (See what I did there?)  ;)  [Gordon from Rain City]

A: The weirdest lefty-righty thing involves C.C. Sabathia, the former great pitcher for the Yankees.  A lefty, considered one of the best lefties of his generation.   Here is a picture of C.C. signing autographs.   I initially thought the photo might have been flipped, but no – other autograph photos looked the same.  Right hand!  I looked it up and the story is bizarre.  When C.C. was in Little Leagues, he was getting hammered by the opposing team.  After the game he was crying, and his desperate dad suggested he try throwing with his left hand.  Bam.  Possible Hall of Famer.  But he does EVERYTHING ELSE, other than pitch, with his right hand.

Q: Contest Idea: The South Korean president and Biden broke into song together, singing "American Pie.  What songs might be played as perfect themes for other appearances. Obama appearing in front of Trump supporters- “Born in the USA.” Trump and Putin,  appearing together at the White House,, and Trump singing. “This Land is Your Land.”  

A: I have discussed this with The Empress and we have altered your idea a little, and will do it.

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Q: Why, in the ASL alphabet, does the hand position for R look like an X and X looks like an R?  This has driven me bonkers since I was a small child.  

A: For the same reason linotypes clustered all the most-used letters together, within easiest reach – E, T, A, I, S….   And the same reason that area codes were apportioned so the biggest cities required the least time dialing:  2i2 for New York, 312 for Chicago, 213 for L.A.    But Topeka was 785.    The X is much easier to make with your fingers, so it is an R. The X is used less, so it’s more complex (though I have to admit I don’t see it looking like an R) Here it is.

Q: I always figured that when a radio station lists temperatures from around, say, our very large D.C. area, it wasn't aiming to benefit a particular listener, but instead to different listeners across the area.   Often it IS raining, or chilly, in Gaithersburg and not raining yet, or warmer, in Waldorf.  Is it really so irritating to hear that bit of information not intended for you specifically?  Even if the readings were pretty much the same, and the station simply reminded you of the breadth of the listening area, that wouldn't bother me.  Certainly not as much as, say, ads on WTOP aimed at nobody but defense contractors or GSA procurement officers.    

A: As you have already seen, you are sort of right on that first part.  As to to the second part, I have several times addressed the issue of incomprehensible ads.  This is my favorite.

Q: Packing the Supreme Court is a not-great answer to the bad situation the current GOP has created, but considering how McConnell et al cheated Obama out of an appointment, then pushed through several highly questionable ["rapist"], dishonest-about-their-positions ["liars"] appointments, isn't that really a serious option right now?

A: No. It would set a hellish precedent.  Every time there is a change in administration from one party to the other, the party in power would further stack the court.  Eventually, the Supreme Court would have to convene in an arena.  

Q: Hi, Gene, I just wanted to share this PSA with your readers: My 13-year-old mixed breed was diagnosed on Tuesday last week with idiopathic vestibular syndrome. She couldn't walk because of the vertigo and had to be hand-fed because she wouldn't eat or drink. (We used a (needleless) syringe for the water.) Today (Monday) she finally was able to walk to the corner and back. She's still wobbly, and we're getting her some ortho booties to help with traction on our hardwood floors. Other old-dog owners might like to know that the telltale symptom is crazy rapid eye movement and sudden onset. (She was fine at 1 p.m., couldn't stand at 3.) Her treatment was meclizine (same stuff my Mom used to take for Meniere's disease). The vet offered to prescribe a nausea med, too, but she didn't need it. Thank you for all your support during this tough week, Gene. -- Amy Lago

A: Hey, Amy. (Amy is the editor of Barney & Clyde at Counterpoint syndicate. )

Yeah, Molly thought this was a good idea, too.  Idiopathic Vestibular Syndrome (vets often call it “old dog vestibular”) is one of the scariest things you’ll see in your dog, and you might think the dog is dying. Don’t euthanize him!  You’ll see terrifying things: Staggering, lurching, loss of balance, nystagmus (creepy eyeball rolling and jerking.)  The dogs will tilt their heads usually in the direction they are staggering or falling. It just … goes away in three to fourteen days.  Treatment is available but not required. 

Q: Question about life: Why is there no law mandating that “sell by,” “use by” or “expires on” dates be placed conspicuously, intuitively and legibly on packaging?

A: For the same reason that websites hide the “No Thanks” button in agate, faintly printed against a sea of black.  They want you to say yes.  The retailers want you to get their product and know it’s got a longer safe shelf life than they are forced, by law, to name. 

*.

Q: Why is it “pleaded” and not “pled”?  Think about "bleed." You wouldn't say "bleeded" -- you'd say "bled." The same goes for words like "speed" and "sped," and "feed" and "fed." Following that pattern, it's not hard to see how the past tense of "plead" should be "pled."

A: From Wikipedia:  In his usage guide, lexicographer Bryan Garner says, "Traditionally speaking, 'pleaded' is the best past tense and past participle form." Garner has also written a dictionary of legal usage in which he says, "'Pled' is an alternative past-tense form that is to be avoided." The Associated Press also prefers "pleaded" and refers to "pled" as colloquial.

That of course does not answer your question.  I will try.  “Pled’ sounds like ‘bled.”  It’s ugly.  More important, it’s usually a legal term, and requires unambiguity and clarity.  There’s a reason that from time immemorial people have pleaded “not guilty” and not “innocent.”    Here’s a similar example, for sound and precision.   People are “hanged,” not “hung.”

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Q: Marla Maples doesn't look that different than E. Jean Carroll. Given your difficulty with faces, I thought you'd have a little sympathy with him in this case. (There are a few thousand other cases in which sympathy is not deserved.)

A: I fear you missed the point. Clearly, Trump also thought that they looked alike. So his protestations that Ms. Carroll wasn’t “my type” was nonsense. He MARRIED a woman who he later confused with Ms. Carroll.

Q: Are QR codes on restaurant menus a secret plot to starve older people who can’t figure them out?

A: Yes. Fortunately I am often dining with a younger person. 

Q: When you fart do you gain or lose weight?

A: This is a surprisingly common dumb question. You lose weight.  Gas has weight, even if it is lighter than air.  It is why a full propane tank weighs a lot more than an empty one.  The amount you lose is negligible, of course – a doctor calculated it is the same amount of weight you lose in skin cell turnover every day. 

This does does remind me of the joke about the guy driving behind a truck.  When they got to a small rural bridge the truck stopped, the driver got out carrying a baseball bat, which he used to pound on the sides of the truck.  Then he got back in and drove over the bridge.  On the other side, the guy motioned to the truck driver to pull over, and asked him to explain what he had done.  “The weight of my truck, empty, is exactly the permitted weight to cross that bridge, but I’m carrying 80 pounds of pigeons. The banging gets them flying, so they exert no weight.”    

Mythbusters checked this out and decided it was scientifically invalid.  The downward air drafts from the beating wings would exert the same weight as the birds themselves. 

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Q; Humiliation once removed: Friend's story. He enters pizzeria, guy behind counter is on the phone. Talking to his girlfriend. In Italian. In a very intimate conversation. Did I mention the conversation is IN ITALIAN? And very intimate? Counter guy gets off phone, my friend orders. In Italian.

A: EXCELLENT. 

This is Gene. I’m calling this one down, but with a bonus. First, a request: Keep sending in questions, right here. We’ll need em on Thursday. Here’s the button.

Bonus: A great great standup bit by Jim Jefferies, an Aussie. Watch it. It is explosively good. Part one. Part two.

See you on Thursday, with the Invitational.