Deceptive Bulletproof Shields Designed to Confuse Enemy Snipers, Assassins, and Scoundrels is available in the PDF format.

I told Rosie I thought she came up with a clever answer. (I didn't point out that it was technically incorrect; the two to one ratio was close enough for an eleven year old.)

Rosie's teacher thought the answer was "offensive," which didn't seem like fair academic criticism to me. (Or to Rosie, either.) I told my niece she was getting an excellent education: the sooner she found out the world was managed by stupid people who acted unfairly the better off she'd be.

Rosie said she already knew that.

Tonight's opening was different, though: they served doughnuts and wine! Doughnuts!!! I skipped the doughnuts and drank too much wine (as usual), but it's the thought that counts.

Doughnuts!!!!!

He turned down the job, but I'm sure the prosperous gallery owners found someone else to indulge their affluent consumers. Moneyed people always get humored.

That's how I carry my pistol on planes, but why? The answer is safety. Pistols on planes are very dangerous, that's why there's almost never one on a commercial flight. Since there are huge odds against having a single gun on a big jet, the odds against having two of them on the same plane are astronomical.

Years ago I read a story about a toe in a saloon in the Arctic; I think it was in the Yukon. The toe had been severed in some sort of mining accident and ended up preserved in a shot glass full of strong whiskey on a shelf behind the bar. Anyone who was brave enough, stupid enough, or, most often, drunk enough could have free whiskey if s/he drank it out of the glass with the severed toe in it.

The situation couldn't last forever and didn't. One night a drunk geologist accidentally swallowed both the whiskey and the toe.

Oops!

That would have been the end of the story, except that the incident was reported in a wire service news bulletin. Within weeks saloon owner received twenty packages from across North America; each contained a preserved human toe.

Skoal!

A toe is no big thing.

I augment Wegman's general strategy with a simple tactile approach. First, I smooth out my skin--especially my scalp--until it's evenly taut. Then I look for bumps, some of which always turn out to be ideas. After that I gently move the bumps under my skin toward my head. When the bumps reach my brain, I have some new ideas.

A waiter caught me nibbling on the salmon asked me what I was doing.

"I am contemplating the hors d'oeuvres; am I not French?"

"No, you are not."

"If you cut me, do I not bleed cheap red wine?"

"You should but you probably do not."

"Am I not the customer, and is not the customer always right?"

He didn't have an answer for that one, so I left with a belly full of fish.

Rights granted to Interlochen Center for the Arts, with the following mandatory adjacent photo credit; ©1997 R. E. Potter III, are nonexclusive, international english [sic] language print media and world wide web, for PR, record, exposition, and promotional use of the photographs, except that they may not be used in any media space purchased for advertising or advertorial without the express written permission of [the] photographer. Robert E. Potter III.

There must be a scientific explanation of why people go to such lengths to protect "intellectual property" with almost no intellectual content. Perhaps there's some sort of corollary to Hilton Kramer's observation "The more minimal the art, the more maximum the explanation."

"Look," she said, "before and after!"

I told her it couldn't be a case of before and after since I could see the grape and the raisin were two different things.

"Au contraire," she replied. "They're both the same object, you're just seeing it at two points in time simultaneously."

That sounded improbable at best, but before I could debate her she ate the grape and the raisin.

"You ate them!" I protested. "That's a crap way to end an argument."

"No," she responded, "I ate it."

Sholem Asch was right.

Ray explained that peas have thin skins, "and when you cut 'em gushy gross stuff comes out." I never thought of peas as little skinned organism with innards, but I can't argue with Ray.