However, these concerns may or may not be relevant to an examination of the origins of the British phrase, "stiff upper lip." According to the story I heard, once upon a time British sailors were buried at sea in canvas coffins. To prepare for burial, a sailor sewed the cadaver of his shipmate into the cloth body bag, with the last stitch going through the dead sailor's upper lip.

But why?

It turns out that life in his majesty's navy was so wretched that sailors would feign death to escape. Once they were buried at sea in the cotton coffin, the clever sailor could use his knife to cut his way out of the coffin and swim to freedom.

Or so the story goes.

Of course, such a getaway would be impossible if the sailor were discovered to be alive, hence the need to keep a stiff upper lip.

This explanation makes almost no sense whatsoever. Nevertheless, I like it. After all, I never met an apocryphal tale I didn't believe.

The junk mail again reminded me that smell is perhaps the most underutilized of media. In fact, I suppose it may be the only unsaturated medium. I read an article that suggested things may soon change, as new technologies provide the chemistry needed to produce any smell on demand. Some company called "DigiScents" is planning on marketing an odor synthesizer called iSmell.

I don't think iSmell will make much difference in art. In the future, art will stink literally as well as figuratively.

"I don't exactly own it, as such," I waffled.

"So where'd you pirate it from?" she asked.

"I didn't really pirate it, either," I said.

"Well, if you don't own it and you didn't pirate it, how did it end up in your computer?" she inquired.

"It's like this," I began. "I happened to find my computer connected to Wisconsin Green College's network, when ..."

"You just happened to find yourself connected to a private network?" interrupted Ellen.

"Well, whatever," I continued. "So anyway, I noticed the login message on the school's FTP server said, 'Take what you need, leave what you can,' so I did."

"OK, so then you took PixelPasser," she said. "Just out of curiosity, did you leave anything?"

"Of course!" I confirmed. "I left a copy of my 1993 piece, One Million Randomly Generated Numbers Arranged in Nine Hundred and Sixty Nine Grids. I think the school got the better deal; I traded a wonderful piece of art for an overrated, buggy program."

Ellen looked skeptical, but then she always does.

Life resumed publication six years later. By that time, I'd mostly moved on from photography to art, and saw Life as irrelevant to photography, art, and indeed life. Edmund Carpenter provided my favorite critique on Life:

"Photographers once thought by getting their photographs published in Life, they would thereby reach large audiences. Gradually they discovered that the only message that came through was Life magazine itself and that their pictures had become but bits of pieces of that message. Unwittingly they contributed to a message far removed from the one they intended."

Life is over. Good riddance.

It's hard to imagine my father at eighty. He wasn't in the best of health when he died; by now I suppose he'd be rather frail. Although I miss him, dying when he was still frisky and optimistic enough to stock his liquor cabinet (the cupboard under the kitchen sink) with the economical one and three-quarter liter plastic bottles of cheap vodka and whisky has something to be said for it. (For the record, I should add that the oversized bottles lasted a long time toward the end of his life, at least when I wasn't there.)

It's equally hard to imagine that my father's dead. Some mornings when I'm in the transitory stage between sleep and caffeination, it occasionally occurs to me that I haven't phoned him in a while. It takes me a second or two to remember that I can no longer call him.

I wonder if I'll live to eighty? At this point, I really don't care, although I suspect that will change. By 2036, I guess medical technology will have "progressed" to the point where my carcass may be kept technically alive in the unlikely event I will be able to afford such services. We'll see...

All instant noodles taste the same, especially after I've added green onions and not a few peppers, so buying on the basis of packaging makes a lot of sense. Throughout the brief meal, I kept repeating "oksekøds smag" over and over. It started to sound like a cross between ox and cod, although it tasted like neither. And as for "smag," what is there to say about smag that hasn't been said before?

Oksekøds smag, oksekøds smag, oksekøds smag, oksekøds smag, oksekøds smag, oksekøds smag, oksekøds smag, oksekøds smag, oksekøds smag, oksekøds smag, oksekøds smag, oksekøds smag, oksekøds smag, oksekøds smag, oksekøds smag, oksekøds smag, oksekøds smag, and on and on.

Bone appetite!

What a handle!

I also learned that his greatest contribution to publishing wasn't the printing press per se. No, his innovative use of movable, reusable type as well as the appropriate inks were what really changed things.

Ironically, Gutenberg may not have printed the Gutenberg Bible, at least not all fifty of them. It turns out that Johann Fust, a fifteenth century vulture capitalist, sued Gutenberg and won. After Gutenberg lost his role in the business, Fust finished the print run of fifty bibles with his son-in-law Peter Schöffer, who had been Gutenberg's assistant.

Some things never change.

As for the printing press itself, it was just a slightly-modified wine press. Although that may have been the original link between drinking, writing, and publishing, I suspect the Mesopotamians hammering away on cuneiform tablets five thousand years ago were quenching their thirst with something stronger than goat's milk.

I think François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire accurately summed up contemporary lyrics when he observed, "Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung."

Things may have been different a century ago, however. For example, take the lyrics to Short and Sweet, a song "written, composed, and sung" by a distant relative of mine, Tom Graham.

Brevity's the soul of wit
  You often hear folks say,
And I myself do like to tell
  Things in the shortest way.
An incident occur'd last week
  Which caus'd a lot of fuss,
Perhaps you'll understand me
  If I tell it to you thus--

C A T of course spells cat,
T O M, he's no flat,
Sometimes after you bet tens,
K I T T E N S.

Now if you like to hear a tale
  Told in this simple way,
I'll tell you of an accident
  I heard the other day.
If I can cut it short and sweet,
  'Twill be to your relief;
So here goes for the story,
  Now this is it in brief--

G A S, gas did leak,
M A N went to seek,
To find it with a light did try--
M A N--S K Y.

The metre of this song is not
  What you'd call over quick,
Although the choruses I sing
  To you in half a tick.
I've got another tale to tell,
  It's one you mustn't miss,
It's rather a long story,
  But I'll tell it you like this--

B O Y off his dot,
G O T a cartridge hot
Off it went, and so did he--
I N Q U E S T.

Have you noticed when you read
  The Evening News at night,
What long accounts they give of
  Say, a quarrel or a fight?
Well, I myself was thinking as
  I read one down to-day,
Why not cut it short and give it
  To us in this way--

W I F E spells wife,
S T R I F E, strife;
Had a frightful row, and the truth to tell,
H O S P I T A L.

That's all you'll now hear from me,
G O O D--B Y E.