“That’s a lie spread by communists,” I protested, then added, “by the way, how old are you, anyway?”

She changed the subject, as she’s done for decades when asked about her chronological age. But I persisted.

“Say, Susan, so how old are you?” I asked.

“I’m as old as my nose and older than my teeth,” she unanswered.

“No, I mean how old are you in earthling years?” I persisted.

“Are you a masochist?” she asked. “There are some questions one doesn’t ask.”

That may or may not be true, but there certainly are questions that one (one being Susan) will never answer.

Nevertheless, from time to time my errors have been egregious enough to drive him out of retirement for a few minutes. For example, he recently cited several examples of unexplainably duplicated words. For example:

11 November: “He ordered his his burrito without ricin ...”

29 February: “... swilling Rainier Ale from from gallon jugs ...”

5 May: “... shot the the poodle in self-defense.”

Unfortunately, Mr. Bear’s comments were less than helpful. Despite repeated requests, he refuses to reveal whether it’s grammatically correct to delete the first or the second duplicated word. Dang dang!

“All girls have left our small village and moved to the city, so I cannot find a woman to be with. But I see the solution to the problem. I love animals very much and want to ask you when it will be allowed in Russia, as it is in Holland, to marry domestic animals?”

What a plaintive cry from a man still longing for civil liberties as yet unrealized some fifteen years after the implosion of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. And anyway, what could possibly be sadder than unrequited animal love?

Buschow, on day two of a twenty-eight day, three-thousand dollar course, complained of cramps and thirst on an ambitious trek where water bottles were forbidden. Later that day, one of his fellow students noticed that Buschow was “unusually quiet.” Or, in more common parlance, dead.

The school’s Internet site boasts, “Our goal is to take you from a world of convenience and comfort and put you in a situation where you must go ‘just a little bit farther’ — past those false limits your mind has set for your body.”

Poor Dave Buschow of River Vale, New Jersey; I guess his false limits proved to be all too true. And so, I suppose the only question is this: did his relatives receive a refund since he didn’t survive survival school?

Willis is an American, and thus it should go without saying that his problems really aren’t his fault. The real culprit—as I, too, have always maintained—is disco. Willis, who claims to be sober for the first time in a quarter of a century, maintains his fall from grace and coherence on, “the excesses of the disco era that many artists like me found difficult to shake almost thirty years later.”

Poor Victor Willis; I don’t expect him to survive his ordeal. As any right-thinking person will confirm, disco kills. Boom-chakka boom-chakka boom-chakka boom-chakka boom-chakka boom-chakka boom-chakka ad ad nauseam.