Zog, The Boy Wonder

I can’t define the line between sanity and insanity, but I know it when I see it. Kurt Vonnegut was pushed to the precipice of that line as a POW in Dresden during WWII, and stayed mostly on the sane side, in part by fictionalizing his experience in the novel “Slaughterhouse Five”. David Hamel, who died a couple of months ago, saw many of the same horrors at Dresden, also as a POW, but he went sailing over the line in a single leap. It is hard not to compare Hamel to a character from a Kilgore Trout novel. Trout was Vonnegut’s mythical and mystical science fiction writer. In his own novel “Breakfast of Champions”, Vonnegut wrote, “Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.” Well, David Hamel ate the sugar, and he may have suspected the champagne, but he died at 81 having produced only a lot of excrement. He loved his wife and he hurt as few people as possible. That may qualify him for sainthood, but not genius.
*
According to David, on Sunday, October 21, 1975, he was watching “The Waltons” with friends in his home outside of Vancouver, British Columbia, when he was contacted by two aliens from the planet “Kladen” who appeared out of the snow on his television screen. Unseen by the others in the room they zapped him across time/space to their spaceship where they communicated their science to him, telepathically. They said they were entrusting him with the “survival of the species”. Hamel explained, “They planted these drawings in my brain. They gave me all the instructions I needed. It is now up to me to make it work.” It was 32 years later when David Hamel died without ever making it work, even with the enthusiastic assistance of several acolytes. Evidently the aliens did NOT give him all the assistance he needed. How incompetent of them.
*
Hamel fiddled in the Quonset hut in his backyard for decades and sent dozens of drawings of the resultant “alien inspired technology” to the patent office in Toronto, in a deluge of “perpetual motion” machines, “pollution free endless energy machines” and “anti-gravity machines”, and the engineers and scientists there deemed his solutions to these fundamental conundrums to be unworkable. How incompetent of them, too. When asked by one true believer how his spaceship would work, Hamel replied, “Fucking energy.” Evidently some “fucking” combination of magnetic energy, vibrations and granite spheres would combine, he insisted, to make his “spacecraft” weightless. “Do you understand now? Or are you just stupid.” To the true believers that question was mere proof of Hamel’s genius, but I think it actually proved that the answer to Hamel’s question was yes, they were just stupid, and desperate to believe.

*
Dozens of people have tried to build the 45 gallon drum sized, magnet driven, flying machine designed by the aliens and transmitted through Hamel. Universally they have failed to get off the ground. Perhaps they are all incompetent, but by this time competency seems almost irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is sanity. One believer spent 12 years collaborating with Hamel, and $5,000 on an 8” version of the device, and still says he will need another $7,000 to build a version big enough to actually work. He offers no explanation as to why model airplanes function but models of this flying saucer do not. Another supplicant spent a month working closely with Hamel, invested his life savings, was even divorced by his wife, and remains earthbound. And yet he still believes in the genius of Hamel. It makes the faith of the Hebrews almost seem passive.
*
Hamel believed that Stonehenge was a landing zone for UFOs; never mind the big rocks scattered in the way. He believed the Dead Sea Scrolls were alien instructions on how to achieve certain alternate realities, written perhaps by some bronze age Timothy Leary (what will our ancestors make of the real acid head?) Hamel believed in Atlantis, never mind the evidence of Santorini and Crete. And Hamel believed that the key to the Bible, The Torah, the Koran and even the Book of Bonkinism (“Cat’s Cradle”), was revealed in a spider’s web. “Did you ever see a spider weaving his web, and then suddenly jump horizontally to another branch without any apparent gravitational forces affecting him? This is the scalar….The spider rides the scalar of the earth.” David also said, “They (the aliens) were eating my peanut butter to teach me a lesson”, and, “The end of the world is not far off, and we need some of us to survive. Otherwise, all is lost.”
*
Well, it’s clear that something was lost, and I think most of us know what it was; David Hamel‘s sanity. There is no indication that Hamel weaved his fantasy for profit, which puts him in a different category from Vonnegut, the author. Two books were written about David but he never wrote one himself. But Vonnegut used fantasies while Hamel was used by them. Vonnegut knew how seductive insanity can be (“God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater”) so I think he would have sympathized with David Hamel. But there is a difference between sympathy and respect. Insane people all tell lies, and they honestly believe them. To join in their fantasy is not a show of respect. It’s just telling more lies. So do we laugh at David Hamel or do we cry?
*
I figure we are in the pretty much the same situation as the Kilgore Trout character (“Breakfast of Champions”) named Zog from the planet Margo, who resembled a human but who communicated by farting and tap dancing. “Zog landed at night in Connecticut. He had no sooner touched down than he saw a house on fire. He rushed into the house, farting and tap dancing, warning the people about the terrible danger they were in. The head of the house brained Zog with a golf club.” Zog certainly meant well.

*

But if it was your house, what would you have done?

- 30 -

MAKE LOVE, NOT POINTS

I think everybody knows we live in a dangerous world, but did you realize just how much safer George and Dick are making it for us? It was announced last week that things are going so well in Iraq that the U.S. State Department has decided to give its employees a choice. They can either “volunteer” to work at the new American “Uuber Embassy” in Bagdad, or be fired. It seems there are 250 unfilled positions at what is supposed to be the largest U.S. embassy in the world, but only 50 applications have been made by department employees. So qualified State Department personnel will receive a letter giving them until Thanksgiving to “volunteer, after which date they will be assigned at random, at which point they can either join the “Bushies” in hell or be fired. There, don’t you feel safer? As you may have heard, the employees sure as hell don't.
*
The State Department has also been extending the popular "War On Terror” by signing treaties with an “Allegiance of the Willing” to be boarded; those nations who are willing to have their merchant ships stopped by US Naval and Coast Guard vessels, ever searching for “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. So far they have signed up Panama, Liberia, Malta, Cypress, The Marshall Islands, and the latest signatory, Mongolia, which doesn’t actually have either a seacoast or a port. Feel safer, yet? No? Well, maybe you're just not concentrating hard enough, buddy.
*
Well, residents of Lagrangeville, New York are concentrating and they remain concerned because ‘ole Dead-Eye-Dick Cheney is planning on “Goin’ Huntin’” at the Clove Valley Rod and Gun Club just outside of town. Viva Ttanata, the farmer whose back yard adjoins the Cheney “zone-of-death-hunt-site” told the New York Daily News, “I don’t want him in my backyard. He scares me. I’ll be keeping my dog inside while he’s there.” Another neighbor, Fred Boehmer, said simply, “I’m getting out of town.” Good thought, Fred. But what the hell do the rest of us clay pigeons do to avoid Dick's pacemaker inhanced glare?
*
It may seem a little unfair to make fun of “Dead-Eye” Dick’s proclivity for gunning down his hunting partners since he’s only gunned down one little old man. But, honestly, how many little old men hunting partners do you have to gun down before you earn a reputation for doing gunning down little old men hunting partners? I say one. But all kidding aside, I still wouldn’t let my dog out side while Dead-eye is carrying a gun, either.
*

I wish Dick would just shut the hell up. This time old dead-eye has announced that “We will not allow Iran to have nuclear weapons….Our country and the entire international community cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its most aggressive ambitions.” And Boom! Gas jumps from $2.59 a gallon to $2.89, and beyond. That sure as hell is shock and awe. It’s like Dick wants his buddies in the oil companies to get even richer, or something. And there was Hillary, voting to give Dick the justification to start WWIII, which George has also prophesied recently. I so wanted to vote for her, but she’s starting to make me as nervous as Dick Cheney, suicide bomber.

*

Meanwhile, another little upstate New York town has become the focus of Republican Senator John McCain’s struggling presidential campaign. The citizens of Bethel Woods were hoping to build a museum to commemorate the seminal event which occurred outside their little town some 37 years ago, Woodstock, which McCain has described as “…a cultural and pharmaceutical event”. It is a description which caused his conservative audiences to smirk and applaud, and which, 35 years ago, would have produced the exact same reaction (for different reasons) from those who actually attended or wished they had attended Woodstock, (never in human history have so many wished they had been so loaded, so cold, so wet, so muddy, so hungry and standing in line for so long to use a port-a-potty.) Woodstock hasn’t been a political issue for almost 40 years. Thank goodness John McCain's Republican Party is still the party of ideas; forty year old ideas, but then these are the same people who are still trying to punish the Democrats for electing FDR four times. And then there was the whole Tom Dewey frustration.
*
The argument about the Bethel Woods earmark is mirrored in Sparta, South Carolina, where that tiny community is trying to spend a million federal and state earmark dollars to build a 30,000 square foot Sparta Tea Pot Museum, but things are not going so well in Sparta, either. The owners of the largest private collection of Tea Pots in America, Gloria and Sonny Kamm, are unhappy because the latest design for the museum the developers are backing won’t allow room for their entire 7,000 tea pots, short and stout, practical and utilitarian and some created by painters Roy Lichtenstein and David Hockney, sculpture Michael Lucera and ceramist Beatrice Wood. A traveling exhibition of just a part of the Kamm tea pot exhibit has just finished breaking attendance records at museums in Napa, California, Montgomery, Alabama, and Toronto, Canada. They had such high hopes in the Republican dominated Carolina legislature.

*

This could almost make up for the Tea Pot dome scandal that so injured the G.O.P in the last century. Except, of course, the Democrats have resisted attacking the struggling working class of Sparta. Which is why the Republicans have been on such a winning streak, their willingness to throw anybody from Terry Shivo to the children of America under their campaign bus, be it the Bush Veto juggernaut or the McCain Straight Talk Express.
*
Because art, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder, and so are pork barrel earmarks. Sparta has lost over 1,500 well paying factory jobs. And the population of 25 to 34 year olds in upstate New York has dropped by from 30 to 42 percent. These communities are each struggling to find an anchor upon which to build their future, and both think they have found a unique local solution. And who should show up to criticize them but a bunch of ideologues trashing these locally inspired attempts at self preservation. Doesn’t America believe in its people anymore? Don’t we believe in investing in our communities anymore?

*

And who would have ever thought that John McCain, war hero, really wanted to grow up to be George W. Bush, draft dodger. Feel safer, yet?
- 30 -

Boo, Whom!

I do not understand why, once a year, I am expected to feed every kid in the neighborhood. And just try offering these vagabonds real food, some sliced ham or some ‘buffalo wings’ or, God forbid, a little rice pilaf, and see just how quickly your house gets egged. What this ‘Kinder Mafia” demand is pure extravagance; candy – mere empty calories. Their obsession with processed sugar is neither healthy nor logical. Oh, sure, they dress it up in fairy costumes and monster masks but as they go door to door they don’t chant, “Treat or trick”, oh no, because it isn’t about the treat. It’s about the trick, and it’s about the shakedown. This isn’t a holiday. It is income redistribution, socialism out of the barrel of a gummy bear.
*
The roots of Halloween were planted long before Christians had enough saints to celebrate the night before All Hallowed Saint’s Day. The Aztecs were celebrating Dia de los Muertos even before they were speaking Spanish., maybe 3,000 years ago, and the Druids in Ireland were celebrating “Samhain” by carving turnip Jack-o-lanterns 2,500 years before they saw their first pumpkin. ‘And how’, you may ask, ‘did offerings to Mictecacihuatl, the Aztec Goddess who was still born, become individually packaged bags of M&Ms’ left out for a skeleton named Catrina? And I will answer you, ‘Only in a world where the child of Salvador Dali and Ma Barker designs the holidays, that’s where.’
*
This is the night when the line between the dead and the not-yet-dead (also known as The Living) is supposed to become fuzzy, and everyone is concerned about ghosts, spooks and ghouls. But its common knowledge that ghosts can’t manipulate physical objects, so they can only harm you psychologically, meaning Scientologists are safe since they don’t believe in psychology. And nobody should be afraid of “spooks” because once you speak a spook’s name they are “spooken for” and rendered harmless; which is what happened to the spook Valerie Plame. Now Robert Novak, he’s a ghoul and every time you think they’re dead they come back to life again on Fox News. That whole network is staffed by zombies, and is a perfect example of how we are terrified of all the wrong things in this life and the afterlife.
*
But on October 31st, I too will be answering my door bearing a bowl filled with tribute, because I don’t want to spend half of November pulling toilet paper out of my rain gutters. Besides, this is also Reformation Day, when, in 1546, Martin Luther supposedly allegedly nailed his “95 Things I Hate About The Pope” to the front door of the Wittenberg Castle Church and was later arrested for deformation of church property. So, logically, children could be going door to door, calling, “Treat or I’ll nail your ass, you papist bastard, and have you got any Jews hiding in here?” So I guess we’re lucky we got the screwed up holiday we did get. It could have been far worse.
*
The truth (as if that ever mattered about holidays) is that Martin Luther defiantly nailing his arguments to the church door was probably as real as the legend of George Washington chopping down a cheery tree; not. And that may be yet another reason why you never see Martin Luther costumes. I did see a George Washington once, but that was so long ago the costume was probably made in the United States.
*
This year Americans will spend over $6 billion on this mish-mash of a holiday. Almost all of our black and orange fix, like cocaine, is provided by overseas suppliers who have no other connection to us, and although that kind of chump change would barely support the occupation of Iraq for a month it does work out to about $65 per family this year. About 4 million Americans will even be buying costumes for their dog, like PetSmart’s spider web dog collar for $12, or PetCo’s doggie Pumpkin dress up for $16. This canine costume capitalism is surprising considering that dogs and skeletons would seem to be a natural costume combo, popular with dogs as well as the humans, and with the advantage that once the holiday was over you wouldn’t have to store the costume, you just let Rover bury it!
*
But we seem determined to spend as much as possible, to prove the depth of our emotional commitment to this “dead holiday thing”, putting 2 million pirates (mostly boys) on the streets Wednesday night, along with 4 million princesses (mostly girls) to look cute and threaten and harass adults, cowering in our homes with only a bowl of bite sized Three Musketeers for protection. It’s the sound that fills the night with horror and chills the bones; “Trick or treat, trick or treat, give us something good to eat, or else.”

- 30 –

YOU'RE DRIVING ME CRAZY

I was doing seventy-two mph one morning, southbound on the 101 in Ventura County, when a small economy car came floating past me. The driver had both bare feet on the dash and was steering with her knees while she used the rear view mirror to apply eye make-up. I guess you could call that a story of the about to be blind being allowed to drive by the evidently blind California DMV. But a similar ‘feat’ landed Martin Veens, from Holland, in dutch while driving down the A55 in Wales, England this past summer. Police had received reports of a 40 ton truck driving “erratically” (meaning weaving) and a helicopter even caught it on video straddling lanes on the “dual carriageway” (meaning freeway). When they pulled him over police found Martin holding a saucepan in his left hand, a fork in his right, and he admitted he had been steering with his knees. Since he also admitted in court that it had been an “outstandingly stupid thing to do” the judge went easy on Martin. He was sentenced to a year in “goal” (jail), had his “permit banned” (license revoked), and before he is allowed to drive trucks again he must take an “extended examination” (bullshit).
*
In Abbotsford, Wisconsin, 43 year old Harvey Miller decided that after a night of drinking at a local bar he was too loaded to drive his pick-up truck home. So he enlisted the help of his friend, 48 year old Ed Marzinske. And when they were pulled over by the cops Harvey argued that because he was just steering while Ed operated the gas and brake pedals, he wasn’t technically “driving” the truck. But the cops arrested both men for DUI noting that, one, they were both technically “driving” the truck, two, they were both drunk, three, neither man had a current valid license, four, this was Harvey’s third DUI arrest and Ed’s second, and five, Harvey has no legs. Well, at least they weren’t “blind drunk”.
*
That fete was accomplished by an unnamed 20 year old in Tartu, Estonia, early on a Sunday morning. Cops pulled him over for weaving and then noticed that he kept missing the tube on the breathalyzer, at which point his 16 year old unlicensed passenger (who was also drunk) admitted she had been providing him with directions. The 16 year old was released to her parents. The 20 year old was arrested. Still you have to figure he got off lightly when compared with all that Floyd P. Sincerbeaux, of Lyons, New York, was charged with; felony driving while intoxicated, misdemeanor first degree unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, operating an unregistered motor vehicle, operating an unlicensed and operating an uninsured motor vehicle. The vehicle in question was a cub cadet riding lawnmower. Floyd was released on $2,500 cash bail. I guess he gave the cops an attitude, because 41 year old Chris Guerrero, who was also riding his lawnmower home while drunk, was only charged with driving with a blood alcohol level above 0.08. Chris was even allowed to drive his mower home, followed by the ticketing officer. The difference must be that Chris didn’t give the arresting officer attitude…and he is a Sacramento Sheriff’s Sergeant assigned to the Sacramento County Jail
*
Attitude is often an important factor in determining whether a driver gets a traffic ticket or not, something clearly on the mind of a Moscow driver who this September ran into some roadwork, which damaged his Mercedes. So far it was simply a story of the collision between capitalism and the workers’ paradise, but when these particular workers refused to compensate this particular capitalist on the spot for the damage to his car, the driver, described only as a short man in his late twenties, pulled a pistol and shot dead one construction crewman and wounded a second. Since he didn’t stick around to finish off his second victim I guess that would make the still-at-large shooter a compassionate conservative.
*
Time, and overusage, appears to have stripped the definition of both conservative and compassionate of their traditional meanings, as articulated by Indiana State Trooper Al Martinez, who pulled over a Chicago man just trying to get home to his Mommy. A mere ten miles short of the Ohio line Al pulled over an SUV, after receiving calls from several truckers about the eastbound vehicle on the Indiana Toll Road (I-90). Al found the driver naked, with a Tee shirt thrown over his crotch and his hands coated with what appeared to be petroleum jelly. The driver insisted he was on his way to visit his mother in the Buckeye state, but the heartless cop charged the Momma’s boy with lewd conduct. Evidently the driver had handled his sport utility safely as he was not charged with any moiving offenses.
*
Would that the same were true for the Jeff Kendell, who was stopped while driving the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, a 27 foot long, 11 foot tall, hot dog and bun shaped vehicle bearing the vanity license plate “Y-U-M-M-Y”. It seems that when Tucson, Arizona highway patrol officer Korey Lankow ran that plate on his computer, YUMMY came back as stolen. Ever vigilant and concerned that some terrorist might be trying to sneak a WMD into the country disguised as a giant wiener, Officer Lankow called for backup and pulled the wiener over. Wiener driver Jeff explained to the three officers who responded to the call for assistance with a giant weiner, that the plates had been stolen in Missouri last February and immediately replaced by the company. The alert on the stolen plates was supposed to carry the notation that if the plates were found on the actual giant wienermobile it was to be ignored, but somehow that notation never made it into the APB, which just proves why we need a Department of Homeland Security, to monopolize those kinds of screw ups in one place, rather than letting them be made by police departments all across the country.
*
You might think that the solution to the problem of HBW – humans behind the wheel – would be modern technology, but you would be wrong, considering the determination and perseverance of humans. The classic proof of this "never-say-die" and "never-say-wait-a-minute-let’s-think-about-this" tendency of humans must be the story of Paula Ceely, a 20 year old student at Birmingham Collage who in February of this year decided to visit her boyfriend in the tiny Welsh village of Hebron, Carmarthenshire. And, since she had never been there before, Paula borrowed his SatNav unit, which is EuroSpeak for the Global Positioning System.
*
Speaking of the SatNav unit Paula said later, “I just followed the directions it was giving me”, which might well be the epitaph for future generations of humans. But as darkness and a blinding rain closed in on this night Paula dutifully followed the SatNav down a lonely and dark country lane, which ended at a white farm gate. At first she thought she had been directed to a dead end, but according to the SatNav this was the correct address. So Paula climbed out into the downpour, swung the gate open wide, drove through, and then stopped again and thoughtfully closed the gate behind her. Then to her surprise she noticed a second gate, so she pushed it open as well. And it was at this moment that Paula heard the approaching train.
*
It was the 8 pm express headed for Swansea, going 60 mph and Paula had just parked her car across its tracks. She had time to think about leaping into her car and driving it to safety, but luckily before she could try the several hundred ton express smashed into her Renault Clio, slicing off the engine block and sending the broken hulk spinning half a mile down the track as if it had been kicked by a pissed off King Kong. Paula said later, 'The crossing wasn't shown…there were no signs at all and it wasn't lit up to warn of an oncoming train.”

*

Well, true, but there six signs at the crossing, including the instructions “STOP”, and “Phone Before Crossing”, which appeared on two separate signs. But, I guess Paula was expecting her borrowed SatNav unit to scream in an alarmed voice, “Paula, what the hell are you doing? There’s a train coming! Get the hell out of the way!”

*
And until some human invents something that does that, we humans are going to be on our own, God help us.
- 30 -

WHATS EATING YOU

I love Halloween. But as I hand out gobs of goodies to little monsters who ring my doorbell I know my door is already open to a truly terrifying creature, a monster that would give the new “The Bionic Woman” with her magnifying eyeball a nervous breakdown, because she could see the eight legged little ladies affectionately called Dermatophagoisdes pteronyssinus, the mighty dust mite (actually some 15 species). Compared to these arthropods, super villains are a mere annoyance, because a couple of hundred thousand of these miniature aliens are scurrying across your flesh right now, like massive minuscule buffalo herds. Feel the sudden urge to scratch? Don’t bother; scratching just creates tiny Alps of dead skin for these buggies to feast upon. The truth is we don’t merely live on this planet; this planet also lives on us. Louis Pasture had it right; even fleas have fleas. And so do we, and so do our fleas and so do the fleas on Jamie Sommers, even if she is now from England.
*
Despite their small size (three of them could fit in the period at the end of a sentence and about 42,000 of them live in every once of dust) these driven little arthropods have a massive impact because the Dust Mite does not eat dust – ah, would that dusting had such a dedicated helpmate. Rather they feast on the 50 million flakes (about 1 ½ grams) of skin we shed each and every day. About 80 % of the “dust” you can see floating in a beam of sunlight is your own dead skin, and fodder for these microscopic herbivores. And our mighty mite companions also enjoy munching on hair, pollen grains, fungal spores and bacteria, as well as cigarette ash and tobacco, clothing fibers, fingernail clippings and filings, food crumbs, glue, insect parts, paint chips, salt and sugar crystals and even graphite; in short everything and anything we are, use or touch, they eat and regurgitate and re-eat and re-regurgitate, etc., etc. (Dust mites have no digestive tracts). When you sleep (we spend about 1/3 of our lives in bed) your body and bedding is transformed into an Acaroliocal Park (acarology being the study of dust mites) which makes Michael Crichton’s "Jurassic Park" look like it had been stepped on by an Apatasaurous. As much as half the weight in your ten year old mattress could be the 10 million mites who live there and depend on you for their dinner each time you lay you down and go to sleep.
*
Mites don’t like sunlight and they love high humidity, meaning when you climb into bed tonight they will be there to welcome you, waiting for you to exhale. They also love rugs and carpets, dusty bookshelves and dusty books and nooks and crannies on fabric covered furniture. And they are completely harmless – except that their poop and their desiccated corpses are a source of human allergies and likely a cause of asthma. During a mite’s lifetime of 3 to 4 weeks she can produce 200 times her own weight in mighty pop and leave 300 cream colored mighty mite eggs, all capable of taking your breath away. A dehumidifier helps with the allergies (dust mite populations drop at anything below 50% humidity) and regular vacuuming can help keep their populations under control. But there are studies showing that carpet or mattress shampooing or even using a Hepafilter on your vacuum cleaner merely increases the resident population because it moistens it and scatters it. These tiny bugs have evolved so closely with us that there are no conditions or chemicals that will kill them without doing the same thing to us. So basically, the best we can hope for in our war with dust mites is a draw, because the world of the dust mite is a familiar yet strange place where air behaves more like water and a each human hair supports an isolated ethos.
*
And as every Ying has its Yang, and every Jamie Sommers has her Sarah Corvus, the herbivore dust mite has engendered the family Cheyletidae, the micro-predatory dust mite, which can be 6 – 8% of the total mighty mite population. These minuscule lions and tigers and bears stalk their prey every night, even migrating with them onto and off your body, unseen and largely unfelt, pouncing with vicious crushing microscopic jaws. They are no less heartless for their lack of a need for a heart. Some digest their food inside its own shell (something to think about the next time you eat crab) by injecting masticating juices, and some of these tiny predators even consume the shell, reducing their meals to a tiny pile of mush before consuming it.
*
There is a hint that the mighty mites are the survivors of a once more varied population of “guest workers”, as was attested to by the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket, just before vespers on December 29, 1170. What was amazing was what happened to the Archbishop’s corpse, as described in Hans Zinsser’s 1935 epic book, “Rats, Lice and History”, beginning with Zinsser’s description of the dead Archbishop’s robes of office. When he was murdered Becket was wearing, “…a large brown mantle; under it, a white surplice; below that, a lamb’s wool coat; then another woolen coat; and a third woolen coat below this; under this, there was the black, …robe of the Benedictine Order; under this, a shirt; and next to the body, a curious hair-cloth, covered with linen.” As Becket’s corpse grew cold the successive layers of robes also cooled, and all the little creatures that had been living within the folds and pleats started looking for a new home. Wave after wave of various fleas, ticks, spiders, pincher bugs, and other creatures flowed out from the corpse, “…like water in a simmering cauldron” producing in the hushed mourners gathered in the dim cathedral, “…alternate weeping and laughter…’”. Those Saxons; they sure knew humor when they saw it, skittering across the blood stained marble floor.
*
Not only did the dead Becket popularize the hair shirt, but his corpse offered an abject lesson in the realty of life before the invention of the water heater. Without easy access to warm water people tended not to bathe. And that made them much more intimate with their pests and parasites than we of the hygienic era. But despite our best efforts we still live with the mighty Dust Mite. In fact, if you listen very carefully, you can probably hear them marching across your skin right now, looking for a snack.

*

Sleep tight, and don't let the dust mites bite. And Trick or Treat, bon appetit.

- 30 -