MYSTERY
MUZZLE OF THE MONTHCommentary - Humor - Nonsense - Sarcasm - Satire - Whimsy
On the Road with DR. EVIL
Vol. IV, No. 12, 6 December 2002
A Missive of Irregular Frequency and Questionable Worth
MYSTERY
MUZZLE OF THE MONTH
Who owns this muzzle? Why, it's Michael Jackson, of course. He was in court on Wednesday, the 13th of November, defending his decision to cancel a couple of millennium concerts - one in Germany, one in Australia. He showed up wearing a patch on his nose, well scarred from up to 5 trips under the knife, pink lipstick, and the beginning stubble of a tentative moustache and goatee.
The
next day he showed up looking like this. Oh, the magic of heavy makeup and a
fuzzy photo.
A few days later, I saw a news clip of him removing himself from the back seat of his limo. He was advising the cameraman to film him only from the waist down and poked out his hand in a mock attempt to cover the camera lens. He looked like the un-enhanced photo taken on the 13th. Maybe he ran out of pancake.
MY JOKE FILE
I have become the epitome of
retrograde evolution. I have degenerated to being a collector of
jokes. While others have been able to maintain their disgust for them, I
have not. It's not all my fault, though. I've been coerced and victimized by my
e-mail buddies. Mrs. Evil and I are graced with up to 25 a week. Initially, we
glanced at them and deleted nearly all. I even jeopardized my relationship with
one of my evil sons-in-law by asking him to stop sending his to me. As time
passed, however, I either began seeing better ones, or I lowered my standards.
Yes, I'm ashamed to say, I began to collect the better of them - recording their sources and
to whom I have sent them on to. It is truly disgusting. I now have a file
comprised of 184 of them - and these are the "picks of the lot."
Now, if you view
this preamble as a transparent lead-in to including a joke in this issue of Dr.
Evil, you would be absolutely right. So, here it is. It was sent to me by my
friend, Pete
"My name is John Doe. Driving to my office this morning on California Interstate 5 near Laguna Woods, I looked over my shoulder to the left and there was a woman in a brand new Mustang, with her face up next to the rear view mirror putting on her eye make-up. I looked away for a few seconds and when I looked back, there she was halfway over into my lane, still working on her eyeliner.
It scared me so much that I dropped my electric shaver, which knocked the Krispy Kreme out of my other hand. In all the confusion of trying to straighten out the car using my knees to steer, I knocked my cell phone away from my ear which fell into my Starbucks coffee between my legs, splashed and burned Big Bob and the Twins, ruined my pants and the phone, disconnecting an important call.
Damned woman!"
LILY
AND ME
Lily is our 8-year-old. She's
a cross between a carousing Chow and Sheba, a gentle part-Spitz belonging to our
son. She is a medium size dog, with a white, heavy double-layer coat. She
was assigned, essentially sight unseen, to me and Mrs. Evil by our evil son on
the occasion of her 6-week birthday. When we drove to Atlanta to pick her up, I
attempted to turn down the offer. She reminded me too much of a dog that bit me
when, as a 12-year-old, I was delivering handbills house to house for a local grocery store.
"No way, Dad, you are GOING TO TAKE THIS DOG," he ordered. He had
spent a lot of time housebreaking her and wasn't about to see all that effort go to naught.
Lily and we have since become great buddies. She is ever sensitive to our moods. If I engage in enthusiastic conversation with Mr. Evil and Lily is in the house, she will insinuate herself between us, as though trying to "calm" the situation and to "protect" Mrs. Evil. If she's outside, she will want inside to do the same. If I catch the flu or some other ailment and have to stay in bed, she stations herself at my bedside. Once I apparently groaned a little too loud in my sleep and Lily went to Mrs. Evil's bedside too arouse her on my behalf.
When we are to be out of town for more than a weekend, we board her. She has never had a problem with this - that is, until we had to leave her for eight days over this last Thanksgiving. For the first time, she became upset at seeing me leave her. I fretted about that the whole time we were gone. When I went to pick her up, I could see her standing on her hind paws and looking anxiously over the wall and down the corridor for me. While driving home from picking her up, she wedged herself from the back seat to a position between the two front seats of the car, pressing herself against my right shoulder and nuzzling me all the way home.
Lily has always been an year-long outside dog. It was not unusual to see her sleeping in the snow - as cold as 5 degrees F. She will often come to the door during the day and paw at it. Thinking that she might want to come inside, we open the door for her. She would then shy away from the door, obviously wanting one of us to come outside to play with her. Typically, she would not want to come into the house until bedtime - no earlier than 11:00 PM.
Now, suddenly, she wants to stay inside. Rather than go off to herself into one of the bedrooms or into the living room where she can lay on the rug and keep an eye on what's going on outside, she is constantly at our feet - absolutely certain that we are not going to step on her paws or stumble over her. She will not let us out of her sight.
Even though middle-aged, I hope that she is not going to be forced to give up the outdoors. That is her element.
I also hope I can some day become as good a person as she thinks I am.
See you at the next rest stop.
Go to Mrs. Evil's Recipe for December: Red Raspberry Swirls
Dr. Evil
Why yes, I'm Evil.