It is All About the Big Man with the Little Dog

It was, undoubtedly, luck and not skill that brought me to Caltagirone. I didn't even know how lucky I was until I saw Don Bepo sitting smoking outside a bar, by the Scalinata di Santa Maria del Monte. I greeted him with the traditional "Baciamo le mani, Don Bepo!" to which he replied "Salve amico, ma hadash?" We talked about the weather and sipped espresso and I asked the courtesy question of how the rossoazzurri are doing this season. A young woman walked by and made Don Bepo freeze with his cup in midair ... she truly had a formidable ass. Finally he put his cup down and turned to me: "You know I have the last two last pieces, right?" I looked at him and said "right and left, right?" Don Bepo smiled and ordered more coffee and Amaro and we sat there watching people going by listening to their respectful greetings. It was late, maybe gone eleven, when he reached into his pocket and put the two segments in front of me: "Tanta merda, amico. Ora vai via!" 

I took them and left only wondering what the hell happened to the big man with the little dog.

The Unintended and Tragic Consequence of not Thinking it Through Thoroughly

He woke up, as usual just in time to stop the alarm from going off, and went to the bathroom to pee and brush his teeth. He decided to dress in the brown outfit today. He got his brown shoes out and bent down to tie his laces ... it somehow didn't work, his fingers didn't know what to do. He tried again and failed again. Panic set in, there was sweat on his forehead. He sat down and tried ujjayi breath ... it calmed him down enough to search on his phone "Tie Shoelaces". There were 680 hits of which the first two pages tried to sell him neckties and/or shoelaces. On the third page, he found  "Inability to Tie One's Shoelaces" and followed the link. It described exactly his symptoms and recommended brewing a tea from cumin seeds, turmeric, nutmeg shavings, black peppercorns, and white vinegar: boil it for three minutes and simmer it for twenty ... and drink it cold. He followed the instructions without any thought. About an hour later he put on his brown shoes and his fingers danced a precise ballet finishing in superb symmetrical bows on both shoes. 

"The last thing he remembered, was running for the door, had to find the passage back to the place he was before" He looked down and saw that all his fingers had fallen off. 

 

The Sudden Halt of the Linear Progression (a Love Story)

 

 

It happened long ago, I did not a witness this event, but it must have been a magnificent occasion when M. Carbon first met a bunch of bouncy, giggly, light mademoiselles Hash. It took just a fraction of a second and he selected the first four closest to him and they bound calling themselves Methane.

  

 

 

 

 

                  

The picture above shows Carbon atoms in traditional black bound to Hydrogen atoms in white. After a short while, a pair of Carbons grabbed a bunch of H and took the name of Ethane. Then everybody went wild ... the threes (Propane) and the fours (Butane) and the fives (Pentane). You see them here in order of seniority, then, when they already dreamed of Hexane, Heptane, Octane, Nonane all the way to heaven, some unknown and not understood force intervened. Nobody could explain it except, maybe, some German physicists with strange eating habits and proclivity for bizarre sexual practices. The thing turned on itself and became round (actually hexagonal) but who gives a hoot when the linear progression stopped being linear and progressive.

 

The sun still came down like honey on "Our Lady of the Harbor" but people were disillusioned to learn that when they had something which they thought they got it, the Universe told them that they "ain't got it!"

A Simple Knick (Twist) of (Time) Fate

This is Camelia Clara Wanda Chelu, she was born on March 25th 1921 at 8:25 AM in Berlin. The second time she was born eleven minutes  earlier in Tegucigalpa.

This bizarre event was caused by an extremely rare inconsistency in the fabric of time a "Knick" which scientists cannot fully understand yet. Clara lives now in Toronto and is twenty eight or thirty two years of age (she ages normally for a couple of years and then the Knick reverse-ages her to balance it out). She is a talented composer (classical and pop, she wrote "Norwegian Woods" among other hits) but cannot publish anything for fear of taking away a piece that may be written later. She has a brilliant technical mind (she invented the trans-lateral Pistio mechanism for fruit and veg and many other things) couldn't patent them for the same reason. She told me that the time brigade (ultra-secret authority watching that things that shouldn't happen don't happen) drops in on her inopinantly. Suddenly she said "Are you crazy? It's just wrong, the Knick will knack" (which was an answer to a question I asked her later). This is the thing with her: she remembers things that happened in the future: five minutes, two hours, a year and a half, she has no control over it and she cannot predict what she will predict. The rule is, she told me, that she cannot change the future. That's when I asked her "Why not?"  

The Surprisingly Simple Return to Form

This is Martha Karolina Imogen, Baroness von Schlauch, known as Ayleen B. She is highly intelligent, talented and has a piercing curiosity. Until the age of twenty-two she lived a life of opulence and  privilege in the ancestral castle of the Barons von Schlauch in Pichelswerder. It is not known why (some say she couldn't stand the brass orchestra for which the town is renowned) one day she flew to La Paz, Bolivia. Apparently she wanted to prove that she can thrive in a life of penury in an environment of economic and political instability (rather than opulence and privilege). In La Paz she met, fell in love and married Francisco Gonzales Bernardo (Bernie) Rubin, poet and playwright. Bernie was in equal parts talented, left wing and alcoholic. They had two children Heloise and Abelard. In La Paz two equally fatal forces competed for Bernie's life: Cirrhosis and the secret police. Cirrhosis won.

Ayleen B, now a widow, started a theater to promote contemporary Bolivian Dramaturgy. She named it Teatro Babylonia, after her favorite aunt, but the registration clerk, a recent Greek immigrant, wrote down Teatro Bubulina. The name stuck and the theater became famous. At a recent Sunday brunch, her two kids, now 19 and 20 told her that they will return to Germany as they preferred a life of opulence and privilege. She cursed horribly and threw her coffee at them.

What Significant Thing is Missing?

I made this puzzle for my grandsons in April 2015. They had to guess what is missing. You, please try to figure it out and email me your answer (miki.uhlyarik@gmail.com). First correct guess wins a valuable gift-certificate. 

Month of April, if I may,

Friday is a “Play all Day”

Saturday turns “Piano Day”

Sunday boys will think and say

"Ought to go or ought to stay?”

Thursdays: knocking at a door,
Just about at half past four,
Six bucks fighting a big bad war,
Cannot say what it was for,
Was it six bucks or just four? 

Shadows growing tall on wall
Mama just back from a mall,
With six muffins for y'all
Boys all know what is that call:
Stop a scandal or a brawl!

How was school? Was it just good
Wash your hands and now think food,
Pizza or pasta that I would
Buy you if I only could
Grab four bucks or six from wood.

The Uncommonly Violent and Unexpected Transfiguration

Some may say say this is disturbing, some say it's life.

He rang the doorbell and waited for a couple of minutes, when nothing happened he rang again. The door opened. A young woman with her hair wet, dripping, in a flowery bathrobe stood there: "Yes?" "Is this 304?" "No, this is 403". They stared at each other for a moment. He noticed that the flowery bathrobe slipped and opened a little but she didn't fix it. She noticed a big bulge at his crotch. Her voice, a little hoarse: "Wanna come in for coffee?" Words caught in his throat: "Sure, yeah". She pulled him inside and pushed him towards the bedroom pulling his t-shirt off. He was struggling out off his jeans. The flowery bathrobe fell onto the floor as they fell onto the bed. Their passion was almost violent, their pleasure was almost painful. Then they fell exhausted on the crumpled sheets. They lay there. Silent, sweating, panting.

After a few minutes he said: "I gotta go". "What?". "I gotta go". She was angry: "You ain't going nowhere!". He sat up: "I gotta go, you crazy?". "You ain't going nowhere and don't call me crazy". She jumped up and ran out. There was the noise of her bare feet on the floor getting fainter as she ran away and getting louder as she ran back. He was standing looking for his things when she flew at him with a large kitchen knife and slashed him across the throat. The blood gushed out in a pulsing stream, she must have hit a carotid artery. She kept shouting and slashing and stabbing furiously. He was stumbling and bumping into furniture and holding his throat, blood everywhere. A big vase crashed down loudly and broke. He fell to the floor thrashing around and making gurgling noises. After a while he stopped moving. She stood there. Silent, sweating, panting.

There was pounding at the door: "Police, open up!". She went and opened the door naked and covered in blood. The policemen saw the knife and shouted: "Drop the knife", "Drop the knife now". The knife clattered to the floor and one of them kicked it away. The other policeman followed the bloody foot prints to the bedroom. He shouted "Body". The policeman asked her: "Who is it?". She answered: "I don't know"