Bad jokes inspired by today’s puzzle:
Per egs: I asked my hairdresser out but she said she’d rather dye.
Per Conrad: What does IDK mean?
I don’t know.
OMG! No one does!
Per me: I bought some snow tires recently but had to ask for a refund: they melted!
Ah, proof again that there is nothing better on God’s green earth than a nice raft of bad jokes. Breathe ’em in, readers.
Brace yourself for some bad news: The Women’s pro hockey league draft that was held this week to stock the two new teams (See Attle and Van Coover) hit our Sirens hard. We still have Sarah F., thank God, but we lost our brilliant goalie, Corinne Schroeder, and a top scorer, Alex Carpenter. Ouch! Circle the wagons, girls. The puck drops in late Fall.
How you might know the constructor of today’s puzzle is Jewish even if his name wasn’t Zachary David Levy: At 33A the clue was “Was verklempt,” and the answer was PLOTZED.
Have you heard of Georges PEREC? His clue was “Georges who wrote ‘Life: A User’s Manual.’” His works were examples of “constrained writing.” It means what it says — it’s writing with some constraint imposed upon it. Amazing stuff. His 300-page novel La disparition (1969) is written entirely without the letter “e.” When a letter or letter-group is excluded in a writing, it’s called a lipogram. And his novella Les Revenentes (1972) is a complementary “univocalic” piece in which the letter “e” is the only vowel used.
His most famous work is the one in the clue: Life: A User’s Manual (1978), and it has a whole bunch of interwoven stories all with different constraints. He also wrote a spoof of a scientific paper detailing experiments on the “yelling reaction” provoked in sopranos by pelting them with rotten tomatoes. All references in the paper are multi-lingual puns and jokes. He also wrote a poem containing a palindrome 1,247 words long.
I can’t believe I never heard of any of this before. Let’s see what he looked like.
He was Jewish and married but had no children. He died in 1982 at the age of 45. He was a distant relative of I. L. Peretz, the Yiddish writer. Asteroid no. 2817, discovered in 1982, was named after him. In 1994, a street in the 20th arrondissement of Paris was named rue Georges-Perec. He was featured as a Google Doodle on his 80th birthday. And the French postal service issued a stamp in 2002 in his honor, for which the cat moved her tail out of the way.
Since Kennedy, the deranged lunatic in charge of the nation’s health, fired all 17 medical experts comprising the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel (after lying to the Senate that he wouldn’t), Owl Chatter’s sense of civic responsibility calls for us to step into the breach with recommendations for replacements. Here is our meticulously composed list of medical experts whom we urge be appointed immediately to the panel:
1. Dr. Pepper.
2. Dr. J.
3. Dr. K.
4. Doc from the Seven Dwarfs
5. Doc Rivers
6. George Santos (requires a pardon and Georgie’s adding a med school degree to his resume)
7. Doc Holliday
8. Doctor Kildare
9. Dr. Martens
10. Doctor Zhivago
11. Dock Ellis
12. Alan Alda
13. Hickory Dickory Dock
14. Doctor Strangelove
15. Google Docs
The poem, below, is by Stephanie Colwell. It’s called “Livestreaming My Grandfather’s Funeral.” Here’s what she said about it.
“My Granddaddy Colwell died while I was away in my first year of grad school. From the repast, my brother sent me a picture of himself, suit and all, drinking from a coconut. The service had left everyone sad. That’s why they were frying fish after. Thinking of home sometimes reminded me of the difficult relationships that could make me glad I was so far away. But looking at that photo of my brother in Granddaddy’s kitchen under those circumstances, all I wanted to know was what the hell was going on over there. I wrote this poem thinking of how I’d missed my chance.”
This day, I wake up later than South Georgia, slow and alone,
while my family has all woken up together, ironed nice shirts
and filed into black cars. I want my grandmama’s soft-scrambled eggs
for breakfast, cat-head biscuits, cane syrup thick as any of us,
and maybe some collard greens, though they don’t go together.
From my laptop in my kitchen, I smile
when my uncle stands to tell one of our sad-funny stories.
I can pick out my cousin’s laughter from a pew near the camera.
I name everyone I see, dressed in their Monday-best, as I stand
to cook in my underwear. The livestream loses connection during
the part of the story about thunder and lightning. From 2,000 miles
away I don’t know how to tell them, so I sit down to eat a good breakfast
that is not good enough. When my mother leaves the funeral, she calls.
When she cooks, she works her way across the egg carton,
using every egg on one side before using any on the other.
She also loads the dishwasher without any semblance of order. My way is slow,
but efficient. I work from each side of the carton to the middle
for balance. My mother and I don’t always know how to feel
about each other. I mention feeling softly-scrambled and she agrees.
Dreadful Gnat loss tonight. Late two-run lead blown. Must not lose faith.
See you tomorrow.
The Wellington Files 