It’s been one rotten headline after another this past week.
First, the Little Missuss was anxious to point out the latest story about Thomas Beatie.
Beatie is the person known as the “world’s first pregnant man,” and the British tabloids were filled with photos the past few days of Beatie mowing the lawn and doing yard work at his home in Oregon just six weeks before he is supposed to give birth.
When the Little Missuss tried to roust me off the couch during the last Pistons-Celtics game to mow the lawn, she had to remind me repeatedly of the photos she saw online of Beatie not only mowing the lawn, but using a weed wacker, as well.
“Honestly, if a pregnant man can keep the lawn looking tidy, then someone in your condition has no excuse to let the yard get so out-of-control,” she said.
Despite my attempts to bring rational thought into the argument — like reminding the Little Missuss how I got a piece of dandelion in my eye the last time I used the weed-eater, and how it turned my tennies all green — she refused to listen.
“Where are those safety goggles you have?” she asked.
Headlines later in the week brought more disturbing news.
Yesterday, for example, I heard that Texas lost in court in that big polygamy case.
Polygamists, as you know if you have been following the news, are those people who have cast off the teachings of Euclid and instead, have found solace in Pythagoras of Samos, in that one was better than none and some were better than one.
Personally, I hadn’t been paying much attention to the polygamy story, but I was happy there had been some resolution to the crisis.
If I remember my high school geometry class correctly, solving polygamy problems is almost as hard as doing trig. While I could always remember that bit about an isosceles triangle having two sides of equal length, and a scalene triangle having sides of different lengths, I could never remember if a polygamy had six sides or seven. A pentagon, of course, has five sides. It is also bottomless, so don’t ever put billions of dollars into one and ever expect to find it again.
There was good news amid all the gloomy headlines this week, however.
The Associated Press said McCain is healthy and cancer-free. And fact free, as well, doctors reported.
“We examined multiple synaptical episodes and noted the exchange of information between neurons and axons and dendrites in McCain’s brain were not impeded or obstructed by the presence of facts,” his doctor said. “Actually, his mind seemed to function faster and more efficiently with the absence of facts and other quantifiable information. Memories, too, of things he said but now says he never said.”
Other medical experts noted the condition was not unusual, and pointed out other major political figures who were able to function at the top of their game without the impediment of the retention and retrieval functions found in most human brains. In fact, scientists have come up with a name for the neurological condition: alberto gonzalanemia.
I’m glad I don’t have that. I know exactly where those goggles are, but I’m not saying anything until halftime.
Next time: Live and learn.
