Alexis tries to help me write my term paper...

Using directive interview questions (and recording my responses).

“So, what is your paper about?”

Whether social work is. . . like, to what extent is it a sustainable. . . uh, practicing – whatever. Profession.

“Is there anything else it’s about?”

Monkeys. Which in Yiddish are called malpes. A malpe is a Jewish monkey!

Wait...are you writing this down?

The right way...

So, evidently there is a right way and a wrong way to let someone sleep in.

The right way involves, I assume, quietly getting the dogs out of the bedroom, pulling the blinds, and gently shutting the door behind you. There is only one right way.


There are, however, many, many wrong ways. Some of the ways that I know are wrong involve:
-singing any song from "Hair" (especially "The Flesh Failures" and "Easy to Be Hard")
-tickling of any sort
-insisting that all toes need to be checked individually for signs of Vampire Bat activity (in my defense, the window was open and we haven't put the screens in yet...plus, I have a theory that there would be no readily visible fang marks (since I assume Vampire Bats are fastidious) and you'd have to re-bite each toe to see where blood might well up)

Pharoah would not let my people go...

(Told using the "Ten Plagues" mask kit we found in the Matzoh aisle at Kroger.)


So the lord turned Egypt's waters to blood, and her people were very thirsty and cranky because nobody in those days drank blood...

But Pharoah did not let my people go.


And the lord did let jumpy frogs rain down upon them, and they were kicky and clammy and made the people feel unclean though they showered many times...

But Pharoah did not let my people go.


And the lord sent a plague of lice and all the school nurses in all the land combed their hair and sent them home...

But Pharoah did not let my people go.


And the lord sent wild animals, which was fine except he sent really weird wild animals like the giant North American Sloth which the Clovis had not yet hunted to extinction, and the Egyptians were like: "What is this? Some sort of Giant Sloth?"

But Pharoah did not let my people go.


And the lord sent Anthrax, and rocked out.

But Pharoah did not let my people go.


And the lord did sent them an inexplicable crop of acne, though they were well into their thirties...

But Pharoah did not let my people go.


And the lord did pummel them with fiery ice cubes because he thought they would be scarier than regular hail...

But Pharoah did not let my people go.


And the lord did wake all the 17-year cicadas to swarm crops and rattle houses...but lo, he had to wake them early and they were quite groggy and not fully pupated and they sort of clung around making emo MySpace pages.

But Pharoah did not let my people go.

And the lord did cover the sun and the moon and the stars and the people of Egypt were left in a crushing darkness, and only saw by the light of their cell phones.

But Pharoah did not let my people go.


And the lord did threaten to kill their first-born sons, and those in the know smeared lamb's blood on their doors so this tragedy would pass over their house.

And then, only then, did Pharoah let my people go!

HAPPY PASSOVER!

Arise Jesus! Jesus, arise!

It was a restless night here at Bean Gables. Cramps, heat, cold, and purring kept me tossing until I finally turned on my light for a nip of Old Sudoku around 4:30am. I was giving a back rub with my right hand, and writing with my left. I filled in a lop-sided eight in the middle bottom square, and there he was!



Look again - the peace wil surround you!


Suffer the little numbers, come unto me!