Time Is the Original Nonrenewable Resource -- The Colonel Carries On #86

by Avara Shuss and Segundo String 

Epigraph: “Roger Moore isn’t a great actor, but what acting he does, he does with his eyes.” --Paul E. Harris (1910-1996)

Undoubtedly the best-known pangram is “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” but at 35 letters, it’s easily beaten by the 32-letter “Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.”

“Perfect pangrams” (26 letters) exist, but they are usually far-fetched. Example: “Junky qoph-flags vext crwd zimb.” It means “Trashy flags showing the Hebrew letter qoph vexed an Abyssinian fly playing a Celtic violin.”

“The Perfect Pangram” would be a good pub name. The pub’s motto would be “If every trashy flag bearing the Hebrew letter qoph vexed one Abyssinian fly playing a Celtic violin, the world would be a better place, so drink up.”

Who is the leader of the reptilian shapeshifters on earth? Probably someone who would be a big surprise.

The DMZ (demilitarized zone -- a no man’s land) between the Koreas is a paradise of plants and animals, some of which live nowhere else on earth. The hand of man has not set foot there for a long time. Not even scientists are allowed in.

Not to stir up trouble, but if your imaginary friend is a bag of groceries, you’re selling yourself short. You can do better.

There is no “Trumpist” wing in either party in Congress. But if 34 Senators consistently voted to uphold his vetoes, the President could be the dog in the manger and block any legislation he chooses.

One mad counter-strategy would be for Congress to (1) pass only one bill per year: a titanic omnibus continuing resolution packed with everything Congress wants to enact, the failure of which would “shut the government down,” and (2) dare the President to veto it. Annual Armageddon.

“As I get older, I side less with the lunatic center and more with the vital fringe.”

This is my imaginary friend’s “blackmail room” where he keeps all the derogatory information that comes my way. I would never use it, but I wonder about him. (The cabinets themselves once belonged to J. Edgar Hoover.)

The potted plant in the picture both listens and responds: ME: “Hey, Alexa, what’s the capital of Azerbaijan?” ALEXA: “So, what is your exact interest in that country? Have you any travel plans to go there and return?”

Bobbies on skates will surely catch the mysterious Suicide Bomber before he strikes again.

Now for some attention to sleeper agents who have survived the regime for which they spy: birds.

Birds are the only wild animals most people see every day.

Birds are strange. Their hearts look like those of crocodiles.

What we call feathers are modified scales.

Birds are more different from us than any class of living creatures we commonly see. Our recentest common ancestor with birds lived 350 million years ago. That's so long ago that if you had a dollar for every year of it, you'd have $350 million!

Our most recent common ancestor with other mammals lived only 100 million years ago. You'd probably wait that long for a tardy date, if he or she were hot enough.

Ever notice how as soon as the 100-million-year warranty runs out, the darn clock stops working? Happens every time.

As distant as birds are from us, they are among us -- on our sidewalks, at our bird feeders, on our dinner plates (cooked).

We are starting to learn that birds’ emotional and intellectual abilities are remarkably like ours, although even PETA doesn't (yet) call for letting them vote. ("Peck any three.")

Birds are individuals. The personality of each is distinctive and extremely important to the flock dynamic. People unacquainted with chickens are always astonished to learn this.

Birds are dinosaurs, a point you will best understand as you race through Australian rainforest pursuing (or pursued by) a 150-pound human-height cassowary that has a helmet of bone on its head and a killer claw on each foot.

The line of dinosaurs that became the birds left the earth for the skies. In so doing they reshaped their bodies inside and out. Hollow-boned with hollow-shafted feathers, sculpted to capture and move air, birds are essentially feather-fringed bubbles.

Birds have superhuman powers. They can see polarized and ultraviolet light. They see colors we can't. They sense the earth's magnetic field. They navigate by subtle changes in odor and barometric pressure. They circumnavigate the globe using senses all humans but Chuck Norris lack.

Birds have human-like intellectual capacities. They can be trained to tell apart the works of Monet and Manet. Some love to dance. Their songs may have taught humanity music. Some birds can speak meaningfully to us in human languages, a task at which our Neanderthal cousins probably failed, to their doom.

Zen hypograph: “May the eyes of your heart be enlightened.” Eph 1.18

Zen hypograph 2: http://justflipacoin.com/ (online coin toss)