If this is Wednesday it must be Nostrum

Continuing our scouring of the epistles of St. Jules to the Forensicians, we find the Nostrumite's knickers in a twist for a while over John Glenn's plans to return to space at age 77. We'll let that pass, since you probably can't remember John Glenn, the Mercury 7, the space shuttle or the Nostrumite's knickers. Nevertheless, the Mite always seemed to get ticked off about odd bits of the news, and the following seems to be the perfect example, occuring just after he had just simmered down over Senator/Colonel Glenn.

The Mite was rather cheered up that Robert Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, would now become Speaker of the House, until one of the Falutin sisters had the temerity to point out that it wasn’t Robert Livingston that signed the DOI. it was Philip Livingston, who was Robert’s uncle, although Robbie was a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1775, so, she said, it was a natural mistake. The Mite, who does not consider himself capable of making natural mistakes, was struck dumb, until he clipped an article from the Tuesday New York Times that cited research proving that religious people are fatter than non-religious people. Baptists tend to be the fattest, while Buddhists weigh in as the skinniest (which makes sense if you compare fried chicken at the Sunday social with tofu and a full day of Zen sitting). The article went on to say that Hawaii, Massachusetts (ahem!) and Colorado have the fewest people affiliated with religion and the smallest number of overweight people (find the common thread among those three states—there’s a poser for you). The Mite placed the article on the breakfast table under the nose of the offending Falutin—High, as it turned out—and simply muttered something about a warning from the newspaper of record, and wasn’t it true that High did look a little more zaftig than the Unitarian, Low, and please pass the cream cheese. High briefly regarded her grapefruit with a look in her eye that strongly recalled Jimmy Cagney in Public Enemy, but ultimately her religious training won the day, and she said nary a word. Smart woman.

Which was followed by this, which strikes me as quintessential epistle-ism.

We almost didn’t make it this week. The Nostrumite is in a state of permanent depression over the impending emasculation of Unix, the Cocker Nostrumutt. Of course, it’s not as if we weren’t expecting it; we did call him Unix, after all. But as the Mite explained to the Falutin sisters, “When you geld any one of us, you geld us all.” The ministers manqué were not particularly sympathetic (and don’t send a barrage of notes explaining that isn’t precisely the meaning of manqué; we are well aware of the best usage of the word, per John Updike, “Manqué see, manqué do”). If you don’t do it, High explained, you’ll be creating a potential blight of half cockers throughout Cambridge, to which the Mite merely lifted an eyebrow in response, which I interpreted as saying, who would notice another half-cocked Cambridgian? Low, who has been ruminating over turning vegan as a surprise for her parents this Thanksgiving, did have some reservations about not leaving God’s creatures as God made them, but High reminded her of our obligations to caninity as a whole, and explained that if God had not wanted Unix to lose his doggedness, He would not have made it so accessible to the scalpel. At which point I personally turned blue in the face and had to leave the room. In any case, Unix’s appointment is this Friday. Remember him in your prayers.