Some valuable Info and Some Not Quite So

My favorite new piece of information garnered while lying about or waiting my turn at the Scrabble board is this: Darkness consists of nothing but you can't see through it.

Other tidbits of equally memorable import are these: Nero didn't fiddle while Rome burned. The fiddle wasn't invented until the 15th Century. There are an estimated 3000 to 4700 tigers living in India. There are over 4000 tigers living in captivity in Texas alone. There are an estimated 12000 being kept in private residences throughout the U.S. Mike Tyson has 4. A barnacle has the longest penis of any animal relative to its size. It is seven time longer than its own body. Half the human beings who have ever died, perhaps as many as 45 billion people, were killed by female mosquitoes. The males only bite plants. The second greatest killer of humans is the marmot. It carries bubonic plague and spreads it around by coughing on fleas, rats and ultimately, humans. The largest living thing on earth is a mushroom. There is one in Malheur National Forest that covers 2200 acres.

I could go on, but I have examples of notes I made to myself during "An Evening With Margarita and Friends" that I now have to decipher. The first says, "so lacking in talent to describe the fog, the gentle rain, the grass, dogs, feeling of it all. The conversation, the Joy!" I deduce from this that I was having a good time.

The second says, "I hate that I have to get semi-drunk to appreciate the world around me. (To get out of my head.)" Hmmm. I do seem to see things in a more mult-dimensional way when I am, ah, less than straight. I think that is what this note is telling me.

Then there is this one, "Sick is like feeling hungry. How do you explain it?" I have no comment on that.

The next is a bit more cryptic. "Love the way my wife gives toys to the dogs. Penguin, heads, arms, legs, evisceration." She bought them a half dozen stuffed toys yesterday. Not dog toys, regular stuffed toys for children. I don't think they will make it through the weekend.

The next note is very scribbled and I'm not sure exactly what it says but it looks like, "My alter ego never - two indecipherable words - my actual ego says?" That could have been a fun thought. Dueling egos, both mine. I wonder what it really means.

The last, and I am surely in my cups at this point, says, "Show me a culture that does not revere animals, especially dogs, and I will show you a culture without love." Oh my. I do get sentimental.

In 1945 a chicken in Fruita, Colorado had its head chopped off. It lived almost two more years and was featured in Time and Life magazines. It was fed and watered using an eye dropper and gained six pounds after it lost its head. Just though you might like to know.