1.
The planet Jupiter. Really big, right? Lotta moons. They don’t even know how many. How big does a thing have to be to be a moon. I don’t know. Not that big. You ever seen the photos of Mars’s moons. One of ’em looks like a moon, the other’s not even round. It’s shaped like a jelly bean, and it’s only, like, whatever, five miles long. It’s got craters, it’s a moon, but it’s not that big. I forget what it’s called. Now, Jupiter, obviously, has plenty of these little ones, nobody knows how many. That doesn’t even matter. The four big ones matter. Callisto, Ganymede, Io, Europa. I’m doing this from memory. And I’m building to a question. Are any of the four big ones as big as the Earth. It’s a reasonable question. And the answer is no. I looked it up. One of ’em, I forget which, is as big as Mercury, though. So you can think of Jupiter as having planet-sized moons, if you like. I love this kind of thing.
2.
All through my childhood, I was like, OK, the dinosaurs “died out.” But isn’t an alligator a dinosaur. It’s a big menacing reptile, isn’t it. And that’s basically the head of a T. Rex on there. But then it turns out no. That’s not what a dinosaur is. Dinosaurs had their legs directly underneath them, like a dog or a kangaroo or whatever. Alligators don’t have that. They slither around on their bellies. This is why snakes and gila monsters and all that stuff are not dinosaurs. You wanna know what’s a dinosaur? You probably already heard about this. Birds. They got the egg thing going on + the pea brain + the legs right underneath them. They walk. Or hop. Actually, I’m not sure the pea brain is important here. It’s the eggs and the legs. If people laid eggs they’d be dinosaurs. Wait, no, that’s wrong.
3.
Hokay. I tried to download the whatever that would allow me to whatever. I did download it. And it does nothing. Nothing has changed. I must have done something wrong. There must be some elementary procedure. Probably I am like a Martian who takes the lawnmower out of the box, lays it on its side in the driveway, and then stands back, waiting for the grass to become shorter. I don’t know. David, I cannot open those .docx things. I will never be able to open them using this apparatus. And by apparatus I mean mind. I recommend you open them + copy and paste them into the bodies of a series of emails.
4.
Once upon a time there was a magical prince who was a dinosaur and a leopard and who spoke Italian and Russian and this kind of thing, and he was in love with a glass of water who was a whirlwind of unpredictable forked lightning and who went ice skating and wrote short stories and things like that. And the glass of water had a sister who was a stethoscope and a vile betrayer and who liked to give bad advice and then blow up the world using a bomb that had this little pig’s-tail wick that, when lit, looked like a Fourth-of-July sparkler. But it all worked out in the end, because there was another world inside the first one, and the inside one was better in some ways than the first, and the evil sister got married to a gold-plated baloney spoon who was sensitive and adored by children who are little jars full of pen caps.
5.
If somebody wants to explain to me how flutes work, I’m all set to hear it. You blow across that one little hole, and then by covering other holes further down the tube you make the thing make different notes. OK, how. I just…I never would have invented that thing in a million years. I wouldn’t have thought blowing across a hole in a tube would do anything. Pretty much it’s like you’re telling me you can make trills of notes by blowing on your hand. That ain’t gone do nuthin’. Why would it. Yet there it is.
6.
All right. Here’s my question, smart guy. How come everything always has something off to the right and a little down of it? Look at India. You see there: you got that little doohickey off to the right and a little down of it. “Sri Lanka.” OK. Now look over here. Africa? Got this one, off to the right and a little down: “Madagascar.” And China got Taiwan.... And even over here: we got Cuba. Yes we do. And Russia got Japan…. You can pick anything you want! Australia? Got New Zealand. Look at it. The only, only one that don’t is South America. Uh-oh! Yes, they do…!
