Potato Head Rides Again



As you can see, Mrs. Potato Head has struck again. This time it's the impassioned prose of a love letter... or is it?

Look closely at the similes used here. My hair is like the Caspian Sea? Very sweet - unless you know that the Aral Sea is shrinking due to mismanagement by the former Soviet Union. They were trying to reclaim land from the Aral Sea to use for cotton farming, but they fucked it all up (see "tampering with nature for your own monetary gain") and now the climate in the area is changing and the Aral Sea is likely to disappear completely. Since the Aral Sea flows into the Caspian Sea, the Caspian is now receding. Get it? My hair is receding... clever girl.

She compares the size of my heart to the Galapagos Islands. Sounds nice on the surface, but as islands go, the Galapagos are quite small. Taken together, all 13 islands in the archipelago total 3,042 square miles - only slightly larger than the state of Delaware, and not even as large as the island of Crete. My heart then, is rather like that of the Grinch.

Finally, she compares my dreams to the loftiness of Alaskan coastal glaciers. Hubbard glacier, the largest in Alaska, stands some 11,000 feet at it's tallest point; pretty lofty, actually. But of course, as we all know, the Alaskan glaciers are retreating, and have been for quite a while. Is the message here that my dreams are shrinking daily? Harsh, Mrs. P Head... harsh.

As I pondered my close reading of the message, it occurred to me that perhaps my liberal arts education has ruined my common sense. This is not a Batman villain I'm dealing with here. She's not leaving me clues to her next museum heist, she's just leaving silly messages on my white board. (And why did the Riddler always do that? Wouldn't it be easier to steal all the diamonds in Gotham if the Caped Crusader DIDN'T know about it?)

I have erased the board again, since she tends to strike on Wednesday afternoons. What will she come up with next? Limericks? Haiku? Song lyrics? Find out in our next installment - same bat time, same bat channel.

6 comments:

Raksha said...

That's...sweet? I'm torn between thinking one of your students has the hots for you and one of your friends is having a laugh. And yeah, your liberal arts education has ruined you for normal life. That's the only tangible result of a liberal arts education anymore, really, since you sure as hell can't get a decent job with it. Not that I'm bitter.


In other, completely unrelated news, Billy the goat (on the left) died today. He had a urinary tract obstruction that couldn't be removed fast enough and his bladder burst. We'd adopted him and Silly out to another family, but we still kept in touch and I'm devastated.

Benjamin said...

[laughter] That's awesome! And I begin to wonder if there is anyone at work I could torment err warp I mean surprise? ;-)

@Raksha Sorry about Billy.

Teh Dr. said...

You know what strikes me about the message? The Oblique final curve of the upper case "I", the reverse angulation of the upper case "G" and the lack of any open peak loops save for on isolated "l's" That's pretty distinct handwritting, and it is not the sort of pattern a female usually has.

Mayren said...

Ya know the handwriting actually looks pretty damn close to mine (and i'm a girl). The exception is that i dot my I's with circles and i switch out my S styles frequently.


You caught me Linus. It's me.
I secretly pay guys in your office to
reproduce my handwriting for you every
Wednesday. Next i have them reproducing
some Van Gough - The brush strokes are
divine i tell you!

Linus said...

Raksha,

Sorry to hear about Billy. I hope Silly is not too saddened by it.

Linus said...

Mayren,
Great job getting the guys in our office to do this for you - I've never seen any of them actually DO anything before. You must pay well... ;)

Actually, I'm kind of saddened by the fact that Mrs. Potato Head didn't strike again yesterday. Perhaps she has already left me for some other grad student... women are so fickle.
:/

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