Strugr

 Dear friends,

I redivivus. That's a Latin word of up to seven syllables (I can only count up to three on my non-missing paws, so it's hard to tell how long it keeps going).  Google helpfully translates it, "redivivus".  If I have resurrected with any greater wisdom than when I was last scene sceen scean ceen heard from -- it is the wisdom of an entire reliance on and trustfulness in google.

At that time, dear friends, I had just published a volume of letters. As someone has said of it, who wished to remain anonymous: "This is the perfect present for the person who has everything else Zack has ever written and who had to be hospitalised when they tried to liquidate it, or for the person who doesn't have the sense not to microwave hardbacks (the book is available in a pyrex baking cover)."  A sample flurry of correspondence between me and some rando is available here.  Please make sure your browser can support my sheer ascendency over the elements of syntax, and disguise yourself if you open that page though. You never know who's collecting click data. Besides, no one else wants to watch you read this blog without a disguise. It's painful.

My Letters were such an overwhelming achievement that I immediately lay down in the middle of the road. I've been lying there since, conserving my energy, pretending to be dead: it was that or get up and do something. I finally gained new insight that helped me to rebuild my dominant psyche on the ashes of my former self.  Unfortunately, I wrote it down on a receipt that the female threw away.  

But I am here to announce to you another debut of creative genius.

The female's sister, the male's sister-in-law, the daughter of her father and mother, the granddaughter of her grandfather and grandmother, the niece, cousin, second cousin, wife, and great great granddaughter, respectively, of her other relations, and my auntie Holly, has devised and materialised a family card game, called "EXPERT ADVICE". It involves giving others advice, while wearing plastic glasses.  Oh goody. My favorite sport.

You can buy it wherever it is sold. Which is here, in case your arms are tied behind your back and you're being forced to read this at the prodding end of a foosball rod, and can't google.

PS. My auntie Holly also crochets little garment bags for bunnies, individual checker holders, and handy cucumber pockets, which you can purchase here.

. . . in 1978, researchers polled 364 university faculty, none of whom had any known neurological problems, and all of whom would seem to be smarter than the Three Stooges. It turned out that left-right confusion was common, especially among the women. The question was, why?
It’s now 34 years later and, said Eric Chudler, director of the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering at the University of Washington, whose work depends on knowing left from right, “that’s a difficult question. I don’t know if any answer exists.”
According to M.K. Holder, executive director of the Handedness Research Institute, and an adjunct assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University, the link between brain “lateralization” -- the way specific functions appear to reside in left or right sides of our brains -- and handedness (or even what we mean when we say “handedness”) is still unclear.
But there does appear to be a link between degree of lateralization and confusion.
For example, left-right confusion may be related to spatial reasoning. If so, it might help explain why it’s more common in women than men; as a group, women tend to underperform on a critical test of spatial reasoning, called mental rotation, that requires subjects to mentally rotate images to tell if they’re identical or mirror images of each other. . . ​

Dear Mr. Bottomly,

I write to commend you in exaggerated language. May your virtues be trumpeted to the skies, may they praise you for whatever it is you have done in the gates, may the gates themselves creak on their hinges with unoiled joy. May those who speak of you unwillingly, or willingly but without euphoric devotion, be hypnotised and have their eyebrows set on fire and be marked forever with this shame on their forehead. May we bandy your praises about as household words, while spreading mayonaise and mustard on ham and cheese sandwiches. Your deeds are not to be overrated. For you have acted in all things with glorious economy, disparity, fashion sense, and unmuggableness. The last which is perhaps chiefest among your virtues, and ought to have been mentioned first.

I insert a quote from the Book of Dead, filling in your name in [] brackets.

Adoration of [R. Victor Bottomly] when riseth he in horizon eastern of heaven. Behold [R. Victor Bottomly], the scribe of the holy offerings of [R. Victor Bottomly], [R. Victor Bottomly!] Saith he, Homage to thee, who hast come as [R. Victor Bottomly], [R. Victor Bottomly] . . . [here we skip a little bit to the end of the plate] . . . Follow thee the souls of the east, praise thee the souls of the West . . . Thou receivest expansion of heart within thy shrine. . . thy heart is dilated with joy forever.

I hope this will go in your file.

Sincerely,

Zack

Thank you very much, Zack.

I retract everything I ever said about you being fake. I finally have something to put into my file!

But I'm still trying to get my mendicant brain around unoiled and joyful hinges: I used to think it was just an aspect of creation's groanings.

Vic

As a neo-Calvinist, of course, I affirm that the groanings of unoiled hinges are "redeemed".

I thought the quote from the Book of the Dead was particularly apt.

I did too, being a former DeadHead.