archy

The weekly mammoth
I haven't posted anything on woolly mammoths this week. Fortunately, Dum Luks came top my rescue by mailing me this:

As a man, I take an instinctively minimalist approach to shopping. The whole exercise is treated like a project or a military assault. I usually have narrow and well-defined success criteria and a clearly delineated target area. If the project can be completed on time and on-budget, I'm gratified. If I am the mission-driven hunter in the "hunter/gatherer" equation, armed with a spear and a chalk etching of a mammoth (Urg! Today, we kill this!), my wife is the classic opportunistic gatherer. She takes time to forage thoroughly, delicately rooting the edible tubers out of the boutique fields, assessing each for succulence, quality and, of course, fashion. The only predatorial thing about her is the way she vanishes among the clothing racks, cryptic in her fashionable outfits like a tiger in tall grass. This may be a defensive maneuver, enabling her to escape my plucking at her sleeve and saying, Urg! Me bored. No mammoth here. I kill latte instead. All hail the mighty hunter.

This brings up an important question: if people are sending me mammoth clippings, does than mean I've become the mammoth man of Left Blogistan? If so, do I get to have a cool nickname? Kent Hovind, the tax-dodging, creationist, and dinosaur theme park manager calls himself Dr. Dino. Can I be Dr. Mammoth? Of course, I never finished my doctorate, so maybe I can only be Magister Mammoth. That sounds kind of pretentious. And Mr. Mammoth sounds like a porno movie star. It really should be Dr. Mammoth. Maybe I can claim to be a doctor in the same sense that blues and boogie-woogie musicians claim academic titles. I doubt as if Professor Longhair had a tenured position anywhere. What about Dr. John (he might)? "Hi. I'm not really a doctor, but I play one on the piano." I could be Dr. Mammoth. Couldn't I?