Crunching the Nutters

As we lurch blindly into yet another year of the soul-curdling nightmare we call Not Being Dead, here are a few statistics.

In its brief life Ask A Drunk has had 24 identifiable contributors, of whom only one (the very excellent Lucy Moore) is female. This becomes 23 if we subtract David Holley, of whom nothing is known beyond the fact of his being called David Holley.

“L. Portobello”, who contributed to our pornography thread, used an e-mail address shared by Maryann (author of the online diary “Dear Kitty”) and her partner Duane Zarakov (one of the Gloucestershire Zarakovs, I believe) and we don’t know which of them wrote the posting in question, so can’t ascribe a name or gender to its author.

Of those contributors whose locations are known, six are in Edinburgh, six in London, three in Oxford; others hail from Hong Kong, San Diego, Wichita, Somerset, Birmingham, Hampshire, Surrey and Dunedin (NZ).

At least 13 are members of Oxford University, which helps to explain its tragic decline.

Standing out in all this like a towering blur at the heart of a finely-etched townscape is our second most industrious contributor, the revered Aimless, of whom we know nothing but concerning whom our theories grow ever more lurid. Today’s Special: he was developed by the CIA in a secret laboratory in the Mojave Desert, and unleashed to devastate all that we hold most dear…

-- Rex (rex@waitrose.com), December 30, 2001

Answers

Don't be silly, my dear Rex. My origins are nowhere near as sinister as you make them out.

As befits a man of my humble station, I was born in a humble cold water flat above a Chinese quandry. Or perhaps it was a Chinese foundry - I was quite young at the time and these details fade. Be that as it may, the bosom of my humble family was capacious. It included the usual assortment of loving parents, malicious siblings, dotty but doting relatives, the odd delivery boy and a pair of brazen strangers no one had the nerve to evict.

We were happy, although constantly humiliated. Mumsie was a good provider, but a spendthrift, so we lived in iron poverty, relieved only by frequent and luxurius indulgence.

Daddums was a neglected genius. He invented a musical instrument rather like a bassoon and a clarinet, which he dubbed the bassinet. He spent the rest of his long, humble days badgering Shostakovich to write music for the bassinet. The quest, alas, was fruitless, for Stalin had proscribed the bassinet as hopelessly bourgeois and anti-Soviet. Not to mention excruitiatingly painful to listen to.

But I ramble. I simply wanted to show you how wrong your theories were. However, I have enjoyed this walk down memory lane so much I may visit more of the details of my life upon you in future. Stay tuned.

-- Aimless (aimless@national_raffle_association.org), January 01, 2002.

In continuation of my previous post, I would like to linger somewhat longer over a few of the more remarkable members of my family before boring you Ask-A-Drunkites with details of my own life.

My distant ancestor Horatio Aimless was renowned for his discovery of the Antilles. His deed was all the more remarkable in that he did it in his spare time, while working as barman at a pub in Leeds.

As with so many discoveries this one was a complete accident and a surprise. He was actually trying to look up Antwerp in the atlas, when his eyes fell by chance on a neighboring entry in the index. The rest, as they say in cartography circles, is legend.

My great uncle Ferdinand de Lessups Aimless was inspired by his namesake to devote his life to the realization of grand plans, to securing global commerce and shaping the future of humankind on a scale far beyond the small powers of most men to succeed.

Ferdinand was a man of exceptional energy and imagination, and before his death in 1967, he had amassed an imposing legacy of excuses for failure, many of which are still in common currency today. As a specimen of his life's work, it was he who first coined, "I know I put it down right here a moment ago. Someone must have walked off with it." and "I popped around to the bank yesterday, but they had just closed. Frightfully sorry. I'll put it right tomorrow, without fail."

My aunt Sally, who used to live in our flat as I was growing up, was the great beauty of the neighborhood, with her marcelled, platinum blonde hair and blood red fingernails. Admittedly, she dyed her hair. But her fingernails were natural -- a matter of insufficient hygiene in her job at the butcher shop.

Ah, the memories flood up all at once. Rather like when I have been mixing wine and whisky on top of bangers and mash. I must wait and let them subside before I continue.

-- Aimless (aimless@national_raffle_association.org), January 02, 2002.

Wow! Small world Aimless!
My great grandfather's second cousin emigrated to the Antilles shortly after their discovery by your ancestor (in the Collin's abridged Atlas of the Known World; tupenny clothbound edition, I believe). This antecedent of mine misheard the phrase "Making a mountain out of an Antille", and took it to mean that there were immense fortunes to be had there. Anyway, he proceeded to set up a fancy linen manufactory, and gave the world Antille Lace. Unfortunately, the demand for cheap doilies and antimacassers dropped off sharply, and he went out of business.
Not to be deterred, he later opened a shoe factory.
The Antilles heel was born, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Spurred on by this achievement, the rest of my family devoted their collected energies to having their names take up at least two complete pages in the telephone directories of every major city in the UK. A task to which they seem to have been admirably suited. Indeed, our arch-nemeses, the Smiths, are now in the minority in certain parts of Scotland, Ireland and North America, but not, strangely enough, in the Antilles.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), January 03, 2002.

A small world, indeed!

As it happens, my Daddums one day noticed that a good half of every antimacassar hung uselessly behind the back of the chair or sofa. He considered this a flaming waste of perfectly good antimacassar. Being the inventive sort, he immediately conceived of the hemi-antimacassar.

Then he sprang into action. Quick as a thought, he seized Mumsie's pinking shears out of her sewing basket in one hand and an outmoded old-style antimacassar in the other and, with a flourish of the shears, he produced the world's first two proto-hemi-antimacassars.

After brief testing, the design underwent a few minor modifications, resulting in the newly perfected neo-proto-hemi-antimacassar. He still holds the patent.

-- Little Nipper (aimless@national_raffle_association.org), January 03, 2002.