Recently, the coyote made a teasing joke about a comment of mine on one of his blogs and my reply was something like, “Huh?” because my mind, a highly unreliable mechanism, had shorted out and I’d forgotten what I’d said.
In order to explain my confusion, I told him to picture my brain as a gumball machine with only two or three gumballs tumbling around, lamely trying to make contact with something, anything – and stick. There once were, I said, a lot more gumballs moving a lot faster than they do now.
Or.
It’s that my brain is a scaled down version of Deep Thought, Douglas Adams’ fictional super-computer in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. My brain is using its gumballs for solving questions like:
1. Why don’t we have world peace yet? It isn’t like we haven’t had pointed examples of how little war ever accomplished.
2. Why do hairdressers want to layer my hair?
3. Why does the CBC let a dull-witted journalist interview Kurt Vonnegut? (No, really. At the end, when he’s thanked for the interview, he replies, “Go jump in a lake" and I break into spontaneous applause. I live alone, so there are no witnesses.)
4. What is the purpose of life? Mine, specifically. The rest of you are on your own with that one. (Mothers, I love you, but you may not reply to this question until your children hit their teens.)
5. Why do people watch talk shows when I could cure them by having them ride the local #20 bus three times? Guaranteed. Satisfaction or your television cheerfully refunded. It’s a new concept. Like reality TV. On without the “TV” part.
6. There was a “6” but I lost the gumball.
7. Where the hell is gumball 6?
