A team of scientists from San Diego claims to have found extraterrestrial life standing in line in local postal offices.

Well, okay, so I made that up. But some day I’m sure this statement will be proven as scientific fact. Really!

You see, yesterday I spent a long time waiting in the post office. This gave me plenty of time to observe people who acted an awful lot like they came from Pluto. I even sorted them into the following types:

The Odiferous Alien:
This is a really stinky alien. In fact, any insects flying within a three-foot radius of this extraterrestrial will instantly drop dead to the floor. Lifting his package from the floor to the mail counter raises his body temperature and exposes his underarms, thereby increasing the three-foot radius to six feet.

This alien has been known to make even hardened postal employees cry.

The Angry Alien:

This creature becomes more and more irritated the closer he gets to the counter. His irritation manifests itself in spontaneous comments to no one in particular, like, “To hell with this!” and “Dammit!” and “Screw this!”

He grimaces a lot, frightening ordinary humans whose expressions of fear he takes to be a form of agreement. Any information relayed to him by the postal clerks may cause him to erupt into a heated tirade before he shouts and stomps out of the post office.

Note: Angry Aliens are sometimes confused with Helpful Aliens, described below.

The Helpful Alien:

This alien unexpectedly calls out to the postal clerks, describing the general conditions of the post office line and/or making suggestions, like, “There are a LOT of people in your line!” and “Do you see how many people are in your line?” and “Do your job faster so we can all get out of this line!”

Confident that all will be well when the postal employees actually follow his advice, this alien gets concerned if he thinks they haven’t heard him and may punctuate his observations with “Hel-LO! Is anyone home?”

The Reproducing Alien:

These extraterrestrials allow their spawn to fling packages of collector postal stamps at each other, whack each other on the head with mailing tubes, and scream at extremely high decibel levels.

Sometimes the spawn stop to stare at human customers as if considering whether they would taste good or not. Fearful of being eaten, the humans may try to prove they come in peace by waving and/or smiling, but this only causes the spawn to scream at even higher decibel levels.

Note: never approach alien spawn, as their parental units may see you as an edible threat to their offspring. Remember! They are reproducing, so they’re probably hungry.

The Clueless Alien

This alien has no idea why she is at the post office, except that it has something to do with the stamp machine. Confident she will one day decipher its mysteries, she stands in front of it and meditates, trying to reach her inner alien.

A long line always builds up behind her, mainly composed of Angry and Helpful Aliens.

Aliens Fearful of Human Contamination:

This kind of alien will not move forward unless there’s at least a six-foot gap between him and the human in front of him.

When the human behind him (that would be me) starts breathing down his neck, he attempts to use his searing Death Ray Eyes to force her back.

Ha! This may work on other people, but I after years of living with my teenagers I am immune.

waiting in line, post office, aliens, extraterrestrials, space aliens, teenagers, humor

WHAT: Our Christmas card scrapbook (top), Tiger’s baby scrapbook (middle), and our wedding album (bottom).

HOW: When Mojo proved himself capable of extracting shoes from shoe hangers and books out of bookcases, I took the precaution of pushing the sofa against the bookcase as a Bulldog Barricade.

Yeah, well.

You know, for a creature shaped like the Goodyear blimp, the way he can worm his way into tiny little spaces is nothing short of miraculous.

BONNIE’S REACTION: You $!&?%!! dog! Wait a minute…whew! The covers and the pages got chewed, but all the pictures seem okay. Thank goodness! Heh! Look, Hubby, here’s the picture of you sprawled out at the front of the church!

HUBBY’S REACTION: Hmph! I don’t think we’re really married, technically, seeing as how I was unconscious at the time. That padre…

BONNIE: …that padre declared you of sound mind and then you said, “I do.” It counts. I’ve got a whole church full of witnesses to back me up, too.

REPLACEMENT COST: $31.45

Today’s nosh about the chip bowl concerns Man’s Best Friend. Sort of. So let’s order and I’ll begin. Waiter, blended with salt for me, please.

At first I thought Lachlan’s Sumi had figured out how to make snowballs during her first foray into snow, but really, she cheated (with a tennis ball).

She ought to check out Eric Scheie’s Coco, whose first snow day inspired her to create mysterious designs that leave Eric mystified. What she says doesn’t make much sense, though, unless it’s viewed from a high altitude. I was lucky enough to ask a passing helicopter pilot to snap a photo for us all:

Poor Coco! I guess it’s true: on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.

Miss Snark’s Killer Yap was featured in several winning entries of the George Clooney contest submissions inspired by the clever Kitty. (And this paragraph is nothing more than a shameless effort to let you know I made it into Miss Snark’s equivalent of an honorable mention, although I can’t put it on my resume because Miss Snark says that would be silly.)

Pat’s greyhound is going through a weird sighthound kick directed at the infamous Rat Dog.

Screamwriter alerted me to an alarming incident involving a dog… and some killer squirrels.

The attack was reported in parkland in the centre of Lazo, a village in the Maritime Territory, and was witnessed by three local people.

A “big” stray dog was nosing about the trees and barking at squirrels hiding in branches overhead when a number of them suddenly descended and attacked, reports say.

“They literally gutted the dog,” local journalist Anastasia Trubitsina told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

“When they saw the men, they scattered in different directions, taking pieces of their kill away with them.”

“Russian squirrel pack ‘kills dog’”

I see this as one explanation for the fall of the USSR: the Soviets foolishly spent their genetic improvement energies on killer squirrels, who apparently turned on their masters, cleaning out the highest eschelon of KGB operatives before they escaped to the Maritime Territory.

If the Soviets had bothered to improve their canines (rather than eject them into space) Russia would now be run by Borzoi, but now they’re stuck with dog-killing squirrels and Putin.

More Doggie News (sort of):

I take this post as proof Winston has successfully infiltrated Podz’s domain. Apparently new to the dog-human relationship, Podz wonders if making dogs obey is demeaning to them.

Alana Marie found a good use for one of her dog kennels when she rescued a lost homing pigeon, who I think wasn’t lost so much as running away from a guy named Horst. It ends happily, but now she needs suggestions for what to do with 40 pounds of pigeon feed.

Okay, so that wasn’t about a dog, but I love it when people rescue creatures. Like Mira, who rescued a beautiful calico and is currently looking for Gaelic names. Or Kait, who’s thinking about donating to the International Wolf Center, a way to rescue wolves.

And finally, I’d like to show you Mojo’s version of “The Princess and the Pea.”

Don’t drop any tortilla chips, please. He eats EVERYTHING.

It contains whey protein (Bavarian Chocolate flavor), flax oil, a little yogurt and psyllium husks. He drinks one of these concoctions every morning. It must do something good for him because that man can deep squat serious poundage like nobody’s business.

And this…

…is Hubby’s protein shake, 30 minutes after he forgets to drink it.

A human being named Dhruba—and not a tentacled alien monster—answered my plea for help regarding my emptied Amazon.com shopping cart.

Thanks for writing us at Amazon.com.

I am sorry you encountered problems while using our web site.

Here are some suggestions that usually help:

Dhruba’s helpful suggestions included clearing my cache and my cookies and refreshing my screen, obvious things I’d already tried. I wrote back to complain my cart was still empty and then I went to bed, visions of Home Depot gift cards dancing in my head.

This morning brought another response, this time from an Amazon customer service rep named Raja:

I’m sorry to hear that you’ve had trouble with your shopping cart.

Your Shopping Cart is related to your Amazon.com account. If you create your list while you are logged into your account, and then log out, your items will seem to disappear. If this is the case, you should be able to retrieve your cart by simply logging back into your account.

This is a basic concept of e-commerce I already understood, but which Raja probably has to politely explain it to thousands of clueless Amazon shoppers every single day; clueless, angry shoppers—shoppers who might accuse Raja of nefarious things, like trying to cheat them, or of being a tentacled alien who laughs maniacally at customer distress.

In fact, I expect Raja probably longs to express something other than the polite, apologetic message she typed out for the quadrillionth time, something along these lines:

If you create your list while you are logged into your account, and then log out, your items will seem to disappear. If this is the case, carefully insert your keyboard into your lower body internal cavity and see if that helps retrieve the contents of your shopping cart.

All politeness aside, my cart was still empty. As I prepared to close the e-mail and take my future Christmas shopping elsewhere, I saw I’d overlooked the end of Raja’s message:

As you are our old customer, I’m issuing a Promotional Gift Certificate of $10.00 which can be used for your future purchases.

Woo hoo! Ten dollars! Now I’m back to the amount I originally expected to pay when I first put my items into my cart, before Amazon raised the prices! In fact, now I’m ahead by five bucks!

I do appreciate good customer service. It’s good, old-fashioned customer service like this that will keep me coming back to Amazon again and ag—

Hey! Who is Raja calling “old”?

A few days ago I wrote about my experiences with the changing prices of items in my Amazon shopping cart. Today I write that those problems are no more!

Why? Because today when I logged in to my account I found yet another one of those Amazonian messages:

My cart is EMPTY. And I didn’t empty it.

I only recently started filling it for Christmas shopping so it couldn’t possibly have approached Amazon’s 90-day limit for holding items, either.

So. Where did all my stuff go?

I checked my ordering history to see if, perhaps, there was a perfectly logical reason for my empty cart, like how I might’ve checked out while I was sleepwalking.

No such luck. Nothing in my previous orders and nothing in my cart.

I wrote to Amazon’s Help Center and am awaiting a response, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s some prankster Amazonian out there in cyberspace, one who took offense to my previous opinion about Amazon.com. I picture him as a tentacled, three-eyed creature laughing maniacally at confused shoppers like me as he changes our prices and empties our carts.

Maybe he not only emptied my cart but is now waiting for my “Help!” message to flitter across the Amazonian support boards so that he and all the other tentacled creatures can laugh at us. Maybe he will respond, too, with a witty yet sardonic retort:

Amazonian: Whatsa matter, crybaby? Something wrong with your cart?

I will answer that response with witty yet sardonic repartee all my own:

Bonnie: Please, please, PLEASE give it back! That stuff was mine! PLEASE PUH-LEASE?

Perhaps the Amazonian will wave his tentacles and laugh at me because I am groveling. “Stand up and fight!” you might urge me, because you only have my best interest at heart and don’t want to see me cowed all my life by e-commerce bullies.

Really, it’s awfully hard to stand up and fight when you hate to shop and it took you 2 weeks just to make your list and check it thirty times and you only want to shop in PEACE… but okay, I’ll do it.

Bonnie: Amazonian Creature, GIVE ME BACK MY STUFF! Or, I’ll….

Amazonian: (sneering) You’ll do what?

Bonnie: I’ll, I’ll….

Amazonian: Cry? Ha, ha, HA!

Right about then I’ll have been pushed to the point of no return. I’ll flick my credit card at him and it will fly through the air in slow motion, end over end, traveling through time and space and my computer screen, until it reaches the braying Amazonian Creature and slices his head clean off.

As his lifeless body slumps over his computer, his scaly hand will fall upon the button that not only refills my cart, but also refills empty carts everywhere, giving all of us customers the original, cheaper prices, too!

Amidst all the cheering, I’ll check out quickly (but modestly) stopping only to look both ways to make certain no frothing and vengeful Amazonian creatures are bearing down on me.

On the other hand, I think almost everybody loves a Home Depot gift card for Christmas, don’t you?

Three San Diegans remember Pearl Harbor in today’s Union-Tribune and North County Times. The first, Dorothy Hargrave, was 30 at the time and training a new waitress in a Pearl City restaurant where she worked while her husband’s ship took him to California for repairs.

At 7:50 a.m. on Dec. 7, Hargrave and the new waitress were waiting for the only customer – a young lieutenant – to finish his breakfast.

The two women looked out the window, hearing planes zoom low overhead. At first, Hargrave thought they were U.S. fighters. Then she heard bullets slap the ground and saw flames shooting from a nearby building.

“The lieutenant said to me, ‘Dorothy, we are at war,’” Hargrave recalled last week at her home in San Diego.

“Who could we be at war with?” she asked the officer.

He replied: ‘We’re at war with Japan.’”

[...]

Minutes after the first wave of planes swept over Pearl Harbor, people began straggling into the restaurant. Some of them were families from nearby housing. Later came some oil-stained sailors who swam ashore from battleship row.

The lieutenant made Dorothy the group’s chief nurse. She gathered her charges in the center of the building and tore up sheets to make bandages. She calmed the group by leading them in “Jesus Loves Me” and “Over the Rainbow” even as bombs destroyed airplanes and ships all around Ford Island.

Through a window, they could see the burning hulk of the battleship Arizona.

“It was scary,” Dorothy said. “We thought we would be prisoners of the Japanese before the day was over.”

The attack lasted two hours. Afterward, Dorothy caught a boat ride back to the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard. Then someone drove her home to Pearl City in a van with a bullet hole in the roof.

“One Terrible Day: A young Navy wife meets the test of fire,” by Steve Liewer, San Diego Union-Tribune, Dec. 7, 2005

Joe Kawka, was a 19-year-old signalman on the destroyer Cassin and remembers the Japanese planes were so close “he could see a pilot’s face.”

His ship was in dry dock for repairs and the guns on deck were out of commission. Instead, the sailors fought back with the only ammunition they had.

“We started throwing potatoes at them. We almost got them, too,” Kawka said.

[...]

Then a second wave of 170 planes attacked. Kawka could see a pilot in the open cockpit.

“He shook his hand at us as he went by,” Kawka said.

A bomb landed between the Cassin and the ship next to it. The crew scrambled to get off the ship, climbing down ropes to escape.

Kawka took cover with other sailors for the rest of the day. The next day, with nothing but the clothes he was wearing, he was ordered to another ship that was hunting for Japanese subs outside the harbor.

“The chaos of that day isn’t easily forgotten,” by Anne Krueger, San Diego Union-Tribune, Dec. 7, 2005

23-year-old Ernie Lippman was a second class radioman on the USS San Francisco. He’d just started his shift when he heard bombing.

Running on deck to see what was happening, Lippmann made it there in time to see airplanes in the sky with the Rising Sun on their fuselages and a torpedo plane drop a bomb that drove into the body of the USS Oklahoma. Although his cruiser was not hit, Lippmann said, he was still frightened for his life.

“One of my thoughts was, ‘Oh God, I won’t see my 24th birthday,’ ” Lippmann said. “I’m glad to be alive; I was spared, I guess.”

“Escondido man recalls attack on Pearl Harbor,” by Jessica Musicar, North County Times, Dec. 7, 2005.

And here’s an online reminiscence that must not be misssed, taken from a teenager’s diary. B.Z. Leonard was 17 and living in Hickman Field, Hawaii when the attack occurred.

Sunday, December 7, 1941

BOMBED! 8:00 in the morning. Unknown attacker so far! Pearl Harbor in flames! Also Hickam hanger line. So far no houses bombed here.

5 of 11:00. We’ve left the post. It got too hot. The PX is in flames, also the barracks. We made a dash during a lull. Left everything we own there. Found out the attackers are Japs. Rats!!! A couple of non-com’s houses demolished. Hope Kay is O.K. We’re at M’s. It’s all so sudden and surprising I can’t believe it’s really happening. It’s awful. School is discontinued until further notice…there goes my graduation.

Shortwave: Direct hit on barracks, 350 killed. Wonder if I knew any of them. Been quiet all afternoon. Left Bill on duty at the U. Blackout all night of course!

“Ginger’s Diary,” by B.Z. Leonard.

I only occasionally had to translate Christmas carols when they were little. They might have wanted to know what a figgy pudding was, or mistletoe, or frankincense, but for the most part they just accepted it all as it was: Christmas music, to be heard at Christmas time.

Of course, that was before they heard an Eartha Kitt Christmas carol.

Eartha: Santa Baby, just slip a sable under the tree / For me / Been an awful good girl, Santa Baby / So hurry down the chimney tonight…

Tiger: She wants a Ford?

Squirt: Under the tree?

They’re young men now and the mysteries of figgy pudding are behind them, replaced by the newer mysteries of what women really want, especially women who sound as good as Eartha does.

Eartha: Santa baby, a ’54 convertible too / Light blue / I’ll wait up for you / dear Santa baby / so hurry down the chimney tonight…

Tiger: So she does want a car.

Squirt: Under the tree!

I guess some things don’t cross the generational divide like you’d think they would, like sables. And then there are those things that just leap across it, like Crasher, the Hormonally Charged Teenage Reindeer.

Eartha: Think of all the fun I’ve missed / Think of all the fellas that I haven’t kissed / Next year I could be just as good / If you’ll check off my Christmas list.

Bonnie: Ahem. This song is old! From, what… the fifties?

Squirt: That’s not so old.

Bonnie: Eartha Kitt sings it.

Tiger and Squirt: Who?

Bonnie: Uh, you know, the old lady witch in Ernest Scared Stupid?

Tiger and Squirt: Her? Really?

Eartha: Santa baby, I want a yacht,
And really that’s not a lot / Been an angel all year / Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight.

By the looks on their faces, I’d say Eartha’s message not only survived the test of time, it survived her role in Ernest Scared Stupid, too.

Eartha: Santa Baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight / Santa cutie, and fill my stocking with a duplex / And checks…

Tiger: She wants Legos?

Bonnie: Not Duplos… she wants a duplex. They’re like condos.

Eartha: Come and trim my Christmas tree / With some decorations bought at Tiffany’s…

Bonnie: Tiffany’s is a famous diamond sto—

Tiger: Shhh, Mom! We know what Tiffany’s is!

I’m doing this translation stuff for free, so you’d think there’d be some gratitude for the service I provide! Still, if they can’t appreciate me for my excellent recollections of interesting old-timer babes, at least I can cram a character lesson into the last few bars of Eartha’s routine.

Eartha: Santa Baby, forgot to mention one little thing / A ring / I don’t mean on the phone / Santa Baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight…

Bonnie: She’s really a little golddigger, isnt’ she? Most girls aren’t like that. I hope you boys don’t ever date girls like that! In fact, if your girl gives you a list of stuff she—

Tiger and Squirt: Shhh! MOM!

Then again, maybe not.

WHAT: The Box That Gave Its All

HOW: This was a cute little satin-covered box, given to Squirt by one of his aunts. He used it to store various treasures, like fistfuls of change, odd-shaped rocks, or his retainers. He left it on the landing, along with his high school biology textbook.

If any of you have followed this series at all, you probably know by now that Mojo prefers expensive items. So when he looked upon this unexpected bonanza he had a serious decision to make. Which item to chew?

MOJO’S THOUGHT PROCESSES: On one paw, the biology book is expensive, and I like expensive. Yummy! On the other paw, this box smells like Squirt’s retainers! I may be a bulldog, but I know retainers cost way more than that biology book. And Bonnie gets amazingly upset whenever she finds those delicious things on the table, or on the counter, or in Squirt’s pants pockets. So my decision is clear!

BONNIE’S REACTION: Oh, NOOO! Squirt! Were your retainers in that box?

SQUIRT’S REACTION: Oh, NOOO! Mojo! How could you? Why did you eat my box? Why? Why? Why? And it was such a good box, too. (steps over the biology book and the remains of his box) What’s for lunch?

BONNIE: Re— re— re—tainers?

SQUIRT: (opens his mouth and points inside) Nope! Heh! Dog, you thought you had my retainers! Can I make waffles?

REPLACEMENT COST: None, unless you count the lethal lecture delivered to the teenager stuffing his face in the kitchen.

Wikipedia has come under fire for featuring a scandalously incorrect biography of John Seigenthaler Sr., falsely suggesting he may have had something to do with the Kennedy assassination. (Read the rest of “Wikipedia Criticized”)