To operate in Kaleidoscope mode, see pp. 96–327.
To operate in Pedometer mode, see pp. 328–329. Do not move your feet while switching to Pedometer setting.
Do not attempt to read the Controls/Functions section (pp. 1–4) without the help of a licensed engineer. A list of recommended engineers can be found on pp. 400.
Recording the purchase date of your unit with your lawyer or guardian could void your warranty.
If you are using your unit in the horse latitudes (see map, pp. 202–223), it cannot be switched from Marine Haircut mode to Calculator mode without a Supplementary BatteryPak or plug-in access to a power grid.
Calculator-mode note: Never attempt to compute the distance to Betelgeuse from earth while watching C-SPAN. (See pp. 401.)
To operate in Sonar mode, see pp. 402–408. Sonar mode operation may interfere with Cell Phone reception.
To operate GPS function (Types A-3, A-2, A-1.5 only), register your whereabouts before startup by aligning Venus, the nearest Wal-Mart, and the heel of your left shoe. A Kangaroo iconograph should begin flashing on the screen.
If you plan to use your unit as a Cell Phone only, disregard this paragraph. It is unnecessary to preset any logarithms.
Your unit (see Type list above) has become obsolete since purchase date. Do not attempt to discard it in a slag pile, bog, recycling receptacle, or mine pit. Switch off unit before destroying. Any person throwing away a unit without switching it off will be reported to the Department of Homeland Security.
2005
LARRY DOYLE
I’M AFRAID I HAVE SOME BAD NEWS
YOU might want to sit down. I wouldn’t sit like that. You’re going to develop a real nice case of lumbosacral strain, and it’s going to hurt for the rest of your life. You’ll end up going to a chiropractor twice a week for the next sixteen years, and every time you go he’s going to ask you if you’ve been doing your exercises and you’re going to admit that you lost the sheet, and he’s going to give you another sheet and charge you a hundred bucks. Meanwhile, the pain will be getting worse and you won’t feel like having sex anymore and your husband is going to start looking around, and who could blame him—you’ve gone from being a reasonably attractive wife to a whiny sack of no sex.
Your husband? I’ll get to him.
So he’s out there, banging some hooker (not wanting to start a relationship, out of respect for you), completely unaware that he’s being filmed for an HBO documentary. Of course, he catches this new hepatitis G, which makes hepatitis C look like hepatitis A, and which also makes your kidneys explode, possibly harming innocent bystanders. You, in turn, are going to take up with your chiropractor, the only man still willing to touch you, and that’s going to get expensive.
So, if I were you, I’d sit up straight.
Anyway, your husband has what we call a “medical condition.” Without getting too technical, I should warn you that this next part is going to make me look smart and you feel stupid, and it’s also pretty gory.
Your husband was admitted with extreme pain in the abdomen, which is obviously not our fault. Now, pain in the abdomen can be caused by any number of things, from comical food poisoning, which strikes in the middle of a fancy dinner party, to fatal—or noncomical—food poisoning, to a three-hundred-pound tumor composed of hair and teeth, possibly the overgrown unborn twin that his mother mourned instead of ever loving him.
We didn’t want to rule anything out, so we opened him up.
There were no multi-hundred-pound tumors; that’s the good news.
However, it’s a real mess in there. There’s a lot of intestinal tubing squishing around—what you call “guts”—as well as an assortment of small, esoteric organs they don’t spend a lot of time on in medical school. And bear in mind that everything’s pretty much the same color, not like in the textbooks.
After securing the kidneys as a precaution, I took a step back and opened the floor to suggestions. This is a teaching hospital, so there’s always a bunch of smart-ass interns wandering around thinking they know everything. The “diagnoses” put forth—crazy, scary stuff—were summarily dismissed, because God forbid one of these snot-nosed wanna-docs is right.
I did a little preliminary exploratory surgery, employing what is known as the “scream test,” which involves poking various organs and seeing if the patient responds. This usually indicates a problem. The procedure is trickier when the patient is sedated, of course, but I’ve been known to get a decent scream out of patients who were technically dead. So I did some poking and prodding, but then I remembered that I had this eye appointment, so I decided to close him up. And that’s when … well, you might want to stand up and sit back down again. I don’t know why; I find it helps, and I’m the doctor.
First, the good news. Your husband’s portfolio looks great; I can’t believe he got into Apple at 12—pre-split 12. I’d say the prognosis for your long-term financial health is excellent. However, last month your husband dumped seventy-eight thousand dollars’ worth of Clo-Pet, the pet-cloning outfit, two days before it was revealed that Dr. Kalabi was not in fact cloning clients’ beloved companions but instead was creating look-alikes using plastic surgery and transplanting pieces from other pets. Yesterday, the SEC and the IRS swooped in and froze all your husband’s accounts—which may explain his abdominal pain—and then, talk about bad luck, this morning the CEO of your health-insurance carrier fled to Argentina with a transgender dominatrix, owing me literally millions of dollars.
So, unless you’ve got fourteen thousand dollars in cash or a certified check, I’m going to have to leave Douglas wide open on the table.
Excuse me? He’s not your husband? Then whose—
God damn it. I’m going to have to go through that whole thing again. Great. Okay, well, then, who is your husband?
Oh.
I’m afraid I have some very bad news.
2006
IAN FRAZIER
HOW TO OPERATE THE SHOWER CURTAIN
DEAR Guest:
The shower curtain in this bathroom has been purchased with care at a reputable “big box” store in order to provide maximum convenience in showering. After you have read these instructions, you will find with a little practice that our shower curtain is as easy to use as the one you have at home.
You’ll note that the shower curtain consists of several parts. The top hem, closest to the ceiling, contains a series of regularly spaced holes designed for the insertion of shower-curtain rings. As this part receives much of the everyday strain of usage, it must be handled correctly. Grasp the shower curtain by its leading edge and gently pull until it is flush with the wall. Step into the tub, if you have not already done so. Then take the other edge of shower curtain and cautiously pull it in opposite direction until it, too, adjoins the wall. A little moisture between shower curtain and wall tiles will help curtain to stick.
Keep in mind that normal bathing will cause you unavoidably to bump against shower curtain, which may cling to you for a moment owing to the natural adhesiveness of water. Some guests find the sensation of wet plastic on their naked flesh upsetting, and overreact to it. Instead, pinch the shower curtain between your thumb and forefinger near where it is adhering to you and simply move away from it until it is disengaged. Then, with the ends of your fingers, push it back to where it is supposed to be.
If shower curtain reattaches itself to you, repeat process above. Under certain atmospheric conditions, a convection effect creates air currents outside shower curtain which will press it against you on all sides no matter what you do. If this happens, stand directly under showerhead until bathroom microclimate stabilizes.
Many guests are surprised to learn that all water pipes in our system run off a single riser. This means that the opening of any hot or cold tap, or the flushing of a toilet, interrupts flow to shower. If you find water becoming extremely hot (or cold), exit tub promptly while using a sweeping motion with one arm to push shower curtain aside.
REMEM
BER TO KEEP SHOWER CURTAIN inside TUB AT ALL TIMES! Failure to do this may result in baseboard rot, wallpaper mildew, destruction of living-room ceiling below, and possible dripping onto catered refreshments at social event in your honor that you are about to attend. So be careful!
This shower curtain comes equipped with small magnets in the shape of disks which have been sewn into the bottom hem at intervals. These serve no purpose whatsoever and may be ignored. Please do not tamper with them. The vertical lines, or pleats, which you may have wondered about, are there for a simple reason: user safety. If you have to move from the tub fast, as outlined above, the easy accordion-type folding motion of the pleats makes that possible. The gray substance in some of the inner pleat folds is a kind of insignificant mildew, less toxic than what is found on some foreign cheeses.
When detaching shower curtain from clinging to you or when exiting tub during a change in water temperature, bear in mind that there are seventeen mostly empty plastic bottles of shampoo on tub edge next to wall. These bottles have accumulated in this area over time. Many have been set upside down in order to concentrate the last amounts of fluid in their cap mechanisms, and are balanced lightly. Inadvertent contact with a thigh or knee can cause all the bottles to be knocked over and to tumble into the tub or behind it. If this should somehow happen, we ask that you kindly pick the bottles up and put them back in the same order in which you found them. Thank you.
While picking up the bottles, a guest occasionally will lose his or her balance temporarily, and, in even rarer cases, fall. If you find this occurring, remember that panic is the enemy here. Let your body go limp, while reminding yourself that the shower curtain is not designed to bear your weight. Grabbing onto it will only complicate the situation.
If, in a “worst case” scenario, you do take hold of the shower curtain, and the curtain rings tear through the holes in the upper hem as you were warned they might, remain motionless and relaxed in the position in which you come to rest. If subsequently you hear a knock on the bathroom door, respond to any questions by saying either “Fine” or “No, I’m fine.” When the questioner goes away, stand up, turn off shower, and lay shower curtain flat on floor and up against tub so you can see the extent of the damage. With a sharp object—a nail file, a pen, or your teeth—make new holes in top hem next to the ones that tore through.
Now lift shower curtain with both hands and reattach it to shower-curtain rings by unclipping, inserting, and reclipping them. If during this process the shower curtain slides down and again goes onto you, reach behind you to shelf under medicine cabinet, take nail file or curved fingernail scissors, and perform short, brisk slashing jabs on shower curtain to cut it back. It can always be repaired later with safety pins or adhesive tape from your toiletries kit.
At this point, you may prefer to get the shower curtain out of your way entirely by gathering it up with both arms and ripping it down with a sharp yank. Now place it in the waste receptacle next to the john. In order that anyone who might be overhearing you will know that you are still all right, sing “Fat Bottomed Girls,” by Queen, as loudly as necessary. While waiting for tub to fill, wedge shower curtain into waste receptacle more firmly by treading it underfoot with a regular high-knee action as if marching in place.
We are happy to have you as our guest. There are many choices you could have made, but you are here, and we appreciate that. Operating the shower curtain is kind of tricky. Nobody is denying that. If you do not wish to deal with it, or if you would rather skip the whole subject for reasons you do not care to reveal, we accept your decision. You did not ask to be born. There is no need ever to touch the shower curtain again. If you would like to receive assistance, pound on the door, weep inconsolably, and someone will be along.
2007
PAST IMPERFECT
S. J. PERELMAN
NO STARCH IN THE DHOTI, S’IL VOUS PLAIT
UP until recently, I had always believed that nobody on earth could deliver a throwaway line with quite the sang-froid of a certain comedian I worked for in Hollywood during the thirties. You probably don’t recall the chap, but his hallmark was a big black mustache, a cigar, and a loping gait, and his three brothers, also in the act, impersonated with varying degrees of success a mute, an Italian, and a clean-cut boy. My respect for Julio (to cloak his identity partially) stemmed from a number of pearls that fell from his lips during our association, notably one inspired by an argument over dietary customs. We were having dinner at an off-Broadway hotel, in the noisiest locale imaginable outside the annual fair at Nizhnii-Novgorod. There were at least a dozen people in the party—lawyers, producers, agents, brokers, astrologers, tipsters, and various assorted sycophants—for, like all celebrated theatrical personages, my man liked to travel with a retinue. The dining room was jammed, some paid-up ghoul from Local 802 was interpreting the “Habanera” on an electric organ over the uproar, and, just to insure dyspepsia, a pair of adagio dancers were flinging themselves with abandon in and out of our food. I was seated next to Julio, who was discoursing learnedly to me on his favorite subject, anatomical deviations among showgirls. Halfway through the meal, we abruptly became aware of a dispute across the table between several of our companions.
“It is not just religious!” one was declaring hotly. “They knew a damn sight more about hygiene than you think in those Biblical days!”
“That still don’t answer my question!” shouted the man he had addressed. “If they allow veal and mutton and beef, why do they forbid pork?”
“Because it’s unclean, you dummy,” the other rasped. “I’m trying to tell you—the pig is an unclean animal!”
“What’s that?” demanded Julio, his voice slicing through the altercation. “The pig an unclean animal?” He rose from his chair and repeated the charge to be certain everyone within fifty feet was listening. “The pig an unclean animal? Why, the pig is the cleanest animal there is—except my father, of course.” And dropped like a falcon back into his chow mein.
As I say, I’d gone along for years considering Julio preeminent in tossing off this kind of grenade, and then one Sunday, a few weeks ago, in the Times magazine, I stumbled across an item that leaves no doubt he has been deposed. The new champ is Robert Trumbull, the former Indian correspondent of the paper and a most affable bird with whom I once spent an afternoon crawling around the Qutb Minar, outside New Delhi. In the course of an article called “Portrait of a Symbol Named Nehru,” Mr. Trumbull had the following to say: “Nehru is accused of having a congenital distaste for Americans because of their all too frequent habit of bragging and of being patronizing when in unfamiliar surroundings. It is said that in the luxurious and gracious house of his father, the late Pandit Motilal Nehru—who sent his laundry to Paris—the young Jawaharlal’s British nurse used to make caustic remarks to the impressionable boy about the table manners of his father’s American guests.”
IT was, of course, the utter nonchalance of the phrase “who sent his laundry to Paris” that knocked me galley-west. Obviously, Trumbull wasn’t referring to one isolated occasion; he meant that the Pandit made a practice of consigning his laundry to the post, the way one used to under the academic elms. But this was no callow sophomore shipping his wash home to save money. A man willful and wealthy enough to have it shuttled from one hemisphere to another could hardly have been prompted by considerations of thrift. He must have been a consummate perfectionist, a fussbudget who wanted every last pleat in order, and, remembering my own Homeric wrangles with laundrymen just around the corner, I blenched at the complications his overseas dispatch must have entailed. Conducted long before there was any air service between India and Europe, it would have involved posting the stuff by sea—a minimum of three weeks in each direction, in addition to the time it took for processing. Each trip would have created problems of customs examination, valuation, duty (unless Nehru senior got friends to take it through for him, which was improbable; most people detest transporting laundry across the world, even their
own). The old gentleman had evidently had a limitless wardrobe, to be able to dispense with portions of it for three months at a time.
The major headache, as I saw it, though, would have been coping with the blanchisseur himself. How did Pandit Motilal get any service or redress out of him at such long range? There were the countless vexations that always arise: the missing sock, the half-pulverized button, the insistence on petrifying everything with starch despite the most detailed instructions. The more I thought about it, the clearer it became that he must have been embroiled in an unending correspondence with the laundry owner. I suggest, accordingly, that while the exact nature of his letters can only be guessed at, it might be useful—or, by the same token, useless—to reconstruct a few, together with the replies they evoked. Even if they accomplish nothing else, they should help widen the breach between East and West.
Allahabad,
United Provinces,
June 7, 1903
Pleurniche et Cie.,
124, Avenue de la Grande Armée, Paris
My dear M. Pleurniche:
You may be interested to learn—though I doubt that anything would stir you out of your vegetable torpor—that your pompous, florid, and illiterate scrawl of the 27th arrived here with insufficient postage, forcing me to disgorge one rupee three annas to the mailman. How symbolic of your character, how magnificently consistent! Not content with impugning the quality of the cambric in my drawers, you contrive to make me pay for the insult. That transcends mere nastiness, you know. If an international award for odium is ever projected, have no fear of the outcome as far as India is concerned. You can rely on my support.
And à propos of symbols, there is something approaching genius in the one that graces your letterhead, the golden fleece. Could any trademark be more apt for a type who charges six francs to wash a cummerbund? I realize that appealing to your sense of logic is like whistling an aria to the deaf, but I paid half that for it originally, and the Muslim who sold it to me was the worst thief in the bazaar. Enlighten me, my dear fellow, since I have never been a tradesman myself—what passes through your head when you mulct a customer in this outrageous fashion? Is it glee? Triumph? Self-approbation at the cunning with which you have swindled your betters? I ask altogether without malice, solely from a desire to fathom the dark intricacies of the human mind.
Disquiet, Please! Page 44
