Cutting Remarks

Be forewarned. This post just may be a new nadir among a sea of blogospherical nadirs. (I like that word nadir. It's originally Arabic for opposite, Merriam-Webster tells me. In this case, opposite obviously refers to "opposite to standards of decency and civilization." Speaking civilly, I note that Merriam-Webster gets credit for the illustration.)

While at camp a few weeks ago in the Adirondacks, we were walking Maggie, our German Shepherd-Yellow Labrador Retriever. The dog dutifully performed her duty (how do we know how dutiful? we watched; can't help it; might have to transport the emissions deeper into the woods via the scooper). This observation elicited an item of conversation from one of the members of the walking crew (not me, oddly enough). To phrase matters delicately here, the observer observed that her dog-walking duties in Gotham (with its strict strictures of cleanup) involved a dog who was not always as tidy and naturally fastidious as our Maggie is in the realm of disposal. This particular dog, whose name escapes me, needed human help.

This unseemly phenomenon was dubbed Bad Cut-off.

The observer went on to remark that in her conversations with her counterparts in New York City successful or ruinous cut-off (of the human variety) was deemed a harbinger of the success or failure of one's whole day. Honestly, who could argue with that? (although I argued against a superstitious adherence to cut-off assessment)

Discussion of this anatomical cut-off syndrome became a humorous theme at camp, with shouted public declarations of one's success or failure.

There. I've gotten this off my chest.

I trust the painful lengths I've taken to posit a simulacrum of decency are woefully apparent.

This is what happens when you feel you must post something (anything!) after four days, whether of value or not.

(Speaking of cut-offs, we had a lunar eclipse here the other morning, with the moon cut off from view at 5:30 a.m. or so. I was sleeping. Melloncutter was up, I'm sure.)

(I suppose this gives new meaning to the "cut-off man" in baseball.)