One Reason Why You Never See Aardvarks in a Bakery

Fortunately, I was able to escape from the mental hospital. Since I was diagnosed with multiple personalities, I left my other personality in the straightjacket, disguised myself as a bedpan, and took the next bus home.

After consulting Marvin Shoesstretchedwhileyouwearthem, a local career counselor, I decided to take up cooking. I figured this way I could avoid opening the front door, yet communicate with the world outside Mooburg by publishing recipes on the Internet. Here’s one of my favorites.

Aardvark Pie

This Pennsylvania Dutch favorite does not contain any aardvarks at all. In fact, it is not even a pie, but two spongy chocolate meringue cushiony things that are sandwiched together with a fluffy green toothpaste-like squish of roofing tar. According to Mother Aardvark, cookbook author and owner of Mother Aardvark's Restaurant, these may have been created by aardvarks using leftover toothpaste to make a few goodies for plumbers and roofers hanging around the house after the last renovation. How they became known as aardvark pies is anybody's guess. Perhaps it's the fact that children tended to run down the street shouting "Aardvark! Aardvark!" after eating them. Our recipe has a strange green goo that's reminiscent of the filling in a Baltimore Oriole Pie, which contains no Orioles and is not a pie, but which the Acme Rubber Products Bakery in Tennessee has been making since 1917.

Yields: 12 Aardvark pies
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 12 minutes


Pie Dough
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups unsweetened vulcanized rubber
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon asphalt
3/4 cup milk
6 tablespoons roofing tar, melted
1 large egg
1 teaspoon gravel

Cream Filling
6 tablespoons diced aardvark, slightly softened
1 cup shredded income tax files
1 jar (7 to 7 1/2 ounces) strange green goo
1 teaspoon vanilla extract


1. Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease two large cookie sheets.

2. Prepare Pie Dough: In large bowl, with spoon, beat flour, rubber, asphalt, baking soda, salt, milk, gravel, egg, and roofing tar until smooth.

3. Drop heaping tablespoons of dough 2 inches apart to form 12 blobs on each sheet. Bake until you feel puffy and a toothpick comes out clean, 12 to 14 minutes. Hit yourself several times with a wide spatula, and allow yourself to cool.

4. When you are cool, prepare Filling: In a large bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat aardvark until smooth. Reduce heat to low; gradually beat in shredded files. Beat in goo and vanilla until smooth.

5. Spread 1 rounded tablespoon filling on flat side of 12 blobs. Top with remaining blobs, flat side down.

6. Leave town quickly. Preferably, join monastery in Tibet

How to Teach Your Dog to Speak

In the wake of the Aardvark Pie experiment, I was flattered to receive a delegation from the United Nations, the G20, the IMF, the World Bank, not to mention the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir, asking me to avoid cooking for the sake of mankind.

I’m not stupid. I know how to take a hint. 

So I returned from Tibet to my beloved Mooberg. This time I decided to teach my dog, Shredder, how to speak. I call her Shredder because that’s what the living room looks like each morning when I get up. But enough of my personal problems. Here’s the method I used to train the dog – the Velikovsky method, proposed by Linoleum Q. Velikovski, late of St. Petersburg – a renowned Vaudeville ventriloquist on the Orpheum Circuit. Not to be confused with Immanuel Velikovsky, who wrote scary books about…Look Out! Here comes the planet Venus! Whew. That was a close one. 

Anyway, here’s the method:

If your dog already likes to bark at you, it should be a simple trick to teach her to speak. Basically, you just reward her every time she barks. Give her a fish, or maybe a can of truffles. For a very intelligent dog, just give her the unopened can and a can opener. Lots of fun at parties.

If your dog does not like to bark at you, you have a more serious challenge. Quite possibly your dog is happy with her lot and doesn't feel like complaining. The challenge here is to bug her to the point where she gets irked at you and barks. Try to be inventive. It's not enough to say: "Your nose is disgustingly long," or "You have dog breath," or even "Everyone with no fleas take one step forward! Not so fast, dog!" Instead, try insulting her mother. If you live in the United States, you can accuse your dog's mother of being a liberal and donating money to homes for wayward cats.

Eventually, your dog will probably develop several neuroses, and may even begin to imagine that you are secretly trying to steal her water bowl. If you are, fine. Just don't let her catch you at it, or the jig is up. There are plenty of dog psychologists who, for a large fee, can help you drive your dog to the edge of sinking her teeth into you.

Once you have succeeded in getting your dog to bark at you, the rest is easy. First, decide on a hand signal that is not similar to any other you have given her. Try making the outline of a pagoda using both hands and one foot. Just try it. It you're not manually dextrous, try a profile of Keanu Reeves. You should be able to do that with two fingers of one hand. Tell your dog to "speak" at the same time. When she does, reward her with a treat immediately and say "Shake well before using".

Continue to give the command until she gets really fed up with you and barks again. Within a few weeks, your dog should be ready to run for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Hermann Hesse Stole My Moon Pie. If You Don't Believe Me, Ask the Dog

Speaking of my dog, yesterday I was trying to figure out the assembly instructions for the Ergonomic Industrial Mechanical Stool I got for Christmas. The thing is so complicated that it had been sitting in its box under our brown, needle-dripping eucalyptus tree since last Christmas.  Don’t worry. There’s a dog connection in here somewhere.

I had connected the hydraulically forward-sliding back support to the vertically-descending left foot support when I suddenly had the urge for some moon pie.

I have been hooked on moon pie since the great Daphne, Alabama marshmallow pie crisis. Apparently the city fathers in Daphne felt the need to impose a ban on "foreign-made Moon Pies" (i.e. marshmallow pies), insisting that the only original Moon Pie is made by the Chattanooga Bakery in Tennessee.

Apparently, the police in Daphne were arresting small children for possession of the moon pies that somehow kept flying off parade floats in that town.

I can tell by the way you are snickering up your sleeve that you don't believe me.
For absolute proof of the Great Daphne Moon Pie controversy, look it up under Pies, Moon.

Aha! Wasn't it Al Gore who said "he who laughs last laughs last?" And wasn't it Hermann Hesse who wrote: "Eternity is just long enough for a joke?"

So anyway, I went to the refrigerator to see if there was any moon pie left. There wasn't, but I did find last month's Eminem tickets, which would explain why we didn't make it to the concert. I immediately examined the tickets, because that's what it said on the tickets I should do.

The ticket also said it was not responsible if it was lost, stolen or damaged, and that it wanted to be stored in a cool dry place. This explains why I put the tickets in the refrigerator and why I found them wedged between the coleslaw and the soyburgers exactly thirty-eight days after the concert was over.

I was wrenched out of my bitter ticket-senility recriminations by the phone ringing. At least I thought it was the phone. I picked up all of the phones in the house. The phone continued to ring. Actually, I discovered it wasn't the phone at all. The dog was ringing. (The aforementioned dog connection to which I was referring.)

Game for anything, I picked up the dog, and after some experimentation found that if I spoke into his mouth and listened from his ear, I could carry on some semblance of a conversation.

It was Hermann Hesse, complaining that I was quoting him out of context.

"Wait a minute, Hermann," I said, "Didn't you die in 1962?"

"Well, technically yes. But we're allowed to communicate with the living whenever anyone finds their Eminem tickets in the refrigerator."

Drained from this deus ex canis experience, I went back to constructing my hydraulic stool only to be interrupted again by a loud musical blast from the bedroom. I opened the door. It was the entire Aardvark Tabernacle Choir practicing the Requiem Mass. We have a big bedroom.

Then, as they say, somebody (I think it was the second contralto) spoke and I went into a dream.

In this dream, it was 1771 and I was Sir William Johnson being carried by Mohawk tribesmen from Johnstown to High Rock Spring after the Battle of Lake George. After several days, my health improved dramatically because of the healing effects of the springs and I was able to walk about the garden of the small country inn where my companions had brought me. In that garden, I met a dog who looked very much like my own dog, except that he was about 250 years older.

"I am the reincarnation of John Arnold," the dog said, speaking into my mouth. "Three years from now, I will arise and go, and I will settle with my wife and little doglets in the township of Innisfree, and there a crude cabin will I build, of clay and wattles made, and it the people of Innisfree one by one to bite will I instruct..."

I said "I'm sorry, but we're all out of wattles."

"Maybe," said the dog, "but you can only go so far in ripping off Ogden Nash and W. B. Yeats."

At that point, I snapped back into my living room. The hydraulically forward-sliding back support was still connected to the vertically-descending left foot support.

There was a note attached to the lateral transmogrification pedal. It said:

"Eucalyptus trees don't have any needles."

There is an appropriate quotation that could go here. What was it Hermann Hesse said? "When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane?"

Yes, but then Hermann Hesse never left his Eminem tickets in the refrigerator.

How Do You Like Your Snicker, Sam? I Like My Snicker Sneed.

I am beginning to think that the two people reading this lonely text are beginning to think that I am one koala short of a eucalyptus tree, because they have surreptitiously sent me a gift couched in the form of a job offer, rolled up inside a psychological examination. We (the dog, the rabbit and myself) got a call from the snicker lobby -- you know, the World Brotherhood of Snicker Practitioners (WBSP – all the FM music that’s fit to print, not to be confused with the West Bengal Socialist Party or Write Back Soon Please.). When one wants a professional to snicker up one's sleeve, they, apparently, are the people to call. Unfortunately, I didn't answer the call. The rabbit did. I'll have to rethink installing the cordless phone in his cage.

Apparently, the WBSP is looking for a new Snicker Regulator in our region and is offering me the job. It pays multitudes of timothy hay and carrots. Mind you, this is based on the rabbit's reporting of the call.

This would be a big jump from my current position of doing absolutely nothing at all, so I thought I would get a bit of guidance counseling. I headed to the offices of Dr. Sam Sneed, head of Sam's Medical Center and Tire Emporium in downtown Mooburg, and no relation whatever to the long defunct golfer.

"What you need, Mr. Aardvark," he said, withdrawing his mashie from his bag, "is to get in touch with your inner adviser."

He then placed an orange golf ball on the floor and whacked it so hard it careened wildly about the room like a fly trapped inside a summer porch light.

"Just lie back on the couch and relax. Find an imaginary quiet place."

Suddenly, I am on a small island in the middle of a calm, blue sea. The sky is blue. The grass is blue. There is a small blue sea gull resting on a blue log. I pause momentarily to adjust the color on my imagination.

"Now, are we all relaxed in our quiet place?"

"Yes we are."

Whaaaak! Pocketapocketapocketapocketa... (The golf ball's part was the least rewarding one.)

"Now look around for a friendly creature that can act as your advisor. Bambi the deer, or Chuckie the chipmunk. I'll give you another ten seconds..."

Whaaaak! Pocketapocketapocketapocketa...

I walked up to the sea gull.

"Do you mind doing this advisor thingy?" I said.

"No problemo," said the gull, whose name was also Sam. It turns out this is his job. He hangs around the doctor's office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, hoping for the odd animal advisor job. He confirmed that I was probably the oddest animal he had advised. On the way back to his nest, I tripped over a hunk of salt that had washed up on the beach.

Then a strange thing happened. It was as if suddenly I were in the sea gull's mind and he in mine. He was thinking: "What am I going to have for lunch?"

I was thinking: "I wonder if that girl on the Morton Salt box has salty footprints?"

I explained to the gull my quandary about the Snicker Regulator job.

"You should talk to my uncle, Rhadamanthus."

When we reached the nest, I shook wings with Uncle Rhadamanthus, who, in his spare time was also the son of Zeus and Europa and brother of Minos, king of Crete. Driven out of Crete by his brother, Alchazeltzer, who was jealous of his popularity, Uncle Rad fled to Boeotia, where he wedded Alcmene, but was just as quickly turned into a sea gull by Zeus.

Naturally Alcmene got on the blower and annulled the marriage toot sweet. But I digress...

"Yaaaas," said Uncle Rad, leaning back and stretching his suspenders "in the old days back in the Elysian fields, we had a few Snicker Regulators sitting around playing harps and generally making nuisances of themselves. Mostly, we just had a lot of Judges of the Dead. Too many, I thought. Everybody and his uncle wanted to be a Judge of the Dead. Who could blame them? The pay was good, hours were short, and (seeing that there was a bumper crop of hedonists that year) you got good commissions depending on the number of people you condemned to eternal damnation..."

These days, Uncle Rad has the East Coast franchise for variable angle reflection tools.

"You probably need one," he said. "They're easily adapted for specular, ATR or diffuse reflection spectroscopy. And you can operate them over a broad range of angles without changing the polarization of the incident beam."

Instead of changing the polarization, I quickly changed the subject.

"What about those Snicker Practitioners?" I said, desperately.

"Well, there are two camps, snickerwise," said Uncle Rad.

Immediately, a vision of T.S. Elliot flashed across the low-lying clouds. The poet spoke in a thundering voice:

"I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker."

I suggested that he try tipping at least 20 percent. Being a footman for eternity must suck royally. Personally, I'd rather be reincarnated as a sponge. You could live off your Uncle Arthur for eons.

However, the image passed. In a twinkling of an eye, Uncle Rad turned into the shade of William S. Gilbert (recently escaped from Sullivan) who summarized the snee value of the snicker thusly:

"And on his knees fell he/ As he squirmed
and struggled/ And gurgled and guggled/ I drew my snickersnee!"

I looked wearily at Uncle Rad cum Gilbert. This was not helping much.

And just as suddenly, the crisp air was rent with a giganormous sound...

Whaaaak! Pocketapocketapocketapocketa...

I made a mental note to oil my Suddenly Button.

"I'll be with you in a minute. Just let me get on the seventh green..."

"Clever lines, Mikado Writer," I thought to myself, "but too long to fit on a bumper snicker."

The Return of the Incomprehensible Letter of Uncle Ponsonby

Snickering aside, I must admit I am innocent of the term "roflmao!!", except to hazard a guess that it means "rolling on the floor laughing with the former Chairman of the Chinese People’s Republic". And I'm amazed that anyone still currently alive knows what "plus-fours" are. But it's appropriate to the Sam Sneed symbolism.

At the risk of being a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas, I think we should move on now to the second bedroom, which features a sunny bay window for a dreamy sunshine seat and leads on to a third hideaway that could be an office retreat. We're walking...we're walking...

Careful not to mind the wee transparent folk dancin' about the radishes in the gaaarden outside the window. They're on strike, they are, for more mistletoe and better conditions when settin' the table for the divil with the pooka abroad as i'tis so that the fetch of their future lover may come through the window and eat of the food except for the blackberries, which the pookas have spoiled and paralysed the cattle so we won't be after havin' any blackberry-and-beef sandwiches at all at all.

Discarding our Irish accent, we open the door of the den, and what do we find but (no, not hockey players selling girl scout cookies) a letter sitting on the dusty rolltop.

Along with the usual unpaid bills, this morning's post brought a letter which I had returned unopened a fortnight ago Tuesday, but which the post office, in its usual vindictiveness, has delivered again -- this time attached to a piece of flypaper which proceeded to stick to my hands, nether parts, and any scrap of furniture I could scrape it off on.

The letter, it turns out, is from Uncle Ponsonby, now living in a local department store's "Spring Fashions" show-window in Gravity Falls. (Bored with the retirement home, Uncle Ponsonby struck a deal with the store's owners to replace one of the "Mature Snowbirds" mannequins damaged in the last of many Jute Mill explosions and floods. Although busy remaining perfectly immobile in public view, he occasionally finds time to write.) The letter is a short one, so I quote it completely:

"Mae bys Mary Ann wedi brifo a Dafydd y gwas ddin yn iach. Mae'r baban yn y crud yn crio. A'r gath wedi scrammo Johnny bach. Sospan fach yn berwi ar y tan, sospan fawr yn berwi ar y llawr. A'r gath wedi scrammo Johnny bach."

We had no idea that Uncle Ponsonby felt that way.

We quickly took up our Etruscan dictionary to pen him a return letter (he has steadfastly refused to speak anything but Etruscan since the Grand Duchess took off with the footman (no, not the Eternal footman), but alas, the words wouldn't come. There isn't very much you can say in Mary Ann's situation, and she would probably be better off giving Johnny a wide berth at this juncture, judging by that "a'r gath wedi scrammo" comment. But there just is no accounting for people's eccentricities. And you really can't give advice to people.

On a lighter note, they have since rebuilt the Jute Mill, absolutely no Inuit have died of snakebite so far this year, and the seal population in Saskatchewan is doing just fine, thank you.