He's a bit dotty

I remember a cartoon strip called Tiger. That was the kids name. (This was long before Calvin & Hobbes.) Tiger had a dog. The great thing about the dog was its name.


The dog's name was Stripe. (This was long before Sting.)

The great thing about the dog's name was that it allowed a certain kind of humour... no -- a certain sensibility -- to erupt on an otherwise po-faced nation. Okay, so it didn't afflict the whole nation all at once in some transcendent moment of catharsis. The nation had already had several of those, and wasn't really paying attention anymore. (This was long after Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and the Katzenjammer Kids.) So maybe it affected me more than it affected the nation. But it certainly shaped my view of the nation - or whatever it is that kids live in; that place of shared comic strips, candy aisles, television adverts, heroic figures and postcards of monumental places. Stripe was a national figure, which meant that whatever Stripe stood for was a national thing, not just the screwy idea of some kid on a hillside.


The great thing about Stripe was that that's exactly was he was not. Stripe was a spotted dog. That dog realised a Zen-like absurdity unattained by any slapstick anti-hero or child punk. What Stripe did - and I'm sure it was intentional - was authorise the practice of naming things in direct contrast to their appearance. So when my brother Larry got a Black Labrador puppy and was searching for a name, I suggested he call the dog Spot.


A good thing about my brother is that he appreciated the humor. He called the dog Ralph. As in the verb to Ralph.


OK, so you aren't rolling on the floor laughing. I'll get over it. Maybe I should tell you about Pogo, and his method of counting days. He said: 'Friday the 13th falls on a Tuesday this month'. I think that this was his way of saying 'If this is Tuesday, it must be Denmark', or vice versa.


Same logic. OK?


Once upon a time I knew a woman named Carol. Parenthetically, I've known several women named Carol, and they alternated with women named Laurie or Lori or Laura. Once upon a time was around 1980. That's how Richard Brautigan would have explained it, had he lived to tell the tale.


But this is not a Brautigan tale, even though, just as Van Morrison wanted to do the things that only Ray Charles could do, I wanted, at one point, to do what only Brautigan has done.


Carol did her first degree in mathematics at the University of Chicago. She was from the wrong side of the tracks in Mamaroneck, New York, when that sort of thing mattered. So she went to Chicago and studied math. As one does. She followed that with a Master's degree in programming. Then, inexplicably (and she has done any number of inexplicable things), she decided to get an Associate's Degree in electronic engineering at Portland Community College, and that is where fate had us meet, next to a woman named Susan.


I'm not sure if Susan ever had a favorite joke. I'll have to ask next time I talk with her. So here is Carol's favorite joke:


What is the difference between a house and a mouse?


Should I wait a minute, for effect? Okay. Let's wait.


Ready for the answer?


Okay, here it is:


Both of them don't ride bicycles!

...

...


Killer, eh?

It's that good.


It doesn't get much more sophisticated than that.