Why I Don't Understand What You're Saying

When I was a child, the pediatrician I was forced to visit enjoyed tormenting me with his voice, which he used for making loud, sarcastic remarks concerning the reasons for those visits. When I had athlete's foot, Dr. Blut called it "jungle rot," and reflected, loudly, on the likelihood of it spreading to other areas of my body. Everything he said was delivered at an abnormally high volume because the nurse had ruptured his eardrums.

Nurse Krill always came in immediately after the doctor had finished distressing me with his words, and went straight to the task of measuring my body temperature with one of the infernal appliances she kept in the cabinet of the examination room. After she had selected the appropriate one, she would approach with an air of nonchalance, hiding the mystery behind her back. Then, with a shriek, she would plunge the thing into one of my ear canals while she counted, loudly, to sixty.

At this point, you're probably asking yourself what she might have done to improve her technique. After all, taking a child's temperature with a modern digital thermometer is hardly rocket science, and besides, it isn't so easy to jam one of those little plastic tips so far into an ear canal that the eardrum is ruptured. Right?

No. You're wrong, as usual. You've conveniently forgotten what year it is in my narrative, and that there's no digital anything, and the rectal thermometer I'm referring to is half a foot long, made of glass, and is filled with tapioca or similarly lethal substance. It obviously wasn't shaped like an ampersand, because that would be silly.*

Continuing on, the main points of my story are simply that (2) you can't assume doctors and nurses aren't demonic entities from Hell, (1) just because Derek Walcott managed to scrawl out a few lines about an ampersand-shaped rectal thermometer doesn't mean he could hear what the doctor was saying about my feet, and (3) it's unwise to trust the accuracy of any temperature measurement when you're surrounded by a bunch of flames.

We've always loved this painting by Ruth Chase.  The text reads:

I am walking through my fears
I am innocent and beautiful again
This is what you hate and why I'll never know you.

I followed a trail to find the context for this image. I thought it was going to be a 1960s Batman episode, in which "Diamond Head" and his gang knock over Tiffanelbow & Co.

This color palette was inspired by a humor piece about a fictional painter who produced canvasses with one solid color each:

There is much controversy among art historians surrounding this stage of Sottise's career, for the simple reason that these works could easily be forged by almost anybody, and no one is quite sure which ones, if any, are authentic. Still, the later, more exotic pieces in this series ('Chartreuse,' 'Raw Umber,' 'Burt Sienna') are fascinating no matter who painted them. But in the fall of 1937, tragedy struck: Sottise ran out of colors and, after exhibiting the 65th and final item in this series ('Crayon Sharpener'), he was forced to enter the next phase of his work.

The most curious and interesting bit of their strange life came out at night, when they were fascinated by my light. I used sometimes to set a candle on a piece of board for a float, and place it in the water close to shore, where the ripples would set it dancing gently. Then I would place a little screen of bark at the shore end of the float, and sit down behind it in darkness.

Presently two points of light would begin to shine, then to scintillate, out among the lily pads, and Chigwooltz would come stealing in, his eyes growing bigger and brighter with wonder. He would place his forearms akimbo on the edge of the float, and lift himself up a bit, like a little old man, and stare steadfastly at the light. And there he would stay as long as I let him, just staring and blinking.

Soon two other points of light would come stealing in from the other side, and another frog would set his elbows on the float and stare hard across at the first-comer. And then two more shining points, and two more, till twelve or fifteen frogs were gathered about my beacon, as thick as they could find elbow room on the float, all staring and blinking like so many strange water owls come up from the bottom to debate weighty things, with a little flickering will-o'-the-wisp nodding grave assent in the midst of them. But never a word was spoken; the silence was perfect.

Sometimes one, more fascinated or more curious than the others, would climb onto the float, and put his nose solemnly into the light. Then there would be a loud sizzle, a jump, and a splash; the candle would go out, and the wondering circle of frogs scatter to the lily pads again, all swimming as if in a trance, dipping their heads under water to wash the light from their bewildered eyes.