Fairy moans and temptation

OLD WOTSISNAME says he misses Sarah Palin. He wishes she'd been running in Iowa. "Ron Paul can be quite funny but Sarah is a real hoot," he said.

We were sitting in the cockpit of his concrete barge on the weekend. He was avoiding working on his engine. I was avoiding helping him, and doing my best to reduce his surplus stock of beer. We said Sarah reminded us of Mrs. Malaprop and recalled that Sarah Palinprop was the one who invented the lovely word "refudiate."

OW said: "You could have knocked me over with a fender when she dropped out of the race. It's just beyond my apprehension. I'd be diluted if she came back."

"Success in politics is elusive," I pointed out. "To all intensive purposes it's a pigment of your imagination."

"That doesn't diminish the extraordinarity of it," said OW, who, for once was looking very dashing with a navy-blue crevasse around his neck.

We both paused to reflect on the profundity of his remark, and to suck on our beers a bit more. Then OW said: "Actually, politicians are a bunch of sharks."

"Quite right," I said, "the waters of Washington are infatuated with them."

There was another pause and then I said: "I'm sorry to interrupt your strain of thought, but whatever happened to the guy you hired to paint your galley after the fire?"

"I had to fire him for gross incontinence," said OW.  "He just started painting all over the powder from the fire extinguisher."

"Hah!" I said. "Serves you right for buying a Chinese extinguisher. It was just a wolf in cheap clothing."

"It was an antique," OW admitted, "but it worked. And Robin Lee Graham had the same kind of extinguisher when he circumvented the world in 1965."

I pondered the significance of that while OW fetched another couple of cans. Then he said: "Getting back to politics, I wouldn't mind getting up-close and personal with Sarah. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink. In political terms she's a hottie."

I was shocked. "But she's married," I said. "You're making a malaproposition."

"Can't help it. It's all to do with fairy moans."

"Fairy moans?"

"Yeah," said OW, "Scientifically proven. Everybody's got fairy moans. Even you've got fairy moans."

"That's offensive," I said. I put down my beer and stepped ashore in dignified fashion. "I resemble that remark."

"Fairy moans," said OW reflectively as I walked away. And then, earnestly: "Lead a snot into temptation."

Today's Thought

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
— Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray.

Tailpiece  

"We're celebrating the anniversary of my wife's birthday tonight."
"Don't you mean you're celebrating the anniversary of her birth?"
"No, no. This is the fifth anniversary of her 39th birthday."

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