How Men Think Or Old Goats

On Saturday, Frontier, a major ISP for California broke down all day, so men ventured outside and did yard work. There was a lot of squinting because it was 95 degrees outside and many of us just crept back indoors and wept softly where nobody could see. Higher cognitive functions are elusive on days like that. But there were sightings of one man who stayed out and mowed his front fenceline, an event that might have faded like so many other urban myths had his wife not taken a photo.

When she was done, Norma told this caprice of nature there were goats loose in the field. His opinion was, "We don't own goats so it's not my business but, if I encounter them on the fenceline and conclude they are lost, I will show them a map. Goats are intelligent and that's usually all they need to find their own way home." This left him to his own thoughts:

Why do runway fashion models look like they know something I don't?

Ooh, there's a hummingbird! So tiny. Surprising you can fit enough parts in one to make a bird.

Is it philosophically possible to give up religion for Lent?

And what about head-wedges? I mean, they have wedges to keep doors open, why not little wedges to stop our heads rolling off pillows at night and getting stuck under things?

At which point the mower coughed. He pulled it around the fence-corner and got out his plug wrench, kneeled and thought:

Spark fouled, gap bridged with carbon lint...lint...Lent? Kneeling. Kneeling in ants.

Ants on a man's knees makes him wonder if our species can ever expect reliable social cohesion until we evolve antennae.

Antennae, you wouldn't need head wedges. Humming bird, trochilidae. Antennae, trochilidae...rhyme! In Latin too. Romans spoke Latin.

Roman Catholic...Latin Mass. Lent. Mmmwwwaaaaa!

Mmmwwwaaaaa?

Man looked up and saw goat. Beyond that, man saw another goat. They were tethered on ten-foot ropes to steel fenceposts where the fieldwire starts. They had eaten down the tall grass where he was going to continue mowing the fire-break. Who did that? If I was that man, and I'm not convinced otherwise, I would credit a neighbor across the field. I think he is from India. His family speaks a lilting language and works outdoors a lot with chickens and goats. I see them and they see me. We've never met. I would say he led the goats over to help me when he saw what I was doing. And if I was the man I am writing about, I would go tell Norma the goats were not loose but we've made some new friends. So the man did.

That leaves fashion models. Why do they look like that?