Thom Forbes

I'm not sure about this and need your thoughts at Jason's Hall at 4 Hall Place (don't block a driveway) this Wednesday evening to figure it out. 

Has it reached the point where we let the public know that the wolfitis contrarius bellicosim  virus is spreading, possibly creating panic among women and children who are blissfully unaware of its existence? Our do we keep the details of some of our dirty little games amongst ourselves?

No sooner had the Hastings Pubic Health Board issued a press release announcing a series of interviews with medical experts who live in Hastings last week than Mike B. was "on the email," as George C. would say, to me.

"I see that the Public Health Board is going to interview Dr. Frank Lowy on Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), Dr. Russell Portenoy on End of Life/ Pallative and Dr. Harrison Bloom on International Aging," he wrote. "It's also asking for suggestions from the public for future topics. I have one.

"I noticed last week," Mike B. continues, "that Art L. let slip that perhaps Illegitimate Bastoid was a better game than Legitimate Bastoid. He also has been observed playing Septoid instead of Mexoid from time to time. Clearly, he's infected with wolfitis contrarius bellicosim."

After displaying several hundred pages of charts, graphs and tables derived from an Internet-based survey of three other members of the Cronies cohort, Mike suggests that Dr. Peter A. be interviewed by WHoH on the subject of the paper he delivered in Chicago a few weeks ago:  "The Insidious Replication of Idiotic Games of Chance That Elicit Moans In the General Population."

I couldn't get past Prof. Pete's abstract myself, but there are phrases like "psychoviral sadism," "megalomaniacal gamesmanship," and "latent need to issue instructions" that clearly could stand some scutiny in a Q&A format. 

On the other hand, I'm not sure, as usual, that I buy into Dr. Pete's thesis in the first place. I think we may be dealing with an entirely different, and heretofore unidentified, disease of a bacterial nature.  Call it Lowen dirty wishfulitis. After all, over the decades, Art L. has been known to play such crowd displeasers as Red and Black and Aces and Eights simply on the whimsical notion that they'll change his luck. It hasn't. Now that's sick. 

Please weigh in with you own thoughts on the matter at the lecture room at Jason's Hall, 4 Hall Place, Hall-on-Hastings, NY, at 8:27 this Wednesday.