Never Walk Away From A Poison Frog
As much as my 89-year-old, Irish-Catholic mom drives me nuts, I get my sense of humor from her.
By Mark Whitney
Coupla’ days back I hammered out a 775-word piece How Much Would You Pay To Get Your Mother Back?, in which I contemplate the pros and cons of croaking my mom with a poison frog.
Satire takes a minute. The darker it is, the longer it takes. I was in the chair for seven hours. Didn’t get up once. No chugs of water. I was locked in. Two days later I am still excited about Mother Back.
My favorite line has nothing to do with the frog, the dissident, the kidnapped mother, or the one I’m holding hostage in La Jolla.
“I know this comic, Basab, from the Palindrome region of India.”
I knew there was a word for words that are spelled the same forward or backward. Had to look it up because I had forgotten that the word is palindrome.
When you have a special frog, you have a job to do. How many frogs make The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal?
Generations from now when the murderous frog’s progeny is profiled on Finding Your Roots, Henry Louis Gates will be like, “How does it make you feel knowing your third great-grandfather murdered a kind-hearted, Russian dissident who stood up to a sociopathic dictator?
As much as my Irish-Catholic mother drives me nuts, I get my sense of humor from her.
Yesterday I’m in Mom and a social worker who looks up from her fillable PDF, turns to Mom, and asks, “Do you have cancer?”
Mom, who is prit near deaf, turns to me, and I’m like, “DO YOU HAVE CANCER?”
Mom turns to the social worker. “No.”
As the social worker types, she asks another question. Mom turns to me again, and I’m like, “DO YOU WEAR A DIAPER?”
Mom is like, “What are we doing?”
“COMPLETING YOUR DEATH CERTIFICATE!”
You simply can’t walk away from a poison frog. Don’t believe me? Ask Alexei Navalny.