Finally! I'm a victim!

There doesn’t seem to be anything in this piece that suggests short people have an unhealthy attitude to life. It just says the shrimps think they’re less healthy. We’re not talking about people like me, who stand at a Napoleonic 5’4”, but the Lollypop Guilders who top off at 5’3”. It seems that they have more difficulties in education, employment and relationships. Really? Education? Well, yes, you get picked on in school, but it’s not like you fail college because things most people would understand go right over your head. Employment? Probably; taller, better-looking people will always have an advantage over those of us in the Leprechaun range. Relationships? There are lots of short women out there. I had no trouble finding women my height, and even dated a few who made me feel like Charlie McCarthy. People would look at us and think: at the end of the night, she puts him away in a suitcase. I married a knockout brainiac an inch or two shorter, and we match well.  We don’t look tiny. We look like actors from an HO gauge production of “Land of the Giants.”

The headline is confusing, too: Shorter people have a chip on their shoulder which makes them unhealthy.” Oh? So it’s not the self-loathing that comes from being doorknob-height, it’s the arrogance they develop to compensate for punyhood? The article veers into pseudo-science when it says “short people would have a 6 per cent higher health rating if they were around three inches taller.”

Six percent! Exactly! Since shortness causes mental health problems, we had better find a solution:

Treatment with growth hormone for children with these conditions can increase their final height by as much as four inches.

The study shows that these height increases could have a huge positive effect on a person's mental wellbeing once they grow up.

How long until someone sues National Health for growth hormone treatments for normal children who might otherwise be wee? If tall people are found to have an exaggerated sense of self-worth and potency, shouldn’t we dose the tall babies down to median size to keep them from making the Smalls feel bad – or at least tax them to pay for growth-hormone therapy, for heaven’s sake. An iniquitous outcome is proof of an injustice, you know – probably a systemic injustice. I think the French revolutionary committees mandated an desired Citizen Height, and enforced it as best as they could. The guillotine was a great leveler.

Ahh! The brisk, satisfying taste of Reducto Ad Absurdum. It’s been a while.

Day one of Enforced Vacation did not begin as planned. My wife left the house early; (G)nat slept in, and I was prepared to do likewise. But the crack of dawn means FOOD to a dog, and since Jasper is accustomed to breakfast scraps – not from me, mind you – he wanted everyone to come downstairs and eat. He actually pushed the bedroom door open with such force it banged against the doorstop; he issued a few complaints through his nose, then dropped to the floor like a sack of meat and sighed. He has become very bossy in his dotage. It’s all come down to food. Well, it was always about food, but he’s past pretending for the sake of social niceties. Go downstairs and make bacon. It is the time of the bacon. It’s one thing to get the cold nose on the hand because he’s hungry and hasn’t been fed, but when you get the cold nose because he wants a bacon chaser, that’s different.

No school today. Vacation for me. I indulged myself this morning a little, and did 60 pages of the redesigned Matchbook site. It looks about 17% different. The biggest change is the size of the matchbooks, and I can hear you say: I certainly hope you’ve committed to a default size of 335 pixels. I have. And I hope you’re grouping the graphics in subfolders so future updates do not require scrolling through endless lists. Well, yes. Then I worked on real work and waited for the playdate.

(G)nat had a boy over today. To play. To play Pokemon.

I know more than he does, she said later, with a small amount of astonishment and dismay. She had expected boys to come pre-loaded with Pokemon lore, but he was a dabbler. She’s committed. She draws her own comics about them. She said the other day that she wanted to be an artist, or maybe make cartoons; she dabbles on these flash-animation sites that let you make your own flip—books, and to my deep abiding pride she not only loves old cartoons, but can tell whether they’re old old or recent. 

Hey, aren’t I supposed to be on vacation? I forgot. Okay. Well. New buzz.mn morning note; new Stagland update, and here’s a Diner I banged out this afternoon while (G)Nat was at a playdate elsewhere. I must warn you: portions of this one are intentionally painful. ITunes here; MP3 here; if you’re seeing the picture below, you can play it on the spot. 

Thanks for your patronage! See you at buzz.mn – all weekend, you know – and back here on Monday.