The Incident with a Cellphone in the Library...

'Twas a chilly day, the wind gusting off the Rocky Mountains like a frozen aluminum baseball bat swung forcefully into the genitals. But thick glass squelched the icy howling, the bitter chill a faint memory for those of us encamped in near-silent government documents section of the Denver Public Library (third floor, northwest corner.)

We poured over our books and weighty documents. You could taste the concentration.

And then he came, sat, and shuffled his personal items. Finally, he placed a call on his cellphone, using the phone's speaker function. He wore a fedora hat indoors...

[Hello? a tinny voice said.]

"Where are you?"

[Broadway and Alameda.]

We'll I'll be done soon, maybe you can pick me up at the library?

[Yeah, I'll pick you up at the library. Should we go to Wild Oats?"]

Yes, I think that would be best.

It went on like that, but not for long. It wasn't a loud conversation, nor was it particularly soft. The man with the fedora spoke calmly, as if he were sitting at his office desk, making a routine phone call to a colleague. Perfectly normal conversation.

One that provoked a dangerous amount of hostility.

The fedora man later gathered his items, stood, streched, and glanced over his surroundings -- only to meet my derisive glare, a glare as ICY AS THE MOUNTAIN WIND BLOWS!

He froze for a full sixty seconds when his eyes met my mine. This part is true -- a minute, maybe more. It was, to my recollection, the weirdest thing I'd ever done. To stare at a complete stranger for such a long time, the feat itself is unusual. Both of us were frozen in place and neither was willing to give even one inch. Sixty seconds, non merde! "What a strange thing I'm doing," I thought as I glared, frozen in my chair, like some paralyzed John Wayne wearing a stoic blue baseball cap emblazoned with the words "40-year-old Virgin."

Finally, the fedora man broke the trance.

"Read any good books lately?"

"I'm trying to," said I.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you."

"Your cell phone conversation disturbed me."

"It was a brief conversation," said he.

"There are plenty of places in this library where you could have made your call and not disturbed anyone. This is the quietest place in the library. You don't need to use your cell phone here."

(This classic Jedi mind trick failed to put the man into a hypnotic state, one that would have enabled me to make him jump from a balcony -- Ed.)

"People use their cell phones in this library all the time," he said. "I find it disturbing, which is why people come here, I guess."

"Yes, it is."

And then the fedora man disappeared amid the stacks. Lucky for him. I was a dangerous man at the moment. He could have been killed.

God help the next man who gets crosswise with me while wearing a fedora hat.

Osama bin Laden: a government PR tool?

Could it be true?

Al Jazeera doubts Osama bin Laden's latest audio tape is authentic, suggesting the only scientific analysis of the tapes comes from the CIA.

Well, so what if they're fake? And isn't Al Jazeera a terrorist-loving rag-head newspaper anyway?

Yes, it is. But it still raises an interesting point, because these audio tapes seem to whip up our fury for war-making and distract us from the real horrors that war creates.

Also, the tapes seem to give politicians opportunity to say things like, "We don't negotiate with terrorists... you have to destroy them. It's the only way to deal with them."

These jokers gotta be in heaven. Under normal circumstances, a public official could never get away with openly uttering such sentiments. Got to seize the moment when it comes, I suppose.

Wouldn't be the first time I suspected Osama bin Laden was a fake. Now, I'm not going to say it -- how this idea resembles a certain book in which certain agents openly modified certain media accounts to report things like we've always been at war with Oceana. We've never been at war with Eurasia.

But come on! Why, why, why does it seem so appropriate?

Don't laugh -- it could be true. Be honest, do any of you really know a thing about this bin Laden guy, anyway? I mean other than what the president or CIA told you? For all we know, he could have died during one of those missile strikes in the 1990s.

Well, I'll be damned

Learned a new word today -- had to look it up in ye ol' dick-tionary.

The word is bourse.

Know what it means? I'll give you a minute to think about it...

Okay, time's up. A bourse is an exchange, or specifically a European stock exchange.

Thank you, smarty-pants New York Times for using an obscure Middle French word rather than some other, common, less-sophisticated word that would make a lot more sense to us here in the dumb old U.S. of A. Like I have the time to research your erudite locutions in my wordbook, sirs. I'm a busy dude, man!

(Alright, fine. Before you get uppity with me, I'll just say it now: maybe I'm not as busy as I pretend to be.)

That's "Mister" Dad, to you...

Poor, dead rabbit.
In case you didn't know it: The lady is pregnant, and according to modern books and websites, that means I am too (but physically, I'm not even the slightest bit pregnant. I feel great.)

If you're reading this big news for the first time on this website, we're very sorry. It's not that we don't like you, we just like others more than you. And please don't think you aren't important -- we just haven't gotten around to you yet. There are simply too many really important people in our lives who demand our immediate attention -- ambassadors, diplomats, heads of state, wartime generals, retired admirals and the like.

And now, to the point: I've spent the past weeks searching for the perfect words to describe my feelings on the matter, but I've come to the conclusion I'm not ready to do that on the internet. Instead, I've compiled a list of terms to help me respectfully address the Lady during the many trying moments she's likely to experience in the coming months:

The Lady is a:

genetalian (that's a medical term for a pregnant woman) who is primagravida (pregnant with her first child).

She is still a nullagravida (woman who has never given birth) or gravida 0 (same thing), but not for long.

She will one day be a gravida 1 (medical term for a woman who has given birth to one child).

She is also still:
nulliparous (never had a child), or she is a nullipara or a para 0, but again, not for long.

She is also:

Great (archaic)
with child
Up the duff (UK slang)
up the spout (UK slang)
up the flue (UK slang)
up a pole (UK slang)
knocked up
banged up (aussie slang)
in a family way
gone (one month)
PG
preggars
cheggars (UK)
prenada (Spanish, not slang)
embarazada (Spanish, not slang)
en estado (Spanish, not slang)
esperando (Spanish, not slang)
about to find pups (this is just stupid)
in a fix
lady-in-waiting

She has:

a bun in the oven
"split the condom" (whatever)
"drunk from the well"

She is not:
A twat, twit, twirp or twerp (apparently technical terms for egg-laden goldfish)

While researching this, I stumbled into this enormous list of colorful phrases depicting menstruation (in various languages), and couldn't stop laughing. Euphemisms of note: Leak Week, Moonblood, A snatchbox decorated with red roses, and Takin' classes at 'Bama. That last is a reference to the Crimson Tide, of course.

But my favorite happens to be one of the dumbest: I'm on my pyramid -- a reference to the banks of the Nile overflowing and running red, I guess...