Ogden Nash: Besides pollution and erosion / We now must face a goose explosion.

Yesterday I dig out the industrial glue and reconstruct the exploded goose from last weekend. No problem. The cracks are an aesthetic improvement. Am feeling better about 2012 already.

As shown in the first photo above, after I reduce the number of pieces from twenty-six down to two, and am all set to close up the bird for good, I inscribe a message to future goose-breakers (most likely me) inside the tail, along with the dates of breakage and repair. How often does one get a chance to write on a sealed object’s inside surface? To hide a quote-unquote Easter egg inside a bird? At the time this seems clever, but now I kind of wish I hadn’t done it — I feel like from now on whenever I see the goose around the house I’m always just going to think of the concealed message inside it. I can see this eventually bothering me. It’s possible I’ll have to re-break the bird so I can blacken the writing out.

Also: Somehow I’m reminded of that old, bad Groucho Marx joke (though it involves the wrong animal): Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

Our dentist is dead. The receptionist calls last week and leaves a message breaking the news. Was old, fell ill, succumbed. A dead man’s hands have been in my mouth. The line of succession has already been worked out. We orphaned patients have been divvied up among the surviving dudes at the practice, and we’ve been punted over to some slightly less senior torturer for the next time we go in for our bloodlettings, our waterpikkings, our medieval floss-and-scrapes, etc.

Also last week is my first actual visit to a Canadian doctor — I finally get around to it after only three years, oops. My first taste of free socialized health care! It is just a quick physical. The usual pokings and proddings, questions and jottings. Weighed and measured, stethoscoped and blood-pressured, turn and cough, thanks now fuck off. The doctor pronounces me Relatively Young And Healthy. I sense quackness.

Shortly thereafter I happen upon the lyrics to Groucho Marx’s “Doctor Hackenbush”, a song left out of A Day at the Races. Though I appreciate that he rhymes “tonsilectomy” with “send a check to me”, the part that sticks is:

DOCTOR   My diagnosis never fails, I know just what to do!

Whenever anybody ails, I’m sympathetic too!

My heart within me melts!

CHORUS   His heart within him melts!

DOCTOR   No matter what I treat ’em for, they die from something else!