It’s Fooble-mint, Fooble-mint, Fooble-mint gum!

For those of you who are not of Generation X, that is what is known as a reference.

Look it up in some kind of book.

Heya hiya howdy, folks, and welcome to that brief respite from sanity known as the Sunday Fooble Hours, brought to you courtesy of Foobco, the Fun Folks to Know. Remember kids, when you think of asparagus used in suggestive ways, think Foobco!

Then call your doctor.

You know what I love? Random acts of wonder. Things that people do just to add a little sparkle and mystery and magic to the lives of others. Anonymous, selfless, completely sincere acts of public wonderfulness.

Like the odd and mysterious paper sculptures showing up around Edinburgh.

I could be wrong about the motive, of course. Perhaps it’s not an act of public wonder but the inevitable byproduct of a brilliant but tortured orgamist’s all-consuming obsession, and what were are seeing are not works of art donated to the public consciousness but symptoms of a mind slowly coming apart.

But I prefer to think that this person wanted to share their hobby with the world, but in a way that would give people something to talk about and wonder about and that would make their days just a little brighter and more interesting.

Nothing harmful or destructive. Just a something a little different, to make this day unlike all the others. A gift.

Then again, sometimes these sort of things are motivated by a simple need to be heard on a subject of local interest. Say, a local eyesore that desperately needs to go away, so desperately that you are willing to get together with a bunch of friends and perform a simply breathtaking act of public art as commentary.

I am gobstruck with awe for the people who did that. It’s not just a marvelously elegant commentary that anyone seeing it can understand. It is a highly daring and presumably quite dangerous stunt that I am thinking required at least three people to pull off. So it took planning and coordination as well.

All to say “this ugly old thing has got to go”.

I have crazy mad respect for people who are that passionate in their desire to make a statement, and who do it in such a powerful and peaceful way.

After all, it’s not like they destroyed anything of value, nor did they make the ugly old dam any uglier. They just added a very simple comment that hurt nobody but made their point clearly and even somewhat humorously.

Then again, some people don’t need to make statements in order to be heard, because they are the butchest human being alive and other people will do all the telling for them.

Like this guy here.

Quick, someone call Stephen Colbert!

Kind of makes Davey Crockett look like a big fat pussy, doesn’t it?

Sure, he “got him a bar when he was only three”, but did he do it by taking it on bare-handed and ripping out its throat with his teeth?

I didn’t think so.

Animal lover that I am, I have no problem with people defending themselves. I don’t feel bad for the bear. We human beings are top predator for a reason. We are really fucking dangerous. If the animals leave us alone, we can be civilized.

But cross the line and attack us, and suddenly it’s all about the law of the jungle.

Is it just me, or have I completely failed to keep a light and jocular tone this week?

Oh well. Here’s some intensely nerdy humour to lighten the mood.

You remember high school algebra, right?

You see, it’s funny because the square root of negative one is an imaginary number because there can be no number that when multiplied by itself results in a negative number. Square a positive number, you get a positive number. Square a negative number, a negative number times a negative number is always positive, ergo, still a positive number.

So you can see, it can be mathematically demonstrated, without the possibility of error, that the above joke is completely hilarious.

If you still don’t find it funny, you must just hate math.

That’s all the stuff I have for you this week, all you fun people out there. Time to clean up, turn out the lights, lock the doors, and play a little wistfully sad piano music to signal the network that we are done for now.

Seeya next week folks!