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On this Twentieth Day
In the Month of September
Of Anno Domini
One thousand Nine hundred
Ninety and Nine as this
World Reckons its Calendar

Doctor Who
Time Lord
c/o Dewey Cheatham and Howe
Attorneys
Sol III / Tellus Imprimus
Code Neil Armstrong

Greetings and Salutations and the Blessings of the Creator and Lord Over All Creation be on to you and our mutual companions, compatriots, and confreres: Those Noble Time Lords who watch yet refrain from participation.

Hail and well met.

I trust this missive finds you well in which ever incarnation you read it. Always assuming that you still haven't managed to get yourself vaporized entirely.

This world continues to confound me with the depths of its insanity. Nonetheless, I find that it also has much to commend it. The greater difficulty often lies in determining which is which.

A fine case in point is the leave taking, "have a nice day."

By my oath, my dear fellow, it boggles the mind with its saccharine inanity. It mightn't, I suppose, be such a nuisance were it not so ubiquitous. Yet, no matter where my meanderings take me on campus I invariably encounter or witness one or more people who will smile vapidly and cheerfully call to a departing comrade, "have a nice day."

It has gotten so annoying that I now firmly believe that every dolt who goes about with a "have a nice day" on his lips should be drowned in his own drool and buried with a thesaurus in his hands.

You'll probably have noticed the use of a local vernacular above. I am learning, both in my course on communications and through interaction with the indigenes, that the words of this world -- and especially of the tongue called English -- that a word is a many splintered thing. The casual mis-use of one is as likely to impale the unfortunate who uttered it as any nearby listener.

Another case in point: but two days past I was engaged in social intercourse with a most charming creature who finally cleared up that minor confusion I had with the Dean of Students. She showed me an apple and explained where it was from.

"Ah!" I exclaimed. "It's a fruit!"

"Hey!" came an outraged shout. I looked at a young man who was seated on the grass in some proximity, surprised at this brash discourtesy. "Not fruit. I'm gay!"

I blinked at him for a moment, then asked, "What possible relation is there between a fruit," I held up the apple, "and being a happy person?"

He gaped at me momentarily, then, in obvious indignation, snapped shut the tome into which he had been peering, climbed to his feet, and stalked off without a further word.

A few other students who had witnessed this laughed for a moment, including the charming creature I was with.

Why would I be "retro" and why should it engender mirth?

Speaking of charming creatures, that reminds me of leaping breasts. I now also know what Bay Watch is. What I still don't quite understand is the fascination concerning breasts whether they leap or not. Nor the reactions of some of the women.

There is here on campus an hour glass shaped pond. One end is open to view, and the other is surrounded by a stand of trees. Each end has a beach. The beach within the stand of trees is used by swimmers and sunbathers who, for one reason or another, prefer to be unclothed for their disportment. The young woman who first showed it to me referred to it as being "sky-clad".

However much I puzzled over it they still appeared to me to be -- buck nekked.

To drag myself back on topic, in yet another vernacular, while discussing the subject of leaping breasts with a young man in the dormitory he confessed that his attraction stemmed from his childhood. He said of it, "I was a bottle baby. As a result I've been fascinated by breasts and staring at them ever since."

In an effort to better understand this fascination I went to the sheltered beach to conduct a study. I must have seemed remarkably out of place there, taking my leisure whilst reclining in the shade of the trees, fully clothed, and studiously examining each female chest that passed by. I can, at least offer two interim observations: 1) they don't really leap much although they do bounce a bit and occasionally jiggle; 2) there is a bemusing variety.

I'll refrain for the nonce from enumerating the witnessed range and scope due to constraints of time, of all ironies. I have a class shortly. I will, however, detail two particular examples of my study.

The first was on that beach.

I saw her approaching from some thirty meters off. She is a tall woman, at 185 centimeters, and trim, with a body like an athlete's. Her skin is a golden shade of tan and generally unblemished save for a sprinkling of freckles. Her hair is sun-bleached brunette and lays over the backs of her shoulders. Her smooth belly is flat and her legs are long. She strode along the beach with her head up, her shoulders back, and her chest out.

There was obvious pride in her bearing and a lithe grace to her movements. Her muscles bunched and relaxed in a rhythm that made her skin appear to ripple. The vernacular that comes to mind is amazon and goddess.

Her breasts are two wondrous mounds that swell like great half-globes. They neither bounced nor jiggled in the least. Her aurorae are the color of rose and her nipples the size of cherries and they point the way before her.

Her deceptively languid pace ate up the distance in moments.

As she came abreast of me, no pun intended, she looked directly at me with all the haughtiness of a queen, but then threw me a wink and coquettish grin. "Lovely, aren't they?"

Magnificent, I thought. Or so I thought I thought. It was when she smiled back at me over her shoulder that I realized that I'd spoken aloud.

Later that same afternoon I encountered a classmate in the quad. She is a smaller package than the amazon, but pretty if somewhat plump, and of equal size in the chest. We were discussing the lesbian theme in much pre-raphaelite art and she brought up that painting that I mentioned in my last letter. The one about the Lady Gabrielle and the Duchess de Villiers. That's when her ample bosom, well covered in a tight sweater, attracted my eye.

I looked over her chest, cocking my head first one way and then the other, and wondered what the protocol was for asking her to expose them for my study.

I had just made up my mind to broach the subject when she noticed the focus of my gaze, stopped talking, looked down, then struck me on the cheek with her open palm.

You know, that hurts.

As I stood there, baffled, bemused, and flabbergasted, she spun on her heel and stalked off just like the happy fruit I mentioned earlier.

Really, Doctor, this world is such a welter of dichotomies I honestly don't know what to make of it. The teacher of our course once used a term wonderfully apt: Culture Shock.

Frankly, I don't know if I'll go into shock or merely have a stroke.

Should you see your evil twin, The Valeyard, kindly convey to him my insincere wishes for his continued good health and I hope a Babel Fish throws up in his ear.

Sincerely yours under the Guidance of That Which Oversees All and One Who Walks in the Light of Knowledge and Learning,

The Papalist

Copyright 1999, 2001 Michael Nellis