The Machinery of Night

Not the Best Part of Wakin' Up

Since Niles and I returned home from our Rita-induced exile, we've had a whole new explanation for life's mundane little vexations and oddities. For example, we woke up yesterday morning to find that our beloved jungle-print sheets were cut to ribbons, and there was a further patch that was worn thin and full of holes. We never noticed the thin patch before, and have no idea how holes could have been made so quickly.

We don't have a cat, nor a poltergeist, nor, to our knowledge, a small time warp which caused the sheets to age overnight. So we must rely on our new all-purpose fall-back explanation: "Hurricane did that."

Industry has apparently embraced this handy excuse as well, as evidenced by this incident (third one down, under "BEVERAGES"):

AINSWORTH, IOWA - Marjorie Morris was shell-shocked [har -- A.S.] by what she found in her freeze-dried coffee.

Morris, 77, of Ainsworth, said she found a dead baby turtle in a 2-pound package of Folgers last Sunday. Morris said she had been making coffee from the package for a month before she made the discovery...

Morris said a Folgers representative explained that because many Folgers facilities are in New Orleans, the turtle might have been in the coffee because of Hurricane Katrina.

Hurricane put a turtle in that woman's coffee! Fear the power of the hurricane!

In other Folgers news, their plant in New Orleans has returned to full capacity:

The plant, which produces more than half of Folgers coffee, has slowly resumed operations since the hurricane...

Coffee supplies were disrupted, causing some shortages, and some Folgers was shipped in metal cans.

Everyone knows that turtles spontaneously generate in metal coffee cans. That's why they stopped making them.

By the way, Mrs. Morris says she does not plan to sue Folgers, which makes her rarer than a turtle entombed in coffee.