Many writers have shared their thoughts with the public:

"There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you." - Beatrix Potter

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." - Anaïs Nin

"Sharing your writing, being enlarged by others' writing, is what makes you feel famous." - Gretchen Bernabei

"Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth." - Edna Ferber

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." - Ben Franklin

"One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones to form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment." - Hart Crane

"There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one can agree what they are." - W. Somerset Maugham

Dr Kerr's Testy Money

Hypothetical propositions are no less scientific than proven facts, your honour. My detractors ignore my findings and brand me a charlatan. Fine, they do so at their own peril! They accuse me of preying on the vulnerabilities of the simple-minded. Money was never my object, I only charged for my inventions in order to make them more widely available. Most of my findings are, in fact, freely available. For the birds! I have gifted my paper on The Dangers of Black Holes and How to Avoid Them, to humanity. My observation that a vessel of water held in the hand and rotated at an arm’s extension effects the retention of the water in the vessel, led to the aforementioned discovery. If the speed of rotation is greater than or equal to the gravitational constant times the radius squared of the arm, the liquid is retained. By the same principle, then, a person in peril of being consumed by a black hole need only apply this formula and attain the yielded speed to escape oblivion. You point to the increased number of speeding offences before you. Many, you say, claim to have been applying my guidelines to vector free of the vortex of a black hole. I submit that their presence before you is testimony to the efficacy of my method.

Now we come to the epidemics. I don’t know why it fell on me to first take cognizance of them. Having once become aware, though, I could not fail to notice their prevalence. I first heard yodelling on the radio. It was a peculiar repetitive utterance of the syllables Yo-De-Le-Hi with the Hi rendered in falsetto at an octave above the other syllabary. One of the first rules of epidemiology is to trace an outbreak to its source. My research led me to Switzerland, and in that mountainous country I found the condition in an advanced stage. I quickly established a field clinic to first observe and then treat the afflicted. This proved fruitful as I made several important observations that were crucial to the treatment I devised. I noted, for instance, that the stricken were of the Germanic strain and that led me to consider that a direct cognitive approach might bring good results. My second significant discovery was that a particular vestural deportment seemed to accompany the condition. This consisted of a jaunty red or green felt hat often sporting a pheasant plume; a white lace-frilled shirt and bow-tie; black leather shorts with elastic suspenders; white knee-length socks; and buckled black shoes. The deviation from the fashionable norm was striking and I determined to begin treatment by addressing this dissonance. To that end, I presented each patient with a photo of a conventionally clad model. I asked them to take their time and note each feature of the clothing. Through leading questions, I established that this indeed was normal dress. I then placed beside the first photo a second one, depicting the deviant costume described above. Aware of the dangers of an excess of cognitive dissonance, I only subjected the patient to short exposures of the second photo. In the interval I observed their response. At first, they showed no reaction. This was followed by signs of confusion. I observed as these were overtaken by jolts of clarity that culminated in a prolonged eureka moment. This led to inevitable feelings of self-consciousness and embarrassment as the realization sank in that only recently they had thus deported themselves. Spurred on by this initial success I didn’t allow them to dwell on these feelings but immediately commenced the second part of the treatment. In slow deliberate tones I repeated the syllables: Yo-De-Le-Hi over and over. The mantra-like repetition seemed to effect a pleasant stupor in the subject. To this condition I applied the cognitive jolt. “What does it mean?” I asked. I repeated the question again and again in the same deliberate tone. The subjects exhibited the same sequence of reactions as in the first part of the treatment. The difference was that this time the realization was that the utterance meant nothing, absolutely nothing. The reflection that they had been projecting this menagerie of meaninglessness in a strange stylized vocalization across mountain ranges at the top of their voices left them in a funk of chagrin. That having run its course they were profuse in their gratitude and a national holiday has been established in my honour.

I have always cringed at the idea of the discoverer of a medical condition applying their name to the disease – Hodgkin’s Disease, Down Syndrome, etc. I prefer more modest descriptive names such as Chicken Pox and Scarlet Fever. I consider myself amply rewarded if my efforts have gone some way towards eradicating Screaming Mountain Sickness from the face of the earth.

The second epidemic led to the banana skin incident that was the substance of my last appearance before your bench. It began with an accident. A colleague on his way to work slipped on a banana peel and fractured his forearm. I was distracted for the rest of the day with the thought of this lurking menace and knew I would not be able to apply myself to another task until I had mitigated the danger. I spent the next month secluded in my laboratory, trying to isolate the gene that was responsible for the slipperiness in the peel. Requiring a vast number of peels, I dined largely on bananas. My ascetic hibernation was rewarded and I was able to extract the undesired sequence and patch in a replacement that provided friction rather than lubricity. I quickly sent my results to the most prominent banana producers in the world and after several months the first crop of non-slip bananas was in the supermarkets. They proved to be popular and public service announcements promoted them for their added safety. I keenly monitored the data coming out of hospitals for any decrease in the number of accidents involving banana peels. To my puzzlement, the rates seemed to be unchanged the world over. Using my science licence, I obtained city office permission to devise an experiment to find out the reason. I set up monitoring points around the city and cast my genetically modified banana peels on a number of busy side-walks. At the end of the day, as I reviewed the footage, the problem became clear. No longer a slip hazard with their non-slip genes, the peels now offered friction. So far so good. The problem seemed to be that the solution worked too well. The peels remained where they were and now became a trip hazard. Slip casualties were being replaced by trip casualties yielding a zero sum benefit for my efforts. However, this was not to be the end of the saga. The timing of this apparent debacle turned out to be fortuitous in quelling another unrelated epidemic.

About that time, a seemingly innocuous trend was beginning to advance to worrying proportions. Simply put, it was the practice of big people wearing small people’s shoes. Looking through the hospital data for that day, I detected that a large contingent of the tripping casualties were afflicted with Shumer’s Syndrome (unfortunately, Dr. Shumer being first to identify the condition, further afflicted the affliction with his name). The unexpected benefit that ensued from the confluence of these two catastrophes was that it provided just the right cognitive jolt to dispel the confusion over shoe size. In other words, tripping on the banana peel proved to be an effective cure for Shumer’s Syndrome. This monumental discovery, as you know, has been celebrated in Shoebabaloo, the hit song by Bananarchy. The lyrics, as best I can extract them from the chaotic cacophony, go like this:

Have you heard, it’s in the news,

There’s big people wearing small people’s shoes.

They walking like Shoebabaloo,

They don’t know whose shoes is whose.

Banana skins all over town,

They don’t know what’s going down

Hey Mr. tall and thin

You ‘bout to hit that banana skin

Hey fat man with the Havana

You got a date with a banana

Hey babe, what’s the deal?

You one step from that yellow peel.

So now you on the ground with your nose all sore

But you ain’t confused ‘bout your shoes no more

Get out of them small kiddy shoes

And let’s all dance Shoebabaloo

I present all this to you as public endorsement of my integrity and my scientific credentials.

And now, your honour, to the matter for which I find myself once more before your bench. As usual, I have dispensed with law quacks and elect to present my own defence. The two elderly ladies opposite who are the plaintiffs, claim to have been swindled in their purchase of my patent (pending) doomsday ear guards. They say that the items they received in the post resemble nothing if not a pair of tea bags and a wire coat hanger. I don’t dispute this resemblance. I laboured long to camouflage my device in the form of common household items. Let me explain how I came to calculate doomsday to the exact minute and my efforts to provide the necessary protection to the populace against its effects.

It all began one evening as I strolled down by the cricket grounds, when I stopped to watch a game in progress. Being of a scientific nature, I reflected on the time differential between the visual aspect of the batsman hitting the ball and the delayed audio aspect. I lamented inwardly at the lack of regard for this basic principle of science in movies. How many times does one see a shooter at a distance shoot someone and the impacted person keel over in the same instant as the report is heard? The different speed of audio and light waves is not represented, detracting enormously from my enjoyment of the movie. I continued on my way, still affected by this thought train. I stopped once more at the rise to take in the magnificence of the setting sun. Tranquilizing as the scene was, there came over me the most momentous and chilling realization of my life. As I gazed on the benign and revered origin and sustainer of life on our planet, it dawned on me that it must also be our destruction. Since the dawn of time earth had been bathing in the light of our god-like star, but what of the sound? Was the sun not a continuous nuclear explosion? Did science not teach that the light would reach first, but sound, travelling at its own slower pace, would arrive at a later time? The differential was determined by the distance to be travelled. I quickly calculated the time differential on the basis of the relative speeds of light and sound over the distance between earth and sun and came to the astounding conclusion that the sun’s sound was imminent! I refined my calculations and determined that the apocalyptic event would happen in a month’s time. That, your honour, was almost a month ago. I hastened home and considered the fate of humanity. There was no time to lose, but very little I could do. My scientific standing had for some time been dragged to the dirt by jealous rivals intent on consigning me to the margins. Be that as it may, I would do what I could to reach as many people as possible with the necessary protection against the onslaught of sound. I worked like never before to develop a set of ear guards that would withstand the low frequencies and the sheer volume. Knowing the nature of humanity in such situations, it was not enough to develop the ear guards. They needed to be disguised as ordinary household items so that when the deafening blow struck and all veneer of civilization was stripped away, those wearing the protection would not be perceived to be enjoying any advantage. At last, having satisfied all these requirements I was ready to produce and distribute. I calculated how many I could make in the remaining time and the cost per item to produce them. I then exhausted all available funds making the first batch. Working within the margin of costs and with no regard for profit, I buttonholed anyone who would listen long enough to understand the import and urgency of my message. I quickly sold out my stock and was maniacally working on the last batch when my work was interrupted by this summons. In answer to the plaintiffs’ claim that the day of doom was supposed to have been two days ago, I submit that in my initial haste I made a slight mis-calculation. I now deduce that we have one week left. I am anxious to get back to my production. I would have been happy to refund the Plaintiffs’ outlay and receive back the goods were it not for the fact that they placed the tea bags - ear pieces, ear pieces, in boiling water, thus rendering them ineffective.

In conclusion, your honour, I have already been unburdened of my professional reputation. All that remains is an idealistic, perhaps naïve scientist who has been chosen, the humblest of the unworthy, perhaps for these very attributes, to save what he can of the human race. I am now offering, for a limited time only, the unprecedented offer of Dr. Jo Kerr’s patent (pending) Doomsday Ear Guards®, together with, at no extra cost, a paint roller and banana shaped spectacle case, plus, plus a Gotham City Centenary commemorative pizza cutter. Yes ladies? Only $1,299.99. Yes ladies, cash will be fine.