Crumby's Telescope Tomfoolery Notes - The Famous Swan, Er, Ray's Tics

Ray, you have summed up the tics. Let me ovate on your enumeration for a minute.

A minute goes by while the Crumby Ovate, ovates.

Ray! My ovation indicates your sum is too high. My ovation indicates that the total is more in the neighborhood of 12 inches.

All righty then, Crumby, you go through all the dang missals and see if you can enumerate all that yourself.

All righty then, maybe I shall.

All righty then, go ahead on.

All righty then, if you fool with me any more, I shall.

All righty then, start enumerating them all up.

Maybe I shall.

Then go ahead on. Do it!

Your pissing me off Ray!

Stop that fussing this instant!

Uh, oh. Uh, oh. Hello, Lovely Druidess Rayetta.

Hmmm. So Ray, your sum is 15.15 inches to date. But Crumby has ovated in the neighborhood of 12 inches. And now the contrasting beliefs have generated a fuss. All righty then. Here's what you shall do. Ray, you shall independently re-enumerate your previous enumeration. Crumby, you shall also enumerate the tics twice, and average your two enumerations together. Then Ray, you and Crumby shall come together with your final enumerations and average those twain enumerations together. The result of that will be what you shall deliver to my office at precisely 5 PM this evening. Do you understand all that?

Yes, Lovely Druidess Rayetta.

All righty then.

The Lovely Druidess sashays on off.

Move over Ray. I need to spell somewhat about the celestial nature of the swan, Cygnus.

Five PM, Crumby.

I heard her Ray, I aint deaf.

Five PM, Crumby.

Dang it! You need to go on off Ray.

Five PM, Crumby.

You know Ray, you are seriously aggravating me. And were it not for my reverential respect of your sister, you would be crying out for mercy at this very nonce.

All righty then Crumby, I shall depart, for its about time for my cereal. Five PM, Crumby.

Ray heads on off to have a big bowl of delicious cereal.

Yepper, there he goes at last, Praise the Goddess. Now let's see here. Lleu Llaw where's my notes. Lleu Llaw, where's my dang notes.

Apparently, the nature of the celestial swan, Cygnus, awaits the recovery of Crumby's notes, securely grasped in the steady hand of Lleu Llaw Guffes. Later.

Ah, ha. There you are with my notes, Lleu Llaw. Unhand them to me.

Yepper. Here they are Crumby, now, where formerly they topped the former pickle bucket that serves as a supplemental telescopery gear reposititory under the shed roof. By the way Crumby, as I fetched the notes forth, from where you left them, I noticed a fierce lot of yellow jackets on a nest hanging down just where one might give that nest a noggin bump were one to traipse that way unwarily.

Yepper, Lleu Llaw, I have already made friends with those particular yellow jackets and don't go that way anymore. Come to think of it, we may need to have a Potential Safety Topic, Environmental Hazard meeting with those grouchy yellow jackets as the subtopic. In fact, you need to go post that up, anon. I sure would hate it if my bosom companion, Ray, tangled with those yellow jackets, before he was aware of their presence and hadn't properly warded his smart aleck self first.

All righty then, Crumby, I'm off to post a notice for a yellow jacket safety meeting.

All righty then, Lleu Llaw. Thanks for fetching in my notes.

Let's see here, Volume 4, page 4444. Isn't that a co-incidence? All righty then.

Yepper, there we were, espying the nether regions of the swan, Cygnus. According to the out of print Golden Skyguide, Cygnus is the very swan that Jupiter transmigrated into for the purpose of wooing Leda. Leda must be an ornithologist or birder, whichever. Whoa! Michael Angelo painted a very interesting picture of the happy couple fornicating. Unfortunately, though, that picture was somehow lost. Except I happen to know that pope what’s his name has that very interesting lost painting Michael Angelo painted which features a very interesting picture of how a plump lady, Leda in fact, might position herself with a large swan. Why would the pope want a picture like that?

Eventually, the interesting couple, Leda and Cygnus/Jupiter, produced four, er, three eggs that eventually hatched out. One of the eggs hatched Castor and Pollux, while the other two offspring of the miraculous union, Clytemnestra and Helen of Troy, each had their own egg to start out in. So, Castor and Pollux are the products of a double yolk. That figures.

Clytemenstra is interesting because, like our own Blodeuwedd, she knew how to get shut of an unwanted Kinglet, Agamemnon, while he was at his ablutions. Which brings me around to Lleu Llaw and why he has turned up at the CB after lo these many centuries of neglect and incredible personal suffering.

My first reaction upon espying Lleu Llaw Guffes, Lion of the Steady Hand, was to shoot him accidentally. Naturally, I had my reasons for shooting Lleu Llaw, accidentally. Never forget, never forgive. But then, when I espied that he wasn’t shot dead, but only grazed, I got to thinking that maybe the WG had sent him along for a reason. And since he had turned up, he could help with the telescopery, maybe. That’s when it also occurred to me that maybe one of the ladies hereabouts could find out more about Lleu Llaw, fer me; why he had turned up here at the CB and suchlike.

“Which one of the ladies is likely to help me?” I queried of myself. Now Rayetta is plenty busy most of the time and prickly. But I thought to myself, “Crumby, Rayetta can go into one of her famous all nighters on the cow hides and figure all this out in a jiffy, whereas it might take anyone else weeks of misery and privation to arrive at similar results.” Besides, I betchum the LDR is more than a little curious about why a dang sun god renegade Druid would turn up here, of all places in time and space, at an Old School like the CB.

I, Crumby the Ovate, am a man of action. So one evening at supper I boldly tugged my forelock in Rayetta’s direction and exclaimed., “Oh Lovely Druidess, why do you reckon that the Steady Hand, son or nephew of Math or Gwydion, maybe, has fetched up here at the CB in defiance of all the odds.”

“Hmmm.” Rayetta replied. “He has been sent here by his mother, Arianrhod, to learn patience from the Crumby Ovate, believe it or not, but also to suffer some more, since His Mother, does not believe he has learned his lesson quite yet.”

“Ha!” I exclaimed. “So you, Lovely Druidess Rayetta have taken to the hides already, just as I foretold, and now I have a companion at last, at beck and call for this or that.”

“That accounting, Crumby, is essentially correct. But you need to remember Crumby, just be yourself, and do not go out of your way to torture Lleu Llaw.”

“All righty then!!!!”

Mighty pleased I was with this happy turn of events. But getting back to Leda and the buck swan, Cygnus. You may have heard the expression, buck duck. Well, a duck is nowhere near as buck as a swan according to Michael Angelo’s painting that the pope absconded with. That painting explains a lot. So Lleu Llaw and I were pretty interested in espying that part of the swan in the neighborhood of the star the Arabs spell Sadr, which translated from the Arabic, is, wand of the eagle. Admittedly, this only makes sense if you know that the ignoramus Arabs believe the swan is an eagle. Er. Actually the Arabs may not be such ignoramuses after all, since the eagle has been the favorite transmigration of the head sun god in all the religions, modern and ancient.

Alas, even the great red tube guided by the Steady Hand revealed little of the prodigious swan or eagle wand. Doubtless a bigger telescope could reveal more of this wonderful organ that so enraptured the beautiful, yet plump, Leda.

Boring Technical Details.

There’s some really nice doubles up around Eta Cygni. 16 Cygni is a nice double right next to the winking planetary nebula, which we can actually espy, all righty then. 30 Cygni is at least as cool as Albireo. Leda had one of Jupiter’s littler moons named for herself.