Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Otus the Head Cat
Your Head Cat faces a conundrum this week.
Conundrum, meaning “an intricate and difficult problem,” has a deeper connotation than a mere dilemma.
In common usage, however, conundrum can be applied to profound situations involving complex subjects such as ethics, sociology, religion or the cosmos and cosmetology, or used in reference to something more mundane, such as the topic of your weekly Head Cat column.
Lexiconic entomology informs us that conundrum comes from the Latin “con,” meaning “with,” and “nunquam,” meaning “never.” In this case, I’ll “never” decide “with” which topic to go, so I’ll cover both.
Longtime readers of this space will have come here today expecting their annual explanation of when and how autumn begins. For the record, the fall equinox officially arrives in the northern hemisphere at 8:54 p.m. today when the sun crosses the socalled “celestial equator.”
Equinox comes from the Latin “aequus,” meaning “equal,” and “nox,” meaning “night.”
With sunrise at Little Rock today at 6:57 a.m. and sunset at 7:05 p.m., we’ll have close to equal amounts of daylight and darkness. However, local equinox won’t actually arrive until Wednesday, when sunrise is at 7 a.m. and sunset at 7 p.m.
We’ll continue to lose about two minutes of daylight every day until winter begins on Dec. 21 — the “shortest day” of the year with only 9:49:28 of daylight.
Each fall, I thoroughly explain all this celestial convolution and it’s always one of most educational and popular columns. It won the 2008 James D. Cantore Betise Totale Award and was reprinted in the Sept. 2017 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
It’s used in non-eStem middle schools across the country. Charter schools use a 2009 monograph authored by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
However, our concerns about the changing seasons may be moot if longtime reader Billy Ike of Jonesboro is correct. Although it was wholly a pleasure to hear from him, his message is disturbing — perhaps as disturbing as that of the End-Time Handmaidens up in Jasper.
“The end of days are upon us,” Billy writes ominously. “Have you not paid heed to the biblical event this week as the University of Arkansas allowed its baseball team to schedule in-state opponents?”
Alas, I was calculating the conundrum of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin (six, if it’s a dabke) and totally missed it. I checked and, indeed, hell has frozen over and pigs have flown.
For the first time in history, the Razorbacks will host other schools in the University of Arkansas system. The baseball Hogs will play the Trojans of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock on April 2 and the Golden Lions of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff on April 16.
Billy continues: “Is it not written in Hezekiah 66:17 that if swine mix with others they ‘shall come to an end together, declares the Lord.’ And in Hezekiah 8:32, ‘Neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.’
“This is as problematic as the arrival of Baphomet! Where is the Right Rev. Rep. Jason Rapert — holder of legislative purse strings and proclaimer of righteousness — to save us from disaster by smiting UA’s funding for these abominations?”
Billy then brings it home and drops the mic.
“This new foreigner athletic director [Hunter Yurachek is a Virginian who came to Arkansas from Houston] is the same as the last foreigner [Ohioan Jeff Long]. He casts our pearls and leads us to certain damnation, and ye of foreign faiths like Kalaka, are allowing this #FakeProphet to exist thanks to your #FakeNews negligence.”
Whoa, there, Billy! You had me up until “foreign faiths like Kalaka?” Kalaka, as my longtime readers know, is an eighth generation Arkansan and a personal representative of “He Whose Name Is Never Spoken.” And, if you must know, all cats are Presbyterians because it was predestined to be so.
Other than that, I would agree with you that having the Razorbacks condescend to play other schools in the state, be they members of the University of Arkansas system or a rogue institution such as Arkansas State University, is the first step that leads to the slippery slope of team mixing and the eternal fires of perdition.
I mean, what unholy wrath and rending of garments would be unleashed if the Razorbacks lost?
Until next time Kalaka reminds you that Georgia native Frank Broyles was also once a “foreigner.”