Professor Yeti

[Editors’ Note: This week, instead of having our beloved Professor answer our readers’ queries, we’ve decided to conduct an interview with the notable yeti, so that our readers may better know him and his charm. The following interview was conducted by Sarah Newton, a direct ancestor of the great physicist Isaac Newton.]

Sarah Newton: What are your hobbies?

Professor Yeti: Everything I do, I do so well that it gets done professionally — I can’t dabble without it becoming more serious. For example, I took up croquet in the mid-eighties as a mild diversion and soon found myself excelling to the greatest degree. I entered a tournament — mostly for fun — and then ended up winning the $5,000 prize.

Sarah Newton: Tell us about your daily life, then. Do you have any habits? What do you eat for breakfast? How do you put on your pants? One leg at a time, I presume?

Professor Yeti: Ah, breakfast. Though I enjoy the traditional fare of bacon and eggs, or pancakes, or cereal, my favorite breakfast involves a meat soup, preferably yak, elk, or skunk. Sometimes I’m annoyed at myself for this, mostly because it’s so stereotypically that of my species — my friends who are birds roll their eyes whenever I discuss my affinity for a stinky skunk tail floating in some briny yak broth.

But — and I am proud of this — I steadfastly refuse to eat squirrels, owing to the fact that I have several in-laws who are squirrels and who would be very offended if I’d dined upon their kind.

As for your question about how I put on my pants, I’ve actually constructed an apparatus that does it for me, both legs simultaneously — when I get out of bed, I get into a chamber that looks much like a sensory deprivation tank, and I have — via mechanical ingenuity — my fur brushed, my contacts put in place, my pants put on, and my shirt buttoned. During the process, I’m also afforded to opportunity to empty my bladder and get a drink of water. The machine automatically brushes my teeth and buckles my suspenders and generally prepares me to look and feel my utmost. The whole time, I have some gentle Bach playing — it’s very soothing — and fifteen minutes after I enter the chamber, I’m ready to sit down to my breakfast, which is made by a different machine as I’m being mechanically prepared for the day.

Sarah Newton: Hmmm. Have you ever desired to fit in more than you do? With all these gadgets and all your intelligence and conspicuous size and hairiness, have you ever wanted to just be a regular Joe six pack?

Professor Yeti: My dear girl . . . while I’ve often loathed the unending attention I receive as well as the resentment and misunderstanding of my genius, and I would never choose to be different. Sometimes I wish people would ignore me, but I would never choose to be different . . . [Professor Yeti strokes his chin and then adds:] and besides, I’d be mendacious if I didn’t admit that the attention appeals to me as much as it repels me . . . to put it in a blunt, tautological manner: I’ve never been anyone else, so I don’t know what it’s like, but even so, I can’t be anyone but me — I’m happy the way I am.

Sarah Newton: So you’re aware of your strangeness?

Professor Yeti: To a degree, yes, but of course I don’t seem strange to myself: I’m only aware of it when others point it out to me. Sometimes I do things that seem perfect normal to me, only to be chastised by some prudish human. And, of course. there’s the whole matter of my being another species entirely.

Sarah Newton: Do you think about this sort of thing often?

Professor Yeti: No, almost never and I’m finding this conversation to become tedious.

Sarah Newton: My apologies. To change the subject then: What’s your latest line of research?

Professor Yeti: I just finished proofing the galleys for a book of mine about allegory and South Africa and am looking doing some translation. I’m seriously considering translating the entire collection of Krazy Kat comics into Japanese. It’s a challenging project for a couple of reasons, the first of which is that George Herriman uses inconsistent and made-up dialects throughout the work, which are difficult to understand in English, much less translate into another language. The second challenge is that the images for Krazy Kat were plagiarized in Central American countries and then Spanish dialogue (that was unrelated to the original dialog) was added in. Fighting the perception that I’m doing something similar will be difficult, though worth it: Officer Pupp, Ignatz Mouse, the bricks — all of Coconino County makes me chuckle.

Sarah Newton: But why into Japanese?

Professor Yeti: First of all, Japan is currently at the forefront of comic expertise. Secondly, there’s an annual prize sponsored by the Japanese government for the best translation of foreign visual literature into the Japanese language. It’s a prize, if I enter, that I’ll doubtless win in 2006.

Sarah Newton: Impressive. I guess we’re running short on time, so just one more question: Do you follow sports? If so, who do you think will win the World Series?

Professor Yeti: That’s two questions, my dear. Regardless, the first answer is: no, I don’t follow sports closely, but, with the caveat that this does not mean I don’t know much more about sports than the common layperson.

As for predictions, it’s difficult to say who will win the World Series since the playoffs, particularly the best-of-five first round are a crapshoot in baseball — baseball relies too much on chance for five games to be meaningful or predictable, particularly when you’re talking about two relatively evenly matched teams — which playoff teams usually are. But then my verbosity is taking all the fun out of this.

The Oakland Athletics. I like the A’s, mostly because green is my favorite color and because I find Billy Beane intelligent. Also, because seeing the Red Sox repeat would be decidedly boring — once was enough, now it’s somebody else’s turn.

Professor Yeti is a world-famous expert and advice columnist. Please send correspondence to: professoryeti@professoryeti.com.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2005 at 7:36 pm and is filed under Ask Professor Yeti. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.