The Patent Office

Dear Henry,

I swear I have so many ideas I should just save everyone a lot of trouble and move in right next door to the patent office. This way, when I am struck by a grand inspiration, one with global implications and the possibility to transform the lives of tens of thousands if not millions, which happens to me perhaps ninety to a hundred times a day, then I will not have to walk down the stairs and take the subway to the patent office. My own constitution is quite like the American constitution: delicate and wobbly, ragged with the passage of time, clearly in need of amending in key areas. But, fundamentally it survives on the strength of a certain genius in it's original manufacture. The checks check, the balances balance. I shudder in the wind, I lean, but I don't topple over. Still all of these trips to the patent office are killing me.

I think the receptionist at the patent office has a crush on me. Every time I walk into the the patent office- maybe six times a day- she always notices me. The other afternoon I was hauling in this enormous model I had constructed, the blueprint for a device which could be used to turn tin foil into rocket fuel. Or I guess you could say it was a pepperoni. But one for which I had found an astoundingly novel use. Yes, so I was carrying the long sausage to the "New Inventions" desk I passed the receptionist (she is called Rhonda)and it was unmistakable that she looked at me significantly. Although she was speaking animatedly on the telephone at this time- to Patent Office security as it turns out- I believe she was simulataneously attempting to peer into my soul. "I'm sorry," I called out to Rhonda as they were escorting me towards the exits, "I haven't got time for such quaint romantic overtures!" I said this with the greatest degree of sensitivity a man in my constantly preoccupied state can muster, though I suspect she was quite badly wounded by this rejection, as she hid her face and did not even respond as I was hurried through the doors.

As I've remarked to you many times in our previous letters, he who is the inventor and constructor of the modern marvels that have reduced our Earth to a ticking time bomb has very little energy to devote to the vagaries of new romance. That our's is a lonely profession is inarguable. Dangerous as well. The vast resorvoir of nerve that is required to drive a golf cart at maximum speed into a twelve foot high stack of pancakes and hot cross buns is not easily come by. And yet how else to test the **** device, still the only known cure for (unnamed medical condition).

Who are the real daredevils, Donald? The men who fall out of trees for Hollywood movies and walk around blind and concussed, dallying with vixens and mugging for papparazzi- you consider that daring? That is not daring! What is daring is the inventor, who, sleeves rolled up and to his shoulders and affixed upon his cranium an antique Stetson hat repeatedly throws himself off the branches of a high tree top until such time as he is sobbing uncontrollably or has been struck with a bolt of inspiration, or a bolt of lightning, or both.

Celebrity does not interest me, and if in fact it did would I not be constantly shouting from the highest mountaintop my status as the man who first discovered and cured the traumatic recognized medical condition known as Restless Leg Syndrome? Of course that which is generally now given as the "cure"- a debilitating perscription medication roughly on par with a capsule sized lobotomy- differs significantly from my original solution to the problem which involved a privately concocted balm and an industrial forklift.

As you may have detected, I am an inventor of many stripes, but the healing and treatment of others is a matter of particular emphasis to me. I am one who believes that doctors and so called "medical professionals" are currently in the midst of purposefully over-medicating our society at a time when nearly every illness can be much more effectively treated and even cured by an invention. For example, while contracting rickets at sea last year, I was able to determine through rigorous trial and error that the best possible method for arresting the deterioration of bone and cartilage involves the employment of clothes pins in tandem with an egg beater and the (sometimes difficult to obtain) assistance of a porpoise. But upon my return to land, do you suppose I was able to obtain a medical patent for this historic breakthrough, following eleven painful hours of standing in line on crutches? No. I was deprived, owing to the vocal opposition of a so called "physician" who claimed my findings had "no therapeutic merit" and held the poytential to cause "serious harm".

Sometimes though, in darker moments, I wonder if it is not the inventing I like at all, but the patents. Of the several thousand blueprints and prototypes I have submitted throughout the years, I am dissapointed to say that none of them have as yet recieved patent protection from the Federal Government. This bull headed obstinance in the face of my work has not deterred it's pace in the slightest but rather quickened it considerably. Just yesterday I was able to fashion from common household cleaning agents a face cream which completely erases the effects of aging. Even more exciting, save for a rather acute burning sensation, the massive inflammation of my tonsils and a piercing ringing in my ears, I have yet to detect even a single dilitorious side effect. I cannot wait to apply it you on your next visit, which I hope will come soon (I noticed you have yet to respond to my overture to airlift in my special experimental craft- don't worry- I am insured against fatality).

Warmest Overtures,

Professor J. Goldsly Woodpipe

P.S. Thank you for organizing the surprise party! It was so wonderful to have all of my friends and family present so unexpectedly. And the original theme with which you christened the proceedings- "an intervention"- very clever. Is that your invention?
(Patent Pending)