When the cat’s away, the lion will roar (the lion’s me)

I appreciate your feedback on last week’s column about the biker gang we call irregular verbs.

If I had time, I’d individually thank all of you who called and emailed me — but zero is a much bigger number than you’d think.

Anyway, you know you’re the one I appreciate most. The rest are chaff. Oh. I didn’t mean y’all, of course. Y’all are good kitchen folk. I meant the rest of the chaff. The rubes. The rubes that aren’t you, obviously. Those numbskulls sitting over there. The non-you numbskulls, natch.

Nice hat, by the way.

Now on to the column proper.

Hellzapoppin!

My editor’s on vacation!

Oklahoma!

Hello, Dolly!

Some other Broadway musical with a slammer at the end!

I can do what I want! And that includes reaching over! And ripping off! Slammers from Mark Ballard’s column! He has plenty!

Here’s some more!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the newspaper biz we call exclamation points “slammers” — did you know that?

No? Then I’d appreciate it if you’d stop reading my column.

Right now.

Bye-bye. It been nice not knowing you. Sure, it’s only been a few seconds, but it’s been wonderful.

So, where was I?

Oh, yeah ...

Hellzapoppin!

I’m going to do the two things I love, but my editor has forbidden:

1. Say I’m going to do two things but do only one thing.

2. Write a two-part column.

I don’t know what she has against my two-parters. She jams my column into a tiny toolbox in the industrial park section of The Telegraph where I can barely breathe. And how can I complain if I can’t breathe? And what’s the point of breathing if I can’t complain?

Then she says I can’t knock down the metaphoric wall between this week and next week to create a metafabulous loft of a column.

But as Spinoza wrote in “Principia Philosophiae Cartesianae”: I’m a clever teapot, yes it’s true. Here’s an example of what I can do.

Next week

Great stuff my editor cut out of my columns that remained great despite what she calls editing and I call the subversion of the natural order.

This story was originally published June 4, 2016 at 9:00 PM.