What does a square sound like?

Is what the 4-year-old (youngest) daughter of a friend of mine asked her.

I’m a failure as a mother, she told me. But, of course, she was joking about herself, the way we do sometimes. You make jokes about yourself as you get older; life, as it is so good at doing, teaches you.

If life doesn’t teach you that, you’re not listening very well.

Self-deprecating humor is probably what separates humans from the rest of the vegetable kingdom, especially during presidential races.

Which means that Mitt Romney is in trouble, because his attempts at humor sound like broccoli being peeled. Squeak, squeak. Squawk.

But I digress.

My friend is quite intelligent and knowledgeable (and, yeah, she’s quite beautiful, too — but we put way too much emphasis on how a woman looks), and her children are quite intelligent, too. Surprise, surprise. Her oldest started reading at 3; I didn’t start reading till I was 4, which I thought was pretty good. Ha-ha.

What does a square sound like? That’s one of the most beautiful questions I’ve ever heard, I told my friend.

(But then, I like Picasso and Duchamps. Think Nude Descending a Staircase, which is not quite like any nude Playboy has ever entertained, if that’s the word.)

Which brings us to the blue Moon, which most Americans believed is the second full Moon in a month. Apparently, most Americans don’t understand Blue Moons at that well. Not surprising, given that the Farmers’ Almanac gave the wrong definition in the late-40s and then later corrected it in the late-90s, not that anybody paid any attention, outside of NPR.

A blue Moon is not two full Moons in one month, as the Almanac proposed back then and as so many believe because they don’t listen to NPR enough. A blue Moon is the third full Moon in a quarter that has four full Moon.

Knowledge about the blue Moon is about as vague as Paul Ryan’s budget plan. Where are all those budget cuts going to come from? Nobody knows, except that they are most certainly not going to affect the rich. Cool. Lord knows, the very rich aren’t yet rich enough; they can barely afford that fifth yacht. Let’s see: one for France, one for Italy, one for the Caribbean, one for Singapore, and one for the Seychelles, because it’s cool to visit some islands about to disappear underwater due to global whatchamacallit — which only exists in the fevered minds of liberal fanatics.

And to set the record straight: Obama’s plan to save $716 billion in Medicare spending does not gut the program, according to dozens of sources, it extends the life of the program. It in no way cuts benefits for the seniors it serves, unlike what the Good Ship Mitt would like you to believe.

And it’s interesting to note that Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan’s much ballyhooed budget plan (by the GOP, anyway) includes the same $716 or so billion move on Medicare.

It’s also interesting to note that Ryan,in his speech to the GOP Convention, blamed Obama for GM closing its plant in Janesville, Wis., which happens to be in his Congressional district.

What’s interesting is that the Janesville GM plant closed when George W. Bush was president. So Obama is responsible for the plant’s closing how, exactly?

Which brings us to the Mitt would like you to believe what he believes now is nothing like what he persuaded you to believe he thought five or six years ago. So, if Obama says that’s a maple tree, Romney says that’s a pine tree, even though the tree has been tapped and producing maple sugar.

So what does a square sound like?

I think we now know.