Did you ever wonder what a cross over style film titled PET SEMETARY 2: HERBERT WEST
would be like?

Or SHANGHAI DAWN OF THE DEAD?

THREE MEN AND A TEENAGER?

Now there was a film called THE GOOD SHEPARD.

And there was one called THE GOOD GERMAN.

Why not: THE GOOD GERMAN SHEPARD?

Arf!

Did you ever buy something because it was out and out dumb?

IN THE POSTAL ZONE: GOING POSTAL: Working with dead people.

He was found dead on a toilet, locked inside a stall.

The word of mouth that came back from the medical examiner that when found, he had been dead three days.

At first, no one noticed. Hugh was pudgy and large and when the heart attack took him while sitting in the toilet stall, it hit quickly and the body girth and weight held him upright. His mother called after the weekend had passed when she did not hear from him. “He goes out,” she said, “sometimes… he tells me.”

It was an out of the way bathroom jammed into a corner and designed badly but because of regulations, it had to be there. It was small tight right angles and divisions of badly designed stalls, vaguely fitting together properly. The janitors and the maintenance were requested to remove the stall walls, but refused, because of the request. The stretcher could not fit into the room. The corpse of the 300 pound man had to be first removed with a hand truck. Body tipped forward, pants pulled up, edged out, moved onto a stretcher.

Hugh’s death presented a problem. The managers of the War Room had to field calls from the newspaper, and direct questions were politely declined.

It was claimed that a message was written on the stall when Hugh’s body was removed. On the door it read, close to the bottom. “A new circle of hell.”

One supervisor was given some grief for referring to the morbidly obese in the post office as "Fork lifts", in reference to what would be needed to lift them to an ambulance.

JOKES NO ONE TELLS: what to say

If you are a guy, you can ask another guy, "What does a woman say after her tenth orgasm"?

He will say "I don't know."

You say, "I knew that."

Or a guy could say to a woman, "What does a woman say after her tenth orgasm?"

She can say "DON'T STOP NOW!"

Unless she decides to say to another man, "What does a woman says after her tenth orgasm?

And if he says, "I don't know."

She can say, "I'm not going out with you."

JOKES NO ONE TELLS

Buffalo Bill.

This is the answer.

The question is: what you do have if you buy your buffalo with a credit card?

DANDELION VINEGAR

(excerpt)

It was August. It was warm.
Waukegan Illinois had the warm days that became slightly chillier at night, as the summer began moving towards autumn.
The family had rented a house that was next door to the rented house where my Uncle Rick and his family had been staying. Uncle Rick was in the Navy. Father was in the Air Force. We lived out of boxes and suitcases for as long as I could recall. I later realized we were a little portable Military family. We lacked suit case handles on our backs.
There was one day where I had bumped into a lamp, and its fall created many pieces. My brother Arnold was quick to suggest: “You’d better tell Mom that you did it on purpose.”
“Why?” I asked. I was four. He was about eight.
“So she’ll know it was okay.”
“Okay?” Since my bumping into the lamp was caused by him shoving me, I thought he was protecting me.
When Mom did arrive, she saw the lamp, and said, “What happened?”
I said, “I did it on purpose.”
“What?”
“I did it on purpose.”
She grabbed me by the arm and started smacking my butt and I whirled around trying to avoid the contact, while shouting “I did it on purpose!” over and over.
She stopped. I looked at Arnold, who wore a big grin.
Something was wrong, I noted. Arnold had a sense of humor that took years of therapy to appreciate.
And on one of those days where the sun was out and blazing and hot and the wind was still, Mom and Father had decided to go shopping. They also decided to leave the two of us by ourselves.
Stay out of trouble, we were told. There’s no baby sitter. Uncle Rick is gone for the day. Don’t fight. Your big brother knows how to phone the police. Don’t worry about burglars. Ann is over a friend’s house. She has a girl scout meeting. Be good. We won’t be gone long. You can make lunch. If something should happen, you know what to do.
That something should happen. When I was younger we all dreaded anything happening, because it made the adults mad, and that often meant that the belts would soon be off and used for other things than holding pants up.
At a time when they could not find a baby sitter, or want to bother neighbors they barely knew to watch a couple of nose picking brats for an hour or two, they decided to see if they could trust us. Like anyone else, they wished they could trust and believe in their own children, instead being given constant reminders that they could not.
I do not know what the inspiration was, or why. I have long suspected cookies as a motive (which we did not have), and a conversation with Arnold about food brought up a mumbling statement that sounds like…”what people over in Africa eat that are their version of candy…”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Grasshoppers,” said Arnold. “If you go out and catch some I’ll cook them up for you.”
I knew about grasshoppers. When there were guests in the house, my Father made a drink called Grasshopper. It had mint and vermouth and gin in it and it smelled bad. The grasshoppers were caught in the back yard and stuck in the drink. Father was always looking for ones about two inches long. Father made these drinks because he knew no one would walk off with his drink after they saw the insect sticking its head out between a few bits of crushed ice. Father always asked if I wanted a sip. Peering into the glass, seeing an insect surrounded by milky green puke, I always managed to say “No.”
And I began to notice that I shouldn't get involved with Arnold’s ideas where I did all of the work.
I got a jar and I went out and caught some sizeable grasshoppers. They spit “tobacco juice” from their mouths. This is what it was called. They ooze a lot of this dark green stuff out of their mouth parts when you catch them. I got about seven or eight.
I brought them in. They were trying to break out, leaping around.
“Okay. Here you are,” I said. I shook the jar.
Arnold had set up the frying pan, but had not turned the gas on.
I gave the jar to him and pulled up a chair.
“Well?”
He put some Crisco in the pan and turned on the burner.
He told me to get a grasshopper and pull their hind legs off. I did this to one two three four five and gave them to him and he put them in the pan. They heated up and stopped moving. They began to crisp. He pulled the pan off the active burner.

“Now what?”
“You have to eat one.”
“Why me?”
“Marlon Perkins eats them all the time on Wild Kingdom,” said Arnold.
“Okay.” Marlon Perkins I respected. He got to live in a zoo. He was surrounded by wild animals. I got to live in Waukegan.

I got some catsup, covered the bugs up and ate one. And two and three and four.” With my fork I held up the last one and asked “You want one?”
He turned and ran for the bathroom.

Many years later at a family dinner I told these stories to the family.
Arnold said “You lie. You’re a goddamn liar. That never happened.”


(I keep nagging myself about my childhood. Writing it is is kind of therapeutic. One of a series. Someone inform Ray Bradbury, so he can complain. I lived in Waukegan for a few years, so I have the right. Nyah, nyah, nyah.)

How to stop a conversation

I was once at a summer party, out of doors and as would be, there were plenty of flies.

Said a young woman, "I don't mind the flies. I don't mind if they land of my food. I don't mind if I find an egg. I just draw the line at maggots."

Thank you.

Invertebrate humor.

SOME THOUGHTS ON LIMITED EDITIONS AND STUFF...

Note: this was written several years back and discovered on a computer disk, Hopefully, it will still make sense.


I thought about AGRIPPA, the "Book of the Dead" which is William Gibson and Dennis Ashbaugh's submission to the world of limited editions. It is a short story artifact. The story is on a computer disk surrounded by decorated debris. After a while, I couldn't think of anything that would make me want to own one (the price tag ranging from $450 to $7500 was another factor). I thought that most telling item was the "gimmick". It could only be read once. After that, you could not call the story up on the screen. It was gone. I mean, you have only one chance. And what if it's incompatible with the system you now own?
Or there isn't enough memory. Or a phone call interrupts. There's a power blackout. It's gone.

I think this is a gimmick. I think if the story was really any good, William Gibson would have wanted it widely published and not held hostage in prestigious packaging. $450 for a short story at a pop better display some skills at wordsmithing. And Gibson's career has stalled since NEUROMANCER, and he needs a gimmick to make people pay attention.

I thought about this and it reminded me of one strange book collector I met. He had flown in from Los Angeles California to Baltimore Maryland to obtain autographs for his Anne McCaffrey books. He yakked about owning this and that and talked about the LeGuin Earthsea books, which at the time I had not read. "Which one did you like the best?" I asked.
"What?"
"Which LeGuin book did you like the best?"
"Which edition?"
"No. Reading. Did you read the Earthsea books?"
"No. I just have first editions."
"You don't read your books?"
"No. I just collect them."
"You don't read your books?
"No. I just use them to decorate my office. I'm a dentist."
"None of your books?"
"No. I just collect them. What's wrong with that?" He also added later about a writer who had died some weeks before that he was glad to have gotten his books autographed the year before and now he's dead and those books will be worth something soon. I was deeply touched by this. I held off throwing up on him.

I could not really answer to those items, but I thought it was a little bit strange. Illiterate selfishness? I am unsure. But over the years I've encountered some off the wall singular minded people when it comes to collecting: only Ray Bradbury. Only Heinlein. Only Niven. Only Piers Anthony. Only Stephen King. Only mainstream novels by Sf writers. Only porno novels written by SF writers. Only movie adaptations. One collector had ten different binding variants of C.L. Moore's JUDGEMENT NIGHT. One collector wanted only badly written novels, accepting a book I'd suggested with, "Okay. I'll buy it. But it had better be bad." Comic book adaptations of SF novels. As strange as some collectors are or have gotten there is no SFfans equal to the rock scene "plaster casters". I sincerely hope not.

George H. Wells, fan from New York, spent several years looking for the novelisation for the low budget cheapie picture called WEREWOLF VERSUS VAMPIRE WOMAN, claiming the true horror of the book was in its sentence structure. Later George discovered the novelized screen play to a Dino DeLaurentis rip off called QUEEN KONG. (I know that a "DeLaurentis Rip Off" sounds kind of far fetched, but the book exists, the movie was made and still from the production were in the book. I'd like a copy of it.)*


* Watching the movie of it has put me off from wanting a copy, since A) it a horrid movie and B) it goes for $50+ bucks.

Ann Coulter. I wrote a review of her book GODLESS , posted it on Amazon.com, and it was pulled.

Twice.

All I did was write something on the order of "Ann Coulter is the dumb blond bimbo of the extreme right wing" and her writing was draining dishwater and suggested the people check Robert Anton Wilson's blog to check out his story about her, suggesting she was a man and the name of the article is "Strap on Veterans for the truth."

Phooey.

JOKES NO ONE TELLS

Why do stand up comics continue to tell jokes?

It's a gag reflex.

There was a woman who painted morbid art during her menstrual cycle. She refers to them as her "period pieces."

SNAKES WILL MAKE LOUSY ASTRONAUTS because of the frustration level.

Wanted to review the film THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH , but it seems to have vanished from my table. It is much much worse than THE GREEN SLIME, and you can tell that from the opening credits and it simply doesn't get any better.

The video seems to have been devoured by the kipple culture in the art room. I don't know if my clutter is worse than George Wells, though he says nothing positive about his apartment and that things keep falling over after he stacks them up. Trade pictures George?

IN THE POSTAL ZONE: GOING POSTAL in which is referenced to sex and the amusing things that happen in the Post Office.

There was a Supervisor who had several rounds of oral sex in his office. Without mentioning what was going on, management put up a video camera in his office taped the next tonsil hockey session.

Then they called him in and let him view the result. It must have been an interesting theater in the mind experience. Yes, it was good, but it is now a horror because he got caught, and the woman is not his wife and she's going to get this same treatment and she's going to feel the same way I did, only worse and...

...and she was going to feel much much worse than him (as he was required to tell his wife), but that her mother still worked there.

SECOND STORY:

The guy called Dave was told that the video cameras in the parking lot showed him getting a blow job in his car.

He said "Only one?"

BY WAY OF dealing with memories and "stuff", I will ramble. The photo is my son, Leo, done up as Morpheus, based on Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" series/character. We had tried at last year's Balticon to get Leo and Neil Gaiman together for a photo op, since he'd colored his hair and they sort of resembled each other. We never connected, though I chatted with Conner Cochran and Peter Beagle about ANANSI BOYS, which Gaiman had claimed some influence by Thorne Smith (well, I didn't see it). I had just reread Thorne Smith's TURNABOUT, which is where a bickering couple wakes up and finds that their personalities have exchanged bodies, and they need to carry on their lives, and must do each other's "jobs" to much reader hilarity. Peter Beagle mused over it, mentioning a TV made movie, and the thought it ultimately would be largely unfilmable, since it's a book that lives in the mind's eye. The TV made movie sucked, and has not been re shown, let alone, to escape on VHS or DVD.

TURNABOUT, by the way, is still a fine book, and despite its age, still can turn your head around with it's still fresh revelations on male/female relations, status and presentation. And when the "man" gets pregnant, real internal bewilderment ensues.

Shortly after reading the Thorne Smith book, I read Heinlein's "Beyond Doubt" that terrible short story he wrote with Emma Wentz, and the dialogue in it seems an awful lot like Thorne Smith.

ANANSI BOYS is very good, but the dialog Gaiman is saying is homaged in it is more Monty Python than Thorne Smith.

Robert A. Heinlein's archives has an eight page screen treatment he wrote for a projected film for Abbot and Costello.

I still come across a few people who think Sid Vicious was signifigant, though he's going to be less than a molecule in pop music history as time goes on. This cartoon was drawn for a music zine of the time, though not in color. I still think its funny, even if the subject has gotten obscure. Redrawn from a sketch, as the original is in someone else's hands, or the wastebin of time.

CARTOON GAGS NO ONE WANTED TO USE

BOB DYLAN and other unrelated topics....

The gutter press could get Dylan for an affair, drug addiction or tax evasion, but I doubt they could get him for not taking a bath.

Yours,

Rich D.

Yes, that item is hard to spot in print.

However, Chester Anderson left one loose end. Under a pseudonym, Chester Anderson had published a gay sex diary titled PUPPIES (his), and mentions an affair with one dirty Lazlo Scott, unwashed, often lifting other people's words and tunes into his songs...it was published under the name John Valentine, and put out by Entwhistle Books, which is helmned by Paul Williams, the writer and editor, and not the dwarf singer from PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE.


from Ned Brooks:

I think I still have Chester Anderson's THE BUTTERFLY KID, which I had
heard of in fanzines. But if I ever read it I have forgotten it all.
Looking at it I see it was from Pyramid in 1967 and cost 60 cents. And I
either read some of it or loaned it, as it has my old address stamp on
the inside front cover. I did that if I actually carried a "pocketbook"
about in my pocket, in case a shop-owner should accuse me of stealing
it. But all I ever had of Dylan was the sound, so if he was ugly or
smelled bad I would not have noticed. Back then I liked his songs but
preferred to hear them sung by someone with an actual voice, but later I
came to appreciate his own noise. Mozart would probably not have met
modern standards of personal hygiene either. ∫˜∫˜∫˜∫

THE BUTTERFLY KID was on the Hugo Ballot on the basis of six nominations, which gives it a peculiar and dubious distinction of its being the one novel that got on the ballot with the fewest nominations. Yes, Dylan's voice. He got better as he got older and her must have listened to his own recordings because the texture of the vocals changed with each album. I've often heard that Dylan is one person who should have fronted a group.

I even got around the finishing off VARIABLE STAR by Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson, which is entertaining enough, though it could fall into the catagory of a "fair" Heinlein, which is better than most. Robinson was able to deal with subject and prose without falling into parody.


I also recently read that Emma Wentz collaboration Heinlein did, easily the poorest story he had a hand in doing. If anyone is familiar with it, can you inform me that Heinlein was doing a bad Thorne Smith dialog capture? I think he must have admired Smith's banter, since elements of verbal horseplay show up in his work

During the BALTICON, the weekend past, shortly before nodding off, watched the Sci-Fi- Channel's LAKE PLACID 2 , which deals with some Gators that are large and eat people. As the movie went on its predictable pace, I counted the people who were Gator snacks and those who would live. A tad too obvious.

GOING POSTAL: IN THE POSTAL ZONE: working with people who aren't all there

Someone was going over some politcal items while waiting to clock out and suggested that the Iraq war was a good thing. I raised an eyebrow, and asked him "why".

He said that Bush is supportive of Isreal, and there's a good chance that the Temple could be rebuilt and Armageddon would be ushered in. And that would be a good thing.

A good thing that millions of people will die?

Yes, he said, they don't have anything to worry about if they believe in Jesus. The rapture will take them. They will all be with Christ and God.

I told him that the word "Rapture" doesn't occur in the Old or New Testament.

Really? he said, You'll have to show me where.