persona non sequitur

2012-01-19T06:28:00.000-08:00

How to Cat Bowl: Get a laser pointer. Have a set of toy pins. And one cat. Set up the pins and turn on the laser pointed and get the cat so involved with attacking the light spot he isn't observing what it is doing. Speed light to ten pins. Get score. Repeat.

2011-11-23T11:05:00.000-08:00

A man I once knew name Kurt S. lived in Newark. He was frequently drunk and/or stoned. One day he found a five dollar bill and bought some Budweiser Tall Boys with it. He got to "thinking" and decided to dig up a few extra quarters and some duct tape and went to the laundromat. He found a dryer that had a window and taped the two cans of beer he had left to the inside of the dryer. He used the quarters and sat back and waited.

"They shot their load," he said. But I wasn't prepared for the smell it produced. Like a brewery."

Nice times in the late 70's.

2011-11-05T06:05:00.001-07:00

This Halloween past here was a performance artist in New York City who gave out pictures of apples. One of the apples had a razor blade taped to it.

2011-09-18T07:58:00.001-07:00

update on eyesight:

The doctor said the eyesight will improve over time, but it would never get back to normal. I have noticed some clarity, some improvement, but not enough to distinguish how many fingers are being held up.

One thing noticed while driving. It all seems new. The route I take to work doesn't feel familiar, as if there is a new memory being made, not an old one being used. Is memory binocular? I mean, does it work that way?

2011-09-17T12:51:00.000-07:00

SUE ME, LINDSAY LOHAN

Sue me Lindsay Loham

Sue Me. Sue me.

For saying things already known.

Sue me. Sue me.

You can’t stay sober in a bar.

Its a wonder you got this far.

Sooo famous and rich.

You qualify as an “A” list bitch.

Sue me. Sue me.

Caught on camera stealing stuff

You thought you’d give that a whirl.

You ain’t no mean girl

Your ego is riding big

But you’re just a tabloid fodder pig.

Freaky Friday was your best,

Those laurels are now dead and at rest

‘cause chugging down that wine

Gives you the courage to take that drive

going home DUI.

Have a fender bender

the police will arrive.

Sue me, sue me.

Sue me Lindsay Lohan

Because you ask the officers again and again,

“Don’t you know who I am?”

Sue me Lindsay Lohan.

I can’t let this go,

You’re stoned on your fame

I want you to sue me

So I can have some of the same.

Sue me. Sue me.

Sue me Lindsay Lohan.

Robert Whitaker Sirignano

24 August 2011

2011-09-10T07:17:00.000-07:00

t This is the cover for H. Allen Smith's book. The cover is pretty hard to find. I've encountered a few people who want at least to see it. The gag within was that there existed a house in Hollywood where, when a partier had far too much to drink and passed out, he would be dropped into this room and allowed to recover. Sometimes pigeons dyed in soothing red and blue colors would be released. The cover has not been reprinted, and when a collection of Charles Addams "Family cartoons" was issued, this was the big ommission.

2011-09-10T07:11:00.000-07:00

The phones are still out, thank you Verizon. I note their websites have many opening for sales pitches and the one for complaints has to be searched for.

2011-07-20T14:17:00.001-07:00

Cartoonfootprint.blogspot.com

2011-07-10T06:52:00.000-07:00

...and then, some weeks later, I can understand that my vision in my left eye will remain impaired. Just place a lot of grease on your eyeglass lens and that will approximate my vision.

2011-05-08T09:29:00.000-07:00

I suppose it will be all right. I'm going to be getting an operation on m left eye, because the retina has come loose from the back of the eye. I started having the symptoms of a lot of floaters showing in my field of vision: this had happened before, and it was a matter of waiting for the eye to absorb the material (a small blood clot)...but here, I see no clarity, but shapes and glowing spots and sunlight and shadows.

The operation is on the 2nd of June. I will have to spend three weeks with my face down in order for the operation take...

I guess the original idea of spending three weeks watching DVDs and relaxing are now kind of moot....

2011-04-23T05:41:00.000-07:00

On the subject of 3D: If they offer 3D TV I will not bother to purchase a set. I've enjoyed some 3D movies, though AVATAR gave me a headache.

But in Real Life, hoe many of you wander around and look about and marvel at the 3D your daily life possess? Do you keep asking "how do they do that?" And you don't need special lenses for that.

2011-04-17T06:18:00.000-07:00

THE A.D.D. SONG

I;m in love and have A.D.D.
I think I could love you forever
But I’ve known you for 48 hours
And that much too long for me

We’ll talk it over in another week or too
Trying to find out went wrong with me and you

I could change my directions
Something I do all the time

I thought about calling you today
I thought about it yesterday
But I’ll wait for tomorrow
And this has caused me constant sorrow

As you are the object of my affections
Or at least until this day is through

Perhaps I’ll call you tomorrow
and tell you of all we’ve been through

I’m in love and have A.D.D.
I think I could love you forever
But it’s only been 48 hours
and that’s far too long for me

I should change my directions
And refill my prescriptions
And take a double dose to see
where I have my inclinations

Maybe when I’m dosed and focused
My true feelings will be revealed
its not a very big problem,
If you know how I feel.

I’m in love and have A.D.D.
I think I’ll call you tomorrow
and then we can see
If you’re the same person I talked to,
Or maybe it’s just me

I’m in love
And I have A.D.D.

2011-02-01T09:17:00.000-08:00

SOME NOTES TO BOOK REVIEWERS...over the years I've been encountering (and I myself am guilty of this) books reviews that state something like the following: "this would make a good movie". This phrase has started cropping up more often in reviews. Let the review stick to the subject: it is a book. It is not a movie, it may never been a movie. Or a video game. Or a board game. It will not make a good view master disk. It is not to be consider an idea used in a role playing card game. It is not being reviewed because Disney wants to market plastic figures based on the characters. It is being read and evaluated on its merits, not projections for a franchise.

Deal with the item at hand.

2010-12-26T05:56:00.000-08:00

TOP TEN THINGS YOU DO NOT MICROWAVE

10) Do not microwave anything with metal in it. This includes light bulbs. Curiosity be damned. You don't need to clean up after it.

9) Do not microwave non food items. It might be interesting to watch a plastic tube off toothpaste undulate and squeeze and puff up, but you will have to clean up afterward.

8) Things with shells. This would include clams, oysters and other shelled mollusks. They explode because there are small bits of air enclosed in their shells. Crabs seem to be unaffected, as are lobsters.

7) Do not not microwave eggs. They explode. And as for whole eggs outside of the shell, the yolk explodes, too.

6) Do not microwave blue cheese. It melts it, and turns the cheese into a pile of blue goo without any texture. It also releases all of the moldy blue cheese odor. All at once. And the cloud of odor will drive you out of the house. I will not try to microwave Limburger cheese for any reason, unless it is to win a bet. A large one.

7) Just because you can microwave popcorn doesn't mean you can heat up whole corn: it explodes. That's how they developed microwave popcorn. Ears of corn, still wrapped with the husk can be microwaved, but not the canned single kernels. (and not with the can either.)

6) Certain other foods, like canned tuna fish, also tend to pop and blow up all over the interior of the microwave.

5) My wife lists fava beans and whole shelled fresh chestnuts as "good for splattering". You have to put holes in them first.

4) Do not attempt to dry your clothing in the microwave. Certain fabrics will only melt.

3)Mustard. Clears your sinuses unintentionally.

2) Plastic sponges. It might be nice to dry them quickly, but this won't help.

1) I know some people love hot peppers. But please do not ever microwave a habanero pepper, and never ever microwave a Naga Jolokia (they're 4 times hotter than the former). What you will get is the second hand experience of being hit by pepper spray. My son cooks burgers with the Naga Jolokia in a frying pan and it can leave you breathless.

I did have an online discussion with a woman who insisted she could microwave eggs, but I discovered she lived at a slightly higher elevation than Delaware's flatland sea level. Water boils at a lower temperature at higher elevations, and the eggs would cook at different rate. I suppose someone else could added to this discussion.

Anyone else have discoveries?

16 November 2010

2010-12-09T05:39:00.000-08:00

JOKES NO ONE TELLS

What's the difference between a TSA agent and a sexual pervert?

The pervert will pat people down for nothing.

2010-12-04T05:30:00.000-08:00

2010-12-04T05:05:00.000-08:00

HYPER

When I was younger, from age four to about six I used to bump and ding myself frequently.It was not due to taking dares or risks. I just did, and my mother was always wondering if I recalled getting hurt; I would notice these things later. For me, this was the “Age of Scabs.” I felt down and got back and and continued to play.

And when I was dating my wife to be and she would arrive at her apartment, she would have a bruise on her side which stemmed from her job as a bike messenger, and only because someone opened up the taxicab door and she could not stop and flew over it. Still, the bruises like this and other weren't noticed until much later. Knocked down, she got back up. She did have quite a few incidents where she hit something and bounced off car hoods.

Years later...

Comes my own son, whimpering to his Mother that he couldn’t sleep because his arm hurt. It was four in the morning. He was five, almost six. Poked in the place he complained about--his wrist--he would just say “OW!” Loudly. His left arm.

Taken to a Doctor. She poked, handled his hand and said, “It’s probably not broken.” Doctors are authority, aren’t they?, thought Giani. “I question authority.”

“Leo,” said Giani, “do you want your arm x-rayed?” “Yes,” he said.

Diagnoses: Wrist broken in two places. Cast put on, with the usual annoying things that casts do: itching, skin warp, weird statements written on cast....

Some months later. I wake up, at some ungodly morning hour and place the kid on the bus. It is an ungodly morning hour because I get to sleep by 3 AM, working the night shift at the post office. By agreement, I end the kid to school. And Giani gets to sleep.

A phone call later that morning. I wake Giani up. “Guess what Leo did. The school nurse think he’s broken his arm. The other one.”

Giani glared at me, scowling “It’s your turn!” And went back to sleep. Leo had fallen off a set of monkey bars, which were military grade and donated by the local Air Force Base in Dover.
New cast. New skin warps. New silly words written on the cast.

A few weeks later...

Leo developed a fever, reaching 105 degrees. His lymph nodes under his arm were swollen. We asked him if he got bitten by the cat,* no, but he did get bitten by a goat.

At hospital Leo is shivering under a blanket in the Emergency room. The attendants try to get blood out of his arms. Normally they would have let it go, but the idea of a goat bite was a novelty to them and the concern was to find if the infection was previously unknown.

Giani held him firmly.

And the needle poked the skin and vein in and Leo was so tense that only a few drops were taken. “We’re going to need to use the other arm. Hearing that, Leo chomped down on Giani’s wrist.

It hurt, she said. “I began to cry, because...” And the attendants had to pry his mouth open forcing their fingers onto both sides his cheeks.

“Leo, if you don’t co operate, I’m going to have to leave.” Leo indicated he would not co operate. Giani left. She sits in the waiting room weeping, She began , hearing shouts of “You’re hurting me. Stay away! Leave me alone.” She feels really out of place. People are looking at her. A few moments later, two orderlies are appearing through the doors and say “We can’t get any blood out of him. And he keeps hitting us with his cast.”

Let’s see, thought my wife, he weighs forty pounds, he’s got a broken arm, he has a temperature of 105 degrees and he fought off two hospital orderlies...no, he’s not going to get kidnapped...

A prescription for antibiotics is given. He did get bitten by a cat, and a goat.

Giani phone calls my Mom. My mother recalls my brother Jack breaking both his arms, four bones with the two wrists. He fell out of a tree. He comes home and decides to go to the Phillies game in Philadelphia that evening. . His friends will drive and he will come back and deal with the broken bones, commenting “All I ask is that nobody touch me.” I don’t recall what game it was, or if his favorite team won. He waited it out and visited the doctor in the morning.

Giani called the genetics counselor and asked what was up. The answer was a condition called “Hyper-myelinazation of the large nerves.” It isn’t that we don’t feel pain, we can ignore it. It’s a dominate trait. It explains why when I was in three totaled car accidents (including a roll over), I was able to get out of the car and walk away and wait for the ambulance.

So when I watch a movie where someone is beaten and they get up and get up again and again until they defeat the foe, I know I understand why.

...Myelinated

* another story entirely...

2010-11-07T04:19:00.000-08:00

STAND UP NO ONE USES;

A husband and wife are arguing. She wants children. He does not. He yells at her: "What do you need a baby for? You've got me."

2010-07-04T09:08:00.000-07:00

WHY THERE ARE NO REDNECKS IN THE VARIOUS STAR TREK UNIVERSES

a) They won't want to work in the future, either.

b) No place to spit chaw.

c)Can't put the Enterprise up on cement blocks in front of the house.

d) No front porch for the dawgs.

e) No way to throw beer cans out the window.

f) Can't get any road kill for lunch.

g) Can't shoot funny looking aliens or pointy eared people.

h)Unable to use duct tape to repair the Enterprise.

i) No first cousins to marry.

j) Can't call in sick. The Doctor KNOWS.

2010-04-10T10:44:00.000-07:00

JOKES NO ONE TELLS

When you were a kid, and you were offered Flintstones vitamins, did you ever wonder if they were trying to introduce cannibalism to you? Or were trying to see what you were? If you eat a Flintstones Vitamin, what does it say about you? Are you gay if you eat Fred or Barney? Or would you just eat Wilma to prove you're straight?

2010-04-10T06:50:00.000-07:00

NEAR MISSES

C.S.Lewis: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE FRIENDLY REFRIGERATOR

J.R.R. Tolkien: FRIENDSHIP OF THE RING

Robert A. Heinlein: THE GUY FROM MARS

Harlan Ellison: I AM A LOUDMOUTH WHO CAN'T TALK

THE CRAP OF THE TITANS

STAR WARTS

2010-04-09T05:57:00.000-07:00

Found an old cartoon. It is dated.

2010-04-04T14:32:00.000-07:00

AMEBAS

2010-03-31T14:34:00.000-07:00

WHY STEPHEN KING'S CUJO BITES THE BIG ONE

Firstly the book was an interesting read. It was only settling back into one's mind did some of the overlooked logic gaps become apparent.

Cujo was a rabid Saint Bernard. He terrorized a woman and her asthmatic child who were trapped inside of a Ford Pinto. All the character could do was whine and scream. She even locked the doors in an effort to keep the dog out.

I have encountered three rabid raccoons while I've lived out here in the boonies. When an animal has rabies, it dehydrates. It gets weak. It lashes out at changes of light and shadow. It loses it balance easily. Often the hind legs stop functioning. It is attracted to noise.

Why didn't the woman trapped in the car do one of the following actions:

A) Roll down the window, and when the dog stuck its head in, roll it up and choke it. Car windows are hard to break.

B) Roll down the window and use the cigarette lighter to blind it?

C) Roll down the window after getting the tire iron out of the back and bashing and gouging out the eyes and blinding the dog with it. Some Pintos were hatchbacks and could be accessed from inside the back seat to the boot of the car and obtain materials. (Depends on the model...)

D) Strap Stephen King into a Pinto and let him sweat it out in 90 degree weather.

My wife and I watched the movie. She knew what a Pinto was and how they were made and thought out loud: "No, no, no, no!!!"

In the movie the kid lives. In the book the kid dies.

Either way, too much suffering for so little thinking.

2010-03-27T06:53:00.000-07:00

DELAWARE ROADSIDE KITSCH

Found on Route 13 Southbound close to Boyd's Corner.

I assume from now on, there is an ethnicity to be found in seafood.

Druid Crabs are obviously blue.

2010-03-14T07:49:00.000-07:00

I had a virius induced fever that had me lying low, tucked into bed, covered with five blankets and I still felt cold even after I put on thermals, shirt pants and sweater. The images of fever flew into my mind's eye and kept on, one after another. Plants, animals, situations, concepts, math, books, pictures flowed on and on. There was a break and I lifted a book off the bedstand and opened it and tried to find a short story. Real short, because my attention span was limited.

What I read i didn't exactly believe. An actress was worried about losing too much weight. She looked normal enough, but the scales dropped each passing day. In order to stay alive, she needed publicity.

I dropped the book. I felt a little stunned. And went back to sleep.

When I woke up, I picked up the book and tried to locate the short story, just to be sure I wasn't fever deluding myself...

The story can be found in THE BLACK GONDOLIER by Fritz Lieber. It's called "The Casket-Demon". I wonder what Fritz Lieber would think of today's headline grabbers: people with no abilities, talent or skills. Famous for being famous.

It's an errie little story. Not as well known as his "Girl With the Hungry Eyes"... I didn't locate a date for the story.

2010-03-14T07:41:00.000-07:00

AMOEBAS

concept and caption: Darrell Schweitzer

artwork: Robert Whitaker Sirignano

2010-02-25T06:30:00.000-08:00

Settling into the computer room, the heat on a little, with stuffed sinuses and an annoyed feeling. The weather report said snow, but what I see outside the window is like what I see what I brush my hair. Some white stuff, but not exactly a whole lot.

I made a joke a while back about Ewe Boll directing CANDYLAND. Seems other people have also had this idea, and other "films" under consideration based on games are : CHUTES AND LADDERS, MONOPOLY, BATTLESHIP...

...Sigh. Mentally bankrupt Hollywood.

The new technology does allow for some surprises. But when I was watching a trailer for CHRISTMAS CAROL, there was a sequence of Jim Carrey swinging, flying on a bell. I realised this was only added to make a reference point for a video game.

Making art, but wanting specifics for a video game added to the movie. No wonder really good movies are a scarce item in the theater.

I'm slowly poking about the clear the kipple that has grown, and try to get some sort of visual clarity here. As in: I know that is!, something that isn't easy right now. I don't think it would make a good video game. I think finding the CD between two books is not a good idea.

2010-02-02T14:36:00.000-08:00

CALLING GROVER GROUNDHOG

I have seen a few posts elsewhere about PETA. Those "we care so much about animals, and if you harm one, we'll kill you." Those kind folks.

I found recent media discussions about PETA amusing. After a stuffed moose head bonked a woman on the head after falling off a wall in a bar, Peta offered to replace it with an unrealistic looking paper replica.

PETA also complained when President Obama swatted a fly.

So, if you're a real die hard asshole of a PETA organization, and a mosquito drops on your arm, you must be kind enough to this parasite to fill itself until it flies off? Having had West Nile Virus, I'm for smashing them painfully into my arm. Several times.

Currently they want to replace weather forecasting groundhogs with animatronic replicants so the ground hogs won't bite any more people or be tortured. Last known people to be bitten: Bill Murry, for GROUND HOG DAY and Mayor Bloomberg of New York.

I think that these groundhogs get better treatment than kids in Haiti.

I wonder if people in Peta would make good lampshades?

*I can hear the crickets chirping!!!!*

2010-01-30T11:11:00.000-08:00

JUST IMAGINE (1930) nominated for Academy Award for best art direction. I saw JUST IMAGINE several months ago. It's an old Science fiction film from 1930. Somewhere it has been described as a satire of Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS. That's being kind, and attempting to give JUST IMAGINE too much credit. JUST IMAGE is a cookie cutter variation of the film RIO RITA, which came out a few years previously, and was a successful early musical. Down to the two comic stars of RIO RITA, there's an attempt to replicate the team of Wheeler and Woolsey. There are two singing doofuses in JUST IMAGINE. JUST IMAGINE is a musical. That description is also too kind. The art direction is all art deco and certainly adds to an 'otherness' to the film if only the people and plot would just stay out of the way. But is is a movie...and movies are supposed to have people in them, and this isn't Andy Warhol. This was once a lost film. Forry Ackerman said it was one of the top ten lost films of science fiction. A print of it was found, semi-restored and it has played a few Science Fiction conventions. It doesn't get a big round of applause. It's kind of dull. In the future (the the film's frame of reference, it's 1980), people have numbers for names. And some number(LN-18) wants to marry another number, but someone else's number is up, the the cute numbered couple can't get married unless J-21 does something spectacular in order to convince the genetics board judge to okay the union, otherwise it goes to someone with the evil name of Z-4. (I'm assuming it's Z-4. The only other evil name is MT-3, or is it B-36?) Watching this at a convention is a disadvantage to having a DVD and a remote: you can fast forward over the musical numbers. I heard them and they lack the ability to be remembered. They're sung and played well, but that's not always what's needed. Swedish comic El Brendel plays Single- 0. He's initially from 1930. He was hit by lightening and revived. He comes back to life and completes his golf swing. He was on a golf course when he "died". He and Maureen O'Sullivan are the only people in the group who display realistic talent. El Brendel is the only one who can deliver a joke properly. Let me elaborate: El Brendel is hungry. His friends take him to an automat, press a couple of buttons and a pill drops out. He swallows it, notices he is full and says "I prefer the old fashioned way." Then he gets an alcoholic drink from a bottle. It is another pill. He swallows, gasps for air and says "I prefer the old fashioned way." He spies a couple putting information into a machine, and a baby in a bassinet pops out. He says "I prefer the old fashioned way." There aren't any other good jokes in this movie. It's supposed to be funny. Or make you smile. In order to "do something" to impress the judge a man comes out of nowhere, and offers J-21 the job of flying a spaceship to Mars. I looked at my watch a lot. I skipped chapters. They go to Mars. They come back. They get married. It isn't any good. The dog is playing Frisbee with the DVD. Trivia notes: the spaceship used to go to Mars was saved from this clunker and used in a few Flash Gordon serials, as are the elaborate dance numbers the Martian natives put on for whatever reasons you can come up with. JUST IMAGINE. It could have stayed lost.

2010-01-24T06:53:00.000-08:00

PLANTZILLA

Of course, everyone needs a children's book with the leader of North Korea featured as the main character.

I could easily have submitted another cover called HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT A PENIS. But PLANTZILLA is a whole lot goofier.

2010-01-23T05:30:00.000-08:00

...and today's sermon will be about unintended irony.

Giani says the line is not new, having seen it as a bumper sticker on a Gothmobile a few years back.

It recalls two other lines of density:

(bumper sticker) 9 MM is faster than 911.

(T-shirt of atomic explosion) Made in America, tested in Japan.

That last one I saw as a shirt in a Police Catalog. Among all the other shirts about "I'M a Proud PIG", there was that line...

I'm not sure if I ever could have the nerve to wear something like that. Or the one with the a tom bomb explosion.

2010-01-23T05:24:00.000-08:00

BAMBI ON ICE.

Or reasons not to open our freezer. We have the head because someone asked for the brain so they could use it to help tan leather. We're still waiting a year later. Meantime, we've obtained another head and jammed it in there.

2010-01-22T04:44:00.000-08:00

TYPOS IN THE GUNSLINGER by Stephen King

Or someone ought to proof read these books

"The gunslinger approached the bar. 'You got hamburger?' he asked.

'Sure.' She looked him in the eye, and she might have been pretty when she started out, but now her face was lumpy and there was a livid scar corkscrewed across her forehead. She had powdered it heavily, but it called attention rather than camouflaging. 'It's dear though.' "

(page 27)

He knew why the rhyme had occurred to him. There had been the recurring dream of his room in the castle and of his father, who had sung it to him as he lay solemnly in the tiny bed by the window of many colors. She did not sing it at bedtime....

(page 71). Someone just changed sex.

I was trying to find out why King keeps writing these stories. Gave myself a shot. But I would only buy thrift store editions. After finishing the third novella herein, I'll put my project on hold.

The quotes are from the paperback edition, which makes it something like the third or forth edition.

2010-01-17T11:28:00.000-08:00

Things we've learned: do not microwave...

Do not microwave eggs. They explode.

Do not microwave blue cheese. It merely melts it, and releases all of the moldy blue cheese odor: all at once.

It would be nice if you could microwave oysters and clams in the shell, but they tend to explode as well.

Same thing with corn: it explodes. That's why they developed microwave popcorn.

Certain other foods, like canned tune fish, also tend to pop and shoot all over the interior of the microwave.

Other examples would be nice....

2010-01-17T11:14:00.000-08:00

RAY BRADBURY VERSUS THE INTERNET

RAY BRADBURY: over the years has been writing about computers and why they are not creative and why they restrict creativity...

He wrote, in his little collection of essays, BRADBURY SPEAKS: "To test my notion, plant me in a room with two hundred chaps, at two hundred computers, give me a number two Red Ticonderoga Pencil and ten cent Red Mowhawk pad and I will out think and out create the whole Goddamn bunch."

Of course, this is a lot of Hoo! Hah! So Ray Bradbury with his pencil and paper is going to sit back and knock off a work of art that will rival SHREK? I'll venture that a man who cannot drive a car, refuses to drive one, is not competent to discuss technology. If he doesn't know how to turn on a computer, he should not criticize what he fails to share and experience.

Of course, a Bradbury fan will applaud this weird statement without thinking. It would sound good on a stage, delivered to a crowd (which it was), get a thunderous round of applause, move the crowd and make everyone nod in approval, but this kind of rabble rousing doesn't carry far, and doesn't reach out on cold print. It just sounds absurd. A computer helped create the book that was published that has this message in it. And when you see it in print, it sounds real dumb.

There are times when being a Luddite isn't worth it. Perhaps in days gone by, the poets complained that when epics were written down, they lost the life they contained. But they were not forgotten. The Maori of New Zealand were disappointed that the young wrote down the names of the elders, instead of committing them to memory. They were not lost or forgotten.

Time will go on, the passions for art will change and how it is created.

And the luddites who cling to old ways of creating may be really losing the thrust that their writings could give because they cannot change.

2009-12-21T06:48:00.000-08:00

THUNDERPANTS with Rupert Grint

Every now and then, I see something and I cannot believe how luridly stupid it is. What are people to make of this? Is it Harry Pooter? No, I didn't watch the movie. I'm going to keep it that way. Just thought I'd "share".

2009-12-20T09:32:00.000-08:00

AND THEN, the snow fell....since late Friday night and into Sunday morning. This is the driveway. The Montero is stuck in the driveway. The other cars were moved closer to the road. We have not cleared the front of the car because we know the snow plow will go by and rebury us.

I was asked by an on line friend--"have you heard of a snow blower", to which I typed --"I'm not getting on my hands and knees for this."

2009-12-20T09:28:00.000-08:00

IN THE POSTAL ZONE: GOING POSTAL

The ex Postal employee Identity for this one is being kept secret.

A Postal truck driver told me that for six months he transported a 53 foot truck to Philadelphia from New York. He picked up a truck from New York and took it back to Philadelphia.

He'd get to the destination, and no one seemed interested in the truck.. He had the order to pick up the truck and take it away, and orders to pick up another. Sometimes they were the same containers. He was puzzled by this.

One day he stopped the truck on the road, and opened it. It was empty.

He checked every day for a couple of months. He was bringing an empty truck to New York, and taking an empty truck back to Philadelphia.

He put in a transfer of duties to another area, so he would not be a "suspect" in any of this..

ºººººº¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬

2009-12-20T09:23:00.000-08:00

GODZILLA VERSUS RAY BRADBURY

Mentioning Ray Bradbury in one of the previous entries reminded me of something. In one week, I read several items on him, and they all seemed to be about BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS. In Harry Knowles book AIN'T IT COOL, he recalls Bradbury being peeved at Toho Studios for "ripping off my movie" to make Godzilla. In the fannish memoir titled GODZILLA ON MY MIND (written by William Tsutsui), this is acknowledged. But Bradbury seems to have forgotten a few items or ignored a few facts: the BEAST was in production, already scripted when the rights to the story "The Foghorn" were acquired. This information is found in KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES volume 1, written by Bill Warren. So it seems rather silly for Bradbury to make an issue of it. But his vanity wouldn't let it go.

Both films have an a-bomb blast for an opening. in BEAST, they use the Arctic for a n A-Bomb test. Though no one with an ounce of brain would fire off an a-bomb in the arctic, even for testing. Why would you want all that ice to melt all at once? Someone without an ounce of brain wrote this screenplay. In BEAST One guy falls into a hole, lands on his back and breaks a leg (well, explain that one).

But It's hardly a rip off. Rhedosaurus has four legs. Godzilla walks upright. Dino critter is full of germs and Godzilla has atomic bad breath. GODZILLA spawned over two dozen sequels, a cottage industries of toys, games, actions figures and the now well known "bad dubbing" effect.

GODZILLA seems to be more of a horror film, while BEAST is action adventure with a giant creature.

BEAST : no sequels. Not even a small plastic figure marketed in toy stores. There is a magaine called G FAN about Godzilla and Toho studios.

Big PS: there was a Superman cartoon from the mid 1940's about a frozen dinosaur that was brought back from the Arctic and it thawed out and went on a rampage in Metropolis (aka New York). Ray Bradbury is a big fan of movies. Hmm. Hmm.

Mostly likely: Bradbury is friends with Ray Harryhausen. He added his name to the film in pre production so his name and "Saturday Evening Post" would be in the movie trailer. The trailer erroneously lists it as a "thriller".

?®©©©©©©©©©©©©©©©

ºººººº¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬

2009-12-19T07:32:00.000-08:00

DEATH BY GANGSTAS BAGGY PANTS

NEW YORK (Dec. 18) -- A career criminal massacred three members of a family in their apartment but fell to his death when he tripped over his own baggy pants.

The massacre occurred Thursday afternoon near a string of upscale shops on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Police said the attack apparently stemmed from botched drug ripoff.

"There is a significant amount of heroin found in the apartment," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told the Daily News.
ALT
David Karp, AP
Workers from the medical examiner's office carry the body of a murder suspect who fell to his death from an apartment building fire escape.

Police said Hector Quinones, 44, shot and killed Carlos Rodriguez Sr., 52, and his 24-year-old son, Carlos Rodriguez Jr., then stabbed to death the younger Rodriguez's grandfather, Fernando Gonzalez, 87, according to reports in the Daily News and the New York Post.

The elder Rodriguez's wife, Gisela Rodriguez, 49, and her daughter, Leyanis, 28, walked in on the carnage. Quinones heard keys in the lock and opened the door for the women, police said.

He shot the mother, who was grazed on the head by a bullet but managed to run from the apartment. The killer wThe killer was just about the grab the daughter when his low-slung pants fell down and he tripped, the Post said. That gave the young woman the chance to run into a back room, where she found the bodies of her brother and father.

Quinones yanked up his pants and scrambled after Leyanis Rodriguez, who climbed onto a fire escape, screaming for help to construction workers on the roof of a nearby building, the Post said. The attacker followed her onto the fire escape, but once again his drooping pants fell and he tripped, plunging three stories to his death.

Estella Carrino, who manages a street-level bicycle store in the building, said she heard the body hit the ground.

"He had no jacket on and his pants were down. He was very dead," she told the Daily News.

The world needs to be notified of the hazards of wearing droopy drawers. Plus it makes you look like you're in the special Olympics. Or wearing Depends.

2009-11-15T08:03:00.000-08:00

SCAMPY (Things We've learned)

We have this dog, and he is interested in cats. He'll chase them, and when he catches them, he tries to hump them. They swat him in the face.

The three out door cats have taken to sitting on the steps out in the garage where the kitchen door opens out. They wait on the steps. This frustrates the dog who scratches at the door endlessly. He has taken the paint off.

Giani decided if he was going to do that, it might be useful if his persistence was doing something else. She found some extra tough sandpaper and glued it to the door, so when the dog is trying to get at the cats, he trims his nails.

2009-11-15T07:38:00.000-08:00

60 YEARS LATER Coming Through the Rye by John David California WindupBird Publishing, England. 2009

I did finally get around to reading this, which is a decent book, but when one does a parody of a book, it should be shorter, not longer than the original.

Anyway, Holden Caulfield wakes up in an old folks home and still thinks he's sixteen. He decides to go back to New York City. This does sound a little absurd, but the author is trying to make a point about the writer's character having outstripped the author.

The style is fairly good at replicating the nuances of the model, and quite well, considering the writer's has English as a second language. What points the writer makes are over stressed.

Again, this kind of book didn't need to be CATCHER IN THE RYE. Several other writers could have been used where the creations overshadowed the creator. Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert E. Howard, L. Frank Baum, and any number of others.

And in a sense, this has been done in a different manner with Flann O'Brien's AT SWIM TWO BIRDS, which is a writer who is writing about a group of characters (including Finn McCool and the Easter Bunny) who get annoyed with him and begin controlling him by writing about him. The writer stays in bed a lot.

The real author of this book did himself a disservice by writing under a pen name and reviewing his work on Amazon.com.Uk and giving it a five star review. The circularity of the review and novel did not go unnoticed.

Of course, J.D. Salinger is pissed and the novel is banned in the USA.

Someone could do a fat collection of the shorter parodies of Salinger that have appeared over the years.

2009-10-27T11:51:00.000-07:00

DELAWARE ROADSIDE KITSCH: ANALTEC...is it really better than Anal Retentive? Just asking...

located on Route 72, Newark Delaware. Northbound.

Amusing people in Delaware for years. I dunno what they do there. I'm not interested, Apparently someone has hit the sign.

2009-10-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

As some of you know, Marge Simpson is the cover girl on this month's PLAYBOY. And a spread. And an interview. I don't want to read it.

I mean here are the journalists who work for years refining their craft and get called on to write an interview for what is, essentially, an imaginary character. Journalists write fiction? Isn't that a kind of lie?

On the other hand, I've stumbled across a few web sites where the question being asked is: who would you rather sleep with Wilma Flintstone or Betty Rubble?

Of course a few oddballs would like to sleep with Barney...

And when I wrote back and suggested they find something real to have a discussion with,
I found them taking the whole issue really seriously, and they were very offended.

Anyway, the net allows you to be different.

2009-10-11T07:26:00.000-07:00

TOE NAIL NOTES

The announcement that the NRA and NABMLA would join forces. Was this inevitable? How will it further the goals of either organization?

Stephen King's "Destroy all the trees" campaign came to light again, as his next novel will contain 1000 plus pages. He will be joined by Sarah Palin who "memoriories" will escape the rejected manuscript pile sometime in November.

King's new novel is called UNDER THE DOME, which will attempt to take a half hour TWILIGHT ZONE style idea and bulk it up. Rod Serling on steroids.

I suggest that, IF YOU MUST, read these things, wait a few weeks and they'll show up in remainder bins and Goodwill at vastly reduced prices.

By the way, the reason Stephen King's son Joe adopted a pen name was not so much he didn't want to be identified with Daddy, but because he felt he wouldn't do well being known as "Joe King". TAKE HIM SERIOUSLY, folks.

They have found Obama's birth certificate. It is in George's Bush's library, next to that big pile of WEAPONS OF MASS DESTURCTION, and the pile of Bush's coloring books he wasn't able to finish. And that pile of drunken driving citations his Daddy got him out of.

2009-10-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

FILMS THAT WOULD BE IMPROVED BY THE ADDITION OF A FLESH EATING ZOMBIE:

G FORCE
ECKS VERSUS SEVER
THE WIZ
PAINT YOUR WAGON
THE ROOM
BATTLEFIELD EARTH
SNAKES ON A PLANE
G.I.JOE
any Eddie Murphy film from the past decade
And Whoopie Goldberg film from the last decade.
LEGALLY BLONDE 2

By the way, when I was watching the second TRANSFORMER movie, there was a scene where a giant robot is tearing apart one of the pyramids. A camera shot strays over to the Sphinx, and on the Sphinx is a pigeon. They didn't blip out the creature. And it was also just the wrong size. If it was in perspective, it would be about 10 feet high....

I got a good laugh out of this, just like I did in ANDACONDA, where the waterfall is going uphill....

2009-10-04T10:53:00.001-07:00

Jokes no one wants to hear.....

How do you castrate a redneck?

Kick his sister in the jaw.

2009-10-04T10:27:00.000-07:00

Just in case you forgot what we look like....

2009-10-04T06:53:00.000-07:00

Ah welll....

VP usta wanna be Sarah Palin had wroted a book. It currently is on Amazon.com's list of #1 best sellers, even though it has not yet been allowed to escape.

Then former President George W. Bush will wrote up his book and it too will escape. I wonder if Bush will clarify his language so it resembles English?

Bush isn't doing a full treatment of his life, but will concentrate on his "Decider" "image". So we won't be reading about how many DUI's there really were, or where he was when he was AWOL. Or if he really snorted cocaine, or was known as the worst cheerleader in Yale.

2009-10-03T07:10:00.000-07:00

LAWSUIT POTENTIAL

I recently watched the movie TROLL, while it is not the best of efforts, it's kind of fun.

But most importantly, it has a character in it named HARRY POTTER. If this wasn't bad enough, there's also a HARRY POTTER junior!!!!!

Who can I sue?

2009-09-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

QUANTUM PHYSICS OBSERVER EFFECT DEMONSTRATED

Show the film PLAN NINE FROM OUT SPACE to people. Afterwards, the discussion of what is was/is can be gotten from the observers of the film, who will not be in total agreement about what was just seen.

Some will consider it trash.

Others might be amused by it.

Some will cringe from it.

Someone who likes it was probably stoned, drunk or 5 years old.

Each person will consider their viewpoint the correct one. The observer carried within his/her self their own dictates, experiences, concerns and expectations. Thusly, they will not be having the same kind of viewing experience that others in the room will have.

In this fashion, demonstrations of how art can teach us how science works.

Class dismissed.

2009-09-20T15:02:00.001-07:00

THINGS WE'VE LEARNED

If you have dogs, never ever feed them asparagus.

What happens to humans, happens to dogs, only worse.

We have also learned, in regards to the dogs, that we should always put the chairs up against the table. I came out one morning before work and found Elvera lying on the table. Asked her to leave and she just looked at me. Like I was some kind of bug. I had to bribe her with a biscuit to get her down.

2009-09-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

JOKES NO ONE TELLS

If you live in a rural area, and you are dribving at night, why should you slow down and let people pass you?

So they get to hit the deer first.

2009-09-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

AGAIN...

It is after worldcon, and as per usual, I haven't put much of the material I obtained away. Most of the zines are stuck in plastic bags, and the few books I bought are sitting in a pile near the computer. However, I did unpack the bag with the clothes much sooner than expected (usually it takes a couple of months) because I kept tripping over the bag.

Anyway, one of the free things I walked away with was an issue of WEIRD TALES. April 2008. It offends some of my sensibilities, since it has "The 85 Weirdest Storytellers", and it lists people like Andy Warhol...John Waters...Andy Kaufman...Kurt Vonnegut...William S. Burroughs...

Andy Warhol was a con artist of the supreme type. He wasn't a story teller.He created issues where people created stories about him, such as pointing a film camera at the Empire State Building for eight hours and releasing it, unedited to a theater and drawing attention to himself. Ditto the film called "Sleep". This is not high drama, art or substance. Kitsch.

John Waters doesn't belong here. He crafted movie stories around disgust.

Andy Kaufman was a performance artist.

Vonnegut rates so low as a science fiction writer that when he died, no one wrote tributes to him in LOCUS Magazine. The editor did that, and he was the only one.

William S. Burroughs is well known for writing books no one was ever able to finish. Of the members of the Beat Generation, he was the only one who remained ambulatory the longest.

Seems to be a lot of lame art in the magazine, and a circle of people who know one another and publish one another and scratch each others backs.

2009-09-13T06:50:00.000-07:00

SOME COPS ARE STUPID

2009-08-31T14:17:00.000-07:00

BUCKWHEAT FLORIDA Jr checks in...

Hey, Saw your June 5,2009 entry on "persona non sequitor" blog. How are you aware
of Buckwheat Florida Jr? I'm living in Chiangmai, Thailand for many years, and presently\ spending a lot of time painting in between travels.. You can check out my website:
www.buckwheatjunior.com

if you like.. regards, Buckwheat

From your "ancient" underground comic SUDS, and those weird panels you supplied one of the underground tabloids. One or the few references to your work is "enigmatic". Other than that term, it seems your become obscure at the time and after the time. I decided if anyone was interested in your work, it would be fun to type in obscure references and see what comes up. (I did this with the "pet rock" guy, though I didn't think he would respond....)

The website looks like fun.

There's another blog or two with references to you, mentioned in the same type with John Thompson, who did that underground "Cyclops", written in Greek. Who knows what will come up.

Glad you're about. After 40 years or so, glad anyone is well and moving.

Take care....

2009-08-30T10:30:00.000-07:00

DELAWARE ROADSIDE KITSCH.

Found at "downtown" Odessa and Route 13.

What they make with Lorenzo's Oil

2009-08-30T10:23:00.000-07:00

Incoming Mail:
INCOMING MAIL: Harlan Ellison writes:

To all my loyal loving readers,

I know I have been delayed in forthcoming with my LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS book. Yes, I know all the stories are more than thirty years old. Yes, I know some of the authors have died since then. Yes, I know that there isn't any real excuse for what's happened.

I know I am going to need to make it up to everyone. So I am commissioning a t-shirt that reads " I SOLD A STORY TO LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T SHIRT" .

Are you happy now?

sincerely,

Harlan Ellison
one excuse after another

2009-08-30T09:53:00.000-07:00

IN THE POSTAL ZONE: GOING POSTAL

This piece of intellectual cheese was found on the Postal Intranet.:::

While is a great day for confusion among the customers about what the postage
rate is and what a "forever stamp" value is... this one made as all amused...

An elderly customer came into the lobby and when the clerk asked if she may
help her , the customer presented the used up backing portion of a Forever
sheet without any stamps on it, and asked for a replacement, the clerk told the
customer , "that will be $8.80 ", the customer was incredulous. She stated that
she "bought a forever book and we should give her stamps forever". You just
had to smile as the clerk explained that the "forever stamps" were good
"forever" no matter what the first class postage was, not once you brought a
book we replaced them for free. The customer was unsatisfied with this response
and left complaining that "forever" doesn't last as long as it used to.

I didn't believe it for a second. This note was sent out the day rates rose. It is simply a "blond" joke. Or a "senile" joke. It has a beginning middle and end.

It is a pity that post office wallows in this kind of BS.

2009-08-30T06:17:00.000-07:00

Memo:

Don't download kitty porn.

2009-08-23T12:33:00.000-07:00

Well, my wife asked me to stop buying books for a while. I guess I'll start reading them. Work on a reading program. Try to find the ones I want to read that are hidden behind the crates I put on top of the other crates so they wouldn't fall over. Admit to biblioholism. Actually finish something.

I almost wrote, "throw some away." Can't do that. Cardinal rule.

I have planned on reading the Robert Jordon WHEEL OF TIME sequence, but I limit myself to only copies I find in thrift stores. And maybe Stephen King's DARK TOWER sequence. You can always wait for them to be remaindered. And they can keep a fire going for a long long time.

Find the book HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE A PENIS and post the cover. I only bought it because it was a dumb title. Lots of dumb titles about. SCOUTS IN BONDAGE. THE MAN WHO RODE HIS TEN SPEED BICYCLE TO THE MOON. THE WEREWOLF VERSUS THE VAMPIRE WOMAN. Etc.

2009-08-09T14:37:00.000-07:00

JOKES NO ONE TELLS

Why does Goofy have a hole in his pocket?

So he can count to nine.

Why does Yul Brynner have a hole is his pocket?

So he can run his fingers through his hair.

2009-08-09T14:31:00.000-07:00

Getting your dog's head in a jar.

Put bacon grease on the bottom of it.

PS: the dog is okay.

2009-08-09T08:53:00.000-07:00

Wandering around Montreal, my mind also wandered into a sequence of disassociation. It led to a new concept, though, and it is about...

Shroedinger's cubicle. Is that person working or not working?

2009-07-30T13:57:00.000-07:00

This is my story, and it is true...I keep telling this one from time to time...

...years back after having left an apartment dwelling for single home dwelling, I had spent the morning scouring the apartment for loose change, bits and pieces, spare cans of food, broken lamps and pillows....

I went to work. I got off at 11:30 PM. I drove south down Route 13. There is a long stretch of road between a few stores and Odessa. There was a large truck on the right hand side. We were both apace, neither passing or falling behind. Doing the speed limit. There's a turn to be had at the left hand side, so I saw no point in getting in front of the truck.

And a car comes speeding up. It was directly in back of me. The headlights were not synchronized.

It begins to flash the high beams. That action caught me in the eye. The high beams are flashed again. And again.

I put up my middle digit and shook it. The high beams went up again.

A few seconds later the familiar red and blue baby lights go on, along with a siren.

I slow down, and allow the truck to get ahead. I pull over. I get out of the car. It is January. The policeman is a tall 6 foot plus. He approaches me and his palm smacks into my chest and his fingers curl slightly, and turn. He dropped the attempting fist.

Not winking an eye, or flinching I ask, "Is there anything you want?

"Yeah," he said "I wanna know why you flipped me, gave me the sign." He walks around my car, flashlight peering into the back seat, illuminating junk and cans and old clothing.

"Well, what do you want?" I gave him my ID. He held onto it.

"Why'd you give me the finger? Why'd you give me the finger?"

"I wasn't speeding. The truck wouldn't let me in. And you raced up on my tail and flashed your beams."

Mr Tall and Tenor was also attempting a pale mustache. I'm sure my facial hair left him at a loss.

Still looking into the contents of my car, he asked, "What would you have done if that was your mother driving behind you?" He turned and faced me.

"I'm sure my mother would understand it if I was pointing out bad behavior and bad driving."

"Okay." A deep breath. " Now what if, what if it was a granny lady with six babies in the back seat..."

I said nothing. He went from possible to highly hypothetical. He glared at me. "I wish I could find something to arrest you for."

I got my ID back. He said "I got a drunk it there for testing. You're wasting my time."

I didn't bother to fill out a change of address for a month.

I told this story often. It caused my son to fail his driving course. Leo had mentioned this and another story about Giani being stopped by a policeman who uttered the words, "We're sure you're the one who was speeding." (I didn't bring up the time policemen held me at gunpoint.) The charge was dismissed.

So Leo told these stories to his driving Teacher at school. She was not amused. She was trying to imply in the course that "The police are your friends". Of course, Leo only found out later that her husband is a State Trooper.

2009-07-05T08:42:00.000-07:00

HARRY POTTER SPOILERS, I read of AOL.com's "news". I don't get it. Like someone has read the novel AND works for AOL? Trying for the teaser to entice readers. AOL often goes to absurd lengths to obtain readership.

AND 60 YEARS ON COMING THROUGH THE RYE seems to be banned from the USA. Which hasn't stopped me from ordering a copy though eBay. Someone paid £100.00 for a copy. Two days later someone with 100 copies was selling it for cover price. Ordered. I want to read it, not go bankrupt.

2009-06-28T08:42:00.000-07:00

DELAWARE ROADSIDE KITSCH

SILOHEAD, found on Route 13 Northbound near the herringbone Roth bridge.

This is actually for a place called FRIGHTLAND which opens up all October and the proceeds go to charity.

Even Michael Berryman has been a "guest".

2009-06-28T08:28:00.000-07:00

60 YEARS LATER COMING THROUGH THE RYE by J.D.CALIFORNIA has been discouraged from existing by J.D. Salinger's lawyers. And Amazon.com won't sell it... Phooey. Holden Caufield is one of the annoying snot nosed whiners in literature. This is a character that needs a hobby.

Ah well. Fair game of parody law would allow the book to be published, as with the book DONE BEEN GONE WITH THE WIND, telling that GONE WITH THE WIND tale from the viewpoint of a slave. Margaret Michell's estate sued. They lost.

Likewise many years back, Leonard Bernstein sued Mad Magazine for parodies to WEST SIDE STORY. The squabble reached the Supreme Court, which said in a ruling that "Leonard Bernstein does not own iambic pentameter."

2009-06-05T11:40:00.000-07:00

BUCKWHEAT FLORIDA Jr. did nothing to contribute to this on line 'zine. I was wondering if anyone would google up the name to see if any information could be obtained by or about him.

I recently make some sort of promise to myself to purchase fewer books. Read the ones that haven't been cracked open, scanner with my eyes and information downloaded into my neurons. The spell lasted only briefly. I saw a small news item in the New York Daily news. J. D. Salinger threatens a lawsuit over a book. Ah, I thought, cool. What is it?

Seems someone wrote a book titled 60 YEARS LATER COMING THROUGH THE RYE. By one J. D. California. "It's a complete rip off," said Salinger's lawyer.

Cool, I thought. And ordered it from Amazon.com. It has already been published in England. It can be ordered from the states through a broker.

I've always found CATCHER IN THE RYE to be annoying. Reading about immaturity can only go so far. From Salinger's reactions over the years about his own little world, maybe he hasn't grown up much either. Cranky in old people is immaturity, yes?

2009-05-24T12:17:00.000-07:00

STAR TREK: THE EARLY REVIEWS

Some time back I found this book called SEVEN GLORIOUS DAYS AND SEVEN FUN FILLED NIGHTS written by Charles Sopkin. It was published by Ace Books in 1968, from a Putnam hardcover. I think it undermines Harlan Ellison’s assertions that his tome, THE GLASS TEAT was the first book to deal with Television.

The author watched as much TV as he could for one week. It seems his brain was turning to mush. Here is his review of a certain science fiction program we all know about:

pages 219-220

This is my first encounter with an actor named Leonard Nimoy who portrays a pointy eared half-man half-spaceman called Spock. “Star Trek” open with two men in firefighter suits moping around a deserted planet. They discover the bodies of five people, evidently murdered. One of the five was kill while taking a shower, fully clothed which I find unusual. One of the two in Firefighter outfits casually sticks a finger in some blood, dripping from God-know-where, and says “its nothing like we’ve dealt with before.” The two explorers go back to their space ship and report to their superiors. The space ship is one a five year mission to a planet “where no man has gone before.” You would think this would be a mighty lonely mission. The space ship, however, is absolutely jammed with attractive space girls, fetchingly attired in miniskirts and boots. I get the impression that on a quiet night among the meteors, the spacemen can find companionship if they wish.

Joey, the one of the two who discovered the dead people, is suddenly stricken with a mysterious ailment. The symptoms are fairly simple. Joey is walking around the spaceship trying to rub something off of his hand, but I know there’s naught on his hand. In a dramatic scene set in the space ship’s lounge, Joey become paranoid and turns on his best friend, a Chinese crewman. “Get off my back, “ Joey snarls at the Chinese. “You don’t have pointed ears and you don’t like me.” (Speaking of pointed ears, Spock is not much in evidence during the first half of “Star Trek”. He is the executive officer of the space ship so I guess he is busy steering it to where no man has ventured before.) Joey gets worse. “What are we doing out here?” he queries the baffled Chinese “We’re polluting space,” Joey says. And then he throws the line I murmur every time I enter an airplane, “If man were supposed to fly he’d have wings. With this final sally, Joey goes completely out of his mind, dashes from the lounge and starts running up and down the corridors of the space ship. (I ought to mention that the interior of the space ship looks like the interior of every Hilton Hotel you’ve ever been in. Pastel walls, deep rugs, nothings too good for our spacemen.)

The Captain, meanwhile has been kept closely informed of Joey’s illness and has alerted the ship’s doctor. The doctor reports that the laboratory’s computers have yet to isolate the elusive virus. (If you think that I am prattling along on too long , remember, this is prime time, the best that television has to offer, and I think you deserve to know all about it.) After a dueling scene in the bowels of the spaceship, Joey is captured and dragged to the infirmary. unfortunately, Joey died on the operating table and one crewman after another tumbles into madness. On top of that , the ship is about to smash into some planet or other in five minutes unless somebody in the flight deck can pull themselves together to straighten it out. Spock, flexing his pointy ears, finally comes down with the disease. In health a fairly rigid type, he begins sobbing, “My mother. I never told her I love her.” In the final scene, the doctor rushes to the flight deck. Finding that Spock and the Captain also have loose screws, the doctor tells nobody in particular that the disease is transmitted from person to person “by the water in their sweat.” Fortunately, he has worked out an immunization and, as the space ship careens toward the planet, the doctor manages to inoculate the captain and Spock with an antidote to the diseased sweat. The space ship is saved. One of the attractive Negro girls on the bridge of the ship gives the eye to Spock, and you know for the next five years everything is going to be absolutely groovy for the cat with the pointy ears.

Anyone have comments? I don’t recognise the show. The early comment about Spock being "half man, half spaceman" reminded me of a review of the animation flick, ICE AGE in the Baltimore Sun, which claimed Scrat was "half squirrel, half rodent".

Did Spock ever flex his ears?

So much for educating the masses.

2009-05-16T07:23:00.000-07:00

I went to the movies last week and saw the reboot of STAR TREK. I had a good time. I never looked at my watch. I was absorbed into the film, totally entranced. Recommended.

While there, I viewed a promotional trailer for the forthcoming G.I.JOE movie. You know, the dolls ("action figures") that came out in the mid-sixties that inspired so many young men to do a tour of duty in Vietnam, hoping to slap the enemy to death. And inspired a lame animated series.

And with the note of this property being turned into a film, other products are being looked at.

Word has it people are looking into making CANDYLAND into a film. Dentists will love it.

I hope Ewe Boll directs.

2009-05-03T08:29:00.000-07:00

I recently took my son shopping We went to the Acme. We wondered about people who bought bottled water. In this household, we distill it. Got a little gallon distiller, and we try to do a few every other day. Cost is about 6-7 cents for the effort. It is steam distilled.

Sitting on the shelves was a large new display of "Baby Water". Steam distilled. Said so on the label. Formulated for newborns. It would be terrible if it was distilled with bleach, or something. I wasn't aware that distilled water was an essential for newborns.

(Let alone soy "milk" which causes horrid smells.)

Consumers. Falling for one con game after another. Take a look at the baby food industry. My wife and I fed out son stuff we ate, and wondered how much extra cash people pay out to have food softened for a babe to eat, when they could do it themselves..

America. Wasting resources for your dollar.

And I even saw this package for "Woody Woodpecker Bird Seed".

Woodpeckers aren't seed eaters. Later...

2009-05-03T08:06:00.000-07:00

Seen on on Route 13 Northbound.

Report him. Just take away his tin snips.

2009-05-03T07:23:00.000-07:00

IN THE POSTAL ZONE: GOING POSTAL : Intellectual Property

I got a note from the post office insisting that it has claims to intellectual property it creates, or whatever I create within my employment tenure. Sure.....

Stamps I can understand. Some designs are copyrightable.

I am very sure that the post office wants to hold onto the legacy it created when postal workers were treated like dirt and humiliated and made to work endlessly on boring jobs and went berserk and tried to pick off as many people they could with their air rifles. I am quite positive they want a patent and copyright on that.

Trouble is, that George Bush is no longer president.

2009-05-03T07:11:00.000-07:00

DELAWARE ROADSIDE KITSCH.

Largest Doctor Bag in the world?

Found on Route 7, exiting Stanton, heading southbound.

That brown stuff is rust.

2009-03-19T16:31:00.000-07:00

Rapper kills self

Dipset is the name of the rapper's label.

King Tut was what he called himself.

He killed himself with a gun.

Sitting in a cab.

Wanted on cocaine charges.

Which police found in his teddy bear in February.

As the police approached the cab, he ended his life.

And it was noted on a website called Boombox Music.

And after the article it left links so you could buy his music and CDs.

The end.

2009-03-19T15:34:00.000-07:00

THE ROOM.

Trust me, this is a bad film. It is bad on so many levels it is kind of a stun gun for the mind. The plot is creaky, made worse for the acting, writing directing and the sound. Man loves woman, woman wants to dump man, has affair with best friend.

The leading man is Tommy Wiseau, who is also the writer, director, and editor and port a potty tender for this dung hill.

The soundtrack has a few songs, all bad. The sound itself goes from sharp to muffled in a few seconds and back.

The acting and diction can be compared unfavorably to a second grade school production. No one is able to deliver anything beyond a staccato recitation. It is like the pod people got together to see if they could recall what emotions were like.

The lead actor (and director) has a few nude shots. He looks fine from the neck down, and she (the mistress) looks fine all over. But naked nipples is not acting, no matter how nice they are. And when the mistress has sex with his best friend there's nary a sense of emotion expressed.

It doesn't get any better, and no one can improve anything by any action at all. The stagings and diction are so bad and fossilized I was wondering if English was the director's third language. This is a film that makes BLOOD FREAK look like an Orson Welles picture. Even in Ed Wood pictures, the speech is given in a natural tone. There seems to be a pace of one tenth of a second between all spoken words. And for many minutes of talk, very little information is exchanged.

I fast forwarded it halfway through. The dialogue was still terrible (I read the subtitles), and the "action" was just as boring. I'm glad he kills himself at the ending. I didn't watch the interview with the director.

In terms of inner emotion, this film is chalk scraping a blackboard. For a long long time.

2009-03-18T07:54:00.000-07:00

LOST : THE ENDING WE DO NOT WANT

Screaming is heard. Blankets are tossed up.

"What a horrible nightmare!!"

"Gilligan?"

2009-02-22T09:12:00.000-08:00

This is my office. I keep track of things going in and things going out. The Route numbers, the drivers, the mail, express and whatever else shows up.

I make up stuff.

This is not my fault. A few days after I got the job back, I was sent a note from the office which read, Route 117 is now 115; route 205 is now rote 203. And route 211 is now route 213. Route 213 is now Route 207. And so on.

It wasn't in the computer files. It was on the sign in sheets and most of the drivers were clueless for a week.

I made extensive notes for correction. The management said "We'll look into it."

2009-02-22T08:28:00.000-08:00

BURNING RUBBER.

Found on Route 9 about two miles from Odessa, this impressive piece of road tracking is about 1/4 a mile long. It causes me to wonder, what did the kid tell his Father?

"Dad, I need new tires. The old ones are worn out."

"I just bought you new ones last month!"

2009-02-15T07:48:00.000-08:00

Possibly, this is an old joke....

2009-02-01T09:48:00.001-08:00

AMOEBAS

2009-01-27T07:21:00.000-08:00

Waiting

It's a bit chilly here. It is snowing. Sleet is expected to come down soon. I'm going to try to block off some tiles. A rodent of some sort has pushed up a load of fiber glass through a crack in the wall. I'm going to pull it out and set some foam on it. I can't tell if it is mouse or rat. There's no available soap for it to carry off, and no tooth scrapings on anything.

George H. Wells must have read that review of ROOM that appeared in Entertainment Weekly, and said it was so bad it has its own midnight movie shows. I saw Ewe Boll's POSTAL, and offer that up, Ewe Boll is a former sausage maker. He gets the photography right, but can't direct edit or offer anything by way of cohesion, story line or character.

Anyway, the household here has taken to watching DEATH NOTE, LOST, SAMURAI SEVEN, and DESERT PUNK.

2009-01-27T07:12:00.000-08:00

So if you

let me play with

your genes, I'll

give you some big

tasty bacteria.

2009-01-23T07:50:00.000-08:00

NASCAR GOLEM

Delaware's Roadside kitsch.

I'm not certain why the "Monster Mile" of Dover Downs needed a golem to advertise it, but here we are. Previously, a picture of a tyrannosaurus was the "Monster".

I was thinking of breaking into the area late at night and putting a large stovepipe hat on it, or making kabbalistic signs on its forehead.

I'd like to include in this series a picture of the 25 foot high Peter Pan that used to grace the top of an old time Art Deco restruarant that used to be by Route 141. It vanished sometime in 1967. Someone somewhere has a photo of it.

I'd be interested.

2008-12-04T06:51:00.000-08:00

I find it curious that after writing about these stories about people and universes going in reverse that a motion picture title, THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON will soon be released.

And a RED DWARF novel, simply titled BACKWARDS was written. In that one, Lister has died, and is placed on this particular planet where things age in reverse. The novel's novelty? Trying to unscramble things to get Lister back at the right age when he was on the ship...and with his loyal crew trying themselves not to get caught up in the same reverse issue.

Deja vu.

(aside: there's deja poo. It's a different form of SS DD.)

2008-12-04T06:45:00.000-08:00

...AND NOW FOR MY NEXT JOKE...

HOW MANY EARTHLINGS DOES

IT TAKE TO CLEAN A NUCLEAR

REACTOR?

2008-11-14T01:21:00.000-08:00

IN REVERSE

I can recall another book wherein the universe is 'going backward". In some Brian Aldiss novel, the universe was going backward because, as the book hinted at, the universe was no longer expanding. It was starting to collapse. and all events begin to reverse.

It has the same improbable ideas of the Philip K. Dick book, where someone starts thinking "I'm living backward." How would you know?

Nice idea, but I never did finish the book, and cannot recall the name of it. As with a number of Aldiss books, he focuses on the structure of the piece, and just types.

2008-09-29T11:57:00.000-07:00

The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A death. What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old-age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating...you finish off as an orgasm and a gleam in someone's eye.

I found this commentary attributed to George Carlin, Andy Rooney and a few others. What it is really about is that it reads like a plot synopsis of Philip K. Dick's COUNTER CLOCK WORLD, where everyone lives backwards.

Trying to set the record straight....

2008-09-29T11:48:00.000-07:00

A LONG LONG TIME AGO, AND VERY FAR AWAY, WE DISCOVER THAT GEORGE LUCUS WAS WILLING TO SELL OUT HIS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY FOR A CHEAP HOLIDAY SPECIAL...

...and we all wondered what kind of drugs he was taking...

2008-09-10T01:25:00.000-07:00

SLOWLY GOING DOWN THE TUBES

This is the fate of STAR WARS and all subsequent media attachments, including all the plastic crap and dolls and games and "whatever" they can stick a picture of Yoda onto.

To start: I have a copy of THE PHANTOM MENACE. It was gotten fewer viewings in this house than HORROR OF PARTY BEACH. A large chunk of the plot seems to feel an awful lot like THE INVISIBLE BOY, so much so that a lawsuit could be created to deal with it. I have only watched the DVD of PHANTOM MENACE once. It does not live. The HORROR DVD has been gone over five times because its...ah...unusual. It has more life in it.

And Jar Jar Binks. Some fans think there should be an edition where he is edited out, leaving a blank that people talk to, and probably a mental filler information bit would be "it's the force". Or there could be computer re enhancement, where Jar Jar is replaced by Pee Wee Herman or Howard the Duck. Or something.

More on this later?

2008-08-24T05:51:00.000-07:00

ZENO'S PARADOX AND WASHING DISHES

Most folks know the paradox proposed by Zeno, who thought his thoughts while crossing a bridge.

I have simular thoughts. When the sink is full, wash only half the dishes.

A day later, wash half the dishes. And then, later, wash half the dishes.

Zeno's view, coss half the bridge, note it, cross half the bridge...in effect, you could never reach the other side of the bridge.

And then again, you will never run out of dishes to wash either.

2008-08-24T05:39:00.000-07:00

ANSWERING THE MAIL.

Thank you all for your card and letter.

People have written and asked questions. One was "How did the goat get out of its pen?" I asked, but it wasn't telling. Goats like to scratch themselves by rubbing up against the fencing wire and it probably found a weak spot on the fencing, and made use of it.

I was warned not to watch a certain dog movie and SHAKES THE CLOWN. Sorry, I already watched SHAKES, and it is bad. I now possess bragging rights. But I expected more from Bobcat Goldthwait, because he was right on in his slightly demented portrait of one of the Egg Twins in ONE CRAZY SUMMER. I guess this might be a first--the pair of twins was fraternal, and both of them acted like they were born a shade too prematurely, both affecting bad speech patterns. And of course, BobCat Goldthwait becomes one of the few western actors to don a Godzilla suit and have him do stand up comedy. And yes, there are a few CD's of BG's stand up available. MEAT BOB is the title of one. One other is called "I DON'T MEAN TO INSULT YOU, BUT YOU LOOK LIKE BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT" Arrrrh!

someone with the e mail of i_i@msn.com said that the global warming issue cannot be solved from using little kids. And they can't vote. I'm not sure, but there a large number of adults out there would would do anything--sometimes involving irrational and insane behavior--to stop a kid from a jog of endless shrieking. (Aside--this is one reason I didn't like Dakota Fanning's role in WAR OF THE WORLDS. Tom Cruise requested special earplugs.)

FLY ME TO THE MOON, took in so little money it was not even in the top ten for its opening weekend gross.

Someone wrote me to inquire: have you updated your blog?" I guess...

Another was..."why are you up so early..." For the overtime at my job.

And "are you going to post more quotes from WEREWOLF VERSUS THE VAMPIRE WOMAN?"

Maybe. Are you going to pay me overtime rates?

2008-08-17T03:50:00.000-07:00

HOW TO BECOME MENTALLY NUMB

I saw a trailer for BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA.

Someone had to think of this concept. Someone had to greenlight it. Someone had to write a treatment. Someone had to write a script. Someone had to go over the script. Someone had to be named director. Someone had to audition actors. Someone had to audition dogs. Someone had to film it. Someone had to splice the film together...

...I watched the trailer. I got the horrors.

I really hate 'concept' films. One of the hardest to watch films is SHAKES THE CLOWN, where nearly everyone is a clown. The police are clowns, the lawyers are clowns, the children are clowns. The idea drowns in its own futility.

Another semi inspired film is BE KIND, PLEASE REWIND. It is a "suppose" film. It supposes that someone is going to sabotage a power company and hooks into a high voltage line, blows off sparks for two minutes and becomes magnetised and stumbles into a fading video store and erases all the videos and then "supposes" that the two individuals involved will "remake" all of the films so the store's owner wouldn't know what happens. And then it supposes that people will like these "remakes" and drive in from other states to check them out. I've only outlined a fraction of the inanity, and I don't want to think too much about it.

Why is this stuff even given funding?

2008-08-16T05:37:00.001-07:00

My Pet Goat

Wednesday 13 August 2008

And last night I got up at 1:30 AM so I could go in early. Overtime on the second shift means being awake at 1:30, washing one's scalp, cleaning up, a few cups of coffee, some food, prepare lunch...

Scampy pup indicated there was a problem beyond the door and in the garage. . I opened the door, carefully, fully expecting another rabid raccoon.

There was a goat sitting on the steps. Hind quarters down. Sitting. It blinked at me. It stood up and released some berries.

I'm standing there in my underwear. Half awake. I blink. The dogs are trying to get at the goat, and I have to push them aside and close the door. I gulped a cold cup of coffee, and got dressed and went out to chase a goat.

There was no moon.

Goats have this odd attraction to people, They will go forward to you, but if you approach and get near, they back off, just enough to be out of reach. This is an annoying dance. The goat led me on a dark chase. I could not see. When I went back to the lit garage, it would follow me.

Five minutes of futility. I found no flashlight. I got my iPod so I could have a light. Five minutes later, the goat was in the garage and I blocked off the door. I caught it with a fish net. Five minutes later I put it into the paddock.

I misplaced my iPod (I found it later.) and have wished I could have another things to do with my mornings, chasing an onry goat through pitch black surroundings, illuminated by five second intervals of light from an iPod.

I thought about goat stew the whole day I was at work.

2008-08-10T05:22:00.000-07:00

MOEZILLA PREPARES TO ATTACK TOKYO.

2008-08-10T02:51:00.000-07:00

SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION:

Someone asked if I had ever met anyone who was famous. I tend to keep mum on this because I have rubbed elbows with a number of people.

Take Alva Rogers. I met him at a Lunacon, he was Artist Guest of Honor, I wish I'd known a little bit more of his background when I met him. But instead of talking about his room mate Jack Parsons--the man who helped start the US Space Program, or his meetings with Robert A. Heinlein, I asked about his other room mate, some guy named L. Ron Hubbard.

Is it true, I asked, the he said 'if you want to make a million dollars, start your own religion'.

The answer was "He said it more than once. He said it frequently."

2008-08-10T02:44:00.000-07:00

MOVIES:

FLY ME TO THE MOON was not released this week. It was supposed to be the "first" 3D animated cartoon. I so wanted to read the reviews, condemming it for inanity, and pursuing my idea for a short movie titled SWAT ME TO PIECES ON THE KITCHEN TABLE.

Maybe later.

2008-08-10T02:34:00.000-07:00

IN THE POSTAL ZONE: GOING POSTAL

Whenever a hole pops a crack in the floor of the Post Office they handle it with care and consideration. It is covered with duct tape.