A funny exchange on Twitter

AT&T tried to sell Beelzebub a cable & internet package this week. Laughing my ass off.

Angry Cat is the new Grumpy Cat

Meet Garfi, the Internet's newest feline of fame. His Flickr/Twitter/Facebook pages are blowing up right now because he's so much more bad-ass than Tard the Grumpy Cat ever was. Thanks to great free exposure like the above linked HuffPo piece and Chris Hardwick's Garfi-centric bit on a recent episode of his @Midnight gameshow on Comedy Central, we will no doubt be seeing a lot of Garfi in the coming months. He's a meme in the making.

So the moment I saw a Santa suit photo I thought, "Grinch. Someone has to make him the Grinch." Of course I figured that if I could think of it, someone else has undoubtedly done it already...

Guess not though. FIRST!

Dirty Peanutz has an official home!

OK, folks--if you've enjoyed my plying my twisted humor on these classic Peanuts strips, go on over to check out my new Dirty Peanutz page on Blogger. I'll be posting a new Peanutz strip there every day! If you've been following along, you'll see familiar strips for a while (with a surprise bonus strip coming up soon) and then after those have all been posted I'm moving on to ALL NEW MATERIAL!

Subscribe now to make sure you get your daily fix of beloved children's characters engaged in the most tasteless endeavors you can imagine. I will no longer be posting these creations on this page; to see more you'll have to visit me at peanuttier.blogspot.com.

Peanutz 11 & 12

PEANUTZ 11

PEANUTZ 12

I must be stopped... Or must I?

I whipped up a few more crazy Peanuts strips. Hope you like them. Click on a strip if anything in the right margin is obscuring it, and it will open in a new screen.

PEANUTZ 7

PEANUTZ 8

PEANUTZ 9









PEANUTZ 10

Crazy Peanuts strips

I recently discovered a great online archive of Peanuts comic strips. Now I'm a huge fan of Peanuts strips and have been all my life. However, while browsing the archive it struck me that sometimes it's funnier if you make up your own captions instead. So here are a few examples I came up with.

PEANUTZ 1

PEANUTZ 2

PEANUTZ 3

PEANUTZ 4

PEANUTZ 5

PEANUTZ 6

Hmmm... A new hobby in the works? It sure is fun! Stay tuned.

Old writings I stumbled upon today

Here are some 100-word fictions stories I wrote for a contest in 1999. I didn't win anything, but it was still a fun exercise. 100 words is a tough limit for an entire story.

DEATHBRINGER

Thunderous gunfire heralded his arrival into town. He took no prisoners and gave no quarter. The sleepy little village of Dustry didn't stand a chance. A black angel of death atop his steed, he plowed through the streets like a homicidal whirlwind.

He dispatched the citizenry with blinding quickness and a deafening roar. When the smoke finally cleared on that dead little town, only one person was left breathing. But if the dead could talk, they would tell you that what rode out of town that day was not a person at all, but a demon straight from hell.

ONE STEP

One step. That's all it takes. Just one step, and all the pain stops. Just a single step into oblivion, into peace.

How could so much go wrong at once? What did I do to deserve such a fucked up life? Where did I go astray? And just when exactly was it that God himself deserted me? All those times I thought, "It can't get any worse," and it did. I tried and tried but never came out ahead. All that time--wasted.

So here I stand, high above the world.

Just one step ends it all.

Just one...

THE DEAD

I don't know how it began, but the dead have risen and they're angry. It's been a week since they were first sighted, clawing their way to the surface to wreak havoc among the living. Needless to say, it was quite a surprise. Turns out, they're all bloodthirsty, vicious killers. So in order to survive, that's what we have to be. Killers. Zombie hunters. Wild, huh?

Never thought I'd be hunting zombies for a living, but there's more of 'em every day, and we're not getting any younger ourselves.

'Course, no one really knows how to stop it...

YOGROT

Under the hill lived the nastiest glumwump, Yogrot, and ugly creature who hated everything. All day long, day after day, he complained to the empty air about how much he hated the world.

One not-so-fine morning, this nastiest of glumwumps got out of his lumpy bed and went into his horribly tiny kitchen to make some awful tea.

He grumbled to himself as his accursed water boiled, then poured himself a cup of misery. As he swallowed the foul concoction, Yogrot was thankful that he had found his first thing to complain about this dreadful morning.

AFTERMATH

The mighty warrior stood proudly on a jutting peak, face into the wind, head held high. It had been a glorious day on the battlefield. Many enemies had been slain, and he knew that the old ones would tell of this victory for generations to come.

Sweat and blood glistened on his brow as he surveyed the carnage below. Scanning the remains, his gaze fell on his mangled brother. With an aching heart and tears of rage, he raised his voice to the gods in a mournful wail. As the sun set, the valley filled with his sorrowful goodbye.

FLIRTING

There was a glimmer in her eyes that he couldn't resist. He noticed her "checking him out" about ten minutes ago. As he sat on the bench in the bus station, he discreetly stole a glance in her direction, and she was still smiling at him.

To test the waters, he flashed her his warmest grin. Seeing this, her grin widened as she stifled a giggle. He screwed up his courage to approach, when he noticed her gaze drifting in a beckoning fashion. He followed her eyes to a point adjacent him on the bench.

A sign: "WET PAINT."

-----------------------------------------------------------

And then there was the poem I wrote and emailed to my buddy in Afghanistan that same year. We emailed back and forth quite a bit back then while I was at work and his workday was done for the night. One day I emailed him and got no immediate response, so I wrote this poem on the fly and sent it to him.

Sleep on, my fairy princess
Float on tiny clouds
Dream of kings and princes
And make your tiny sounds

Waken from your slumber
A new day dawning bright
Still a fairy princess
And such a lovely sight

Pretty little ribbons
In your flowing hair
Pajamas made of satin
Cling to your derriere

A necklace made of diamond
A bracelet made of pearls
I'm sure you are the envy
Of all the little girls

But where's the golden castle?
Where's the handsome prince?
Now that your head is clearing
All you see are tents

The jewelry is real enough
As are the pretty clothes
But the princes all surround you
And want to break your nose

Good night, my fairy princess
Sleep on 'til evening comes
Beaten to unconsciousness
By your Air Force chums

His response: "I wasn't sleeping. Nice poem, asshole. Fairy princess my ass. And I could kick the shit out of most of the guys here."

2013 Six Flags visit #2

The hand stamper guy was being a bit judgmental Saturday.

We just got back home tonight around dinner time after spending two days in Eureka, Missouri visiting with family and having a blast at our favorite place on earth, Six Flags St. Louis. My wife's sister-in-law gave birth to her second daughter just four weeks ago and we had yet to meet her, so we went to see the new niece and get in some baby time. Since they live only ten minutes from Six Flags, we deemed it a waste to travel all that way and not take the opportunity to use our season passes. As such, we made sure to use them both Saturday and Sunday.

We had a handful of milestones on this Six Flags visit:

1. My daughter, Calliope (age 8), rode her fourth wooden coaster ever, and the first ever at that particular park--American Thunder (formerly Evel Knievel)... TWICE. She's starting to come around. My goal is to get her on Screaming Eagle before the season comes to an end. She's chickened out on the platform twice now. It's hard to get her on the old Philly Toboggan coasters. She's not a fan of vintage rides.
2. The whole family rode something together, which we haven't done in probably five years. We rode the log flume twice in a row on Saturday afternoon. I miss riding stuff with my wife. She usually holds all our shit while two or three of us do the riding. Oh, and that brings up the next milestone:
3. We purchased our first Six Flags souvenir photo ever--just for you readers! We posed on the log flume drop specifically with the purpose of upgrading the graphic in my blog banner. Look for that to happen very soon.
4. Ash and I rode the Boss in the front seat for the first time ever. I have ridden this coaster at least a dozen times since its construction, but never in the first seat. Man, that's the way to ride it, let me tell you.
5. Ash and I also rode Mr. Freeze Reverse Blast in the front- er, back... Crap, it's confusing with a backward-facing coaster. We were the last to leave the tunnel (facing backward) and the first ones back in (facing forward), for the first time. That was pretty cool.
6. We've been to this park so many times that now we have to make our own entertainment while we're there to mix things up a bit. We began telling employees on Saturday to "Have a Six Farts day!" to see how many "You too"s we could get in response. That was puerile but fun. Sunday we changed it up to "Have a Six Frogs day!" It's a bit less off-color but still quite successfully chuckle-inducing.
7. We also began nosing people (mostly Six Flags employees) like Joe on the TruTV hidden-camera program Impractical Jokers. Ash is quite good at it, as it turns out.

 

Thanks for reading! Keep an eye out for my updated header graphic soon.







Laundry list classics

My Grammar Geeks group on LinkedIn has lately been busy contributing to a discussion called "Laundry list classics." The idea is to imagine what the first draft of a famous story might have been like were it penned on the back of a laundry or shopping list, cocktail napkin or something equally mundane. Some folks have posted alternate versions of famous first lines from classic novels, while others have composed sonnets or limericks. No matter the format, one could easily imagine the work scrawled haphazardly across a dry cleaning receipt or junk mail envelope.

I know that National Poetry Month is over, but I couldn't resist once this discussion started picking up steam. I've submitted three of my own limericks so far, and here they are:

I travelled one day on a whim
To shadowy Innsmouth so grim.
The fish-frogs came out
And chased me about--
I think I'll go back for a swim.


A young Kansan named Dorothy Gale
To Oz in a cyclone did sail.
On the road, she eased down
To old Emerald Town
And melted a witch with a pail.


On a night when I mourned my Lenore
With a sorrow like never before,
In swooped a black bird
That spoke only one word;
My wits shall return nevermore.

National Poetry Month #29

First, on an unrelated note, happy birthday to my loving wife, Heather. She is a super mother and wife who sacrifices daily for her family. I just want to let everyone know how much I appreciate what she does for this family. She's very sweet, and she would never approve of the poems I'm going to feature today.

This morning I was introduced, through my Grammar Geeks group on LinkedIn, to the wickedly funny poetry of a British man named Harry Graham. I've never heard of this guy before today, but I love his mischievous sense of humor. It reminds me of Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies. Proceed with caution in reading the following short poems by Harry Graham.

UNCLEJOE
An angel bore dear Uncle Joe
To rest beyond the stars.
I miss him, oh! I miss him so,--
He had such good cigars.

AUNT ELIZA
In the drinking-well
(Which the plumber built her)
Aunt Eliza fell, --
We must buy a filter.

TRAGEDY
That morning, when my wife eloped
With James, our chauffer, how I moped!
What tragedies in life there are!
I'm dashed if I can start the car.

ACCIDENT
"There's been an accident!" they said,
"Your servant's cut in half; he's dead."
"Indeed!" said Mr. Jones , "and please
Give me the half that's got my keys."

COMPENSATION
Weep not for little Leonie,
 Abducted by a French Marquis!
Though loss of honour was a wrench,
Just think how it's improved her French.

TENDER HEARTEDNESS
Billy, in one of his nice new sashes,
Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes;
Now, although the room grows chilly,
I haven't the heart to poke poor Billy.

THE STERN PARENT
Father heard his children scream,
So he threw them in the stream,
Saying, as he drowned the third,
"Children should be seen, not heard!"

CALCULATING CLARA
O'er the rugged mountain's brow
Clara threw the twins she nursed,
And remarked, "I wonder now
Which will reach the bottom first?"

 

 

National Poetry Month #19

Short on time today. No big intro, just that I like this poem (obviously)...

ELEGY FOR JOG
by John Ciardi

Stiff-dog death, all froth on a bloody chin,

sniffs at the curb. Skinny-man death, his master,

opens the traffic's hedge to let him in.

Jog was his name, silliness his disaster.

He wasn't satisfied to scare the truck:

he had to bite the tire. Fools have no luck.

National Poetry Month #17

A Martian astronomer, eh? Yesterday's post segues perfectly (Prefectly?) into today's. For though it's technically National Poetry Month, there's nobody saying we don't welcome the enthusiasm of folks from other countries... worlds... or even solar systems.

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz has quite a way with words.

Why, the Vogons from Douglas Adams' comic sci-fi masterpiece The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are great lovers of poetry (though the Guide indicates that their poetry is actually artistically the third worst in the universe).

Here's a wonderful example:

Oh freddled gruntbuggly, 
Thy micturations are to me, 
As plurdled gabbleblotchits, 
On a lurgid bee, 
That mordiously hath bitled out, 
Its earted jurtles, 
Into a rancid festering confectious inner-sphincter. [drowned out by moaning and screaming] 
Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles, 
Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts, 
And living glupules frart and slipulate, 
Like jowling meated liverslime.
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes, 
And hooptiously drangle me, 
With crinkly bindlewurdles, 
Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, 
See if I don't.

National Poetry Month #16

Honestly, after yesterday what more can be said?

EARTH
by John Hall Wheelock

"A planet doesn't simply explode of itself," said drily
The Martian astronomer, gazing off into the air--
"That they were able to do it is proof that highly
Intelligent beings must have been living there."

National Poetry Month #15

Wow! Can National Poetry Month really be halfway over already? I can hardly believe it. I don't envy myself the tough choices that are in the next two weeks ahead of me. This evening I dug out an old poetry paperback I used to love reading, called Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle and Other Modern Verses. It was compiled by Stephen Dunning, Edward Lueders and Hugh Smith and originally published in 1966, though my 15th printing was done in 1974 and distributed by Scholastic.

Here's one of my favorite pieces from that book.

  
DUST
by Sydney King Russell

Agatha Morley
All her life
Grumbled at dust
Like a good wife.

Dust on a table,
Dust on a chair,
Dust on a mantel
She couldn't bear.

She forgave faults
In man and child
But a dusty shelf
Would set her wild.

She bore with sin
Without protest,
But dust thoughts preyed
Upon her rest.

Agatha Morley
Is sleeping sound
Six feet under
The mouldy ground.

Six feet under
The earth she lies
With dust at her feet
And dust in her eyes.

National Poetry Month #14

The "Unicorn" post got me thinking more about my record collection, which in turn focused my attention on the selection of hilarious Smothers Brothers LPs in my library. Logically, then, I must present another Shel Silverstein poem, and you'll see why. Dick Smothers gave a little tune to this one and recorded an extremely abbreviated version of it for the It Must Have Been Something I Said! record in 1964.

I've always loved this album. It has some of my favorite Smothers tracks on it, including "Hiawatha" and "Crabs Walk Sideways," both of which I still find myself humming on occasion, decades after my last listen. Looking back, though, knowing what I know now, I envision a completely different interpretation of the following poem than Silverstein intended. I'm sure Lovecraft was never on his mind when he penned:

THE SLITHERY DEE
by Shel Silverstein

The Slithery Dee
He lives in the sea
He saw all the others
But he didn’t see me.

The Slithery Dee
He came out of the sea
He chased all the others
But he didn’t chase me.

The Slithery Dee
I hid in a tree
He caught all the others
But he couldn’t catch me.

The Slithery Dee
He went back to the sea
He ate all the others
But he didn’t eat me.

The Slithery Dee
Oh where can he be?
He ate all the others
But he’ll never eat … S-L-U-U-U-R-P!

National Poetry Month #13

Happy National Poetry Month (and National Scrabble Day as well)! Today I bring you a fun little piece from a true American wordsmith.

TO AN INSECT
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

I love to hear thine earnest voice,
      Wherever thou art hid,
Thou testy little dogmatist,
      Thou pretty Katydid!
Thou mindest me of gentlefolks,--
      Old gentlefolks are they,--
Thou say'st an undisputed thing
      In such a solemn way.

Thou art a female, Katydid!
      I know it by the trill
That quivers through thy piercing notes,
      So petulant and shrill;
I think there is a knot of you
      Beneath the hollow tree,--
A knot of spinster Katydids,--
      Do Katydids drink tea?

Oh, tell me where did Katy live,
      And what did Katy do?
And was she very fair and young,
      And yet so wicked, too?
Did Katy love a naughty man,
      Or kiss more cheeks than one?
I warrant Katy did no more
      Than many a Kate has done.

Dear me! I'll tell you all about
      My fuss with little Jane,
And Ann, with whom I used to walk
      So often down the lane,
And all that tore their locks of black,
      Or wet their eyes of blue,--
Pray tell me, sweetest Katydid,
      What did poor Katy do?

Ah no! the living oak shall crash,
      That stood for ages still,
The rock shall rend its mossy base
      And thunder down the hill,
Before the little Katydid
      Shall add one word, to tell
The mystic story of the maid
      Whose name she knows so well.

Peace to the ever-murmuring race!
      And when the latest one
Shall fold in death her feeble wings
      Beneath the autumn sun,
Then shall she raise her fainting voice,
      And lift her drooping lid,
And then the child of future years
      Shall hear what Katy did.

Today is a perfect storm of celebrations

Not only is today the 11th day of National Poetry Month, I just found out it's also National 8-Track Day! How do these two celebrations perfectly intertwine with one another? In the memory of my favorite 8-track as a child, combined with the swath of stormy weather plaguing the Midwest over the last day or two.

When I was a kid, I absolutely loved the Irish Rovers' album The Unicorn. I still do, actually... Not the 8-track so much, but I do have it stashed in a box somewhere still because of its sentimental value; never mind that I have copies on vinyl and CD as well. It endures to this day as one of my all-time favorite feel-good albums.

The title track from that album was the only chart hit for the group here in the U.S. (possibly abroad too, though I can't corroborate that). It was penned by the famous comedic poet, Mr. Shel Silverstein. Bear with me, I'm going to tie the perfect storm up in a nice little bow now.

If you are unfamiliar with the lyrics, they happen to be the story of the unicorn's extinction. See, they missed out on Noah's ark ride because they were too busy playing in the rain. Aaaand there's our tie in. It's been raining quite a lot lately, and we have flood warnings and all out here by the Illinois River. Bam!

Anyway, to honor both National Poetry Month and National 8-Track Day, I present to you the lyrics of that classic Irish Rovers tune, "The Unicorn."

THE UNICORN
by Shel Silverstein

A long time ago, when the earth was green
There was more kinds of animals than you've ever seen,
They'd run around free while the earth was bein' born,
And the loveliest of all was the unicorn.
 
There were green alligators and long-neck geese.
Some humpty-back camels and some chimpanzees.
Some catsandratsandelephants, but sure as you're born
The loveliest of all was the unicorn.

Now God seen some sinnin', and it gave him pain.
He said, "Stand back, I'm goin' to make it rain."
He said, "Hey Brother Noah, I'll tell ya what ta do.
Build me a floatin' zoo."

"And take some of them green alligators and long-neck geese,
Some humpty-back camels and some chimpanzees.
Some catsandratsandelephants, but sure as you're born
Don't you forget my unicorn."

Now Noah was there, he answered the call
And finished up making the ark just as the rain started to fall.
He marched in the animals two by two,
And he called out as they went through,

"Hey Lord, I got your green alligators and long-neck geese,
Some humpty-back camels and some chimpanzees.
Some catsandratsandelephants -- but Lord, I'm so forlorn
I just don't see no unicorn."

Ol' Noah looked out through the drivin' rain
Them unicorns were hidin', playin' silly games.
They were kickin' and splashin' as the rain was pourin'.
Oh them silly unicorns.

There were green alligators and long-neck geese,
Some humpty-back camels and some chimpanzees.
Noah cried, "Close the door 'cause the rain is pourin'--
And we just can't wait for no unicorns."

The ark started movin', and it drifted with the tide,
And the unicorns looked up from the rock and they cried.
And the water come up and sort of floated them away--
That's why you've never seen a unicorn to this very day.

You'll see green alligators and long-neck geese.
Some humpty-back camels and some chimpanzees.
Some catsandratsandelephants, but sure as you're born
You're never gonna see no unicorn

National Poetry Month #5

Here is a great piece from a poet who hails from my own hometown of Galesburg, Illinois. It's a fascinating train of thought to ruminate upon. I've wondered the same thing myself, never having known that a renowned poet considered it enough of a conundrum so as to write about it...

THE HANGMAN AT HOME
by Carl Sandburg

What does a hangman think about
When he goes home at night from work?
When he sits down with his wife and
Children for a cup of coffee and a
Plate of ham and eggs, do they ask
Him if it was a good day's work
And everything went well or do they
Stay off some topics and kill about
The weather, baseball, politics
And the comic strips in the papers
And the movies? Do they look at his
Hands when he reaches for the coffee
Or the ham and eggs? If the little
Ones say, Daddy, play horse, here's
A rope--does he answer like a joke:
I seen enough rope for today?
Or does his face light up like a
Bonfire of joy and does he say:
It's a good and dandy world we live
In. And if a white face moon looks
In through a window where a baby girl
Sleeps and the moon-gleams mix with
Baby ears and baby hair--the hangman--
How does he act then? It must be easy
For him. Anything is easy for a hangman,
I guess.

National Poetry Month 4

Here's another one I love, from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, 1872:

JABBERWOCKY
by Lewis Carroll

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

      The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;

      Long time the manxome foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree

      And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

      The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

      And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

      The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

      He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

      Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

      He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe.

National Poetry Month 2

Today I will juxtapose yesterday's lengthy featured piece with the world's shortest rhyming poem, penned by an unknown author and titled FLEAS:

Adam had 'em.