Thank God
After 2 months of zero inspiration, a tale landed on me tonight hard enough to wake me up (after half an hours sleep) and drag me out of bed.
Of course it is a sad horror. I ain’t gonna change my spots.
Check Out Fail
Was walking up the street just now. Ahead of me, an extraordinarily attractive young woman was walking, so I was “enjoying the scenery” as you might say. Always been a fan of fitted skirts and heels.
Drew level with her and she glanced at me and said “Oh hi, Uncle Mark.”
Crap.
I held her in my arms when she was 13 days old and stood as godfather. Uncle is a courtesy, but damn! More than brain bleach is needed here.
Columbo Time
What where you doing the evening of the 8th of May, 1998?
Can’t remember, eh?
I really, really hope the cops ask me that at some stage, because I can tell them exactly what went down.
It was a typical May evening. Sun sullenly peeking through the clouds as it slowly set. All of the gas rings in use, prepping the potatos and the steamed vegetables. On the smallest ring, a pan of gravy gently thickening and bubbling to the perfect consistancy.
With a flourish worthy of Emeril, the oven is opened and a perfectly roasted shoulder of lamb is brought forth. Lifted tenderly from it’s bed of veggies, it was placed on the 150 year old serving plate and the veggies and juices sieved into the gravy to turn it from mere heavenly into ambrosia.
Drain the potatos and shove them into a serving bowl. The veggies (carrots and broccoli) come off the steam and set for a minute before being carried to the table by eager hands. The peas, of course, get a few lovingly placed pats of butter on them as they go into their own serving dish.
Everything else on the table, the glasses in each place containing their wine or wine and water, there was only one thing left to do.
Enter the lamb. Ceremoniously borne from the kitchen to its own place on the sideboard, snuggly nestled on it’s bed of parsley. Carving knife and fork at the ready.
That is when it happened. A slight twist of the carving knife and the blade hit bone, putting an almost microscopic nick in the blade.
Something I get reminded about every frigging time the knife drawer gets opened, even after 14 years.
That is the tale officer.
Gasoline Alley
Sorry, not even I am old enough to remember when this started. Far as I know it was about 86 years ago now, and I am too idle to pull up the relevant Wikipedia page.
It had a unique premise, amongst all the comic strips in the papers. The characters got older by roughly one year per year.
Tarzan still looks the same. Dick Tracy is drawn slightly better now but still looks the same. Batman and Superman - haven’t aged a day. Spider-man - well, how can we tell? Between the costume and bad art for faces they could be on the 40th - though Aunt May never changes.
Walt Wallet is now 108 years old and looks it. He acts it too. Wanders off into the old comics home where he sees comic characters that were dead and gone before your parents were born. We also know Walt is lying about his age, since he served in the Navy in WW1. It is a small vanity by an old guy, so we let it lie. A dude gets over 100, the odd year shaved off here and there is irrelevant.
The average life of a newspaper strip comic character is about 40 years before no one gives a shit any more. I mean, hell, no one gives a shit about Garfield now, and that cat hasn’t even started shedding.
Skeezix (and don’t blame me for the name) is exactly the age of the comic, as the comic started with him being left on Walt’s doorstep, complete with a cute little rush basket (Yes Rush is a total Basket, but hold that for a different post). Means the dude is old enough to be your grandfather. Great grandfather if you started early enough.
Now look - getting to 86 is pretty freaking impressive. Most of the people who would remember the first comic are dead. Most of the rest struggle to remember if they like Jello.
So you’d think.
A comic where people get older is a comic where people die. Not superhero die where they come back and kick ass, but really die.
For good. Like real people do.
Kinda harsh for a pen and ink drawing.
P.S - Clovia is really a bit of a bitch, amirite?
Googlewhack
Had my first ever googlewhack today.
Kind of baffling as it is a bible verse and would make a kickass death metal song “Raising up the powers.” The powers of Chaos!!
Who The Hell Is That?
I don’t usually bother with mirrors. Know what I look like and am ugly enough not to want to dwell on the fact. Add in that I normally get washed, shaved and dressed in the dark, so as not to disturb anyone else and months can go by without really noticing my reflection. (Yes, contrary to popular belief I do show in mirrors)
Some time in the last 6 months, since I more or less retired, my scant hair has turned from a dirty mousey blonde to grey. No elegant Reid Richards silver temples here, just a dull and lifeless grey over my whole damned head. Yes, it has been a rough few months, but HOLY SHIT YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO AGE THAT FAST!
Who do you see to demand a recount?
Don’t feel old. In my head I am still about 20. Even though my morning run has degenerated to a vigorous walk and I now bench press a baby rather than an adult, I ain’t old.
Shit. Who the hell am I kidding?
Me, hopefully.
Why Won’t People Excerpt?
If you write on the net, people share your stuff, even stuff that has been paid for by a company. Sometimes they flat out steal it, but often they post a full article on a message board, which theoretically denies whoever paid for the article a number of hits.
Most honest message boards follow excerpt rules. No more than 20% of the article or so posted, with a clear link to the original article to read the rest and the author and source fully credited.
That, to me, is a fair system. It drives traffic to the various sites and allows new regular readers to be created from people who otherwise might never have read your stuff at all. If you get posted on a high membership forum, you will see a significant spike in traffic. It is word of mouth advertising at it’s finest.
None exerpting, on the other hand, is annoying. People read your article without giving you the traffic. And like it or not, many online sites judge the worth of their authors by the traffic they bring in. They may claim not to, but they do.
Which leads to the reason I wrote this today. Kathy Benjamin - you or your editors may want to contact Free Republic and ask for mental floss to be put on the excerpt list. Your “5 Apocalypse Scenarios Governments Have Actually Addressed” article for Mental Floss was posted in it’s entirety here. The credits are there, but you lost views.
A Small Tale About A Great Man Or Two.
The 3rd of September, 1943. Italy surrendered to the Allies.
Germany was not exactly enthralled with this idea and promptly took over the country. My wife’s grandfather, a general in the army at the time, called his troops together and gave them a clear choice.
Go home, or go with him to fight the Germans.
Not one of them went home. They left in the night, while some of the older soldiers stayed in barracks under the effective command of his wife, to make things seem normal. Two of their sons were living at home, the eldest was in a military academy half the country away.
The Germans were desperate for troops. They went into the academy where my Father in Law was learning and stated that, the following day, all students over the age of 16 were being moved to the front for active duty in the German Army.
My Father in Law left that night, along with most of his classmates. He knew roughly where his father was. All that seperated him from joining his father was 550 miles of rough country, patrolled by an army that would now consider him a deserter and shoot him on sight.
He walked at night for two weeks, sleeping during the day in whatever hiding places he could find. Culverts, caves, barns, sometimes in a bed thanks to the kindness of strangers, who would feed him well before sending him on his way. The rest of the time he ate what he could find. He always hated eggs, both cooked and raw, after this gentle stroll!
Once he got south of Rome, he managed to hook up with the partisans - mainly Mafia - who conveyed him to his father’s hiding place. He walked into the camp one evening, kissed his father and asked for a rifle. This good and gentle man had a confirmed kill count of 175 by the end of the war, done one shot at a time not spray and pray.
By the end of the war, he was well established as liaison to the Allied forces, a job he continued after he went back to the academy and qualified in 1946. In the late 40s / early 50s he did some hush hush work for Operation Gladio, then retired from that to command the same regiment his father had before him.
At 90, he was still slim and muscular and worked out every day. He had an operation on his cataracts when he was 87, meaning he could once more see to drive. Prior to that, riding in a car with him was interesting, to say the least!
I will miss him terribly.
