Today’s agenda — pet-sitting for my buddy Schrodinger while he’s out of town:
1) Let the dogs out;
2) Ascertain why the caged bird sings; and
3) Take special care of the little cat, but also kill it.
Photo credit: Meathead Movers [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D
People, if you have tartar sauce in your fridge and you’re not sure it’s good, please do not hold it up to your nose and sniff it to ascertain its viability. If in doubt, throw it out. Trust me on this.
Because it might smell like a syphilitic dragon with an anger disorder urinated radioactive turpentine onto a raging car fire outside an ammonia factory — right after a chemical warfare attack was waged nearby by the steaming Sulphur Men from Planet Terrible. You get the picture.
This is an important tip. I need to jot this down for that cookbook I’m working on.
Also, “the steaming Sulphur Men from Planet Terrible” is your writing prompt for tonight. Go.
Apparently some of my poetry readings were picked up by a video hosting site in Germany? I … don’t know how any of this works, to be honest. But it looks like the De-Visions platform borrowed a few readings from my Youtube account and then shared them in a different video format(?)
I honestly don’t mind. Thanks for the exposure, De-Visions.
The readings include my interpretation of Philippe Atherton-Blenkiron’s superb “Operation Staffhound,” as well as Jenny S.’s readings of my poems.
Gonna be about a beautiful woman falling in love with a Montana horse rancher — although he has a debilitating cold and a sore throat.
Gonna call it The Hoarse Whisperer.
Am I brilliant or what? Let’s take a vote — yea or neigh? (Quit stallion.)
Hey, it can’t all be “A” material, alright? And when you’re sick with a nasty cold, you write jokes like this.
Please — nobody tell me if this pun has been done before. I’m tired of learning that time travelers are stealing my jokes and then posting them in the past.
And if you argue this joke is bad, then I demand equus time.
[Update: OMG, I kid you not — right after I posted this, I picked up a new WordPress follower named “Horst.” You can’t make this stuff up, people. (And if you are reading this, my new German friend, I do not mean to offend you.)]
It’s about an insomniac member of the Green Lantern Corps. His mental power to focus his ring’s energy results from hours of sleeplessness.
You think Guy Gardner was a $%^&? This dude’s crankier.
Here’s a thought. If the upcoming “Captain Marvel” introduces the shape-shifting skrull to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (as far back as the 1990’s, at least), then does it create the possibility that any major players we’ve seen since the MCU’s inception are Skrull in disguise?
Like in the comics’ “Secret Invasion” storyline?
I kinda hope not, because it’s a terrible idea. But still.
Weird world — I ran this same post on Facebook and it gave me the option of “tagging” the skrull characters on the cover below, in case they were my friends. As Ford Fairlane would say, “Kooky.”
If so, send me to Stockholm. (Yeah, I know that’s where they hand you the Nobel, but I’ve always wanted to see Stockholm …)
My latest:
I’ll never show restraint on social media.
BECAUSE THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEMES.
I’m honored to share here that my poem “Roanoke Summer Midnight” appeared today over at The Piker Press. You can find it right here.
The Piker Press is an outstanding online journal of arts, sciences, fiction and non-fiction. As always, I’m grateful to Editor Sand Pilarski for allowing me to be a part of its creative community.
The morning after declaring a national emergency to fund the border wall without Congressional approval, the President of the United States asked (via tweet, of course) how television networks could “get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution.”
This is the President of the United States, people.
The tweet can (arguably, I suppose) be interpreted as an implicit call to violence against television networks. It all boils down to whether or not you view the word “retribution” as intrinsically violent. In fairness to the president, the various online dictionaries don’t actually require that — “retribution” can be defined as benignly as “recompense” or “reward,” or as ominously as “punishment for a crime” or “the act of taking revenge.”
But I will tell you that “retribution” is a word that I immediately associate with organized crime movies. (The example that springs to mind first is Robert Patrick growling it ironically in 1997’s “Cop Land.”)
Where were you that night, Jack?
I had nothing to do with it. That would be retribution, and that I leave to God almighty. I’m Gandhi.
If it helps to determine the president’s intention any, we can look at the Stalin-esque phrase he invokes, yet again, in his follow-up tweet: “THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” (And we know the man is sure of his assertion when he types it in all capitals.)
I’m personally reading the man’s comments in the context of what I’ve been reading lately from a few Trump supporters in my orbit via social media. I wrote previously on this blog about one of them openly calling for the large scale execution of “journslists” (they can never quite spell it) and Democrats. I have also heard from these individuals that the Second Amendment was created to protect us from journalists, while another hoped brightly that journalists get “eaten alive” (a metaphor, to be sure, yet hardly one that suggests a peaceable course of action).
But back to the tweet about “Saturday Night Live.” As though he were proceeding from some official Online Imbecile checklist, he was sure to include the term “Fake News” (his dumbed-down catchphrase for whatever he perceives as propaganda), as well as something childish (“very unfair”), something vague (“many other shows … should be looked into”) and something with inscrutable logic (“This is the real Collusion!”)
Again — this is the President of the United States, people.
Enjoy your Sunday.
A little Fredericksburg, VA, side street with a used bookstore, and indie comic shop, and a diner where you could get tons of coffee and omelettes.
The diner would have wifi. The comic shop owner would be a chill, affable local dude you could shoot the breeze with about the medium, or about current events. The used bookstore would sell a worn, dog-eared pocket dictionary so that you could learn to finally spell the word “omelette” correctly the first time. (I might just tear out that page and carry it in my wallet, along with the page containing “Pennsylvania.”)
And the entire street would be a block from the Rappahannock River, so you could take a stroll afterward.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 