I guess if WalMart is telling me to get back to work, then, I’d better get back to work.
(It’s certainly better than going to work at WalMart…)
Jul 302007
Jul 232007
If Religion is the Opiate of the Masses, then Philosophy is the NSAID. Not quite as potent, non-addictive and it doesn’t get you high, but may hurt your stomach.
Jul 222007
I was working on-and-off on a funny-as-all-get-out collection of Harry Potter NON-Spoilers, that is, events that I could guarantee would NOT happen in “Deathly Harry and the Potter Hallows” or whatever. But I wound up disappointing myself in the quality of the lines; meanwhile I kept hearing other ‘joke spoilers’ that duplicated my jokes. But then, the “Sopranos-esque-Eat-Onion-Rings-and-Go-Suddenly-to-Black-Ending” and the “Voldemort/Vader-Is-Harry/Luke’s-Father-Twist” are pretty obvious. By Thursday Evening, the latest I could post this and get noticed before the book came out, I was down on the whole enterprise. Still, I had a few worthy lines, so here are a few things that you’ll never find in the last Harry Potter book, or any Harry Potter book not written by an idiot or a smart-ass:
- Harry leads a gang of Hogwarts students to the streets of London, assaulting Christians.
- Hermione grows up to marry an Advertising guy named Darren.
- Harry is singled out and invited to become a transcendant post-human being by a vision resembling Wesley Crusher from “Star Trek: TNG”.
- The Hogwarts Academy is actually a small model inside a snowglobe, obsessed over by the real Harry Potter, an autistic boy in Boston.
- Voldemort admits responsibility for 9/11.
- Hedwig becomes famous as the “ORLY?” owl.
As for my own life, I remain hopeful that THIS is all a dream and I wake up in bed with Suzanne Pleshette. But with my luck, I’ll wake up and find Patrick Duffy in the shower.
Jul 142007
Finally, a media outlet takes a positive step beyond reporting catastrophes and toward preventing them. I think.
(And I just noticed at the very bottom of the clipping, the first in the list of “BBC Related Sites” listed is “Sport”)
Jul 092007
I had not been keeping up my blog about comics (web and otherwise), but when I did my usual jog through the aggregators of newspaper comics, I found so much that was weirder than usual, I had to sit down and take two-and-a-half hours to sum it all up. And THAT’s why I haven’t been keeping up this blog either…
Jul 082007
An aging radio fan (NOT ME) has put up a GeoCities (how 1997!) site in tribute to semi-legendary broadcaster and my former mentor “Sweet” Dick Whittington, including a reprinted magazine article documenting one of his stunts while I was his Assistant/Gopher/Sidekick.
Yes, I am the “Wendell” in the article AND I’m in this picture, standing to the right, trying to hide a tape recorder under my jacket from the London bobbies guarding 10 Downing Street. (They didn’t allow recording devices at the Prime Minister’s front door).
I may yet find him a better webplace for his little fansite, but in the meantime let me point out that (a) I was NOT responsible the lost cassette; that was Dave the Engineer’s fault, and (b) I did not record the “beer in Bangor” incident because my recorder’s batteries had run down after all I had recorded at the LA Airport send-off and on the flight (and Dave the Engineer had all the batteries, so I blame him again).
And that was a PG-rated ‘edited’ account of the Bangor incident from the Los Angeles Magazine writer – who went on to become, among other things, editor in chief at E!Online – and who got a free ticket to follow this adventure because we’d made promotional trade-offs with the airline and a London hotel for a dozen people – because one of the other ‘extra people’ along for the trip was Dick’s then-girlfriend, who requested to be kept out of the article, even though the real reason for their disappearance was so he could “bang her in Bangor”.