Thursday, June 30, 2011
Gastromoner
Who discovered the Planet of the Grapes? And still thinks the moon is made from green cheese?
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
John "Methuselah" Quincy Adams
According to Michele Bachmann, who was Abraham Lincoln channeling when he ordered the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863?
Monday, June 27, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
The pin is mightier than the sore
What do you say as you perform bathroom surgery and lance that boil?
The short plastic-produce-sticker rant
Okay – so you (we are talking the editorial “you” here, of course) paraglide, levitate or teleport into Trader Joes, Whole Foods, Waldbaums -- or any other purveyor of insanely overpriced produce.
You do your best Sunday Quasimodo shuffle across those oh-so expensive terra cotta tile floors. Knowing all the time that you are paying arm and leg, through the nose and up the wazoo for their hideously expensive up keep.
Ah, the organic produce aisle manages to materialize into in your blurry blood-shot eyeshot. All is copacetic. Auuuommmmm. Macro-biotic, hypoallegenic, ecologic. Green as chlorophyll, IPM and bacillus thurigensis.
You behold all manner of manifest globular miracles of Mother Nature. Rivaling Pamela Anderson, the Mark II model. Pears. Citrus. Apples. Tomatoes. Payaya. And melons that equal any pneumatic starlet or pole dancer. You serenely select the best of the bunch, check out and arrive home. Mouth watering for a god’s-nectar-laced bucket of fresh fruit.
The nirvana commences. You eat.
But then slowly mysteriously something swims into your semi-consciousness. You become aware of something foreign in your mouth. And I don’t mean mid-winter Chilean peaches. Your tongue makes like an Indy 500 car scouring your mouth. You fish it out. Only by the slightest chance and greatest luck has the item in question escaped your gullet, esophagus, stomach, duodenum- your entire bustling alimentary canal.
It is a plastic sticker.
It reads “Organic.”
You discover identical stickers affixed to each and every one of the examples of the fruit you have purchased.
Oh you see. The same mentality that pours forest-grown, prodigiously expensive, exquisitely-brewed-in-pure-quartz urn, organic-coffee into a styrofoam cup is in play here.
The mentality is called imbecilic moronic idiocy. It’s middle name is “ this defeats the entire purpose.” Its theme song is “Snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”
No doubt when we all die slow, agonizing and premature deaths from exotic plastic-generated cancers, the autopsies will reveal stomach, sticker deposits with more leaves than pages in Manhattan phone book.
All bearing the assertion “organic.”
Sigh….Rant finished.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
Renren, Dandang, Youku and SolarFun
What Chinese stocks must have been named -- and bought -- by a nursery school class?
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Friday, June 17, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Long Days Journey Into Night
What's the movie that starred Dawn Frantangelo, Fred Noonan and Yves Montagne?
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Hey We've Been Tweeting for years
What's the new musical starring Robyn Williams, Cardinal Cushing, Jay Leno and Atticus Finch?
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Bad Smell at Ebb Tide
What's one of Art Fern's Tea-Time Movies starring: Lawrence Welk, Buster Crabbe, Dinah Shore, Pearl Bailey, Johnny Rotten and Harriet Beacher Stowe.
Poop My Eye, Kiss Sky Goodbye
What's one of Art Fern's Tea-Time Movies starring: Walter Pidgeon, Bob Crane, Larry Bird and Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Pincer movement
When Beetle Bailey advanced to Four Star General, what was his first battle strategy?
Johnny Appleseed, Sharon Stone and Zazu Pitts
Who stars in the movie, Journey to the Center of the Fruit?
Monday, June 13, 2011
The Travel Rant
If I see so much as one more single measly puny inferior pixel of ecstatically happy and inane world travelers on this computer screen ---I am gonna hurl….
…the entire LCD out the window. And then, the unsettled sesame seeds in my stomach will become airborne on their mission to be a new wall paper pattern.
I mean, people seem love to parade and prattle around internet dating sites with those vapid-smile, brainless-grin photos in front of the Matterhorn, at Machhu Pichu, in Modena, near Mumbai.
Don’t they get it? The only message they send is that the tourist on shameless display is a rich, self indulgent, shallow, narcissistic, adrenaline sucking, exhibitionistic show-off.
“Look at me -- I can travel. I am ambulatory. I’m hyperactive. I have credit card.”
What about a little balance in life. Is not there room to similarly genuflect to agoraphobia, couch potato syndrome, shut-in-itis, general do-nothingality?
I am all for voyages to places of foreign extraction. That have any thing remotely construable as a purpose. You wanna loot overseas ancient relic sites for a local museum? Fine with me. Wish to boink in person that cute Russian hottie who emails dirty pictures. Get express airfare to Leningrad and pass go. Want to run up a horrendous search-and-rescue tab as you try to swim the North Sea. Knock yourself out. Need to smuggle prozac in from Tuvalu? Right on! Desirous to see the world? Sure . Join the Navy.
But mindless useless travel is so banal. Sooo ephemeral . It creates memories you say. You need that? Oh, then watch this fist. It will create a beautiful and lasting memory on your crushed face!
And what about when you die. Anything lasting at all then? Oh sure -- those 6000 under-exposed out-of-focus kodachromes of dank dreary English gardens. Which you dragoon hapless relatives into a unbroken fortnight orgy of watching on a dim screen in a dark hot uncomfortable living room.
Okay I grant you -- mindless consumptive world wide energy use -- in the support of trivial transportation - does create all sort of fab and groovy things that do endure. Nuclear waste. Global warming, Ozone layer depletion. Ice cap melting. Glacier vaporization .Rising seas. Wonderful. You get gold stars for all those long lasting special effects and future generation abuse, fellow travelers.
Oh and I almost forgot. The fetid humidity of halitosis-afflicted tourist threatens to ruin the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And vibration and air pollution from tourist busses has helped crumble the Sphinx into an oversized alley cat that needs a face transplant. And the Parthenon into a penitentiary rock pile. The mindless feeding of Yellowstone yogis and careless food disposal turns then into dangerous dumpster diver grizzlies. It’s the appetizer for their main course….
Tree-climbing tourists.
Yes!!!. Which makes it for the bear and non-travelers also…just desserts, doncha think?.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Saturday, June 11, 2011
My first encounter with a Warbird.
(A Warbird is a certain kind of vintage military airplane. Read on.)
It was a time immemorial. Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. The little airport there. The only security was a low wooden split-rail fence. And I was so young I had to look though, not over, the rails.
Some days or evenings in the summer my Uncle would drive me and my brother to the airport so we could watch the planes. Take off, land, taxi around, start-up and shut-down.
There was a control tower. And a grass lot to the side where planes were tied down when not flying. There were also a few gray matte-finished metal hangars further away.
This flock of small planes looked to me almost like a gaggle of geese. Or maybe even a recess at a girl’s school. They were mostly white. They sat even and level and quite low on tricycle landing gear. When their pilots started them up, the sound was of that of a motor that buzzed and whirred. They had big clear cockpit windows that looked almost like a pretty women’s eyes. They were rather cute and fetching to me. I was a little boy, but already I shyly and secretly liked girls.
Then one day we came to the airport and there was something different parked in among the familiar friendly white flower airplanes. Something I had never seen before. Something that looked like it had come from the Dark Ages. At first it seemed a malevolent monster. It was a Warbird. An airplane that flew in anger during World War Two. A single-engine craft that pursued bombers of the enemy -- and protected bombers of the Allies.
The Warbird was so huge it towered over and beyond the other planes like a dinosaur. It was painted in camouflage shades of very dark brown and green and black. With big bright bold American insignia on both sides and both wings. And it sat back on its haunches, like a bulldog poised to strike. Like a machine already pointed to the sky that was clearly its domain.
The cockpit looked to my young innocent eyes like a jail cell. The windows were heavily reinforced with metal and it was sunk far away from the front and deeply into the ridge of the plane’s backbone.
And the engine. It sat in a huge dark cavern at the very front of the plane. Up very high. I could hardly see inside to know what technical wonders, what immense power lurked within. Out from those mysterious bowels sprouted a shaft that held crosswise a shiny metal propeller so long and tall it was a giant saber of air, I thought. To the side I could see where the engine exhausted its gases. Most of the little planes had one, two or – rarely – three pipes to do so. I begin to count. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. And then I realized there were another nine on exhaust pipes the other side. The engine had 18 cylinders.
I stood next to my Uncle, transfixed by this amazing machine in a curious mixture of fear and rapt fascination and wonder. He leaned over and said very quietly, “That’s a Razorback, nephew. It was built by Republic.”
I knew I would never be so lucky as to see this magnificent bird-of-prey fly. Not a chance.
But then as I see out of the very corner of my eye, along came a man. The pilot of the warbird. No question. He was strong and young and tall and walked in long confident strides. But still how puny he was, compared to the massive and powerful ship he approached. To reach the cabin, he scaled a series foot holds like a rockclimber going up the face of a Himalayan mountain.
He slowly carefully raised a heavy cockpit door and then the monster suddenly enveloped him. The door closed with satisfying thud. He was inside. I can see just the head of the pilot in his pleasant prison and he was clearly checking many things before flight. All sound ceased for many moments. It was so silent I could hear the breezes I could usually only feel -- in the cacophony of a busy summertime resort airport at the height of season. It seemed if the whole world waited expectantly for this warbird.
The suddenly, a high pitched squeal broke the stasis. I heard gears grind, metal move, internals reciprocate. The pilot was starting the engine. The propeller turned slowly around.
And then all hell broke loose. The engine sputtered, coughed, and then caught with a roar and rumble so loud and deep it shook the ground and rattled my chest. It spewed withering feathery sheets of amber and orange flame, and billows of silver smoke out the exhaust. It seemed as if it was running not on mere gasoline, but on war itself. The noise was beyond stentorian. As a little boy, I often plugged my sensitive ears when something was too loud. But now I just stood and consumed in amazement this beautiful, strange and deafening music.
I feared the warbird had caught fire, was going to explode in a vicious conflagration and take every living within a mile with it.
But demeanor of my uncle – who flew in the war – remained calm. Indeed he cracked just the slightest of knowing smiles. I gathered that this clash of angry and violent mythical armies in front of my eyes was not that at all. It was just a normal and successful engine start procedure.
And indeed the engine and the million minions of parts in its belly quickly settled down. It idled back into a smooth powerful effortless lope. The smoke and flames dissipated. I heard incredible complexity, but it was all carefully operating – in tandem – as one. It was all in copacetic sync. It was running perfectly.
Before too long, the engine note rose just the merest iota. But so powerful was this powerplant and its propeller that this 6-ton plane quickly began to move . It had begun to taxi. It then slowly ponderously rotated on its wheels as if on a turntable and headed for the runway. Now I was behind, instead of in front of, that gargantuan fan. It suddenly blasted us all with furious buffeting gushes of hurricane wind -- heavily scented with the pungent perfume of engine smoke, raw aviation gas, hot oil and burning rubber. My hat careened off, but remain unfetched. I was too rapt to notice or care.
As it taxied, the pilot turned the warbird from side to side as it went. This puzzled me. Then I realized the engine was so big and the stance so aggressive that he could not see directly ahead on the ground. He had to partially turn the plane to each side and peer around from each side in turn. Wow.
Farther and farther away the big wardbird went. The runway seemed miles long to me. The plane receded so far in the distance that its rumble wafted in on the wind. But I could still see the big bright propeller spinning in the sun.
Now coming in on the wind I began to hear the sound of gathering thunder, of a mythological freight train coming down the track. The Warbird began to rumble down the runway toward us. In a flash it was upon us, deafening our ears with a hoarse and throbbing roar from its engine and a piercing snarl from its propeller. The ponderous bulldog pose was gone. Its tail was already flying above the ground and now it looked like a sleek streamlined cheetah streaking straight for its prey.
Most of the little planes slowly gracefully floated skyward when they took off. But this miracle beast attacked the atmosphere. It leapt almost vertically from the runway and cork skewered itself into the sky as if gravity had been repealed . My head spun at the dizzying rapidity of its ascent. It rose like an angel and with a trice was almost out of sight. My Uncle remarked the pilot had performed a chandelle on take-off. His tone indicated that was rather unusual. To say the least, I learned later
As Uncle drove us home, with the wonderful scent of engine in our clothes and the echoes of its the rumble ringing in our ears, I realized I had been weeping. They were not tears of pain or sorrow or fear. But something akin to joy or religion or gathering awareness.
I wondered if I had ever lived before and that this magnificent flying machine had been the one I died in.
Abe Lincoln, Freddie Mercury and Betty Ford
What did three members of The Cars just change their names to?
Friday, June 10, 2011
The War of the Words
What's going on in the terms: spendthrift, firewater, drywell, nightlight and fastfood?
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Top dozen reasons you know you are a skinflint when:
12. You use dehumidifier condensate to flush toilets-- and pray for heat waves.
11. You have an annual spending budget. It is zero
10. You roll your own cigars from dust bunnies
9. You consider electric shaver cleaning a good time to harvest dietary protein
8. You try to plumb your sewer ducts into your propane tank
7. You make flies into pets by pulling off their wings.
6. Your idea of a mid-winter romantic blazing fire is to turn up the quartz heater a notch.
5. Your have health insurance under the YGSYD program ( You Get Sick, You Die )
4. You try to excise your glioblastoma multiforme with a brace and bit, dental mirror and quart of novacaine.
3. You lift weights so you can steer your truck while coasting with the engine off.
2. You recycle toilet paper. As dinner knapkins. And…..
(drum roll)
1. The medial report comes back ands it says ….your epidermis is chert.
Ask not what your country can do for you , it tolls for thee.
What came out when the co-channeling of JKF and Hemmingway went terribly wrong?
Anthony Weiner, Frank Furter, and Snoop Dogg
Who are the latest inductees into the Phony Baloney Hall of Fame?
Home sweet home
What's the name of assisted living facility for Candy Samples, Sugar Ray Robinson, the Three Muskeeters, and Gum...by
No ifs ands or buts
What rules out any legal document that ever existed, does exist and/or will exist in the history of the universe?
Spahn and Sain and pray for rain
What did the ADHD afflicted gardener and baseball trivilogist think about?
The worlds longest pick up line
Top seven reasons why you (fill in name) are eye candy..and just a teensy weinsy bit more
7 - Because you bring me Almond Joy
6 - Because you make my knees as weak as Turkish Taffy
5 - Because you turn my brain into cotton candy
4 - Because I want to shower you with Hershey’s kisses
3 - Because your clever assertive coy flirty funny way about you gives me the Snickers
2 - Because your charm is, like, totally, Good and Plenty..and (drum roll please)
1 - Because when I lower my gaze upon you just a little, I think of (ahem) extremely delectable, beautiful and fetching Peter Paul Mounds……and Bazooka Bubble Gum…and the Two Musketeers
But mere “eye candy” is kind of, like, calling a supernova a nice little sparkler. I mean I am talking orgasmic, metaphysical, universe-shattering, ocular nirvana here…
You are like a religious experience. Like, Genesis, Resurrection and The Second Coming (pun intended) all rolled into one. Somehow you channel Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe and Mamie Van Doren all into one beautiful body. Wearing one extremely small and overstressed bikini.
You prove that God is a woman. And living on the barstool next to me
You turn every drab pixel on my brain LCD into positively picture perfect 32 billion color pulchritude.
Among the pantheon of pretty and unobtainable (at least to a troll like me) women you are like the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, the rainbow pot of gold and the Higgs Boson combined.
And such power – when you put your arms together you can melt diamonds, crush walnuts, fuse ti…oops…er…ah…tritium. With a mere thought you can part the Red Sea, freeze hell over and make pigs fly like bumblebees on crack. You can pay off the national debt from your lunch money. You effortlessly cure low T, ED, steroid banishment and metrosexual wimpitude.
You can graciously, gracefully and gently get down on your knees, part your luscious red lips, look straight up into my eyes and mouth the following words:
“I want to blow you……away…”
You turn men into raging beasts, jabbering idiots, quivering ninnies, bamboozled bozos and eager spokes-slaves for the American Diary Association. You make my eyes water, jaw drop, teeth tingle, stomach flutter, loins stir and my socks roll up and down at 90 miles an hour. Plus (ahem) certain activity in other corpulent structures.
In your wake you leave a trail of blown minds, broken hearts, swollen pride, long-standing members and monuments erected in your honor. And, men who want to consume foxy felines, stroke souls, Harley-Dee imaginary hairlines and Porky-Pig twin mountain peaks. (“Not that there’s anything wrong with that..”)
If you are 41 – oh well then I am the Uncle of Bonzo, Ham, King Kong and Curious George. No flippen way.
Rocket science you cannot do, you say? You don’t have to – you can convert a convention of astrophysicist into a gooey blubbering pool of horny protoplasm.
To put it in shelf-speak – you’ve gotta rack nicer than the gold-plated diamond-coated platinum frame that Donald Trump hangs his toupees on.
So to conclude in rapt, thunderstruck, mind-boggling adoration -- I will stop beating around the bush and making subtle noises that might be misunderstood.
I like you gurl!
Monday, June 6, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Frappes, earthquakes, baked chicken and Jerry Lee Lewis
What are the core tenets of the Shaker religion?
Saturday, June 4, 2011
The plaint of the phony architect, or How not to get a date, etc. Part umpteen
And now a word from our sponsor – caution— tongue in cheek – salt shakers ready?…
People ask me why my screen name is R_Chitect. Hellloowwww? I mean -- I built the Tower of Babel. Put up the walls of Jericho. Made the flood control levee for Atlantis. And I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale.
In short -- I have a sterling reputation. (Oh silver polish? What’s that?) I am internationally un-renown. I even won the Ig-Nobel prize. I am honorable and honest as a mid-June day in Antarctica is long.
There’s more. I’m a good listener when my hearing aid is adjusted properly. And once my ritalin scrip kicks in, I have vast powers of concentration. I have successfully completed courses in anger management, sensitivity training and metrosexual wimpiness. Still not convinced? My real name is Frank Lloyd..(..yeah, Wright). I named my daughter Joan of Arch. My boat was christened Noah’s Arch. And I have fallen arches.
Let’see-- other interesting things about me. I am fixated on women named Betty. Boop, Page, Apple Brown and that nice ole lady that runs England. Interesting how many women names are derived from Elizabeth? Bette, Betty, Beth, Elisa, Liz, Lisa, Lizzie, Leisa, Abe… (oops!) Almost as many as the rich permutations of men’s names from Felix, Ignatz, Bozo,Rufus, Fang and Hey-You-Dummy.
Ok, time to close w/all those cool hackneyed internet aphorisms –
ciao 4 niao,
TTFN,
toodles,
“hosta” lavista,
C U L 8 R, A V 8 R
Forward slash, html, greater than
Now….You wouldn’t even think of deflowering my spotlessly clean, still-virginal, email inbox!
Thursday, June 2, 2011
It happened on July Fourth...
My own private airshow
It was one of those evenings for the ages.
Sunset. July 4. The verdant and purple mountains gobbled down a blazing ball of red to the west. It seemed as if the earth paused expectantly at the crescendo of the year, the latest twilight, the longest afternoon. Nighthawks darted silent overhead, feasting on a banquet of bugs. A hermit thrush sung ever briefly from its perch high and deep in the woods, as if to put a perfect coda on the day.
But there was more soon to come.
The air lay in a curiously light gentle dry blanket upon the land. Cool, balmy and light Canadian zephyrs wafted in from the distant hills of New Hampshire and beyond, not that usual heavy damp draft, laden with southern humidity, of most Independence Day weekends.
While embalmed in this pleasant stasis, I sensed, then felt, then heard, a deep rumble from high in the heavens. My vision lifted to the sky and was greeted with the approach of four military aircraft. Their intensely dark angular but sleek shapes perfectly matched the growing and soon monstrous, marvelous thunder in my ears -- from engines built for war and fettered only by the restraint of their pilots. In apparent slow motion, these ponderous and powerful machines now reconnoitered, pinwheeled, banked and lazily loitered right over my house, no less than a hundred feet up. The marker lights on their wing tips glowed brilliantly like sparks of burning magnesium.
As if on cue, I found myself snapping to attention and offering up a salute. In spite of myself, I felt a sense of national pride, a surge of good old American testosterone, as I saw close hand what billions upon billions of national defense dollars can create.
For a few moments we – I and this quartet of technology almost beyond my imagining – seem to eye each other with curious caution. I well knew they could – in a trice – convert my quiet humble and modest reality to a smoking hole in the ground, with a merest fingertip motion. Perhaps they in turn wondered about this miniature man on a white flat roof, nested in a forest and unusual from the air.
But before I knew it this rare moment of equilibrium passed. These four sinister, sinuous birds of prey took their leave due east. For they had an Independence Date with destiny over the Charles River and the Hatch Shell. All that was left was a faint perfume of jet fuel and an echo that rumbled and rolled off the hills to the west. And then receded into a deep growling whisper. Was it just my imagination or did one of these aerial gladiators tip his wings in acknowledgment to my salute as he departed?
I was about to clamber slowly down in the gathering dusk from my roof top vantage point when Nature proved it always has the last word. Levitating up through a sea of leaves came a tiny hummingbird to put on a little airshow of its own.
Barely bigger than a bumblebee, it hovered, it darted pugnaciously, it hung in mid air as if the law of gravity had been repealed. Then with an iridescent flash of green and red, it spun on a dime and zoomed out of sight in a flash, as if to squeak:
“Hey! Look at me! Look at me! I’m a fly boy too!!”
2005
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