Mr. Bertrand writes: “January is National Brain Surgery Month, or Na-BS-Mo for short. Each year, people across the country get out their hacksaws and X-Acto knives and perform daringly complex between-the-ears procedures. You may not realize it, but each of us has at least one brain operation inside us. The trick is to let it out!”
Insightful.
I’ve watched enough Jeeves & Wooster and House that I shouldn’t have been surprised. Hugh Laurie has the answer.
Courtesy of Patrick Carver at Southern Appeal.
James Lileks, the chariots of the Blogosphere and the horses thereof, has added a new section to his Institute of Official Cheer, over at lileks.com. It’s called Comic Ads in Comics.
In the past James has made us wince through revealing the amazing awfulness of pictures of food in old recipe books, and interior decoration as practiced in the 1970s (apparently entirely by blind people). But I think this new section may be the most painful of them all. Ugly, mendacious and pathetic all at once, the old comic ads from comic books are like one of those hypnotherapy sessions on TV crime shows, where the traumatized victim screams “No! No!” as the police hypnotist tries to pull some horrible, suppressed memory out of his subconscious, like a dentist yanking a healthy tooth. Anybody who spent any time with comics in their childhood (and I read a few, though only when they were given to me. The folks wouldn’t let us spend money on the things. I see their point now) will recognize those ads. Post-traumatic stress ensues.
I think I’ve mentioned previously that, before I set my personal sights on immortality through literature, I dreamed of being an artist. I drew incessantly as a kid. I had no high-brow pretensions. I wanted to draw stuff that looked like stuff. I wanted to be another Norman Rockwell or Howard Pyle. I thought I might be a cartoonist, or a commercial artist.
So I can imagine myself snagging an entry-level job with Marvel or DC, and being assigned to draw these abominations as part of my apprenticeship. It reminds me of something I used to say, when I was contemplating (theoretically) what it would be like to try to be a professional actor—“If you’re really lucky, you get to prostitute yourself.”
All in all, I think I prefer being a failed novelist to being a failed artist.
(I mean, “Captain Tootsie.” Nothing could justify that. Nothing.)
(The scene opens with a shot of an American suburban kitchen. AMANDA is seen standing at a counter with a cardboard box in her hand. Her daughter HEATHER enters and observes what she’s doing.)
HEATHER: Mom, what are you doing with that rat poison?
AMANDA: I’m going to put some out, honey. I saw a rat in the pantry, and I can’t stand rats.
HEATHER (putting her hands on her hips): Mom! You can’t do that!
AMANDA: Why not?
HEATHER: Don’t you listen to the news? They told us about it in school. You can’t poison rats. It’s against the law. Continue reading Public service announcement
In 2009 this country will inaugurate as president a man whose election represents a major alteration in our society.
This president will be a representative of a minority group which has too long been banished to the periphery of society, subjected to ridicule and discrimination, and denied equal rights under the law.
I refer, of course, to smokers. Continue reading Free at last!
Here’s your Halloween post of horror with original reporting by me. Police across the nation are gearing up for a bizarre Halloween night this year, anticipating shooting rampaging in many neighborhoods in just about every city. No one is safe.
Blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter threads, overheard conversations, word on the street, telepathy–intelligence of every kind is leading police to conclude that thousands of parents of trick-or-treaters are planning to shoot children, neighbors, passersby, anything at any time. Deputy Mule Culwick of Huckshire Township said some parents even will have high-powered cameras capable of shooting pictures in very dim light.
Citizens are advised to avoid opening their doors tonight, especially when cute munchkins or specters of economic disaster ring the doorbell. Hurling candy at them may not be defense enough. Playing their game is out of the question. You may need to hire a ninja.
One kid: “Hey, I thought I had more candy than this?” (Ninja take from he with too much)
Two kids: “How’d we get so much candy in our bags?” (Ninja give to them with little)
Red kid: “Did we hit all the houses in this neighborhood already?” (Ninja sweep bad kids down street)
Blue kid: “Wow! I’ve got a handful of Smarties, and no one’s even opened their door to me yet!” (Ninja give candy without dangerous interaction from host. Also, Smarties official candy of Brandywine Books. Nerds also official.)
No, this isn’t my favorite Lutheran hymn, as Phil requested. I just thought it was amusing for Reformation Day.
Hat tip: Ed Veith at Cranach. (Don’t blame me.)
The story of Rachel Yoder’s angst, murder, and the years of cover-up by Mary DeMuth, budding Amish crime novelist. “Rachel suddenly couldn’t find her voice. Hearing Stephen sounding so sinister choked it from her. He didn’t sound like his simple Amish self! She moaned again.”
I think I’d have to work pretty hard to think of a less significant question than the one I pose below, but it nags at me. I’ve been meaning to blog about it for some time.
How come there isn’t any pine-scented room deodorizer anymore?
Oh, I know you can buy it during Christmas season. This is especially for people like me who have artificial trees (I’m a middle-aged bachelor, for pete’s sake—it’s not like I’m denying my heirs a Precious Memory). It allows us to pretend that we have a real tree desiccating in our living spaces, as long as we keep the lights pretty low and our eyes squinty. Which we middle-aged bachelors do quite a lot anyway, because we’re still trying to master that Charles Bronson thing that somebody said worked so well with the chicks in the ’70s.
Even longer ago than that, when I was but a wee keebler, pine was about the only kind of room deodorizer you could get. It came in a narrow glass bottle. You unscrewed the steel cap and pulled it outward, and a thick terrycloth wick that was attached to it came out of the bottle. You pulled it as far as you liked, depending on whether you wanted “a vague whiff of Douglas Fir from a distant mountain” or “bathing in a vat of Pine-Sol,” and evaporation did the rest. The bottle generally lasted about three days, I think, no matter how much wick you exposed. But it was a pine smell, and it pleased me. Continue reading Any pine in the Glade?