Sunday Funnies are back!

dealing with the frigid cold here.

Winter...what'cha gonna do?

in flight

archival tape

features various pronunciations of

squee, and eep!

as told by the children

of those who've flown

into the wind with

black devils.

Odd tales, older than your father,

regaled with a drink

of rats on the wing

give chase to squeamish

thoughts

and squirming bums,

where the windows pause for shadows

and light has no taste

for monsters.

Tom and Dinosaur Hand review...

Tom and Dinosaur Hand review: Argo, Lincoln, Life of Pi and The Hobbit.

Dinosaur Hand: Ay caramba, el Tomas! That's a load o'movies!

Tom: I know, Dino. We don't usually see so many new movies, and these were all in the theater, so I guess things are looking up for us.

D.H: Heh, not our bank accounts.

Tom: I think of the four movies, Argo had to be my favorite. Ben Affleck directed and starred, and I gotta say: he knocked it out of the ballpark.

D.H: Yeah, I really liked the part with Sammy Sosa. This was very cool, and all of the explosions and gun runners and drug dealers getting whacked...Steven Seagal in his kimono twisting that machete into his guts...masterful.

Tom: What? Good lord, wrong movie, and Sammy Sosa? Wtf?

D.H: Your baseball metaphor threw me off...like maybe it was an interception, or a butt fumble...I don't know!

Tom: Obviously, Dino, this wasn't your type of movie. It was suspenseful, but not what you'd call violent...I thoroughly enjoyed it however, and so did the two old ladies sitting behind us who couldn't keep their mouths shut, probably because their hearing was shot and they didn't know how loud they were talking.

D.H: Damn, I hate going to movies!





Tom: Next up, a Steven Spielberg movie, and how can you go wrong with Spielberg?

D.H: The man who brought us Jaws, and E.T., and of course Jurassic Park...I jumped clean out of my skin when that T-Rex ate the lawyer! Then I laughed my ass off!

Tom: Right, and he directed great movies like Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan. Look up his filmography – wow.

D.H: He was the executive producer of Used Cars!

Tom: Um. I enjoyed that. Anyway...Lincoln. Wow, what a wonderfully great movie. And Daniel Day-Lewis gave what is arguably the best performance of his life. I didn't really like (at all) the last couple of movies he was in...but Lincoln was superb.

D.H: There Will be Blood! Where was it?

Tom: C'mon, Dinosaur Hand! Really; this was about politics and the 13^th Amendment, wheeling and dealing in Washington D.C...and Lincoln's woebegone life! It was quite immense. The human parts with his child, and his inconsolably demented wife were so...real.

D.H: Blither. Blither and blather. Blither blather...blah blah blah blah, bleh. And not even any popcorn. Swimming in a sea of popcorn, glub blub, blub.

Dinosaur Hand: I liked Life of Pi! The tiger was pretty awesome. But really, it should have eaten that kid. And there weren't enough shark battles!

Tom: Oh. This is the first movie I've seen in 3-D since Avatar, and if you haven't seen Avatar in 3-D, well then, don't bother seeing Avatar.

D.H: Yeah, that was very cool in 3-D. Totally, dude. Notice the rad hand gesture?

Tom: Indeed. The Life of Pi was interesting. The 3-D didn't add much, but it was visually beautiful to watch. The special effects were amazing. I've read the book...

D.H: Enough about “reading the book”, I know you're going to say the book was better. Some of us don't read, you know.

Tom: Actually, the movie and the book were pretty much the same. I remember liking the book, but not enough to ever reread it, so you may as well see the movie. It was good. Not great.

Dinosaur Hand: Okay, OK, my turn, my pick, the next movie and the last one we saw...was:

Tom: The Hobbit.

D.H: Bah! You stole my thunder!

Tom: I'm about to do more than that. This movie was a major neck aching, butt scrunching, back tweaking yawner.

D.H: But, the dwarfs!

Tom: Who cares. What were their names, who could keep track of them? Sleepy, Sneezy...Dopey?

D.H: Unfair! The orcs! And Gollum!

Tom: I was sooo disappointed in this movie. Everything was over the top... the action scene in the goblin caverns was completely utterly hokum...they made Bilbo into a hero too early – he was doing courageous things that he never succumbed to in Tolkien's magical book. I found myself laughing at the stupidity of the movie more and more every next scene. Peter Jackson, you should have relied on your story telling skills more than Weta Digital's mind numbing special effects. I left the theater with a crick in my neck – because I was holding my head up trying not to fall asleep (though I ought to have let sleep take me) – and an overwhelming feeling of nauseousness.

D.H: But, the eagles, and Gandalf...The Ring!

Tom: Of course there were a few nice parts, but the movie was awash with utter bunk and chaos. And good grief, there are to be two more!? Count me out.

D.H: Are you saying you didn't like The Hobbit, then?

Tom: Go soak yourself in a dish of Palmolive, Dinosaur Hand. We will not be furthering the dismal efforts of Peter Jackson any more.

Stick to the cartoon...it also sucked, but was a lot shorter.

mission impossible

Through the visor the astronaut could make out vague shapes in the distance – ahead a structure towered, but he was fatigued from the journey and needed to rest a moment. He walked on the street, it was a narrow avenue, and came to the one door that stood out from many. There was a mark on the door, and the astronaut knocked upon it.

“What do you want, can't you see? I'm dressed for dinner.” Behind the man behind the door was a woman in red, and climbing upon her back was a small girl, or perhaps a monkey in a dress. The astronaut couldn't see well behind his visor.

He raised an arm, longed to feel the thread, but felt the impeding stranger behind the door glowering through his mask, the scene was harassed by the sun visor.

> “Might I remove my helmet?” The resulting motions and colors could, should probably, blind the astronaut, the caustic air might choke him, but his fingers inside his gloves itched and he struggled with the bolts on his helmet.

“You fool. Come inside and sit in the bathtub.” The well dressed man set aside his pork chop, then bade his wife and monkeychild to lean against the wall. They disappeared into the camouflage swales and buttes of the wallpaper.

> The astronaut was led through a maze of halls, and came upon a glorious toilet, a veritable spa. A polyhedron construct on wheels hovered in the corner, covered in tin foil. “You have my moonwalker,” he said, but he had lost the keys.

> The man turned on a fan and then an ultraviolet light. “The women have gone out into the yard, they are sitting under a shade awning and peeling butterflies.” He closed the door.

> Taking this for a sign, the astronaut clumsily removed his helmet and let it drop to the tile floor, then he held his breath and waited to die. He scrunched his eyes shut and thought about his wife, so many hundreds of miles away, and how she drew upon the walls, and grew tumbleweeds for the garden. They would put a cloth upon the table and sometimes sit naked on it. She wore lipstick and longed to live among the birds. Strangers averted their eyes, fearing their repertoire, and they cavorted stopping only to write letters. Then he was chosen, and whisped away.

> The astronaut found he could breath, and finally he looked out of the window, but the woman and her child had left the shade and only a large hairy ape remained and was menacing a woman on the ground. Her clothes were torn, he had seen it before and turned to the door.

This room was no place to be, it suffocated the astronaut. He removed his spacesuit taking with him only a utility belt and tried the door handle. It was unlocked, outside on a chair a girl sat reading the morning paper but she didn't look up, only said “have a nice day.”

> It was a shame, he thought, that he would have to die today, in a strange place. The astronaut had taken a bath towel and wrapped it around his head. With a screwdriver he drove holes through the cloth and left only a blind of small threads to fall over his eyes. The air burned and sucked the moisture from his eyes and he blanched under the towel. He couldn't find a passage out, so the astronaut loaded his lazer with long shards of electricity and blasted a hole down the breadth of the house, then stumbled through the devastation. The last room he passed contained headless bodies that pumped blood, spurting onto the floor and tables. He slipped, but a large hole led to the outer wall, and he escaped.

> Beyond the street loomed a tower, he could see it now, the obstructing helmet lay on the cold tile behind him. His eyes burned, the astronaut felt them slowly melting. His skin felt loose, but he needed to keep moving. To the tower.

People in the streets were running with flags, he almost tripped on a mustache, a child ran with a machine gun and screamed Veritas, Veritas in a high pitched voice. He wanted to strangle the running boy, but then lips hovered over his ear, the sweet voice of his wife so far away, and she calmed him and put images of painted hands, floating breasts, splashing into his mind's eye. For a moment he stood taller, but the tiny lizards began creeping up his socks, and the astronaut had to flee, lest a stasis should take him to dissolves his bones in a bath of brine and the scythe of a toothy grimace.

Finally he came upon the square, stepping over the prone bodies of men and women that littered the cobbles. The tower rose ahead, but the only way to gain entry was through a vast orifice that throbbed in his path. There was nothing for it, but to struggle forward, and he pierced the gobbling membrane with a lance and blundered through. Inside the air was if anything more foul, but his skin was coated in a slime that soothed and his watering eyes blinked rapidly. The scales began to shed and the astronaut could see clearly again. He unwrapped the towel and tied it to his waist, looking up and seeing the tower rise into the cloudscape. Though his muscles ached, he jumped forward, feeling the utility belt bang against his leg, and grasped a rung.

> The astronaut had trouble thinking, but his training took over. The tactics had been forced onto him over a period a months, he performed endless tasks over and over again. Now his undertaking was to climb, one hand over the other, for as long as it took. If he could, he must reach the summit. An appliance in his belt felt the change in altitude and a needle protruded into his leg. The astronaut winced, but carried on.

At the first level he stopped for a moment. A small aircraft had crashed here and a woman was laying on the metal deck of the platform, sitting up out of her skin. She had failed, but he was still alive. He leaned over into the cockpit and found several vials of Q serum laying on the floor. Only one was unopened, and he unscrewed the lid and drank the purplish fluid inside. He hoped it would suffice, and then went back to the ladder. The astronaut climbed.

> In the gloom that pervaded he saw his wife, she washed her long black hair, was toweling it slowly. That day they reclined in their bed, then laid a dog skin rug at the foot of the mountain and made friends with dark neighbors. A man from the park office showed them how to transplant red organs and they practiced. It was fun. Their heads almost split from the knowledge; the astronaut became lethargic and his body felt like the bust of a Roman god. Legless, armless, crumbling and noseless. He came to the third landing and crawled up, found a metal arm and leaned upon it.

> The astronaut looked into his utility belt, but there was nothing in it but a spent lazer and a screwdriver that he longed to plunge into his heart, the bloody organ he had traded for his wife's. It beat and reminded him, but the day was done. A latticework of filaments upon his chest throbbed and cursed, but no training could prevent the inevitable.

The astronaut slumped and then lay still, while the bubble burst and the sky opened, etching his worn body into a filigree upon the rusting iron scaffold.

deep

Come out of your tunnel, and taste the rain. These bleak, gastric undulations that pull you in, that you wander through unimpeded yet ducking – they keep you humble like an earthworm, like a troll hovering for a handout. Riches are not forthcoming, nothing will come your way but the pennies falling through cracks. Come out, let your back even out, crack those vertebrae, let the sun cauterize your rancid wounds, finger the dew that dribbles off the edge of a leaf. Every bend brings a weary new sameness. Every muted gray, feathered tendril of marauding root, crumb of obstreperous soil brings around a circular tangle of not again here we go and nothing ventured nothing gained. Hear the rain, climb up, and out, drown in the hard wet drops that want only to bash in your brains, tunnel into the lines of your diminishing face, puddle in your eyes. Taste it, and let the rain shape your dreams, then put your foot to the test, follow the rain running rivulets in the dirt and revel in the mud, it colors your world and rainbows shift in the folds of conquest.

embrace the night

In the office where the window is an afterthought, clothed in black shutting out the eve, hangs my painting of Oliver Dorman, eccentric. The office is stark, equipped only with a maple desk and chair. A bookshelf stands in the corner where a sliver of light from the open door leaks in. Upon this desk is a blank sheet of paper, and a pen that is all but empty of ink. It matters not. Oliver Dorman winces in his portrait, not fond of sitting the prerequisite length of time. He scrunches up his nose and pouts, but the artist paints over this grim affair with brush, gives his model an air of contempt and a glass for contemplation. If ever the door slams, the front door to this abode, the pen moves about; it is inching closer to the edge, off the page, nearer to the brink, ready to take the plunge. The worn wooden planks, scuffed below the four legged butt holder, lie cold over stretched beams and hard packed clay. Quiet they have lain for hours, even days, frigid and replete with tedium, anxious to receive any clue, a sign from above. Just a draft gives rise to a thought, places its icy finger on the page and lifts a corner, forging an intimate turn of phrase, and forgetting like a candle does, its flame dancing on a breeze that snuffs it and travels on. What little light remains evaporates, taking Oliver Dorman with it into the night, and blackness creeps in, filling at last the creaky floorboards, stopping them like glue and only the rafters speak now, in low tones bidding another day farewell; goodnight.

Willow's Ball !

Really, another year has gone by and it's time for the world, no, galactically famous Willow's Ball?!

I'm sooo compelled to attend, but this always ends so badly for me. Dinosaur Hand typically gets me in trouble; all of his pinching and grabbing invariably get me slapped or thrown through a plate glass window. My dates always turn up missing...usually they're in the wine cellar getting it on with someone famous or changing into a bat or something equally icky. Last year Dino drove into the Scioto and my Tuxedo of purple ash leaves washed away and I ended up handcuffed to the banister...

Ah, memories...

Well, my date this year was easy. First I thought to ask the Love Is girl, but as she is anatomically incorrect and there wouldn't be much chance of any wicked fun after the ball, I passed. I was introduced to this perfectly gorgeous pair of legs months ago by our lovely hostess, Willow. My wonderfully quiet date couldn't really say "No," so she'll be at my side all night. Dinosaur Hand will help me keep her close. She can go all night, so please feel free to cut in. I do need to get around to all of the other lovely ladies, though with all of the masks I doubt I'll know who I'm dancing with.

I couldn't decide what to dress as this year, as willow insists on a masked ball. I've got this crazy elephant head, and the trunk is great as it will hold a wine glass and leave the hands free for other stuff...but this being an election year I thought to stay away from anything even remotely political...Drinks and politics don't mix, and Glenn is always about with a sword or muskets...

My unicorn is still at the dry cleaners...

An empty Box on wheels is always a good idea...I guess my date could pull me around and feed me drinks and cookies through a hole.

I'm not good at the costume thing, or masks. I prefer to just be a rug,

 

or wear a paper bag over my head and tell bad jokes all night long,

or just put my fingers over my eyes.

In the end I've decided to come as an Octopus...that way my many hands will confuse the multitude of guests and nobody will be able to guess which one is Dinosaur Hand. He'll like that...a lot!

Okay, we're on our way...the drive isn't too long from Ft. Wayne, the weather is nice, and we're looking forward to seeing some of our best old bloggy friends, and some new ones as well. Look out for the red Tracker, possibly floating down the Scioto again, Cheers!