My photo file is filling up. I have 2 choices. I can allow my computer to crash and then panhandle for a new one - or I can share all this crap with you. Why do people put pictures on FB? Sorry, that's too deep for me. Here's some stuff I got recently.
These photos break down into 2 basic categories
1) Animals:
Uh... hi yerself?
Yeah - just showing me up - I could never stay on those things
I know people who don't check before opening the door
Mother Husky of Cluckutta
I'm sure I've worked for this guy
and 2) Deep thinking
Does the horse drive the boat?
Staying with the transportation vein
Disappointment
If Bob Ross finished the Sistine Chapel
Now we're talking!
Thanks Al
I decided to get Zen - or lazy in posting a video today. I went to my FB page and chose the first vid I liked. The winner was posted by D.T. As I'm musically ignorant, I've never heard of this musician. The good news is that I've found a new musician I like. The bad news is that he just died.
On two previous
occasions I’ve made overtures to two great corporations for
sponsorship: Little Debbie and Starbucks. Surprisingly,
nothing has come of either proposal. I’m getting tired of eating
post-expiration-date bread from the thrift store. (I suspect they’re
lying about that “nutrient-rich spinach coating.”) It’s time
to make another try.
Yes, I know that
I’ve had my issues with Disney, but I just want to let them know
that I’m the kind of guy that can get past old disagreements and
gain new perspective – you know… be bought.
To show the kind
of work I’m prepared to do on their behalf, I’ve written new
lyrics to one of the most hated tunes of all time, It’s a Small
World After All.
Here’s the tune.
I dare you to put it on continuous loop for an hour and not go pee
in your neighbor’s coy pond or some other act of suburban
terrorism. To spice up the chorus (which is only 6 words – 7 if
you count a contraction as 2,) I’ve put in words to be sung
subliminally beneath the line, After All. My version is a
little more syncopated on the 2nd, 4th, and 6th
lines of the verses as well. I mean, c’mon! I can’t leave it
like it is.
So Betty Wryte-Goode interviewed me for her column on Bethlehem
Writers Roundtable. Of course she misquoted me. She might have been
awestruck like these folk from Life of Brian.
Here’s what I remember from the interview.
BWG: Tell me about Humor.
Headley: Humor’s different than writing mystery,
sci fi, or road signs. The rule of humor is that it has no rules.
Humor thrives on almost out-worn taboos, and twisted thinking. If
you think too straight, no web site will screw you up enough to be
funny.
BWG: Then how does a humor writer prepare? Isn’t
there anything online that will help you? How about Cracked?
Headley: Not screwy enough.
BWG: There’s George Takei’s I’m not right in
the head.com. Is it helpful?
Headley: These sites are great if you’re looking
to be entertained, but I found out the hard way that stealing other
people’s stuff is usually not a good idea.
BWG: Oh dear! Is there nothing online that helps
you prepare?
Headley: Sure, there’s stuff. The news is always
good. Some humor writers go straight to the off-beat news sites
like…
(alright, I drew a blank here,)
but I think it’s better to go for the
straight stuff. Well, there really isn’t any straight stuff
anymore, but the sources that are supposed to give you the straight
stuff likeReuter’s
or UPI. If you’re going for processed news, you should definitely
choose one from column A and one from column B. If you go to MSNBC,
or CNN, you should also go to The Blaze or Fox News. You can’t get
too political – well, you can, ‘cause there are no rules, but
it’s a hard row to hoe if you’re trying to make someone laugh,
and convert them to your cause. How many funny Jehovah’s Witnesses
have you met?
BWG: Two.
Headley: Really? Do you remember any of their
shtick? I knew there was something about that 144,000 thing that had
potential.
BWG: I’m sorry, I don’t remember, but stealing
from them is “not usually a good idea,” right?
Headley: Sometimes I make exceptions.
BWG: This interview is supposed to be about helping
other writers, remember?
Headley: Okay, as long as you promote my book.
You’re going to promote my book, right?
BWG: At the end. So once you have the news, what do
you do?
Headley: Think like a dog.
BWG: Pardon me?
Headley: It doesn’t have to be a dog. You can
think like a cat, canary, giant squid – any creature that comes
into contact with humans. The giant squid probably isn’t so good,
‘cause all it would be thinking is, ‘humans in a can – are they
tasty? Do they go well with a kelp garnish?’ There’s not really
a lot of range in thinking like a giant squid.
Cats are better.
BWG: Explain, please.
Headley: Animals are funny. If you don’t believe
me, check your Facebook page and count how many posts you see of cats
and dogs doing funny things, or giving funny looks. Animals are
funny because they think better than we do. Most of what they think
makes sense. That’s pretty twisted thinking to most humans ‘cause
most of what we do is stupid. We puzzle and amuse animals and they
return the favor. You want to make something funny, think like an
animal.
BWG: Perhaps you might give us an example.
Headley: Think of any old story like Jack and the
Bean Stock. Now think of it from the perspective of the golden
goose, or the cow that Jack sells for the beans. You straighten out
the story when you think like an animal, which means it sounds all
twisted to humans.
BWG: But most of your work that I’ve read is from
a human point of view.
Headley: That’s the final twist. Put that animal
thought into a human brain. You want to break the ice during stand
up? Try licking your arm and batting the back of your ears with the
saliva.
The added benefit is then you don’t have wash behind your
ears later.
BWG: Oh… Well, thank you Headley Hauser for all
these wonderful ideas.
Headley: Don’t forget the book plug!
Of course she got this blog plug wrong, but at least she (in an
understated way) did plug my book… so, (sigh) thanks, Betty… I
guess.
will come after me for infringing on the copyright they have purchased from the Frank Baum estate and the makers of the 1939 classic, Wizard of Oz. Why does Disney buy all the classics? It couldn’t be because they lack imagination (without Pixar) to do anything original anymore? Of course those dozen Saved By The Bell rip-offs that constitute the Disney Channels programming are all… something.
Toto in Munchkinland
by Headley Hauser
The house never used to move like that. At least Toto didn’t think it moved that way, but he spent all of his time with Dorothy, and she wandered around outside singing a lot, so he couldn’t be sure. This was a lot like being in the basket when the bad dog rode on her bicycle over the rocky hilly road, except that now he didn’t see any way to jump out.
Crash!
Well, there wasn’t till now.
"Oh Toto," said Dorothy, "look at all the colors!"
What was a color? Dorothy was the love of his life, but Toto could never understand this thing she had about colors. Then she completely ignored the most interesting smells.
Dorothy was a very strange dog.
What was this? Toto ran out of the house and around to the side. There was something under the house – something either newly dead or just dying. It was the foulest, nastiest smell he’d ever smelled in his life. Was it food? Maybe he should roll in it.
He’d better check with Dorothy.
"Dorothy!" Toto barked, "you gotta come smell this dead thing!"
"Toto," said Dorothy, "I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore."
Talk about changing the subject! Sometimes it seemed like Dorothy just wasn’t listening.
Dorothy went around looking at flowers while Toto sniffed for really interesting things. Of course, the dead thing was pretty hard to ignore, but Toto wasn’t a puppy anymore. He knew how to sniff for little things. There weren’t many things to smell, no rabbits or squirrels or even those bag things with all the hard kibble in them. Unless that dead thing was food, they might be in trouble.
But there were dogs – lots of them. They smelled different than Dorothy, but so did Toto. Dogs came in all kinds of scents. Dorothy was so busy looking for colors that she didn’t even smell the pack.
Toto wasn’t worried. The pack smelled like they were afraid. Toto gave a growl to show them that they had reason to fear. Three dogs smaller than Dorothy and a big bitch with white fur came out of the weeds so Dorothy could see them. Toto prepared for a fight.
They just talked. They didn’t even growl, but at least they showed Dorothy respect.
The pack showed Dorothy the dead thing under the house. They didn’t say it was food, so Toto lost interest and went around marking the small trees that didn’t smell like real trees at all.
It was too easy. No dogs had marked any of them.
"What’s wrong with you dogs!" Toto barked.
Dorothy giggled like Toto had made a joke and held out her arms. Toto jumped into her arms. She never understood the things he tried to tell her, but she was nice and warm.
They talked some more – not about food or territory or anything useful. They talked about witches and a wizard. Unless they were the witches and wizard of food, Toto didn’t care.
Then it got weird.
Everybody started saying, "Follow the yellow brick road." They said it over and over again. Even Dorothy said it. Dorothy started walking while saying, "Follow the yellow brick road." She motioned for Toto to follow her.
Toto followed. He always followed Dorothy. He loved Dorothy.
"But when do we eat?" barked Toto.
"And what’s yellow?"
Some people don’t get that last line. Dogs are colorblind, so…
Never mind – Hey Disney, here’s a new logo for you!
Does it surprise you to hear that I’m dyslexic? Back in my father’s day, you had two kinds of children, those with polio, and those without. In my childhood polio was gone so we searched for other crippling diseases for children and discovered dyslexia. Nowadays we’ve gone overboard. We have dyslexia, autism, peanut allergy, IBS, ADD, and a wide variety of other maladies and phobias to choose from. We used to fear being different. Now we can’t handle being the same. Any kid without at least 2 crippling issues might be suffering from ENS (Excessive Normality Syndrome.)
None of this has anything to do with Foo. I only mentioned the dyslexia, because my personal not-so-crippling disease was my doorway to Foo.
What is Foo? Foo is the answer to one of the stupidest inconsistencies of the English language. If we want to abbreviate yes and no, we use Y & N. If we want to abbreviate true and false, we use T & F. Everybody knows what we’re talking about.
How do we abbreviate on and off? What kind of idiotic seventh century Middle English philologist came up with the idea of having on and off start with the same letter? Whoever it was didn’t foresee light and power switches becoming integral parts of our daily existence. Those of us who receive excessive AARP junk mail can’t read the tiny letters on the switches. A large O or F we might see.
Recently I’ve noted the abbreviations O and – to designate on and off. What does that mean? Both words begin with O and neither has an – in it.
Foo is the answer. Foo is similar enough to off that the constantly evolving English language will adapt to it in no time (dyslexics might not even notice the difference.) We obviously can’t reverse on because not only is no already a commonly used word, but because no more easily associates with off than on.
Foo is the beginning of relatively few words, food, foot, fool, none of which are antithetical to off. When you attempt to fool someone, aren’t you trying to throw them off?
In the case of a certain bunny-knock them off
It’s a good fit.
What about ffo. While it’s true that ffo has greater similarity to off, do you really want to pronounce that? Unless you’re Bavarian, or grew up stuttering, it’s difficult to say ffo without an offensive (fooensive?) spray of saliva.
"Honey, turn ffo the lights and come to bed."
You think a little spittle on your lover’s face is going to help you get lucky?
Nah, Foo is better. The fooshoot? Do not fooer foo-color or foohand foolishness to fooicious fooicers, lest you fooend.
I like the sound of it; let’s get started. You grab a dictionary; I’ll get the white-out.
So a kindly old lady asked me if I went to church. She seemed so
sweet until I realized she'd picked my pocket of two dollars and
thirty-seven cents, and my buy one, get one free coupon for jumbo
fries at Lard World.
Sigh.
Yes, I used to go to church. I went Christmas, Easter, and whenever
I felt shaky about my football wagers.
My last time was halfway through the season, and I was nervous about
giving nine points to the Dolphins against the Patriots in Miami.
I sat down in the pew. I’m not sure why they called it that.
Maybe there was too much silent farting going on.
It all began with the Introit. Introit is church talk for opening
song. I once asked Pastor Birdshoe why the closing song wasn’t
called Detroit. He just mumbled something – might have been in
Latin.
Pastor Birdshoe welcomed us and made some announcements. I saw that
the next song was supposed to be, On a Hill Far Away. I’d
fallen for that prank too many times, so I raise my hand.
“Yes, Brother Headley,” said Pastor Birdshoe, “you may use the
bathroom. You don’t have to ask permission.”
“Not this time, Pastor B.S.,” I said. “I wanted to make a
request for the next song.”
“What is your request?”
“How about Jesus Is My Snow Tires?”
“I’m afraid we don’t know that one and it’s not in the
hymnal.”
“We could hum.”
Later we had the offering.
I put in my usual note – “No money, but I’m “PAYING”
attention.” I know Pastor Birdshoe loves that one.
Pastor B.S. preached out of Daniel. The text was something about
three good Jewish boys telling the King of Babylon to stick it –
then getting fired. They must have had a worthless shop steward. I
love Birdshoe’s sermons – they always give me a chance to catch a
few winks and I try not to snore too loud.
I got my “blessed assurance” about my football worries by their
choice of closing hymn (I still say they should call it Detroit.)
We all bowed our heads and Pastor Birdshoe blessed us: “Go in
Peace, Go in Joy, Go in Love…”
“And Go New England,” I added. “Cover the spread against the
Fins!”
Two weeks later I had Jacksonville plus three in Indy, so I went
back. They’d moved the church. There wasn’t even a note.
Here’s
something from the archives about Ben Affleck, cookies and the TSA.
It’s from the time when the TSA and Homeland Security were taking
over airports.
Ah, good times...
The
video is the only one I could find on You Tube with both Affleck and
the TSA in it. (warning – video is in bad taste, probably illegal, and
contains strong language.) Actually, I’m
embarrassed to post it, but I’ve been including a video with each
post and Robin, my blogging sensei, includes a video in each of his
posts. So here’s a token video. You might not want to watch it.
Really
– don’t watch this video
Did
you watch it? Didn’t like it, did you? Well, I… Never mind,
here’s the story.
The
Cookie Story
Adapted
(partially stolen) by Headley Hauser
I was
flying from Chicago to San Francisco so we naturally had to change
planes in Miami. During the three-hour layover, I hung around
security. In order to sneak fake wanted posters of over-rated movie
stars into TSA notebooks, I pointed at small children yelling,
“Achmed, what a great disguise, did you get through with the
nose-hair clippers?” (It’s a little known fact that pilots and
sky marshals are completely incapacitated if they have insufficient
amounts of nose hair.).
Such
thoughts left me a bit peckish (which is not nearly as dirty a word
as I first thought it was). I decided to get a snack. The snack bar
had gingersnaps in two sizes, the two-cookie pack for three dollars
and the eight-pound box for three fifty. Not that I’ve ever been
that fond of gingersnaps but I figured I’d fork over the extra four
bits. I also bought a gourmet instant coffee with a package of
dehydrated foam for six dollars.
I
stuffed the cookies into my knapsack, grabbed my coffee, splashed a
few drops on my shirt to appease karma and grabbed the last empty
chair at my gate.
I’ve
always considered people who blow on their coffee uncouth. I take a
fist full of gingersnaps, dunk them in my coffee and wait for them to
break up into moderately warm ginger mush. Once you suck off a few
layers of cookie rot from a cup of hot coffee, it’s usually cool
enough to drink without any annoying blowing. I wouldn’t be
surprised if the Queen has her tea that way.
I was
just getting ready for the second round of snap dunking when I
noticed someone else’s hand in the cookie box. The hand belonged
to Ben Affleck.
Now
there are probably several hundred cookies in a hundred and twenty
eight once box and I wasn’t likely to miss one, but dang it, Ben
Affleck makes far more money than he deserves and it didn’t seem
fair that he should help himself to my ginger snaps! I tried to
ignore the outrage but after I’d cleared the second layer of sludge
crumbs from my cup, didn’t he go for a second cookie!
This
was too much! I stomped off to find security.
I was
just forming in my mind a way to make cookie theft by a celebrity
sound serious enough to warrant the attention of these highly paid
civil servants who were, before 911, minimum wage deadbeats (like
me), when I remembered the wanted posters.
I
whispered to the woman with a mustache. “Isn’t he wanted?”
She
checked the book. Sure enough, there she found Mummar Ben Affleck
Ravioli of the Che Boyardi branch of the Humus terrorist
organization. “To be considered armed and dangerous – known to
regularly murder the English language.”
As I
boarded the plane, I found my box of cookies still in my knapsack.
Ben Affleck hadn’t been stealing my cookies at all, I had been
stealing his (C’mon, you’ve all read at least one of the versions
of the cookie story so don’t look surprised).
I
thought about his screams as they hauled him off for a complete
cavity search. I remembered hearing; “Didn’t you see Pearl
Harbor? I’m a big star!” The mustached security woman replied,
“not so big from where I stand mister but these gloves are cold.”
I
considered his upcoming trip to Guantanomo Bay where he’ll be
forced to read the Koran in Arabic. If he reads it as poorly as he
did his lines in Chasing Amy, he’s in for a hard time with his
fellow detainees.
All
this trouble just because I made a mistake about whose box of cookies
sat between us.
The
plane would be taking off soon but I still had enough time to set the
matter straight. Justice was in my hands.
I sat
down and offered a gingersnap to the lady next to me.
This forth of July, I thought it might be a good time to think about
what makes America so great. Sure, you could cop out and talk about
veterans, grandparents and puppies, but all countries have those
(unless they eat their dogs – then maybe veterans, grandparents and
kittens.) What makes us great is that we’re the best in just about
everything… in spite of ourselves.
Number 1: Our Food.
Our food is so good – we don’t even need vitamins or minerals in
it! We are the home of fizzy drinks like Pepsi and Coke. Perrier?
C’mon Frenchies, it’s not even sweet. Put some corn syrup in it!
Speaking of fizzy, we even did it with cheese. The Europeans have
their flat boring cheese; we puffed ours full of air, salt, and
preservatives.
Are there rat droppings in hot dogs? Sure there are
– but they’re good American rat droppings from good American
rats. That’s why we grill them every forth of July.
We even feel sorry for the rest of the world and send our burger and
chicken franchises to culturally deprived places like Paris and
Beijing. Heck, we even named our deep-fried cut potatoes after those
Paris folk and do they appreciate it – no. We don’t care –
pass the pork rinds.
Number II: Our Culture
We have some fine musicians in our country
like Tyler Nail
and Matt
Allivato.
They make good quality music that’s easy on the ear.
BUT… our country is so great, we pretty much ignore guys like that.
Instead we promote bad poetry put to 30-year-old rhythms and we call
it, “fresh,” and we promote failed musicians from other genres
who sell out to make imitation country music, and call it, “genuine.”
Yup – we’re that good.
You wanna see a movie? We got both kinds – romantic
comedy and superhero.
Our sports are so superior that we changed the name of the most
popular sport in the rest of the world to soccer.
And that's not all!
Letter C: Our Government
We got a grand old Constitution! It’s a whizz-banger, and there’s
nobody out there that has any better. We have no idea what it says,
but our politicians are positively certain the guys with a different
designation next to their name are breaking it all the time. Despite
the designation, each pol swears with his or her hand on a dark
impressive-looking book that they will preserve and defend our
constitution.
Sure enough, from what I hear, the Constitution is buried deep below
one of our really impressive government buildings, which might be
about preserving and defending, or it might be about ignoring, but
our white house, congress and supreme court are all agreed to keep it
buried deep and out of the way.
It’s good they all have one thing they agree on.
Yup – we promote our least original artists, eat our worst foods,
and elect our shiftiest people. It’s just our way of putting one
arm behind our back to let the rest of the world catch up.
Imagine how good we’d be if we tried.
By the way… Did you notice on the Junk Drawer
blog that all the postings have my name on them? The good folks at Go
Figure Reads made my blog first, and now they’re stuck. Tee-hee.
I'm Will Wright. In order to introduce the new blog, Junk Drawer, Headley's allowing me to post today with something I
wrote a couple years ago for Bethlehem Writers Roundtable.
Top Ten TV Themes
Most of my friends had impressive vinyl collections when
I was growing up. I didn’t purchase a single album until I was
seventeen. I didn’t consider myself musically ignorant; after all,
I watched plenty of television, and TV (particularly in the sixties
and seventies) gave us many memorable theme songs.
Here’s my top ten:
The
Monkees Theme by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. Like many theme songs,
The Monkees Theme was catchy. I chose it over other catchy themes
like The Ballad of Jed Clampett, or The Addams Family Theme, because
you knew that in each episode of The Monkees, you would get a short
music video at the end.
Star
Trek by Alexander Courage. Star Trek debuted when I was eight. The
theme fit the show. It was exiting, adventurous, and a little bit
scary (by eight-year-old standards.) It almost made those silly
William Shatner monologues worthwhile.
Suicide
Is Painless (MASH) by Johnny Mandel (lyrics, which were not part of
the TV show, were by Mike Altman, Robert Altman’s
fourteen-year-old son.) Leaving out the lyrics was probably a good
idea.
Love
Is All Around (Mary Tyler Moore Show) by Paul Williams, recorded by
Sonny Curtis. Yes, it was sentimental, and I never would have
admitted liking it when I was thirteen, but if you watched the
corner of my eye carefully, you might have seen the beginnings (just
the beginnings!) of a tear, when Mary threw her hat in the air.
Where
Everybody Knows Your Name (Cheers) by Gary Portnoy, and Judy Hart.
Some songs have a way of transporting you. This song took you to a
comfortable place. It had a lot to do with the success of the show.
Mission
Impossible Theme by Lalo Schifrin. Even you were just getting up to
use the bathroom, you moved differently – smoothly, and with
confidence, after hearing this theme. It made you feel like you
could do anything.
Hawaii
Five-O Theme by Morton Stevens. It had a similar effect as did the
Mission Impossible theme. I never liked the show, but I waited for
that final chord before I changed the station.
Raw
Hide by Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington. Who cares that the
lyrics were repetitive – what a ride!
Secret
Agent Man (Danger Man) by Steve Barri and P. F. Sloan, performed
by Johnny Rivers. I know Patrick McGoohan starred in the show, but
I don’t remember anything else about the show – but I sure
remember the song! (sorry, I couldn't find the credits on You Tube.)
1 The Theme from Peter Gunn by Henry Mancini. The show
was a little before my time, but the theme was all around me growing
up. I wasn’t the only teenager who drove a little too fast and
took the corners a little too sharp, as Mancini’s pulsing beat
pushed adrenaline from adolescent glands, up to my brain, and then
down to the accelerator.
