Bring In Your Dead

I have an affliction.

I’ve had it before, and god help me, I’ll probably have it again. I shouldn’t complain; most people have to deal with the same thing – I have a job.

Jobs have only one redeeming benefit – money. With money, I can buy goods and services, including Pop Tarts,

 and gas for the Yugo.

Unfortunately, jobs have many detriments including 1) wasted time 2) raised expectations from creditors 3) increased difficulty in free-loading on others and 4) E.J.I. (enforced jerk interaction.)

Sick days bring a respite. Unfortunately my current boss, Whipcracker Toliver, has memorized the WebbMD website, and it’s getting harder to find an illness to pass muster with him.

This morning I tried a different tack. I called work.

Whipcracker: Tote that Bail Bondage Services. This is Whip Toliver. How may our employees serve you?

Headley: Mr. Toliver, I have some sad news.

Whipcracker: What is it now, Headley?

Headley: Yes sir, I’m calling about Headley Hauser. He’s dead.

Whipcracker: Am I not talking to Headley right now?

Headley: No sir, this is Doctor Mumblefuss. I just happen to sound a lot like him.

Whipcracker: I see, Doctor Mumblefuss. This of course is a terrible tragedy. I’m sure Headley’s coworkers will be deeply saddened. I wonder if he knew before he passed on, that if I report his death to social services, he’ll no longer be eligible for unemployment or food stamps.

Headley: (pause) Maybe I should try the shock thingies.

Whipcradker: Yes, Doctor, do try the shock thingies, and if you manage to resurrect Headley, remind him that it’s his turn to bring in coffee this morning.

I’m not sure, but I think he was on to me. Next time, I gotta find someone else to play Doctor Mumblefuss.

Cral and I used to do a song about work in our spectacularly ignored act: Headley and the Rug (and Cral) Hit the Road. I apologize that there’s no tune for you, but there really wasn’t much of one even when Cral and I did it. All the Xs are for hand claps.

Love my Job

words and kinda music by Headley Hauser

I need to go away XX I need to go away XX xxxx

I need to go away XX I need to go away XX xxxx

This place makes me shake xxxxxxx

This place makes my belly ache xx

This place gives me things I don’t need xx

I need x I need x I need

I need to go away XX I need to go away XX xxxx

I need to go away XX I need to go away XX xxxx

This place makes me work xxxxxxx

This place makes me deal with a jerk xx

This place gives me things I don’t need xx

I need x I need x I need

(go up a step)

I need to go away XX I need to go away XX xxxx

I need to go away XX I need to go away XX xxxx

This place gives me grief xxxxxxx

This place is just beyond belief xx

Tell my boss that I NEED TO GO!

I need x I need x

I need to leave

I’d tell you it was much better live – but there was a reason we were spectacularly ignored. Here’s a vid of someone who’s actually pretty funny.

Babies respond to FB pictures

   So I got a slew of posts with baby pictures on them this week, and they don't look pleased.  Kids are surfing the net so early these days.  I didn't dare answer the telephone before I was 6.
   What has these munchkins so rankled?  Maybe it's all the other stuff that shows up on Facebook.
   Some of it is pretty scary...

vegitrembles

Severe Penalties for missed compulsories

bad-ass garden-keepers

bad-ass queen - jeepers-creepers!

   It's enough to fill your diaper.

   And there's so much miscommunication.

at least I hope they didn't mean...

OK, I don't want to think too much about this.

Yeah, I tried that one

I don't care if she's confused - I'm still cheering.

   But us little guys?  We're lying awake at nap-time wondering

   Not all of it is in the best of taste

Just be a good egg, why don't ya?

shudder me bumpers!

Ya gotta look your best if you're gonna pick up a creamsicle in frozen foods

Yup - it's a pain in the...

   Adults wonder why we spit up our milk.

Of course, there are always the loonies

I hope they wore their lead bibs

Until she gets enough cabinet space...

now performing Penguin Lake

Relatives?  I'm admitting nothing!

   We hear you talk about being role models - We don't think it means what you think it means.

   But even Facebook adults sometimes have perfect moments

It's alright - I still find you appeeling

Now - for the video - the babies show their stuff!

Will Wright’s Kinda Like

So I had a parody fall apart – no I don’t want to talk about it. It’s Wednesday night, and I have no post for Just Plain Stupid for Thursday morning.

The Rug (which is actually not a person, but an old hairpiece,) my old partner in the show, Headley and the Rug (and Cral) offered a bit he did about Swiss cheese. Stanley McFarland – a man who mistakenly thinks he has a sense of humor, offered me a poem from his book, Confessions of a Protestant link - (there’s a real knee-slapper.)

You might see each of these offerings in future posts, but luckily for you, Will Wright offered an actually good story from his chapbook, Salt for the Journey link . It’s also available, as is so much of the short fiction and commentary of Go Figure Reads writers, on the official blog of Go Figure Reads – Junk Drawer. Junk Drawer

Of course it’s good because I helped him write it…

Kinda Like…

by Will Wright

It’s kinda like this

Imagine a hamster

He spends all day in a converted fish aquarium

He’s is left alone

Except for two five minute periods a day

When some giant says a few meaningless words

Does a few chores

And replaces the water and food pellets

The rest of the day

He’s on his own

Now there’s only one interesting thing in his cage

The running wheel

Not surprisingly, the hamster starts to run

He runs because he likes to run

He runs because there’s nothing else to do

He keeps running

Even when he needs to poop

He runs

It doesn’t matter

The poop falls right through the wheel

And lands on the floor

The hamster keeps running

He poops again

And keeps running

Running, running poop running poop

After a while

He looks down

He thinks

“Hey, that’s kind of interesting

When the poop falls through the wheel

It looks different than regular poop

It’s in an odd pattern

I wonder if I can do this

On purpose”

For the rest of the day

The hamster runs

And poops

With a purpose

Sometimes he moves to one side of the wheel

Sometimes to the other

He tries it while running extra fast

He tries it while walking

The pattern gets more and more interesting

When he has to eat and drink

He’s really careful getting down from the wheel

He doesn’t want to disturb the pattern

Just as the sun goes down

The giant returns

He grunts in human speech

“Gee, you sure made a mess today!”

He takes the paper from the bottom of the cage

And rolls it up carefully

He puts down new paper

And gives the hamster

Water and pellets

The giant leaves

The hamster lies exhausted

He looks at the clean paper

He looks at the food and water

And he finally understands

“He gave me food and water for my pretty pattern

He put down more paper for a new pattern

I must be an artist!

I’m underpaid”

Here's a hamster with a different "skill."  

Monty Python and the Limitation of Print

“You’re funny, Headley,” said an unidentified person to me recently, “but you can’t hold a candle to Monty Python.”

Like most people raised in the 60s and 70s, I didn’t take offence; I only nodded my head in agreement. There isn’t/wasn’t/ever will be any human or collection of humans as funny as Monty Python. It has become an article of faith in my generation, much as Elvis’ supremacy had been to the generation preceding mine.

So I thinks to myself – how can I do what they did? What can I write that is as brilliant as Holy Grail, Life of Brian, and the Flying Circus shows?

When you love something, never try to figure out why. To have one’s faith shaken is a disturbing sensation.

Observing the scripts of Monty Python without the stork-like posturings of John Cleese,

 the quirky art of Terry Gilliam,

 the smarmy naïveté of Eric Idle,

 the bulging bombast of Graham Chapman,

 or the shrill transvestitism of Terry Jones

 is to look at a bag of Doritos after the last chip has been masticated.

As Chapman, in army uniform informed us

 it’s just silly.

(oh, and Michael Palin showed up too – but he was just a tosser.)

(What is a tosser, anyway?)

Consider this:

A man and a woman are lowered into a diner where they find that Spam is considered an essential (or several essential,) part to every menu choice. A group of Vikings interrupt the dialog with a song about Spam.

It looks like a pathetic idea there in black and white – until you add the talent…

Or, a man walks into a pet shop to complain about a parrot he’s just bought there that is dead.

Sounds like a loser, but…

How about, a man pays to have a five minute argument. Almost the entire dialog consists of the service provider denying everything his customer says until the police break the thing up for being a pathetic sketch.

Pathetic sketch or not, add the Monty Python cast and it’s…

So until I can get the surviving (and perhaps the dead,) members of Monty Python to play out Trouble in Taos, link or Volition Man, link I’ll never really know if my stories are funny or not.

And getting the Coen brothers to direct wouldn’t hurt either.

There is one sketch that I think was brilliant even read from the page.