Hair Wrangling

I was in a barber shop years ago unsuccessful in getting a by the follicle rate, when the barber’s scissors paused on the left side of my head. I glanced up into the mirror and met a sheepish look on the man’s face.

“You want me to leave the hair alone on this side?”

Leave the hair alone! Why would I want him to leave the hair alone? Why would anyone want the hair on one side of his head to be longer than the hair on the other side? That would be lopsided, unbalanced, like the two loops of a paperclip. Who in the world would ever want a paperclip haircut?

The realization washed over me like a rancid wave of bay rum. My barber was offering me a comb-over!

I watched with a mixture of fascination and nausea as he lowered my part to just above the ear and showed me how I could miraculous fool myself into thinking I was fooling everyone into thinking I was still growing hair on the top of my head. I remembered all the bad comb-overs I’d seen in my younger days and how I had prayed earnestly for a healthy gust of wind to raise the unmistakable bald guy flag that all fully-follicled-folk love to salute.

My chickens had come home and somehow roosted on the top of my head making it as bald as one of their vindictive eggs.

Fleetingly, I considered actually doing it as a public service. I could get a tee-shirt that read “Hey bald guys! See how bad it looks?” on one side and “Mother’s don’t let your babies grow up to be wind toys” on the other. I weighed the cost of printing up such a tee shirt against its value to society and had found it as unbalanced as the ridiculous hair I saw in the mirror.

I had him cut it even.

After coming home, I started feeling bad for the barber. The comb-over hairstyle had to be a hard sell and this poor guy must get a lot of abuse for recommending it. What his barber shop as well as barber shops across the nation needed was a comb-over brochure. Barbers need something like those discrete like those “So You’ve Got Herpes – It’s Not the End of the World,” pamphlets that doctors hand out to roughly half of their sexually active patients.

Of course I’ve never seen one of those pamphlets, but a friend of mine got one.

We could title the brochure, “Is Self-Delusion Right for You?” In the brochure the future lock-flopper would learn the discrete international barber sign to tell his hair professional to leave one side unshorn: a q-tip casually inserted in the ear canal of the shaggy side.

Sporting a stick in your ear is far less embarrassing than discussing a premeditated fashion faux pas like a come-over.

The next day I went to Jeff’s Irregular and Sometimes Hot Bargain Shack and purchased a North Korean hair cutting system (Guaranteed to make you look like a third world despot.) I selected the half inch setting and turned the top of my head into a pink and gray peach. No more barber shops – no more embarrassing encounters.

Though sometimes I run my hand across my stubbly head left-to-right and ask people what I just created.

“What?” they ask.

“The world’s shortest come-over.”

Of course when I was younger the embarrassing hair style was a duck tail (some didn't use the word, tail.)

Yeah, the post is over, but I had to include these extra pics.

Fugleigh, the Zombie Teddy Bear

 You may pick up from the story below that I’ve been associating with some sick and twisted people lately. Nick Craver created a wonderful illustration for Fugleigh. Unfortunately, we’ve been unable to get it in the right format to share here.

Warning – not nice stuff beyond this point.

Fugleigh, the Zombie Teddy Bear

by Headley Hauser

with Nick Craver and Carrie Harman

Fugleigh was nestled for the night, tight within 8-year-old Carrie’s embrace. It was all very warm and cuddly.

“Bah,” said Fugleigh the Zombie teddy bear. He gnawed gently at Carrie’s ear – not so much as to wake her up and only the skin of the ear, not the cartilage. The missing ear flap on the other side of her head testified on how difficult it was to re-grow cartilage but Carrie was very clever at growing back ear skin.

Clever… The word made Fugleigh hungry. But Carrie had a math test in the morning. Well, maybe a little.

Fugleigh gently sucked at Carrie’s brain. Sluurrrpppp. Not too much now. Sluuuuuuurrrrrpppp!

Self-control was never a strong point among zombie teddy bears.

“Mmmmmmm,” said Fugleigh. “Good brains!” Fugleigh smacked his cloth and emaciated zombie teddy bear lips. “I think Carrie must be partially Chinese, because just seconds after I eat; I’m hungry again. I wonder where the cat is?”

Fugleigh found Muffinpie circling her food dish. There wasn’t any food in the dish and there wouldn’t be till morning, but Muffinpie just kept circling staring intently at the dish as if the food might appear any second and run away. Fugleigh approached and started walking behind the cat. Muffinpie glanced Fugleigh’s way and hissed, then quickly resumed the circling and study of her food dish.

Fugleigh stopped and waited. Muffinpie came around the dish and stopped, studying Fugleigh, then the dish. There was no room for Muffinpie to pass between Fugleigh and the dish, and if she went around Fugleigh, the zombie teddy bear would be between her and the food dish.

“Bah!” said Fugleigh.

The cat cowered. In spite of the fact that she had claws that could have ripped Fugleigh to shreds, the cat sat back on her haunches and howled.

“It could be,” said Fugleigh, “that this cat has no more brain matter to spare.”

For the next few hours, Fugleigh haunted the house looking for brains to eat. Carrie’s parents wisely kept their bedroom door locked, with not an ax or sledge hammer in sight. Fugleigh found an unusually intelligent cockroach, but in spite of the insect’s cerebral gifts, the total amount of brain matter wasn’t at all satisfying.

An hour before dawn, Fugleigh found himself back in Carrie’s room, staring benevolently, though ravenously at the little girl who loved and cared for him.

“I couldn’t really hurt her,” he told himself. “If only she didn’t have that math test today.”

Fugleigh heard the stuffing within him growl as the first hint of dawn came in the latticed window.

“Carrie doesn’t much like math anyway,” he said.

“Sluuuuuuurrrrrrrpppp!”

I didn't realize this theme was so popular.

The Art of Don Martin

He was a genius. Parents (especially mothers, who are usually more grown up than their testosterone impaired counterparts,) called his art silly, trash or even disgusting. That’s the wonderful thing about art, the stuff that’s worth keeping is never respected till the artist is dead. I’m sure there were contemporaries of Leonardo Da Vinci who looked up at the Sistine chapel and said, “Populist claptrap!”

To those of us raised in the 60’s and 70’s, Don Martin was our Leonardo.

Martin truly was an artist - not just a cartoonist, as shown by the diversity of his character styles from the simplistic Fester Bestertester

To the far less exaggerated Lance Parkertip, Noted Notary Public.

Like all Mad artists, Martin did his share of parody.

But he was always at his best telling little stories of everyday events - gone wrong - or at least odd..

Politically correct predated Don Martin, and I don't think it would have influenced him anyway.

And in a way - I think that is what will preserve his legacy long after our self-appointed social inhibitors have passed away.  What will endure is the onomatopoeia.

And the high fashion,

That was the work of an artist only properly recognized years after his death.

But that’s the thing about art, dance, music, film. We as a society rarely know what we have before it’s gone.

Someday we’ll look back at this decade and recognize the greatness of art which is today regarded as garbage. Fifty years from now, someone might be dedicating a blog post to the Great Literature of Headley Hauser.

Or maybe not.

Here's one of his lesser gags - YouTube needs some new uploads.

Alien Rant

Please don’t blame me for this post. Go Figure Reads director, Walter Bego has proven to me on several occasions that he’s as crappy a writer as he is an administrator. Now he wants to prove it to the world. This is an edit cut from his constantly revised and never released sci fi book, WEEMS (available sometime after 2035.) He cut this out because it makes his bad novel even worse, but he thinks you should read it because…

Well, maybe Walt just doesn’t like people.

As I understand it, the point of this is that far from Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a United Federation of Planets where nine out of ten significant folks are human – we earthlings would be considered the galactic rubes in any gathering of self-respecting aliens.

Or maybe dopes – like me for putting Walt’s crap on my blog.

Well, here it is…

“I really don’t think so.” She struggled with how much she should say, even to a trusted friend like Phar. “The Kauntral has always solved their problems militarily and I’m afraid it’s clouded their judgment. I fear we’re making a terrible mistake. And then to bring in humans…”

Phar said nothing for a moment. He knew the problems she had encountered on earth. “Don’t you think five years is long enough to hold a grudge?”

“It’s not a grudge. These people just get on my nerves.” Khana didn’t like sounding childish but she couldn’t help herself. “They can’t even settle on a name for their species. Sometimes they’re called humans, then earthlings, then Terrans, then man, which isn’t even a plural word, then they say “mankind!” To make matters worse many of them insist on being called by extinct tribal designations and these names make no sense whatsoever! One calls himself a Frenchman another an African or a Russian or a Guatemalan. So these suffixes man, ican, ian, and an are all supposed to mean the same thing? As if that’s not enough they have tribal groupings. The Russian will tell you that he and the Frenchman are Europeans but the others aren’t. Then the Frenchman will say the Russian’s not really a European at all. All the time they ignore the fact than some of these terms don’t even apply to the female of the species – ludicrous! Then there are the Scots, Scottish and Scotch which are supposed to be interchangeable except one is a vile beverage very popular on Fural.”

“As the Pulids tell us, ‘the least worthy are usually self obsessed.’ At least the humans aren’t responsible for this war. But speaking of obsessions, if this Scottish wasn’t so popular on Fural, maybe we wouldn’t be having this problem?”

“You don’t believe that anymore than I do Phar. Besides, it wasn’t a beverage that started their plague; it was a psychotropic virus exposed to a recreational inhalant. But the Tropes were going to do this eventually. They’re just too big and too mean not to push other people around.”

So – that’s a snippet from Walter Bego’s recycle bin.

No, I didn’t get it either.

But then again, I'm a human like...

Cone Conundrum

I remember a scandal in the late 60s about my state renting hundreds of traffic barrels for a dollar a day. What a waste of money, we thought!

That was before traffic cones took over the world.

Traffic cones, unlike their barrel predecessors are not on our highways simply to point out occasional hazards.  They are not just there in the hundreds, but in the millions.

And I beg to differ with anyone who contends that they serve to make traffic simpler.

Traffic cones have become America's number one cash crop.

And they aren't content to stay on our highways.  They have invaded our culture.

Our art.  Don't believe me...

How about this?

Or this?

They've invaded our children's programming.

And music.

And when I say they've taken over the stage, I'm speaking literally.

They have their own weight loss programs.

Even their own pets.

There are reports of traffic cone mind control.

They are taking on human characteristics

So they can blend in and take over our planet before we are even aware of the danger.

They're coming for you.  If you find yourself planted by the roadside marking traffic hazards five years from now.  You were warned!

Ask not for whom the cone wobbles.  It wobbles for you.