"Why Women Lie"

     One day, while a seamstress was sewing while sitting close to a river, her thimble fell into the river. When she cried out, the Lord appeared and asked, "Why are you crying?"The seamstress replied that her thimble had fallen into the water, and she needed the thimble to make her living.The Lord went down into the water and reappeared with a golden thimble."Is this your thimble?" the Lord asked. The seamstress replied, "No."  The Lord again went down and came up with a wooden thimble. "Is this your thimble?" the Lord asked. Again, the seamstress replied, "No." The Lord went down again and came up with a silver thimble. "Is this your thimble?" the Lord asked. The seamstress replied, "Yes."The Lord was pleased with the woman's honesty and gave her all three thimbles to keep, and the seamstress went home happy.    

     Some time later, the seamstress was walking with her husband along the river bank, and her husband fell into the river. When she cried out,The Lord again appeared and asked her, Why are you crying?"  "Oh Lord, my husband has fallen into the water!"The Lord went down into the water and came up with Mel Gibson. "Is this your husband?" the Lord asked. "Yes," cried the seamstress.The Lord was furious. "You lied! That is an untruth!"  The seamstress replied, "Oh, forgive me, my Lord. It is a misunderstanding.You see, if I had said 'no' to Mel Gibson, you would have come up with Tom Cruise. Then if I said 'no' to him, you would have come up with my husband. Had I then said 'yes,' you would have given me all three. Lord, I am a poor woman and am not able to take care of all three husbands, so THAT'S why I said yes to Mel Gibson.

     "The moral of this story is: Whenever a woman lies, it is for a good and honorable reason, and for the benefit of others.

     That's their story, and they're sticking to it.  

~Author Unknown. 

"Actually NOT Stinkin' to High Heaven"

     Yesterday, when I got to work, I went out to clean and sweep off the parking lot, and discovered a dead skunk on the edge of the road. Grabbing my trusty shovel and garbage bag, I went out to remove said deceased critter, expecting to find quite a mess. But, he was lying there just as if asleep; almost in a prestine condition. In fact, I nudged him (her?) a bit with the end of the shovel just to make sure it was dead, rather than just knocked unconscious by a passing car. he was quite a beautiful thing: the common stripped type. Didn't appear to be very old. Quite sad, really.

     I've seen people make pets out of skunks. One place I worked years ago a person from Florida had a "blonde" skunk he called "Flower". He brought it out of his car where it was traveling with him and I held it in my arms. It was very tamed and loving, and naturally descented. Said he'd found it when it was just a baby and had hand-raised it.

But skunks aren't meant to be kept as pets. Neither are wild rabbits, raccoons, wolves, foxes or other wild creatures. They're meant to be left IN the wild. Such creatures can not be vaccinated for rabies, and skunks, although they may not "be" rapid, can certainly carry such things.

     Anyway, I finally scooped the skunk up and put it in the garbage bag and took it out to the dumpster for disposal, and went back to my duties with a fond,

     "Adieu, Pepe'"

"Nothing to Moon Over"

     Let's see..."what" happened 35 years ago?  Oh,yeah.  Man first stepped foot on the moon.  Which led to----?

     Well, of course , it really gave technology a kick in the ass.  If the U.S. hadn't been trying to beat the Ruskies in the Space Race, they'd never tried to make computers smaller and smaller.  If nothing else we can thank this country's ego trip for the pc's we are now enjoying, as well as other great advances in technology (such as micro-surgery).

     But where did it really get us?  What did this country...and the world...get out of the moon flights besides a couple of buckets of rocks?  The moon is supposingly rich in many valuable minerals but there's this problem in getting them: it's 1/2 a million miles away in an unlivable atmosphere in a dead chuck of rock.  And believe me, if there's minerals of extreme value there, someone somewhere would have already been back on Luna by now finding some way to dig 'em up!

     Do we rack up what has been termed the greatest achievement of mankind in the 20th. Century as "man's quest forever to explore"?  An adventure just to see "what's on the other side of the mountain"? If so, we're simply talking about yet another ego trip.  There's not much there worth exploring.  I don't think anyone would ever want to live on the moon.  Be rather hard to homestead.  Hey!  We didn't even claim a stake for property rights.

     And exactly "what" has it done for space exploration in general?  Astronauts visited the moon a 1/2 dozen times...then Stopped!  We haven't been back there in 30 years (although I'm sure nothing has changed).  We've concentrated on space shuttle flights and space stations , and sending robots to Mars, and vehicles to look at comets, and huge telescopes to look at distant galaxies, and I'm sure we've leaned a whole lot from all of this and probably quite a bit to help mankind. 

     I guess.

     But, in a way, landing on the moon ended so many things as well.  It seemed to be a crushing blow AGAINST space exploration simply because, "been there---DONE that.  Nothing there; quit wasting tax money.  Our dreams are now fulfilled.  U.S.A. is No.1."

     And you know...IF we'd really wanted to put a man on, say, Mars, we could have already done that by now.  I think the general population just can't think of a good reason "why" it should be done.  Perhaps they think there's too many problems on our OWN planet that should be addressed before we play Capt. Kirk and fly off again into outer space.

     I'm not sure if...maybe they're not right.
 
  

"No More No.1 Son"

I read something today that I thought was sort of sad, and shows me that "political correctness" in this country is getting more and more out-of-hand.

"Charlie Chan" movies are being banned from showing on t.v. "Those Who be" have determined that the character is just too much of a sterotype and not a good role model for orientals.

I DISAGREE! Charlie is pretty damn positive! He's smart as a whip, uses violence only as a last resort, and never lets his occupation interfere with his being a loving parent and husband to his very large family.

I suppose we aren't likely to see "Fu manchu" much any time soon either, not to mention David Carridine in "Kung Fu" series (that's finally out on DVD).

"Sign of Old Age"

Okay...so "kill" me. I screwed up yesterday wishing Ringo Happy Birthday on the 8th., when in fact, it was the 7th. Rack it up to the ravages of time on this (most of the time) mortal brain and having too much other stuff on it these days to remember.

So, A Happy BELATED Birthday, Ringo. There. I've blogged it twice---just for him.

"They Say It's YOUR Birthday"

Birthday Greetings go out today to Richard Starkey, alias, "Ringo Starr", the "funny" Beatle, who turned 64. I always liked Ringo's music endeavors as well as his various movie appearances.
Take care of yourself, Ringo; you're one of only two that remains with us still today in physical form.

"Happy 4th."

On this day that we celebrate our freedoms in this country, let us never forget all those who have died to defend those principles...

...and those who are still overseas even now fighting in the same cause.
Happy Independence Day.

"Why Are They ALL So Physical (physical)?"

TWO Comic Book related topics in a row? (I must be slippin'.)

But there IS something I've always wondered about in comics: Why are all the characters drawn so fit and trim? Now I'm not talking about the super heroes, but all of the "bit" characters. Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Pieface, Iris West, Willie Lumpkin, you name 'em, they are ALL drawn very fit. Few supporting characters seem drawn otherwise (outside of Lex Luthor, The Prankster, and Perry White, who was always a bit plump and rarer still, smoked!) Even Kingpin, tho' he's fat-looking, that's all supposed to be muscle.

Fewer still were there over-weight super heroes, remembering only Fatman the Human Flying Saucer, Herbie Popnecker and Bouncing Boy, but they all had these miraculous powers to compensate for being that way. And Bouncing Boy even slimmed down for a while there (maybe still is, who know? Haven't kept up w/The Legion in years). Oddly enough when Bouncing Boy got slim it took all the flab with it as well; sure wish I had that method for my love-handles.

Not that I care to see a buncha characters running around flappin' their extra rolls of fat and floppin' their man-boobs, but it's just that everyone on this planet is different, and a very large number of people ARE overweight: men, women and children alike.

Neither are chararters drawn too thin. It's like everyone has been given a Jack LaLane course to make them physically perfect. Also, why are so many of them HAIRLESS? Does hair cut down on The Flash's ability to run fast? Chest hair slow down Aquaman in the water (his beard doesn't seem to hinder him these days). You know, it's gotta be hell on all of those super heroINES who bare their legs in skimpy costumes to look good all the time, always having to shave (wax, "whatever") their legs and other interesting parts of their female anatomy constantly just to look good in public.

As well, it seems that having super powers has a pleasant enough side-effect on super heroines enlargening certain other parts of their bodies. No wonder as a pre-teen I got hooked on comics.

I'm refering to super hero comics of course and not the NON-mainstream books and artists. Dan Clowes, Robert Crumb and others are all capable of drawing people realistically, or at least like folk you'd see every day. But none of them are "known" as super hero artists.

Well...being perfect is what hooked a lot of us on those characters. Many of us didn't want to identify WITH the characters as much as we wanted to BE them.

And, at my age, I'll get to looking like Perry White or Lex Luthor soon enough.

"Does Whatever a Multi-Million Dollar Summer Blockbuster Can"

...and "Spider-man 2" is going to be a big hit; but, we already knew that it would be.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of Spider-man these days and haven't been one since the 1960's. I was a great follower of Steve Ditko's work on the comic book and even after he left as artist and co-writer I followed the title well up past #100 when Gil Kane was handling the art chores and fans were treated to stories of him having 6 arms, meeting Morbius the Living Vampire, going to The Hidden land and meeting Ka-Zar and the Death of Gwen Stacy and The Green Golbin, but lost interest soon afterwards with Doc Octopus attempting to marry Aunt May, "The Spider-Mobile" and the original clone saga.

Some years back I picked up on the book again when he changed to a black costume and the Venon character was introduced, but my renewed interest didn't last very long and when the clone sage was RE-introduced, Aunt May died and then Marvel began this up-dated version, well, that pretty much spelled the end of me ever wanting to keep up with him.

The first Spider-man movie was "okay". Can't say I cared for things like an armored Green Goblin or revisions to Uncle Ben's death; thought they were as unnecessary as changing the name of the wrestler from Spidr-man's original origin. Neither did I like putting Mary Jane Watson in the "Gwen Stacy Bridge Death" scenario. I guess the best thing I liked about the movie was the credit finally given to Steve Ditko. But forgetting all I ever knew about the character beforehand and trying to watch it "cold" and take it as 2 hours of entertainment, I liked it as well or better than say, the first time I ever saw the 1989 "Batman" flick or the first Chris Reeve "Superman" film.

In the Marvel movie fare I've thought the X-men flicks were probably the best written. I can't resist watching Patrick Stewart as Prof. X ('Course, I'll watch just about anything Stewart's in since I like him as an actor).

Spider-man 2 will, of course, be the biggest box office hit (so far) money-wise for Marvel of any of their comic book character adaptations, and I'm sure they need another hit after such flicks as The Punisher and (the somewhat disapointing) Incredible Hulk.

Probably over at D.C. Comics (or,Warner Bros.,these days) they are carefully watching and weighing Marvel's various success stories of the cinema before wading back into the water with new character adaptations of their own produced in the "blockbuster" style.