Comics I do understand

There are few comics in one of today's posts to Comics I Don't Understand that made me laugh.

The saddest day

While I was searching for a souvenir for a recent post, I ran across several treasures in my souvenir boxes from my youth that, like it or not, I'm going to share with all of you.

For our first stroll down that memory lane, here is a letter to the editor of The Lookout, the Los Alamos High School newspaper, that I signed that Brian Lanter and Colleen wrote. I thought that I was going to get to help write it but they apparently didn't need (want?) my help. (They needed to use big words, some of which I still don't know, so I guess I couldn't have effectively contributed to the letter.) I don't remember whether it got printed.

The newspaper had printed a story about a recent snowfall that made the local skiers and their Snow God very happy. Colleen, Brian and I were not fond of snow and took umbrage (how's that for a good word, Colleen?) at their promotion of one (false) god over another.

So, on this saddest day of the year, the day the sun leaves our hemisphere for six painful months, here's our letter to the editor.


OK, here's a quibble. "Spalpeen" seems to be only a noun but was used as an adjective in the letter. And "morrhuol" doesn't show up in any dictionary I've found (either on my computer or on the Internet), though it is defined in the Google results. Somebody liked to show off his or her vast vocabulary.

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Hey, did you notice the use of "there" where "their" should have been used? Boy, I'm glad I didn't have a hand in that letter!

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Just because I had a few spare minutes, here's the letter for search engines to index (typos and all):

Dear Editor,

Actually you're not all that dear, and this is not going to be a nice letter (no, not at all nice). We, the disciples of the Sun Cult, are incensed! Why? You ask why, after what you've done to us? As an established religious cult, we stand adamantly behind our constitutional rights to equality. We therefore resent, sir, the blatant bigotry and callous treatment that have been our lot at the hands of your unworthy rag. You spalpeen miscreants, you fatuous hypocrits, have you no sense of social propriety, have you no vestige of civilized decency, have you no cognitive faculty, have you no rubber galoshes?

Three issues previous, in this moribund mouthpiece of corrupt winter promoters, you deemed it appropriate to glorify the snow god, while failing utterly to extend the Sun God those aggrandizements and encomia due so august and resplendent a diety.

What insensate gawks you must be, to allow the tramontane vagaries of vehement vituperators to violate the vestal virginity of verisimilar verbalization. Only the willing pawn of the basiliskine juggernaut of unbridled press would have refused to publish our supplicatory epistle, in which we requested equal representation.

Therefore stand warned that our glorious leader has revealed unto us his divine design for the demise of the snow god and the subjugation of his followers. Those who have slighted the Sun God to curry favor with the snow god shall be hoisted by there own petard. Resistors will be calcined by his refulgent wrath as they writhe in the mucilaginous morrhuol of moral decay.

Be it also know that the last true snow melted before the presence of our lord on Sunday, March 4. Any subsequent appearance of “snow” is but an illusion, drawn up by the ignoble snow god to tempt the followers of the True Lord.

For as it is written in the Book of Truth: “WE LIKE TO EAT (Oh yes, we do), BUT MOSTLY WE LIKE TO GET VENGEANCE!”

Yours Truly,

Tony Alamo in the news

After I graduated from New Mexico Tech in 1978, Poss and I took a road trip to Washington, D.C., our nation's capital. On the way there we had a meal at a restaurant in Alma, Arkansas, where I had grits for the first time.

At the restaurant I picked up a tract where Tony Alamo tells us of his life and conversion to Christianity. I seem to remember that the restaurant was owned by Mr. Alamo. What a thrill it was to eat where a great evangelist spreads the Word of the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation! As Poss and I drove east, I read his story. The nutcase somehow got stuck in my brain. He occasionally shows up in the newspaper and the stories often somehow seem to catch my attention.

His sainted Susan died in 1982 and Tony was planning on her resurrection. He's been jailed for tax evasion from his sequined jacket business (he apparently didn't pay his cult members followers wages that should have been taxed). He's apparently been charged in various child abuse and brain washing incidents.

Today's news article was about a raid on his compound for a child pornography and abuse investigation. According to Mr. Alamo, little girls reach the age of consent at puberty.

And Poss and I ate at his restaurant!

Anyway, I saved his little tract all these years as a souvenir of our trip to D.C. It's not worth reading but here it is anyway. (The blots are Windex.) The news stories from today are interesting in a very scary way.


And as I was commanded, I didn't destroy the tract and am now passing it on!

Successories

You've probably seen Successories^® products. Their motivational posters feature beautifully photographed scenes and extraordinarily apt sentiments that high-powered managers strew around their workplaces to inspire their extraordinary teams to perform at 110%. No, make that 120%!

I had a manager who had many of these posters around the office and in the conference rooms. Most of us felt that they were rah-rah, cheerleader-y drivel. We enjoyed the products from Despair, Inc. that are parodies of the Successories. They feature the same sort of beautiful photography but sentiments befitting the Dilbertesque environment we work in. Wally's desk surely holds the Pessimist's Mug that lets you know when the glass is half empty.

But there might be something to the Successories items (or at least the people who think that they're swell). The manager who provided us with all that inspirational sap left the company and started his own company. He sold it to a big, multinational company for megabucks, started another company and sold that one to another company for more megabucks. He made many people rather wealthy.

Our marketing group seems to have seen those posters and have decided that they can show potential customers that we can be just as inspirational.

Or something.

There are some posters on the wall outside the bathrooms in the part of the building where they make presentations to potential customers. I guess they're supposed to see that they'll become high-powered competitors in their fields if they use our product.

But the posters are lacking the beautiful photography of the Successories. And the sappy sentiments. Heck, I don't know what the point of the posters are. They wouldn't inspire me to buy anything.

One tells them that we'll make their companies smarter.
The model doesn't really give me the impression that intelligence is to be found here. He's just somebody smiling for the camera. And I'm not sure what the swirls of light are supposed to inspire. That he's getting brighter?

The one that really bewilders me is the one that says we'll enable business growth.
How does a bored looking person staring blankly into the camera illustrate that a company is going to make its customers' companies grow? What are they trying to tell me?

I'll never understand those people in Marketing.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

A bell for summoning the butler (press on his tail or head and he rings!).

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

Bookends (ironically used to hold DVDs, most of which we haven't watched).

Naked ladies

Back in March, I mentioned that I had transplanted some naked ladies around the yard. In that post I said that they take a few years to get established before they'd bloom so I probably wouldn't be posting pictures of them this year.

I was wrong.

Imagine my surprise when I walked passed our overgrown acacia this morning and happened to see some pink beneath it. There was a naked lady! Blooming! Its first year after being transplanted! A month after everybody else's naked ladies have bloomed!

So here is the picture I promised I wouldn't be posting this year.

Ladies (naked or clothed) and gentlemen, my naked lady.