Welcome Back Mr. Salad. How Was Your Trip?

11/24/2015  -  12:51 CDT


About four hours ago, I noticed that the Accuweather notifications on my smart watch were for "3903 Swiss Avenue." The location setting was Dallas, Texas, so I set it back to San Antonio, but it went back to Dallas. I rebooted my wristwatch (yeah, I know) but it went back to Dallas as soon as I enabled location services. I turned the watch off and looked at my phone which had the same issue---Not surprising because the watch is a member of the same techno-cult and they're buddies. I fired up my Chromebook and it thinks were in Dallas too, but yeah, same cult. I knew my trusty Win8 box would be OK, but when I went to check on what had happened to geo-loaction in the Googleverse, the same thing---Dallas Freaking Texas!

A Rod Serling narration started up in my head, but then I started wondering if DoD had scrambled the GPS signals (Yes, they can do that.) I went out to my car which has an embarrassing number of GPS receivers. One showed the San Antonio map briefly before switching to Dallas, another one showed the Dallas map, and the third one, embedded in a mobile ham radio with no Map, gave me the following coordinates: 32.79;-96.78. It was Dallas all the way down.

Now, all of this stuff communicates with the outside world on other channels, so to eliminate the possibility that it had been reinstructed (hacked), I dug out my old-school Geo-caching GPS unit---it only has one job, so when the Dallas coordinates came up on that  I started praying and looking for my sunglasses  because I only know of one reason DoD would scramble GPS.  I was still looking at it and contemplating the grim implications of temporary survival when it went back to good old 29.62,-98.68.

I checked all the other stuff and it all agreed that we were back in San Antonio. Outside of a temporarily frightening headline on the Drudge Report, there's nothing on major news sites about any of it, so I just marked it down to a local system glitch, until I looked up 3903 Swiss Avenue, Dallas, Texas and discovered that's the address for the Dallas Theological Seminary! If that's not a harbinger of doom, I don't know what is.

Seriously though, I just wanted to post this for insanity prevention reasons, and unlike at least 20% of the stuff I usually post on this blog, this is all true.

Temporarily Frightening Headline

MAILBAG 11/23/2015

All of my favorite mailbag questions start with "why don't you."

Dear Dr. Salad,

Why don't you try posting something useful for a change?"

-Loafie

Well Captain Loafie, I've just never tried it before, but OK. How's this?

Yours,

OS

Some People Might Think It Would Be Funny

One morning at breakfast my mom slapped the funny paper in front of me, stabbed her finger at the first print of Gary Larson's "Boneless Chicken Ranch" cartoon, and demanded to know what was funny about it.

I was flattered to think she had recognized me as some sort of authority on humor, so I ignored the obvious tone of agitation and decided to attempt an analysis; however, this being the first time I'd seen the cartoon, I actually laughed out loud. LOL's hadn't been invented yet, so I had to actually laugh out loud, and unfortunately, I somehow found her lack of understanding coupled with her overly serious demand for literary analysis just as funny as the cartoon. I picked up the paper and said, "See..." but then started to laugh when I realized she wasn't even smiling.  When I got control of myself, I started again, but only got as far as "Well, it's..." before my sister showed up and asked what was funny.

They both just looked at me while I made a few more attempts on a thesis statement, but every time I looked at them, they looked more serious, and I took a nosedive into catastrophic hysteria. after a demonstration of why "falling out of my chair laughing" is a cliche, I wound up sitting in the floor holding my sides straight-jacket style.

Stacy asked my mom what was wrong with me, but it was a rhetorical question.  Mom just picked up the paper and asked her about the cartoon.  Stacy told her, "At the supermarket, when you buy meat labelled "boneless," I guess some people might think it would be funny if those animals were born that way." When my mom looked at me for confirmation, all I could do was point at my sister and nod because she was right, and I had entered the truly scary part of uncontrollable laughter where the snot starts to flow.

Mom asked me if I was on drugs, but that was also rhetorical. I focused on a stray corn-flake under the table, held out my hand "please stop" style, and in a miraculous act of spontaneous self-control, gave the following analysis in my best Mr. Spock voice:

"Stacey is mostly right; some of us are so heartless that the mere image of congenitally deformed chickens flopping around on the ground is funny. On further analysis, we can see how the cartoon is aimed at the casual carnivore who may actually beleive there is a boneless variety of chicken.  Of course, it's preposterous to think anybody would be that ignorant, but if you've ever watched the Q&A portion of the Miss America pageant, you know such stupidity is sadly well within the realm of possibility. At the same time, and in light of recent developments in genetic science, a reasonable person might be forgiven for having a shadow of fear that bonless chickens may soon be an agricultural reality, and a shadow of fear is always a component of truly entertaining humor.  These components work in concert with a more abstract device common to Mr. L arson's work; he has an unparalleled talent for illustrating an absurdity in a way that  places it at, or more frequently in his case, just on the other side of the boundary between possible and impossible. In fact, I assume this is why Larson named his strip "The Far Side."

"Oh, like Monty Python?"

"Exactly, but with less squirting blood."  I said.

"Poor chickens."  Stacey said.

My mom gave me three books for my next birthday; a collection of Far Side cartoons, a collection of Nancy cartoons, and a copy of What Color is Your Parachute.

I skimmed the Larson book because I'd already seen them in the funnies section of the paper as they came out and I had maybe half of them cut out and tacked to something somewhere.  But Nancy!  Nancy changed my life! 

The message from my mom was pretty clear. "If you think floppy chickens are funny..."---so I tried Nancy.  I really did, but after twenty or so strips, Nancy was having the same effect on my mind as the corn-flake under the table.  Since it was a birthday gift, I felt obligated to continue.  The only thing that came close to amusing me was when, after reaching the halfway point, I realized that not one single panel out of hundreds had amused me in any way whatsoever. At the time, Nancy was a major syndicated comic strip with a readership that outstripped Far Side by whole orders of magnitude. I turned inward and started to ask myself what was wrong with me in a non-rhetorical way. I trudged on through the houmorless wasteland of Nancy in desperate hope that at some point something would strike me as funny, even if it was accidental. Nothing ever did and eventually I just gave up and realized that it just wasn't going to happen.

As with most of the truly dramatic life-changing events in my life, the transformational moment came only after my complete and total surrender. Nancy had dethroned my mental child-king tyrant of what-is-and-what-isn't-funny.  Free at last, I was able to enjoy the last few cartoons for what they were. After my enlightenment I reread the whole collection in a transcendent state of bliss and comfort completely devoid of entertainment. I was so distracted by the fact that I could be truly happy without being entertained that I had to give it a third read after the novelty had passed.  Perfect Zen.

Not only did I discover the capacity to be content witout being entertained, I started to see my mom as a white middle aged female version of Master Po from Kung Fu.

At some point, Master Po mom asked me why I thought she had given me the Parachute book, and when I said I guessed it was because she wanted me to get a job, she said I was wrong.  She said it was just because she thought it would be funny to give it to me.

"Oh, like Nancy?"  I asked.

"Exactly, but with less not having a job."

And thus, Master Po not only informed me that I had graduated, and it was time for me to leave the monastery, she gave me the news with the most richly nuanced call-back line I've ever heard.  Of course, I didn't laugh at the time, or even a few days later when I finally got it, but now---now I consider that to be the single funniest thing ever said, and I'm instantly, if not ironically, entertained every time I think about it.

Thanks mom!  I miss you a lot, and not only like a Conway missing his Korman, but sometimes like a Grasshopper missing his Po.

Voice

I never thought much about "voice" until another writer pointed out how some of my stuff seemed to change character mid-stream.  I realized there were three distinct voices, but when I tried to stick with one it was too distracting so I started doing it after the first draft.  At that point, I use this handy triptych to pick the main one, and then consult him on any material submitted by the others.

Remember Remember What Exactly?

Help me out here.

410 years ago a Catholic guy named Guy Fawkes was arrested for plotting to blow up the House of Lords because he felt that the Protestant King James I was too intolerant of Catholic guys, but since some other Catholic guys ratted Fawkes out, Guy got arrested before he could detonate anything, and since neither King Jimmy nor the HoLs were blown to reens smither, 5 November became an official holiday by act of Parliament recognizing the providential hand of Almighty God in keeping England Protestant.  Since then, it has inexplicably mutated into an excuse to set large fires, blow things up, and burn effigies of the Pope, the King, Guy, and just about anybody that has managed to inspire enough ill-will in someone else to make them want to stuff a suit with hay and set it on fire.

I first found out about Guy Fawkes when I was doing some mandatory etymology research under the lash of Prof. Huber as I kicked against his efforts to teach me English. "Guy," was the word I had  pulled out of the hat, and Huber said he was counting on me because he didn't know where it came from himself

At the time, all the hyper-links were kept in this thing at the library called a "card catalog" while we were waiting for Google to be invented. I kept seeing references to Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, but nothing that explained why he was named Guy, or where the word 'guy' came from. After rummaging through five or six drawers of the card catalog and looking up about fifty references, I became obsessed with the Guy Fawkes story and forgot all about  my assignment. All of the references to Guy cited a compendium of British history that was not at the branch, so I talked my uncle into taking me to the main library downtown. 

Mr. Decimal had failed to mention that the book I was looking for would be found in the "Central Stacks" on the dimly lit and guarded second floor.  I was escorted in by the library hunchback who informed me that the book "must forever remain on the premises." Yeah---direct quote. If that wasn't enough, after he took the book down from a high shelf and put it on a table for me he said, "this book is worth considerably more than you." And if that still  wasn't enough, he sat there and looked at me the whole time.  The book itself was one of those corded spine leather tomes rarely seen outside of movies about devil worshipers, so it was fairly distracting when Quasimodo sat down across from me and folded his arms, but after he fell asleep he was less Boris Karloff and more Uncle Fester, so I just ignored him.

I was making notes on all sorts of obscure British history when I stumbled on the truth about the assignment I had so completely forgotten about. Guy Fawkes wasn't named Guy because he was a guy; Guys are called "guys" because British kids would make Guy Fawkes effigies and cart them around door-to-door asking people to give them a "penny for the 'Guy'," which explains where we got the word guy, but oddly enough, goes right along with the historical trend of the actual Guy Fawkes/Gunpowder Plot/Bonfire Night situation not making any damned sense at all.

Decades later, it got worse when V, the lead character in the film V for Vendetta, recited The Fifth of November poem that I had copied down in my notes. I had a strong "glitch in the matrix" moment that was intensified by suddenly realizing that the masked V was portrayed by Hugo Weaving, the actor that played Agent Smith in The Matrix where the phrase "glitch in the matrix" came from. This was followed by several milder deja vu aftershocks, when Weaving portrayed Gandalf's friend Elrond in Lord of the Rings as I had confused Ian McKellen, who played the wizard Gandalf, with Richard Harris who played the alpha wizard in Harry Potter who just so happened to have a pet phoenix named Fawkes.

As a precaution, I sent an email to the House of Lords advising them to keep J.K. Rowling the hell out of their basement, but then realized that most of my concerns can be attributed to a mental disorder that causes me to see connections where there aren't any.

I guess the main thing I don't understand is how the holiday became almost antithetical to the original intent of celebrating the preservation of government. The now ubiquitous Guy Fawkes masks have become a symbol for the anarchistic "Occupy Whatever" movement, Libertarians, Whistle-blowers, and just about any group of people that can somehow manage to think of themselves as being anti-establishment.

Oh, wait.  Duh!  I get it now.

Anyway, here is the version I had in my notes.  It's not the one I usually see, but I think the last part shows how the British kids justified their fundraising efforts. If you try to imagine your teenage-self reading it out of the Necronomicon in the company of a snoring albino, perhaps you'll understand why it stuck with me.


        Remember, remember the fifth of November
        Gunpowder, treason and plot.
        I see no reason, why gunpowder treason
        Should ever be forgot.

        Remember, remember, the fifth of November,
        Gunpowder, treason and plot!
        A stick or a stake for King James' sake
        Will you please to give us a fagot
        If you can't give us one, we'll take two;
        The better for us and the worse for you!

        A penny for loaf to feed the Pope
        A farthing o' cheese to choke him
        A pint of beer to rinse it down
        A fagot of sticks to burn him
        Burn him in a tub of tar
        Burn him like a blazing star
        Burn his body from his head
        Then we'll sing ol' Pope is dead
        Hip hoorah!
        Hip hip hoorah!
        Hip hip hoorah!


NB: I fully intend to detonate fireworks this evening, but I'm only going to do it as a defiant act of protest against the idea that one must have a reason to detonate fireworks, and I'm only wearing the Guy mask because I think it looks cool.