When I was a little kid, I shared a room with my brother. He was (still is) 6 years older than me so he got to pick what we watched on TV. Consequently I picked-up the first derivative of his warped sense of humor.
To this day Dick Van Dyke means “Burt” to 3/4 of my family. But he still reminds me of the Alan Brady Show.
Maybe cows can swim. Can they swim? If they could swim would they worry about sharks???
Maybe they should start.
A few years ago (15 or 16) Prada on Sloane Street had a collection of ‘exotic’ coats. The crocodile coat was grotesque … it made the wearer look like some kind of “Silence of the Lambs”/“Crocodile Dundee” smash up.
The seal skin coat was shockingly beautiful. It was also 10,000GBP and at the end of the day I couldn’t get the thought of those poor, sad little seals being bludgeoned to death for the sake of a chic coat. It wasn’t my size anyway.
I have said again and again – these are NOT classy.
My wife and I were in Singapore, walking through the boutiques on Orchard Road. One of the stores had a large collection of fur coats and jackets.
FUR? It was hotter than Hades outside! And HUMID!
I asked the clerk in the store how many folks come into his shop – when it is so damned hot outside!?
His reply: “Sir, Singaporean women travel.”
‘suppose he was right.
I remember a time I was walking across Copley Square – walking towards Neiman’s … there were a bunch of kids (younger than me = ‘kids’ ) were holding up pictures of foxes and minks that had been riven to shreds to make pelts.
One of them was finishing what appeared to be a Whopper from BK.
They were all chanting “FUR IS CRUEL! FUR IS CRUEL!”
I walked to the one with the burger wrapper in his hand. As he shouted “FUR IS CRUEL” I chimed in by saying “IT’S ALSO SOFT AND WARM!”
… well they are new. Not exactly fresh.
I still have all the Chang & Eng comics… but I’m STILL debating whether the world should see them. Haven’t they suffered ENOUGH?
I’ve finally got back into the swing of creating more humorous comics!
So that’s either good news for those of you who tune in because you like them or bad news for those of you who tune in to see if I ever hit bottom.
More from my cabinet of horological wonders. Now delving into my (so-called) cancer watches. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer six years ago I did what any normally paranoid person would do: I segregated myself from all of the talismanic objects I could. My t-shirts (how I initially figured out there was a problem in the first place) got put in a bag inside a box and then hidden in a case. All my watches and pens went into hiding …
From that point I decided to get all NEW watches and pens. These would be the ones that I used to see myself through. I bought the first cancer watch the same day as my diagnosis. A black Casio G-Shock… tough enough to be driven over with a tank – surely it can beat cancer. Also, as it is a “Tough Solar” model I see it as being something of an immortal watch. Handy when you’re looking for inspiration to not die.
I bought a box of Uniball pens that I used to take notes and write letters.
… and then there was Orange Nasty. Seiko SKX011-J (J stands for ‘made in Japan’/K stands for made in (Korea????) no: made anyplace OTHER than Japan!).
It seems like every time I get bored I buy an SKX011-J (actually more like an SKX… the color variants don’t matter. They are the first watch that pop into my head to do stupid stunts with. [Like the time I bought an SXK009-J, 15 min before leaving to go to Vietnam… and had it shipped to my hotel at the beach to see if and or how long it would take to get there. Apparently guaranteed next-day service still means NEXT DAY – even in the world of bored stupid stunts….]
… anyway. I get bored and I buy a watch. I wear it until I’m not bored anymore and then I give them to friends. The first Orange Nasty was purchased while recuperating from my bilateral mastectomy. The operation was a piece of cake! The post-op was a piece of cake. Not being able to move my arms for a week: THAT was tough… spending a month with drainage bulbs – also not very much fun. Going to the hospitals to have swollen effusions drained with a syringe that looked like a ‘Three Stooges’ prop – also not a highlight. Spending every second of the day looking over my shoulder wondering when doom was about to punch me in the face again – 👎 I do not recommend.
Deflect! Deflect! Deflect!
Here comes the FedEx driver with my box. In it was the first Orange Nasty. I wore it until I felt well enough to go home. Then I gave it to the first person to comment on it.
In 2020 I was kind of trapped for a few months (10 1/2 … but who is counting?) so I bought THIS Orange Nasty… same spec. SXK011-J… same seller, in Singapore.
A friend saw a picture of it and commented on it. Seeing as I wasn’t there to give them the watch I did the next best thing; I sent one.
Question: Do you even really “like” watches?
Answer: No – not really. They aggravate me. Mechanical watches are like needy personalities – always calling out for my attention. Asking to be wound. Asking to be worn. Asking for me to charge up the lume pips and then admire them glowing in the dark. “We’ll tell you what time it is when you wake up to pee!”
You’ll keep me awake thinking about all the time that’s ever elapsed and all the time that has yet to come and that will frustrate me even further.
Question: If you don’t like them – why buy so many?
Answer: D’uh – because I’m an addict! Because I’m serially bored and looking for that illusive “simple prop to occupy my mind”. Fortunately I have developed Fatalistic Yoga to clear my mind – it’s way way cheaper too! I’m not nearly as bankrupt as I used to be (fiscally or spiritually).
Sorry – I’m a big fan of low-hanging fruit.
Actually – my dad had a theory (I never tested it) that the sweetest fruit is that which the birds and critters go for first. His belief/understanding was that they were looking for sweet foods too and that they had some extra-sensory function that allowed them to hone in on it.
As of today my Minions are both back at school. Please allow me to dig through my notes of the past few months (jumbled,confused and angry as some of them may be) and cultivate a few pearls for y’all to enjoy.
There may be a few breaks in coverage but that’s only because I really don’t like to run with all text. If it were OK to run with all text I’d have enough to flood this page with crap from now until the next Big Bang.
“I love you”??
No.
Trans Rectal Ultrasound
Yikes!!!!
Follow this space.
I’ve been trying a new diet for the last 10-12 days. No food until 6pm. Before that, any time I feel hungry I have a shot of espresso, a small glass of orange juice and then 500ml of water.
So far I haven’t lost any weight. (Why is that?)
As an example: last night just before I was ready to SNAP and start kicking people I had a double whopper, 4 chicken drumsticks, 4 zucchini fritters, 2 large pita breads and 4 tablespoons of hummus.
“The devil mocks their every step.”
I’ve never met my neighbors who live across the driveway, but I admire them. They are crazy and they really DGAF!
From time to time they use their 36th floor balcony for different things… it has basketball hoops up most of the time. Some time ago they erected a gigantic SNOW GLOBE on it. Today a mysterious awning appeared (reminds me of the ones that used to hang over the top-tier of seats of the Colosseum in Rome).
Today, while gazing over at the assortment of mish and mash I saw this guy.
YIKES!!!
Dude! STOP.
I’m sure you’re ok. I’m sure that you know what you’re doing and I’m sure that you’re being paid for this… but the juice is NOT worth the squeeze.
I’m something of a huge fraud. Not just because I spent a large chunk of my life as a fictional character: “Rob Banks”
No. The reason I’m a fraud is because most of the people I interact with think I’m things that I’m not. They think I’m intelligent; I’ve been electrocuted twice. REPHRASE: I electrocuted myself twice.
People think I’m ‘together’… but that’s only because I don’t panic openly nor at the first hint of trouble. The truth is that my blood pressure is so high (how high is it???? (My blood pressure is so high it would kill a giraffe! 🦒)) that I have to actively calm myself down almost constantly otherwise I would surely have had a stroke by now.
People also think I’m successful – probably because I collect a lot of different things. (Funny – no one EVER comments on my collection of yo-yo’s 🪀!)
The grim truth is that I’ve never actually been successful in business. I’ve made a lot of stylish and costly mistakes. I’ve written a lot of “F U” letters to people that came back to bite me on the a$$. I’ve been caught playing checkers at a chess match with money… No lie; I was very good at what I did when I was working – but that was always because I had my private parts in a vise and the handle was making a quarter-turn every half-hour. The only thing I’ve ever been successful at was meeting, falling in love with and marrying the woman of my dreams (by the way, my dearly departed friend introduced me to my wife. So I owe him for that as well.) My marriage, my children and their uniquely twisted natures (the kids, the marriage is traditional in every sense) are the only things I can point to that I have been an active participant in that I feel proud of.
UNTIL TODAY!
Today I was notified that To The Spanner Born (and by proxy Fatalistic Yoga) has/have 50 followers! That means that there are 50 really cool people out there who actually (dare I say) LIKE what I do.
I’d like to take this time to thank each and every one of you… which I could do because there are only 50 of you! And let you all know that you’ve made a HAPPY man very OLD!
Chat messages: why do I always send messages that I end up regretting? It probably has to do with why I also SAY a lot of things that I regret… and why I DO things that I regret. (Hint: it’s not the ‘it’ it’s the “I”!)
Last month I lost my friend. I still can’t accurately express how terrible this has made me feel…. Instinctively I downloaded all of our chat history from Facebook (as in @FatalisticYoga !) There were in the tens of thousands of messages between us. I then went through and re-read them, harvesting out some of our limericks and poems.
There were a lot of things in those messages that I regretted; things I should have kept to myself instead of just pushing all my chips out onto the table and causing pointless aggravation. Things I SHOULD HAVE said were also painfully obvious; so many junctures where I should have expressed my concern for his health or admiration for his writing.
And more importantly, and regrettably, there was not one single juncture where I ever expressed how much I valued our 40 year friendship. At the time I probably didn’t see it… now I see it.
My name is Rob Banks and I’m addicted to Freecell.
My addiction started 25 years ago when I started working afternoons in a of “so called” pricing specialists; we would pull down all of the end of day holdings for a group of institutional funds and then go about getting prices for all their stocks, bonds, options, futures and credit derivatives. As the Windows 95 based machines would do their work, we would actually sit there and play games.
It started with Minesweeper … the thrill of evading death with every click was just the kind of adrenaline boost we needed to get through the afternoon.
After we were done for the day we’d need to come down. That involved Solitaire. After a while it was too simple, too linear. That’s when someone introduced me to Freecell. There was something about Freecell that appealed to me in a big, big way. It had a relaxing effect, like Solitaire… but there was a component of struggle to it that I also really enjoyed.
In 1997 I took a job writing business plans and doing financial projections for entrepreneurs – that was a Mac based environment.
I went back to jobs in Windows based environments in 1998/1999/2000. The games were locked.
Then another string of Mac based roles in 2000-2004 meant that I was free from playing the game for a long enough period of time to think I was truly past it.
Like all addicts I would get triggered to look for it from time to time… stress at work… environments where people were screaming and swearing at me…or even just times when I wanted to mindlessly struggle against the cruelty of fate. I never indulged though, I would only think about it.
Fast forward to 2015: I was in my doctor’s office being dealt ANOTHER form of struggle against the cruel hand of fate … I was BRCA 2 positive and had developed at DCIS.
I went home. I went straight to the App Store and looked for it. There it was! I could keep it on my phone and I could play anytime I wanted!
Every game was a chance to write the letters of my destiny on those cards and see if I could defeat destiny. “If I win THIS game something GOOD will happen to me today. If I lose, well… we know the spectrum of outcomes.“
***
When I got my all clear from my surgeon and oncologist I swore that I would not link my destiny to the turn of 52 cards.
…yeah right!
Not only did I continue to play – I reset my game and vowed never to lose again!
As you can see, at the 2,005 moves end of the spectrum there have been some nasty, nasty, nasty (sometimes month-long) struggles.
Only 832 times was I able to win without an undo.
But I have NEVER used a “Hint”. And because you can’t get out of a game to identify which deal number it is without losing, I’ve never been able to find a solution to any game I was in.
That’s approximately 348,000 moves that I made to cheat destiny.
I know that there are supposedly a collection of futile deals in the game – they say they can’t be beaten. Ever single time I hit the “Random Deal” button I know that there’s a chance I’ll get one of those 8 tragic hands out of 52 factorial (that’s a big, big, big number!)…
I’ll make concessions for those games when they come.
Last week I created a fictitious college. Then I advertised on-line classes at this school. The main thrust of the curriculum would be to teach people how to embrace failure to the point that they could get past failing and start succeeding.
I chatted with another friend about this concept and we boiled the entire thesis down to TWO interconnected situations.
1) when you are looking for a job or for money to start a business you are at the mercy of other people… and people are not always naturally merciful. When you need money and they have money you’re basically screwed.
And
2) the best way to prevent ‘needing’ money (D’uh! Everyone NEEDS money! Money to buy love. Money to secure food. Money to attract shelter…) is to control your ‘Jones’ … you don’t need what you don’t spend.
… I wish there were a fake college for me to have gone to 30 years ago! I would have had a much easier time of it hence.
Sounds funny to say but I found my voice a long time ago. I hit on the right words and tone and phrasing that triggered my brain. Once I found it I kept on using it.
The confusing thing for me is whether or not people ‘hear’ that voice or whether they just read the words. If it’s a very complex thing I’m trying to convey I will generally read it aloud. If when I read it aloud it sounds totally natural then I know it’s “me” and that the people who know me will get it. If I have to put on a funny voice or a hat to carry it off…. Delete delete delete!
I had a therapist break-down in tears while telling me that he was a compulsive gambler who had lost everything betting on college basketball games.
I was polite. I was concerned for him. I also did wonder how this was going to impact my wanting to jam my umbrella into the wheels of people passing by me on their bicycles… 🌂 🚴
I guess that was his turn to speak.
I had one doctor tell me that my brain was like the engine of a high-power sports car; capable of doing a lot of incredible things quickly, but not really that good for sitting in traffic.
Eventually the metaphor grew to encompass the need for specialized service to keep all the cylinders firing in the correct sequence.
Towards the end it was all about how if I took it for service anywhere else I’d prove my mother right by voiding my warranty and end up dying in a fiery crash that sent me straight to hell!
… oh well.
True story: every time I had to discuss something ‘deep’ I needed to pee. In the end the therapy wasn’t too expensive. My share of the water bill however was immense!
I still feel like 1/2 of a comedy duo… yeah- I know there were THREE stooges.
To me the only thing I hate worse than clicking on a link that brings me to some questionable software that deludes me into thinking it will be easy to blog my cartoons to the world (and achieve acceptance and fame and glory and international acclaim…sigh) is getting a message from a friend that is clearly engineered for me to say something falsely complimentary.
What the deuce is taking so long for you to reply to my message?
Is there anything more frustrating than sending a message to someone – or perhaps worse: asking a question – and NOT getting an answer right away?
Then when the response to your pivotal moment comes (hours or days later) you find out that the other person was doing something totally random!
“…oh I went shopping for carrots…”
“…I had to have the muffler on my car recalibrated…”
“…there was a casting call for extras for a dog-food commercial…”
Someday technology will tell us what’s happening on the other end of our conversations. And when it does we’ll probably feel like garbage.
Sometimes when I send a message to a friend and there is a long delay in replying I generally assume that the person has died laughing. Literally died – because what I’ve said is so funny.
…then the little (typing) notification comes on and I know they are ok.
So the question becomes – what is really happening while waiting for a response…?
Sometimes when I send a message to a friend and there is a long delay in replying I generally assume that the person has died laughing. Literally died – because what I’ve said is so funny.
…then the little (typing) notification comes on and I know they are ok.
So the question becomes – what is really happening while waiting for a response…?
Pursuant to family crisis I’m rolling out these drafts…. I have new stuff but I’m not ready to put it into context yet.
Pursuant to family crisis I’m rolling out these drafts…. I have new stuff but I’m not ready to put it into context yet.
Pursuant to family crisis I’m rolling out these drafts…. I have new stuff but I’m not ready to put it into context yet.
Pursuant to family crisis I’m rolling out these drafts…. I have new stuff but I’m not ready to put it into context yet.
Pursuant to family crisis I’m rolling out these drafts…. I have new stuff but I’m not ready to put it into context yet.
I remember reading an article “a while back”** in either GQ or Playboy (yeah – I used to read the articles in Playboy! One of my friends has been a contributor to Playboy on a number of occasions! No! Not as a photographer or as a Playmate… he’s an actual writer (as opposed to Mr Snuffleupagus over here…))
…Anyway the gist of the article was that cartoons in America HAVE TO dumb down the collective psyche (animated ones anyway). People won’t sit for 30 minutes of overly intellectualized cartoons.
I use that as my moral authority to keep all of my philosophical ideas unillustrated. I can also remember reading something a while back where Hegel discussed the necessity for methadone jokes to lubricate his serious works.
** The article was published over 27 years ago! …I’m so old.
… I keep finding remnants of 2020 everywhere I look. Here’s another sketch for a demented doctor (doctors get dementia too!) Please note that he goes through 3 different hair-styles as he kills his patient and laments.
Did you ever wonder what was happening in your pool while you’re at work? Maybe its just the kid who cleans your pool… cleaning your pool.
….Maybe he’s using your pool to harbor (pun intended) exotic pets.
Make note: fire the pool cleaner…
My best friend’s house was really beautiful. It had a grand piano in the living room with loads of sheet music on it. It was not just a prop – that piano got played at all hours of the day or night.
It got me to thinking: before phones and before laptops and before desktops and before television … and radio… the only way to entertain at home was to actually PLAY music.
It was a much simpler but a much more interesting time.
Reminds me of the time I got dysentery while reading Darwin: survival of the $hitest
I just heard that one of my comedic idols – Jackie Mason – has passed on from this life to work the next crowd.
When I was very young I saw “The Jerk” with Steve Martin; Jackie Mason played a snarky gas station owner “Harry Hartounian” (later in life I’d pay homage to that schtick with a similar pen name… later later!!!(waves/flutters hand)). His attitude, his tone, his timing – to a 6 year old it was completely unique. It was unique to the entire world – who knew? (Shoulder shrug)
… still looks like crap…
I really hate these old ones. (Why do you share them?… I don’t know.)
Not because the idea isn’t funny – it is. That you’d ask a slightly bizarre question and get a completely unexpected answer makes me laugh. But the images are just so so so so so crap.
And yet – something like 30-40% of the people that view these like them. go figure.
… make that champion of the UNIVERSE.
(the trophy says “#1 with the Universe”. I couldn’t get the spacing right or make it look cool (as if that was ever an option.))
[“In the gardens of belief. Meditate us turn the key”
(Shouldn’t that be “in the gardens of belief meditators turn the key”?)
“A Play Within A Play”
Jon and Vangelis
(how infuriating – I double checked that lyric online and found out that the “official” line is not as cool as I had always heard it when listening to the song.)]
Congratulations to Jeff Bezos on his successful mission to space. I applaud his courage and his enthusiasm to bring man to the heavens.
But I must really ask: who wears brown shoes to space???
After yesterdays I thought I’d post this one. A real visual masterpiece.
I have NO IDEA what the hell I was thinking when I playfully implicated that these three symbols would decide to vacation together in what appears to be Hawaii. (I hope they’re having fun.)
That happens more and more to me these days. My favorite playlist is an acronym … but I can’t remember what it stands for and it is starting to infuriate me. “MCATIS”
Will someone please contact my subconscious and tap into my memory to find out and then tell me?
Here’s another cheap shot that I had to look at three times to remember exactly who or what I was aiming my japes at.
Another day/week another cheap shot and pun.
If you were looking for Kierkegaard – you came to the right place! (But on the wrong day… catch me in another decade when I go back to rereading all my Hong & Hong translations.)
To The Spanner Born 