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I’m half crazy

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.

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A New Diet!

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.

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50 is just a number

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!

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“Maybe I’ve forgotten the name and the address of everyone I’ve ever known”

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.

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NOW you tell me!

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.

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Finding my voice

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!

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Arrested Development

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.

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Car-tharsis

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.

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Sneer phishing

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.

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While I was waiting…

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.

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What is really happening on the other end of the phone?

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…?

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What is really happening on the other end of the phone?

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…?

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Closing out the month on another low note

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.

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Back of the Envelope Ideas

… 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.

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More Superheroes at work…

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…

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Technology isn’t always what you want

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.

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Unconscious Communication

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.

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Meditation Heavyweight World Champion

… 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.)]

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I still can’t remember

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?

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Cairo-Practors

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.)

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The Circle of Life

What this originally looked like was…

I think I like the one I drew on the back of an envelope better. But then again – what I think is not important. Fatalistic Yoga is about what YOU think. 😉

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The Skeleton in my closet

Greetings from Chester! He’s the skeleton I keep in my closet. It COMPLETELY freaks out anyone that comes to look at the electrical box or phone lines. And that’s why I keep him there.


oh – he’s also the source of all my ‘Dark Powers’… I really wish they were useful for something OTHER THAN knowing that there is ice cream in the freezer.

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Back to the mind numbing stupidity

I wrote an elegy for a little boy who had died in the community. The headmaster of the school seemed shocked that I wrote it. Considering that it sprang forth from the same mind as the person who envisioned THIS monstrosity ⬆️ I can understand his amazement.

Sometimes I amaze myself. That isn’t always great.

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Honestly – Scott is a great guy

Scott or the person I portray as “Scott” is really a nice guy; very calm, very, very classy… contrary to this space, you could say he was ‘to the MANNER born’.

When I talk to him I feel like I’m the world’s crappiest client (letting my dirty filthy subconscious run wild like this doesn’t actually help). I never feel like I’m worthy enough to be his client.

He’s got clients that wear shoes with laces!

He’s got clients that own boats.

He has clients that don’t actively attempt to compose the most profanity laden sentence in history… and then send it to random people. (One reason that almost all of you reading are wise: you NEVER give me your email addresses! Thanks for that.)

Anyway – I apologize in advance for breaking that dear, sweet man’s heart by depicting him as an empty-headed, insensitive and ineffectual jerk.

And his mirror trading strategy was something I agreed to.

… you can put the gun down now – I already made it look like “I’m” the bad guy here… is this mic on? Is it capturing what I’m saying?…

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Deal or No Deal

I’ve been involved in thinking up, preparing and presenting business proposals for nearly 30 years. It is so ubiquitous in my daily life that I don’t always realize when it is happening.

I can however tell when they go all horribly wrong. I can tell you the dates and locations of all of those events.

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Jokes about Pros

Tasteless – I know.

I’m cleaning out the cupboard to make room for fresh ideas.

The next few days I’ll be scraping the bottom of the barrel. If you’re faint of heart or squeamish in any way, I suggest taking a few days off.

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Poor Gumby

At times like these we see why sometimes a good lawyer is what you really need.


….I never liked Pokey – I always saw his true nature.

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Life With Bob

…what if Bob Dylan was your friend.
… what if he had your telephone number and called you all hours of the day and night to try to help him understand the mundane aspects of life that you NEVER expect Bob Dylan to be connected to???

God – I’m shameless.

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More experimental stuff

As I have mentioned and you may have taken note of, I’m making some subtle stylistic changes. Don’t worry! Don’t worry: there are more crude and unusual jokes (I have about 50 of them that I am pretty much terrified of!).

This one takes a rough look at what it would be like to recast the ‘strong leading man’ type of role with a ‘vapist’. (Or are they vapers?)

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Impossible to understand

Sorry – I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel. I’ve been busy doing stuff for other people (like what?) [Like – you don’t want to know!]

I HAVE been making new stuff but I’m not going to lie, I’m not just shaking them out of my sleeve at the moment.

So – submitted for your (dis)approval: an and stuck to the side of a rollercoaster. What would that be like for the ant?

… I do actually think about stuff like that.

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Impossible to understand

Sorry – I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel. I’ve been busy doing stuff for other people (like what?) [Like – you don’t want to know!]

I HAVE been making new stuff but I’m not going to lie, I’m not just shaking them out of my sleeve at the moment.

So – submitted for your (dis)approval: an and stuck to the side of a rollercoaster. What would that be like for the ant?

… I do actually think about stuff like that.

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The Ring of a King

Behold – the cheap stock imagery. The vaguely altered purloined images… Mario is at it AGAIN!

Would Elvis ever wrestle Andre the Giant? IDK – how would we get Christopher Walken to referee?????