WHAT'S THAT NOISE?  

 

 Strangely enough, noises in the night don't bother me anymore.  We used to have two cats and any strange interruptions of the silence during the periods of darkness when no one is up, except burglars and deranged homicidal maniacs, would be attributed to the cats.    Sure enough in the morning you'd find a wastebasket overturned or books knocked off the shelf by a feline that was looking up a certain reference on catnip.      
      After the "librarians' left for that big litter box in the sky, when I would hear a strange noise,  like someone rubbing a honing stone over a hook,  I would quietly slip thru the house in the darkness thinking I could sneak up on whatever was causing it and hit it with my shoe.  Fortunately this theory was never put to the test.  And afterwards I would turn the lights on and find no one in the house and nothing out of place, no half-eaten lampshades,  no bloody entrails gaily decorating the mirrors, no pentagrams burned into the sofa, and no trails of green sticky stuff leading to a bottomless chasm in the VCR.
      After a while of chasing these night phantasms thru the dark, with numerous stubbed toes and head bumps (Oh yeah I pulled that shelf out so I would remember to rearrange the tapes) I decided it would be better to look around for what was causing the noise-  when there was more light.  In the morning.  In case it was an ape burglar or escaped mental patient with surgical tools.

       I would lay quietly, pretending I was harmlessly asleep, until I was asleep.  It seemed to work.  To this very day I have never been murdered in my sleep.

          The night noises continue unabated, but I figure as long as I'm not out there to lure any rabid  critters across the dimensional threshold, they will look for some other victims that enjoy getting out of bed in the middle of the night to have their bowels strung thru keyholes.  Me, I can pass on night sweats and menacing shadows with glinting steel claws.  I'd rather spend the time comforting my pillow and telling it that there's nothing that can't wait till daylight, when the unburied undead go back to their unholy sleep and the civilized dead rise to find their morning coffee. 

      Although if I could catch the thing that hides in my cellar and sneaks out at night and eats half my socks I would certainly invent new and refined methods of torture that would make even those fabled Nazi war doctors wince with envy.

A hopping bird date & 2 female sheep,
A hopping bird date & 2 female sheep,
A hopping bird date & a deer  AMY,
A hopping bird date & 2 female sheep.

And many ( a black person from Shakespeare's time, you know, like Otello)!

Unca udder daddy, Hank.

And now for something pretty damn silly:

A pun fest of yer favorite songs:

 

The Orange Juice Song    You know, “Orange juice sorry you made me cry…”

The Mayonnaise Song:   Mayonnaise have seen the glory  of the comin’ of the lard…

That great old favorite: Sam and Janet :  Sam and Janet evening you will meet a strangler…

The Abby Song:   Abby home for Christmas…

The two  Wendy Moon Songs:   Wendy moon comes over the mountain…

and :      Wendy moon hits your eye…

The Gorilla Song:   Gorilla my dreams…

Allah’s Song:   Allah my love, Allah my kissin’…

Arthur’s Song:   Arthur stars out tonight…

Dexter’s Song:  Dexter halls with boughs of holly…

Howard’s Song:   Howard sings in Glockamora?

Hugh’s Song:  Hugh say either and I say either…

Shelby’s Song:  Shelby comin’ round the mountain…

Olive’s Song:  Olive me, why not take olive me…

The F U Song:  F U knew Suzy, like I know Suzy…

The Lynden Song:  Lynden Bridges falling down…

(Maybe that should be his father Lloyd Bridges.)

Guido’s Song:  Guido need no education…

The Teresa Songs:  Teresa tavern in the town… 

and      Teresa house in New Orleans…

The Wonton Omeara lament.

Not to mention all of the Bunny Songs:

My Bunny lies over the ocean…

Bunny can you spare a dime?

Bunny, my Bunny, your bunny misses you…

I aint got no bunny ...      and no bunny cares for me...

You’re no bunny till somebunny loves you…

And, of course, “Hare to the chief.”

Tequila Mockingbird:  I’ll just hum the first verse…

 

Compiled  with the able help of Shedog. 

You got  any suggestions, send them in  and we'll add them to the list!

2008 Predictions


George Lucas will announce the a new TV series called The Robot Chronicles.  It will be the adventures of R2D2 and CP3O before they became robots.

Peter Jackson will remake Mr Deeds Goes to Town. The main character will be a giant ape.

Ellen DeGeneris will have Harry Potter's love child.

France will be destroyed in a major earthquake  but no one will notice because it will happen during Sweeps Week.

Jim Carrey will have a huge leering face tattooed on his back.

Bin Laden will be captured in Washington. He will be discovered posing as one of Bush's advisers.

Britney Spears will take a vow to become a Sister of Charity.  She will become known as the singing, flying, swinging, dancing nun.

G W Bush will take a four month vacation.  His popularity ratings will stay up as long as he's away.

NBC will come out with a new reality show that all takes place in a taxi.

Joan Collins, Elizabeth Taylor, Wanda Sykes and  Phyllis Diller will open a chain of beauty shops called Shaggin' Hags.

Erik Estrada will open a school for motorcycle-riding actors.

JIm Carrey will have a giant face tattooed on his chest with its tongue hanging out.

Harrison Ford will be accused of trying to run  Callista Flockhart   thru a pencil sharpener  'To sharpen her wits.'

Dubya will announce that he's having Cheney's  love child.

Paris Hilton will  do nothing of real interest but it will be heavily covered in all the media.

CATS will reopen off Broadway  with new lyrics;  Chachacheezeborger I luf ewe, Wat da fock?, Kitty needz iz medicines, Freebird , n
I CAN HAZ CHEEZEBORGER ?! ! !

<table width=500 style='border:1px solid black; background-color:white; color:black;'><tr><td><img src='http://triggur.org/dearsanta/santa.gif'><font size=6>Dear Santa...</font><br><br><b>Dear Santa,</b><br><br>This year I've been busy!<br><br>In March I bought porn for <lj user="paulcurtis"> <font size=-3 color=gray>(10 points)</font>.  In October I had a shoot-out with rival gang lords on the 5 near LA <font size=-3 color=gray>(-76 points)</font>.  In May I gave <lj user="paulcurtis"> a Dutch Oven <font size=-3 color=gray>(-10 points)</font>.  Last Tuesday I bought porn for <lj user="paulcurtis"> <font size=-3 color=gray>(-10 points)</font>.  In February I turned <lj user="paulcurtis"> in for tearing the tag off a mattress <font size=-3 color=gray>(3 points)</font>.  <br><br>Overall, I've been <b>naughty</b> <font size=-3 color=gray>(-83 points)</font>.  For Christmas I deserve <b>a lump of coal</b>!<br><br><blockquote>Sincerely,<br>henryboop</blockquote></td></tr></table><br><form action='http://triggur.org/dearsanta/'>Write your letter to Santa!  Enter your LJ username:<input type=text name=uname size=20><input type=submit value='Write Santa!'></form>

Hey I did what it said and that's what it gave me.  looks like it quoted itself endlessly.

I miss the wackiness of Paul Curtis and am glad to be reconnected to it somehow.  I still use some Curtis cartoonies  in the Absurd Sigs newsletter altho I have repudiated my menza membership.  Kaytie is playing StarTrekkin across the universe so it will be hard to concentrate and write creativeley.

Here's my letter to Old Nick:
     Dear Nick, Your slovenly highness,  I have done my best to be bad but in todays world the competition is so stiff.  I have poisoned the dust bunnies under my bed and  soon the poison will spill into the dust Coyotes and the roaches that eat their moldering bodies and the whole trash food chain will .... omagod.... Kayte is playing Ratatooey- phooey   my creative juices will have to be sublimated till All is quiet on the Wattam Front.
I'll be talking to you Marvelous Paul.

This is a rant.

    

Rants are good for you, they give you a chance to vent your spleen and let others nod their heads and say,” Yeah, that’s right!”

   

Now I have nothing against India or Indians ( I dated Lara Ramaswamy, a wonderful person)  and outsourcing is okay for certain jobs but it just don’t work for phone service.  People who are trying to answer questions and solve problems on the phone should be completely familiar with the native language and all colloquialisms and certainly the mores and cultural depths of the speakers they’re dealing with.  (Is that an end preposition?  I do not know, but I know English well enough to make myself understood on the phone.)

    Recently I had to go thru a stack of credit cards and change my addresses on them.

The businesses that had native English speakers averaged about two minutes apiece and they got them correct as time has proved.  The Indian speakers although they could approach English speaking could not understand or recognize the alphabet and I’ve gotten some really weird spellings of Sprague Avenue, my street.  “Sparague.” “Spague.”

“Anuvue.”  These coming from the official communications of the companies I dealt with.  And after I spelled it out for them.  And they repeated it back to me.

 

Needless to say when I called Chase and wanted to explain why I had to take my wife off my account but not to close it till she had paid it off and I got an Indian that had rehearsed

his spiel and couldn’t talk about anything else and kept asking me for a list of  answers to verify my identity that included my address, my phone number, my mother’s name and finally my social security number I got upset.  I asked for his supervisor.  He started double talking and said he was switching me to another representative.  I was put on hold and then cut off.   So I called back and when I got another unctuously polite gentleman trying vainly to deal with the complexities of an unfamiliar language I asked to speak with someone that was familiar with the English language and he hung up on me.

 

I decided I could not deal with a company that did not use native English speakers and I put my bills away, but when the next bill came I determined to find my way thru the morass of  bureaucratic layers and get someone that understood the common vernacular.

“Hello, this is Dean speaking, how may I help you?”

Good lord, they have put a signal on my phone number that switched me from Bombay to San Francisco!   Or so many people have complained that they’ve gone American.

Whatever!  Hurray!  I explained my problems and Dean solved them.

 

Please, CEOS,  do not use non-English speakers to answer your phones.  Indians make great doctors, they can speak two languages and study medicine, too,  but you can’t take

someone that  took English in school in a foreign country and have them understand what is happening when a client calls to correct a complicated error in billing.   You wouldn’t put an American that took high school French into the control tower of a French airport would you?

 

Moral:   A company that is so greedy that it puts incompetents in its most important communication positions will not survive .

All Hallows Eve Report...
So SHEDOG sat out on a musty ancient chair on the front stoop of our haunted Bellevue mansion and fed the maws of the leetle monsters that appeared before twilight.
When the sun crept down to seek  safety from the Denizens of the Night  she passed the blue bowl full of goodies on to me.  First I ran and got my Edward Scientific real genuine (color) plastic SKULL.  (I wanted to put on my prognathic ape face makeup but beelzebub knows what scary universe its currently inhabiting.)

First I placed the cursed cranium in the opened mailbox.  A subteen wiseacre asked what happened to that guy and I said,"Too much candy."  This didn't stop him from his appointed rounds and after he got his dole he rushed on to collect the rest of his spoils. Don't today's parents wish they could go out and collect five pounds of free candy and gobble it all down without fear of bodily retribution.

I was one flight of steps up from the action and some little kids could barely span the steps with their tiny legs and costume binders so I moved down to the bottom of the bottom flight and sat on the steps.  There was no place to put the skull where it could be seen so I propped it up in the candy bowl.  And then added cellophane wrapped candy eyes.
It was a cool night, but not cold, (remember when Octobrr costumes included a parka and gloves?) and beside the faeries, witches, goblins,elves and Spiderkids parading and running up and down the streets, brightly blinking "UFOs" would pass over making a low run in the glide path to the Greater Pgh Airport.  A house up the street was all decorated in orange lights and also decorated the night with a tape (or CD: generation gap)  of horrific moans, shrieks and caterwauling.  A perfect American celebration of pure pagan hullabaloo.

Standing around in the dark watching mothers and fathers herding there babies into the joy of a strange mystical almost unexplainable ritual I discovered I had a pocket full of change and remembered when I was a kid and  the people down the block that gave out fifty cent pieces to the Halloweeners and what a cause for whispered jubilance  that was;  "Can you go back?" "Naw they're taking names."
So I grabbed half of the change in my pocket and held it in my hand.  When a bigger kid came with his younger bespectacled brother I dipped into the candy bowl and dropped only the candy into the older kids bag but when I dropped the candy into the little kids bag I dropped the change in too.  I could just imagine when he was digging thru his bag and discovered that the Spirits of the Night had somehow generated a handful of money for him.
Later when the day was almost over I ran out of candy just as two sharply dressed girl teeny boppers came to collect.  The one girl got the last candy and ran off with a 'Happy Halloween' over her shoulder.  I said. "Sorry, that was the last of the treats, but here is the rest of all the change I have." and dropped it into her outstretched hand.   She was speechless, but gave a big smile and ran off to gloat to her friends.

Bellevue has a number of interesting rituals that were unfamiliar to me,  driving the fire truck thru all the streets with all its lights on was one.
Now of course I've heard of ,' TRICK OR TREAT'  and its refrain, 'Smell my feet, give us something good to eat."   But I've never heard it from kids in costume,  even the smallest would be coaxed to chirp out a shy, "Twick o' tweat."   And 'Wow'   half of them said, 'Thank you.'
And the other half would, instead of checking in their bag to make sure they got something good, smile and wish me a, "Happy Halloween!"
There may be hope for the old US of A  yet.

test

Okay  I  got an urge from Shedog to get on this thing and I filled out what I could and answered a question about bands.

SOMEHOW  my answer got placed in her   journal.  Duh  eek

So I tried again, today. I spent an hour listing the things I liked.
When I was done and looked at it  it said , "Too many words, try again from the first sentence."    YAAUUUGHGHHGHH!

So I said some smart friggin thing and quoted what it had said.

It gave me another BLANK SCREEN  and shook its finger at me.

I typed in ,"Friggit"

It blank screened me.

I tried again  and it left, pulled all its connections and went back to my server.

Here I am again like a fool trying to get it to  print what I type.    ***sigh***