Woodsman

It was the woodsman's job to rush in after Red and her Grandma were foolish enough to be eaten by a wolf. He brandished his axe menacingly and cut the animal open, freeing the hapless females.

But he's new on the scene, not original to the story. Early on, Red saw through the ruse and made her escape. Or she dissected old Lupus her own self. Or never let him in to begin with, having built her Grandmother's house with bricks. Wait, that's wrong. In any event, it was her wits that got her through the ordeal, not an armed man-stranger who happened by.

The Three Glyphs of Midge

Largely, even hugely forgotten are the Three Glyphs of Midge. Once revered in Midgian lore for their purported powers to heal carbuncles, they fell out of favor in the seventh century with the arrival of leeches from the Orient. Ironic, isn't it? That the glyphs should disappear, but their odes and paeans should be sung for centuries. Long after every smidge of Midge was wiped out, drunks went on toasting and singing the same old song. They came to believe Midge was a young buxom lass, and so some women were so named. Meanwhile, the glyphs were entombed in a barber's burial vault in Outer Slobovia for some twelve hundred years, until discovered by tomb raiders disguised as archeologists, sold to Nazis, auctioned at Christie's, and purchased by a wealthy Brazilian plastic surgeon, who put them back to use, not in healing carbuncles, but in removing ass fat.

ChemLawn Man

Say Good Bye to:

Brown Grass
Worms
Crickets
Snakes
Toads
Chipmunks
Squirrels
Birds
Neighborhood children

when you say Hello to ChemLawn Man.
ChemLawn. It's just you and your grass.

Fungal Crinoid

Exoverasic crinoid with fungus wrap.

Astronomers Find Nothing

Astronomers at the University of Minnesota, searching the sky for star clusters and distant galaxies, found instead nothing.

Astrophysicist Gordon Greenaway described the discovery as "very significant." He likened the find to last year's speculative theory by astronomers at the University of Wisconsin which more or less determined that space, in addition to being curved, has a curlycued tail.

"The nothing we found is significantly larger than any areas of nothing we've previously encountered," said Greenaway. "We are at a loss to explain it. All rational thought would lead us to believe that something should be there, but as far as we can detect, nothing is."

Determining the exact size of this vast nothingness is the next step for astronomers, after which they will try to answer why nothing exists and what nothing, if anything, consists of.

The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

I do so look forward every year to this date, it being Day of the Blessing, whence we recall the prayer of Saint Attilla: "O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that with it Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits, in Thy mercy."

Wraith 2

Another squirrelly thing.

Wraith

A wraith is a squirrelly thing appearing in or around deathbeds. It's a hint of what's to come and is therefore hard to make out by living beings, but those on the cusp bring it into focus at the last moment. Closure is not what a wraith provides.

no title

Why should I even hazard a guess as to why it is the stone must roll, the wind must turn, the grist be ground from the grown? As if the seed be sown, the prairies scorched, the soil turned, the toil earned, the earth spoiled, the works oiled. Why should even I want to know?

Castor and Pollux

They're Gemini today, but Castor & Pollux weren't always stars. Time was they were spurned as spawn of a swan. Twins they were, with different fathers. Not an uncommon thing back when.

Leda had Castor and his sister Clytemnestra by Tyndareus, a mere mortal. A Spartan king, but a mortal nonetheless. From the second egg (I did mention that Leda was a swan, didn't I?) hatched Pollux and his sister Helen. You know Helen. Launched a thousand ships and all. Their dad was Zeus, the Big God, master of disguise, who could easily change into a swan if he fancied one.

Castor and Pollux became Argonauts; accepted the award of Patron Saints of Voyagers; went on to rescue Helen. Castor, like many mortals, was into horseback riding. Pollux, like many immortals, preferred throwing punches in the ring. They hung out and had a lot of fun together.

Once they raped a couple of priestesses. That got them in trouble with a couple of other twins who claimed the priestesses for themselves. An imbroglio ensued, resulting in the death of three of the four. Naturally, Pollux, being immortal, was spared. But he couldn't stand to lose his brother, so he asked Papa Zeus to take him instead. Zeus compromised. He assigned them alternate days, first on Olympus as gods and then as dead mortals under the ground. So, you see, it worked out okay all around. Except on those alternate days.

Schist

The nectar absorption rate of schist 

is slowed by anahydroid metamorphicism.

Amalgamidian

Recalcified bone-stone depicting unknown amalgamidian. Demineralization has erased some features, but new growth has evolved regardless.

White Pegs Found In Black Holes

Scientists expecting to find gray pegs in black holes found white ones instead. Major assumptions are presently being brought into question. Not least of which is how did they get there? Were they white to begin with? What with all the debris present in a black hole, why haven't they turned gray? What shape are the pegs, round or square? What shape are the holes? Scientists are expected to be busy for a long time figuring it all out.

The Joker

Feargus MacFib

Feargus MacFib, Pictish pyrate of Fife, expeller of Ionian monks, waylayer of Angles, aboder of brochs and crannogs, and a flib of a glyph carver, aye.

Manny Loburn

When Manny'n the boys got to swarpin about, weren't no runction akin. The floors'd be dented, glass'd be flindered 'n there'd be hair'n beer'n flesh'n blood everwheres.

Clown Button 2

Thursday's post of a clown button garnered the following response from an astute peruser of these tomes. Alas, I cannot condone his questionable morals. He writes:

That clown button looks suspiciously like one belonging to one Flipwidget the Clown, presently living in the Federal Corrections Institute of Comedic Studies in Harper, Minnesota. Though I have no definitive proof, the accompanying photograph shows Flipwidget being offered a token of my esteem after he rescued a fellow member of Big Skull-Headed Clown Local 435 in Topeka from under the wheels of a taxiing airplane. Being President of said chapter, I felt it was my duty to reward him for his action. I'm afraid that blowing up the picture would not bring the button to clarity, but it also might have been on another pair of pants. He's been known to, uh, leave them behind on occasion.

Empty-Eyed Louie

I would have relegated this missive to the comment section, but I thought putting it front and center would make it easier for the vice squad to "get a grip on the situation," if you catch my drift.

Ruskies Spur Water Claims

The recent flag planting below the North Pole by the Russians has generated hundreds of copycat claims around the globe by countries and corporations alike.

The island Republic of Cape Verde, for instance, has shocked the world by sinking it's flag in the Atlantic Ocean and claiming it as their sovereign territory. This symbolic act was followed by similar ceremonies off the shores of Iceland, Barbados, and Bar Harbor, Maine.

Not to be outdone, Chicken-of-the-Sea and Bumblebee are vying for tuna rights in both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. Flags of many aquarium supply companies hoping to capitalize on fish and coral have appeared on buoys anchored off the Australian coast above the Great Barrier Reef. And competing kelp claims are the order of the day everywhere the prized brown seaweed is harvested.

Even individuals are getting in while the getting's good. Space travel pioneer Burt Rutan has made known his intention to plant a flag at the Martian North Pole for both water and oil rights, should either commodity exist. Marius Douala of Oku, a village in Cameroon, has laid claim to all of the deadly gas at the bottom of Lakes Nyos and Monoun in that west African country. And media magnate Rupert Murdoch has claimed as his own all gems, gold bars, doubloons and pieces of eight lying at the bottom of every ocean on the planet.

So it would appear Vladimir Putin has set in motion an unprecedented rush to lay claim to all that can theoretically be claimed.

Plain Jain

Kalingish ascetic revered as the Mother Of Jainism. Karmic conversion at birth. Clued into eternal, natural law at the age of two. She gave up all worldly attachments when she attained Moksha at the age of five. Lived to sixty-seven without food, drink, shelter or sleep. Regarded as the ultimate role model of many dead and/or reincarnated Jains.

Clown Button

This is one in a set of a dozen earthen clay clown buttons I purchased recently from an antique dealer at a recent Ringling Brothers Convention. Marvelous, isn't it? This one, in particular, is believed to have held up the trousers of Noodles Roquefort. The notable lack of buttonholes goes a long way to explaining why Noodle's pants were always falling down.

Lurbinox

The Holy Feast Day of the Lurbinox mingles stout Lurb values and Nabisco Vanilla Wafers. Guilt is the main Lurb value. Fear's another.

The Feast of Wafers is meant to symbolize a renewal of sorts. A time to cast off old sorts and try on new sorts. Of course, the old sorts don't want to go, so they cling to the Lurbinox and scream bloody murder. Eventually, they're lured off the Lurb by the new sorts armed with Vanilla Wafers, but not before the Lurb is totally flammed. I swear, it happens every year.

Trotsky

Thirty years on the front lines mapping Bolshevism with Lenin, although often disagreeing with him, Leon Trotsky fought for revolution with his pen. Exiled, imprisoned, exiled again to Vienna, to Switzerland, to France, to Spain, to New York, he read, corresponded, and, above all, wrote.

Come the revolution, he returned to Russia, became commissar and then head of the Red Army. Rebuilt the railroads, argued for state unions, attempted to heal factional rifts, made enemies. Chief among them, Josef Stalin.

When Lenin died in '23, the power vacuum grew in intensity. Brains gave in to brawn and within four years Stalin had secured his base, founded the secret police and sent Trotsky into exile again: to Kazakhstan, to Istanbul, to France, to Norway and finally to Mexico City. In Mexico, he finally had time to write the history of the revolution and the failed Soviet state. It was here, too, his head was cleaved by an ice axe wielded by a Stalinist hack.

Saint Pyr

Abbott Pyr of Ynys Byr,
In his cups fell in the well.
By the time they fished him out
He was dead and gone to hell.
His brother monks without complaint
Canonized their peer a saint.
And so to heaven he arose
At least that's how the story goes.

In Orbit

The last shot my camera phone got off before the gas took effect.

Little Boys

Slugs and snails and puppy dog entrails are the basic ingredients, but I'm partial to snakes and bats and innards of cats.