Moon Over My Slumber

There's just something about the night sky. Screw stars...gimme the moon, and I'll be just find.

Growing up, I had an east face window in my room. The window itself was fairly small and located higher than most windows. Because of its unusual size, it never received any shades or draping. Furthermore, the only good way to situate my bed at that time was in such a way that I could look out the window while lying in bed.

There were many nights that the moon kept me up. In many ways, I felt the moon shone much more clearly than the sun ever did, despite knowing the connection between the moon's shine and the sun's glow. The moon became a good friend, a watchful eye, and the reason I could fall asleep many nights.

Since moving out of that house, I have had windows facing north, west, and south. Never again have I slept as well as I did in that one room with the moon over my bed.

***

Forest Moon

The Anti-Finger

Driving to the grocer, window open, Ting Tings rockin’ over the radio.

Approaching intersection. Out of the corner of my eye, a truck appears from the left.

I hit the brakes. Truck drives through stop sign.

“What the…” emanates quite naturally from my maw as the one finger salute waves the truck by.

In all fairness, I had every right to be angry. This truck almost smashes into me at the intersection. Despite the requisite fury that should have been boiling, I was left confused. For as the truck comes tumbling by, the driver responds to my ASL profanity with an equal yet opposite reaction: He raises his hands to about chin level and displays a silent film representation of Alfred E. Newman’s “What, me worry?”

Confused? Trust me…you have seen it before.

It is the same expression every child gives when asked if they ate all the cookies.

It is the display of faux ignorance drawn into every panel of Hank Ketcham’s “Dennis the Menace”.

It is, quite honestly, a non-verbal platitude reserved for the depths of Muppet Hell.

And for some unbeknownst reason, it has become the Goofus to Gallant’s finger.

In case you are having trouble visualizing it, then imagine you were holding a plate of delicious, fresh baked cupcakes. Now, bring them up to your face so you can saver the scent. Tilt your head, and remove the plate. Add a look of stupor to your face, and you have an expression I will now refer to as “The Anti-Finger.”

Anyways, as this truck nearly crashes into me, the driver flashes me the anti-finger. And what really strikes me about it is that I have seen it before.

Zoom back about two weeks. Driving down First Avenue, returning home. As I reach the stoplight, it switches from red to green. No need to stop, I continue forward. This time zooming in from the right, another truck comes barreling down the street. Given his current velocity, I realize he isn’t going to stop, so I hit my brakes. The truck just barely misses my front bumper.

My car howls in anger as I press the horn. From his raised cab, the driver looks down to me, and with a look that says, “I have no idea what is happening,” he flashes the anti-finger.

Despite escaping these costly, near-accidents without a scratch, I still want to know when did the unwritten opposite of “F* YOU” become “SILLY ME!”

***

The Anti-Finger

Sharp Mind, Slick Head

For the past year, I have been doing a double dose of comics for a local newspaper. The first is a funny adventure comic, ala Donald Duck meets Johnny Quest, called BTCC. The other comic, and the focus of my current diatribe is FUH Comics.

What is FUH, you say?

Mix one part Political Cartoon with one part Ripley's Believe it or Not and stir. Serve cold and dry.

FUH - Messed-up Illustrated History.

FUH is F'd Up!

Finally, FUH is at home on Gnome Coffee. Just hit the Webcomics button and select the FUH Comics banner. Or just hit this link.

Either way, please visit the site and throw my gracious "landlord" (netlord?) a dime. He does make some stupendous coffee!

Next on the net: BTCC

LOOK OUT!

***

FUH Comics 09

Customer Disservice

I don’t like my job.

You see, I’ve been working customer service in one form or the other now for the better part of three years. And it’s not the phone variety either. No, it is the face-to-face kind, where you have to stand, typically in one place, for hours on end. It’s practically inhuman.

Think back fifty years ago, and what jobs delegated you to stay standing for so long. Mannequin. Scarecrow. Decorative fountain of children peeing. All positions that have been replaced by inanimate objects.

But people don’t want to talk to inanimate objects, of course. They want someone to blame when they arrive at the store a day late for the sale (“I’m sorry ma’am. I didn’t realize you were coming in today, otherwise I would have extended the sale”), or show up at the airport and hour after their flight leaves (“Sir, I deeply apologize for sending that flight off on time. That was entirely my bad. If I had known you were hammered in the bar, I would have waited for you to sober up and THEN sent the plane out”).

But seriously, no one should have to work in a place where the customers demean and berate you, and then only turn around to find the management doing the same. Especially when the management takes less responsibility than their employees while simultaneously skirting the border of legality in regards to payroll and harassment.

So yeah...that's why I left.

***

Easter Man 002A

Under the Weather

Fargo/Moorhead is flooding. Things are calming down but are not quite finished. Mid-April is the expected second crest. Despite all this, we are also in the midst of another blizzard.

Grr…

How is it that humanity is still under the influence of its environment? Haven’t we spent millennia trying to get the upper hand on this? Tesla, among other ideas, theorized that the weather could be changed via radio waves. Though science says otherwise, it is an attempt, correct? Maybe weather can be changed via social methods. Is global warming not a method of weather control?

Truth is that weather control already exists. So, yeah…go humanity!

***

Icy Mountain Surprise!

Faux-ku

Felt funny this morning. Don't know why. These words were stuck in my head:

Had an odd dream
Can't tell what's real
World's a hologram.

Truth be told, there was an odd dream. There have been many odd dreams. Is this one any different?

***

BenJammin - 1500 C2

Aunt Jemimah in the White Castle

The checkout girl smiled. She tried not to laugh as she asked if I found everything all right.

“Uhh…yup”

Had this been any other night, any regular night, she could have very well been flirting with me. In fact, she most definitely would have been flirting. Not tonight, though. Between my confused disposition and the boxes of microwaveable sandwiches, there was only one thought in her mind: this guy is stoned. Honestly, I really couldn’t argue with her rationality.


The last four hours had been spent in front of a computer screen, answering questions in a tutorial lesson on customer service that discussed scenario after endless, insignificant scenario. The tutorial lesson was finally complete, and I had just barely passed the assessment. Standing felt foreign, with each step feeling uncontrollably bouncy and new. My head was equally spaced-out. It was time to go, but whom would I inform? All the employees present were gathered around a computer screen watching an assembly line manufactured film, where actors, plots, and camerawork were all pulled randomly from separate boxes.

“How do I leave?" the words tumbled clumsily out of my mouth.

During the computer tutorials, my arms and legs would take turns going to sleep. Prior to this, I hadn’t known that one’s tongue could go on sabbatical as well. Had I been one of the employees, I would have commended myself on the great Slingblade impression. Thankfully, one of the employees had understood what I was trying to say and pointed to a big white door plainly labeled “EXIT”.

I left the lobby and wondered if my car had been towed. My blue Sable still needed a parking pass, but the manager kept forgetting to assign one.

“Where do I park until I get a parking pass?”

“Just park in the lot. If you get ticketed, we’ll pay for it,” he said.

“Yeah, but what if they decide to tow it?” A sign from my walk to the office had danced in my memory, stating all trespassing cars would be towed.

“That probably won’t happen,” he said with questionable certainty.

My car had not been towed. It hadn’t even been ticketed. How secure is this parking lot if they don’t notice any alien automobiles?

The steering wheel shivered under my warm hands. Leaving the parking lot, I took a wrong turn and ended up driving through the customer lot entrance

My gut and my gourd growled in agreement. Though my mind may have been filled with new information, but my stomach was emptied of old meals. I craved red meat. It had been years since my tongue lashed a fast-food burger. A tug inside my skull pulled my car into a McDonald’s drive-thru.

“HiwelcometoMcDonald’sorderwheneveryou’reready.”

Here it was. That moment between anticipation and achievement where you reach the peak of desire without actually feeling fulfilled. “May I have a Big Mac?”

“Sorrywe’reallout.”

“What?”

“I’msorrythegrill’sclosedandwedon’thavenaymoreBigMacs.”

Was it the speaker or the Speaker that made the dialogue unintelligible? “I’m sorry, I can’t understand you. Could you please speak slowly?”

“The…grill…is…closed…so…there…are…no…more…Big…Macs…”

It must have been spite that split the words. “Can I just have a cheeseburger, then?”

“No cheeseburgers either.”

“Um…” My mind was a hive of African killer bees, all buzzing to get out, “…what do you have?”

“Pop, milkshakes, pie…”

“Can I just get a soda?”

“Sure, what size?”

“Small”


I pulled through the drive-thru, and paid for my small Sprite. She had lied to me, I realized as my mouth filled with the salty, sharp taste of ordinary carbonated water. They were out of soda too.

My inner wolf still howled for the repose granted only by beef. Of course, at this time of night, everything else was closed, except the grocery store


The grocery store is a nighttime haven for those suffering from sun deprivation. The aseptic lights on the ceiling illuminated the muddy tracks on the floor. In my mind, time was of the essence…mostly because it was late and I had no desire to spend the rest of my waking hours preparing a meal whose weight would set the sleepy-time trigger off in my stomach. So I marched directly to the frozen food aisle. Immediately, a pair of boxes caught my attention. A smiling Aunt Jemimah was perched next to sterling White Castle.

“Perfect…” growled my inner wolf.

***

Forest Owl