Thirteen People Who Want To Steal My JC Penney Bicycle

JC Penney Lightweight 5 Speed

I had a great day masquerading as a crummy day. Everything I did want to happen didn't, and everything I didn't want to happen did. This is my bicycle. I haven't had one in twenty-five years, but I couldn't pass this one up. Everything you see on here works. The headlight, the brakelight, the pump. I wrote a poem about this bicycle and I have titled it Thirteen People Who Want To Steal My JC Penney Lightweight Five Speed Bicycle. The episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Show were re-runs. I want a lot more night. I haven't stayed up past midnight but a few times this year and it's the only time my mind really relaxes. I can't write enough words to fill up this god-blessed column and I want to eat some of the tasty things I bought today and my stomach is gorged like I swallowed a watermelon.

Thirteen People Who Want To Steal My JC Penney
Lightweight Five Speed Bicycle

Chairman Mao
Ben Stiller
Eudora Welty
Scatman Carruthers
The kid from the Life cereal commercial
Burt Bacharach
Albert Fred "Red" Schoendienst
Jan Smithers
Tommy Smothers
-cont-

    There are others, but I forgot who they are. It made me feel slightly better to write that poem. 




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The Swamp Golem

The Swamp Golem is one of the finest Tiny Drawings. Where does the swamp end and the Golem begin? It's hard to say. I know I wouldn't want to encounter this creature out on the Bayou. or anywhere else, for that matter.  Pin It

A Blog About Bonanza and James Coburn

I suppose I should blog about something today before I go hop on the trolley and go across town. What will it be? The NBA Finals? No. Silver prices? No. The nature of pop celebrity in modern culture? No. 

I watched Bonanza a couple of times this week on MeTV. The second episode featured James Coburn. We'd just seen Coburn in Duck, You Sucker a few weeks ago and it's always nice to see him in anything. Then aI saw an episode of Adam12 where they go on a double date to this Old West town and get surrounded by punk bikers. That seems like it was a real theme in late 60's, early 70's America, after the Manson Family murders. Young people were a potential menace. Seems funny now looking back, but maybe not because FBI records on violence show violent crime has been dropping steadily for almost three decades now. Maybe those kids were more violent back then. Who knows. Anyway, hello to the NSA and the handful of people who actually read these. Pin It

Zombie Logic Press To Participate In Rockford City Market

This is the rig Jenny came up with for our table at Rockford City Market. I said let's go with a flim-flam man/snake oil theme, as if we just blew into town and opened up a suitcase of trinkets and arcane goodies. I really like it and I hope we do a few sales tomorrow. Either way it was nice of the Rockford Area Arts Council to invite us to share their tent. Unfortunately we keep selling out of The Toughskin Rhinoceros Wrangler Company, but these great cards from Scary Stationary should go over well. 

I'll be signing books, assuming I sell any, with this silver Tiffany pen that arrived in the mail yesterday. 

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Maybe I Should Have Gotten Him the Bug-Eyed Penguin

What child wouldn't go bonkers at the prospect of owning this fine Willard Mitt Romney pillow? I know I spent over $278 getting one for the three year old, and he just won't go to sleep without it. His final words every day as he clings to his Willard Romney pillow are "I love you Mitt." I hope he's not becoming a young Republican. Yesterday he insisted upon hoarding all the fruits of our collective Leggo construction endeavors despite having done only a fraction of the work. Then he explained to me since he owned the means of production I had no standing to complain. I think this is a bad sign. Maybe I should go back and get him the bug-eyed penguin.  Pin It

Tornadoes Still Undefeated Against Storm Chasers

In November I watched in amazement as the election results poured in from Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. I wondered to myself who these people were, and if they were ever going to join the rest of America in modernity? Tornado season has started in America, and got the ball rolling in Oklahoma, where it apparently has some sort of vendetta. Although these plains states are known as tornado alley, I heard several weather experts explain there's no known good reason why certain locations are victimized over and over by tornadoes while nearby cities are never touched. I don't understand the phenomenon of storm chasing. They claim to be doing it in the name of science, but I suspect it's just thrill seeking and ego stroking. I doubt there's any real need to have human contact with a tornado to gather the data needed to expand our knowledge about tornadoes. So, I observed the news about the death of storm chaser Tim Samaras with ambivalence. This is a man who put his family at risk to engage in an activity that can be done without risking one's life. So, why did he do it? Seems selfish to me. I doubt that we need to know much more about tornadoes to know how to take precautions and head to safety, so anyone trying to convince me he was doing it to make other people safer wouldn't get very far. He did it for his own reasons, and he died that way.Humanity didn't need any more footage of tornadoes for scientists to be able to study them. Of all the things I could be sad about this morning or feel are tragic, this isn't denting the list. Hope you find the excitement you craved in the afterlife. Pin It

The Mystery of Bloods Point Cemetery

Every city has it's own story of a haunted cemetery. In rural Boone County, Illinois, it's Bloods Point Cemetery. What makes this cemetery unusual is there are no crosses or religious symbols, and scuttlebutt has always been it was a burial ground for witches, pagans, or devil worshippers. The cemetery was opened in 1836, and in recent years has been victimized by vandals several times. Of course the rumor is it is haunted.  So Jenny and I drove out there. I didn't detect anything all that unusual and didn't get any out of the ordinary, but Jenny mentioned something in the car that made me think. She said this plot, which is sunken in, has concentric circles around it as if a huge fist smashed into the ground from above. And when she sent me the picture that is exactly what it looks like. I wondered to myself if this burial plot had been dug up then re-covered, or if it's just natural for a grave site to settle this way after over a hundred years. Anyway, this is the most interesting picture from Bloods Point Cemetery. Pin It