Poetry Friday

I feel a bit like I'm cheating doing another Poetry Friday. I've been bad about posting recently and poems are generally easy. But then I thought...hey it's my blog. And I want to post a poem.

I love Neil Gaiman. I love his stories, I love his blog, and I love his poetry. I've only found one thing he's written that I didn't like and considering how much he's written that's pretty incredible. This poem makes me giggle so of course it makes me ridiculously happy.

The Day the Saucers Came
by Neil Gaiman

That day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden,
silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,
and the people of Earth stood and stared as they descended,
waiting, dry-mouthed to find what waited inside for us
and none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow,
but you didn't notice it because

That day, the day the saucers came, by some coincidence,
was the day that the graves gave up their dead
and the zombies pushed up through soft earth
or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,
but you did not notice this because

On the saucer day, which was the zombie day, it was
Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us
a ship built of dead-men's nails, a serpent, a wolf,
all bigger than the mind could hold, and the cameraman could
not get far enough away, and then the Gods came out
but you did not see them coming because

On the saucer-zombie-battling gods day the floodgates broke
and each of us was engulfed by genies and sprites
offering us wishes and wonders and eternities
and charm and cleverness and true brave hearts and pots of gold
while giants feefofummed across the land, and killer bees,
but you had no idea of any of this because

That day, the saucer day the zombie day
the Ragnarok and fairies day, the day the great winds came
and snows, and the cities turned to crystal, the day
all plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the
computers turned, the screens telling us we would obey, the day
angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars,
and all the bells of London were sounded, the day
animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,
the fluttering capes and arrival of the Time Machine day,
you didn't notice any of this because

you were sitting in your room, not doing anything
not even reading, not really, just
looking at your telephone,
wondering if I was going to call.

How to Train Your Dragon

It's rare when Jeff buys a movie just so I can see it. He had gone to the theater on the cruise ship to see How To Train Your Dragon and I hadn't gone. So when it finally came out on DVD, Jeff practically ran to the store and bought it. He made me watch it the first night. Halfway through the movie, I loudly announced

"If anything happens to harm this dragon, you are so in trouble."

It took me less than forty minutes and I was already completely enchanted by the dragon. I'm an animal lover by nature and tend to anthropomorphize anyway but the way the animators imbued him with cat-like sweetness, put me over the edge. I loved Toothless. I worried about Toothless. While I loved Hiccup's character, it was Toothless that stole the show for me. I'm always amazed by what animators can do with just the movement of an ear. With just the movement of Toothless's ears, they could make him angry or curious or happy. Without saying a word the creature spoke volumes. I'm in awe of that.

The whole film was both funny and sweet. I loved Craig Ferguson's character. So much of the dialogue and narration was clever. With lines like "This is Berk. It snows nine months out of the year, and hails the other three. What little food grows here is tough and tasteless. The people that grow here, even more so," you can't help but laugh. The relationship between Hiccup and pretty much everyone was interesting. I loved the banter between him and Astrid. But it was touching too. I'll even admit that when Stoick thanked Toothless for bringing Hiccup down to earth safely, I shed more than a few tears. But it was the animation that made me love the film. The emotion on one dragon's face made it all worth it. Such a great movie. I'm awfully glad that Jeff made me watch it.

Songs about Toast and Butter Jesus

I'm going to steal a post idea from my friend Salt who writes a very enjoyable blog about whatever argument happens to end up in his head. Today he wrote an interesting post about religion and the belief that things happen as a punishment. He was referencing the gigantic Styrofoam Jesus that was recently struck by lightning and burned to the ground. But I'm not going to talk about that.

Instead I'm more interested in the singer he mentioned. A while ago Jeff got me hooked on the morning show Bob and Tom. I loved the comedians they brought in, some of their batter between the group, and I particularly liked the musicians. They introduced me to people like Paul and Storm, Rodney Carrington, Stephen Lynch, and Heywood Banks. Sometimes the humor got a bit crude (this show is not for the young ones) but it almost always made me laugh. I haven't been listening to the show recently but I still listen to the music.

So where to these two paragraphs combine? With Heywood Banks, a parody songwriter. Heywood wrote a hilarious song about the giant Jesus sculpture called "Big Butter Jesus" since it has a bit of a buttery looking color to it. With descriptors like "unsalted Jesus", "Promise Jesus", "sweet cream Jesus", and the ever perfect "Oleo Lord", this song is blasphemous and downright hilarious. And this is just one of his songs.

Most of his songs are just silly. He has a decent voice and that with his bizarre lyrics make these songs enjoyable. His song "Iowa" is a regular favorite of mine. Any song about the state that occasionally bursts in with "What's that smell?" is good in my book. I laugh so hard I cry when I listen to "You Can Be Mean to Me (The Revenge Song)". And you really have to watch his song "Toast" on video. Heywood sings while accompanying himself on...well...a toaster. Bob and Tom's favorite seemed to be "A Trauma to the Groin" which is enjoyable but not quite as good as "Wiper Blades".

Heywood is actually Stuart Mitchell, and he has a style all his own. I've seen pictures of him with long straight hair and a pair of nerd glasses, but I've also seen pictures with him looking like Colonel Sanders. There both funny looks but but his image is only a small part of the act. It's the music that fascinated me. His music just makes me crack up laughing. If you're not easily offended (and have a good sense of humor) he's well worth a listen. Fun stuff.

Thanks for the idea, Salt. Hope it's okay that I "borrowed".

Poetry Friday

I haven't done a Poetry Friday in a while and I figure I'm about due. I've been thinking about which poem to post all week. On Wednesday I had decided it would be Jorie Graham's The Way Things Work, mostly because I tend to repeat the last line as something of a mantra. "The way things work is that eventually something catches." Not sure why that lines sticks with me but it does.

But today I'm in a silly mood. I just finished a very, very, very (can I stress the VERY) frustrating work project and I feel like I can breath a little easier. So today is something silly, a little ditty by Ogden Nash. I've been reading through his collected works and am constantly beset by smirks (sorry too much rhyming poetry). For those of you with children, this may seem familiar. For me, it just makes me laugh.

Children's Party
by Ogden Nash

May I join you in the doghouse, Rover?
I wish to retire till the party's over.
Since three o'clock I've done my best
To entertain each tiny guest.

My conscience now I've left behind me,
And if they want me, let them find me.
I blew their bubbles, I sailed their boats,
I kept them from each other's throats.

I told them tales of magic lands,
I took them out to wash their hands.
I sorted their rubbers and tied their laces,
I wiped their noses and dried their faces.

Of similarities there's lots
Twixt tiny tots and Hottentots.
I've earned repose to heal the ravages
Of these angelic-looking savages.

Oh, progeny playing by itself
Is a lonely little elf,
But progeny in roistering batches
Would drive St. Francis from here to Natchez.

Shunned are the games a parent proposes,
They prefer to squirt each other with hoses,
Their playmates are their natural foemen
And they like to poke each other's abdomen.

Their joy needs another woe's to cushion it,
Say a puddle, and someone littler to push in it.
They observe with glee the ballistic results
Of ice cream with spoons for catapults,

And inform the assembly with tears and glares
That everyone's presents are better than theirs.
Oh, little women and little men,
Someday I hope to love you again,

But not till after the party's over,
So give me the key to the doghouse, Rover

Animated Chemistry

As I'm sure I've mentioned before I've become completely addicted to Neatorama. I've added it to my news bookmarks and go there daily for a bit of inspiration, entertainment, or education. It's just like the magazine Mental Floss, which my sister has been working (and succeeding) on getting me to read.

The last couple of days or so, Neatorama has featured animation from some young animators. And after watching today's feature, I simply had to share. The image above is from Oxygen, the story of a young oxygen molecule trying to make friends at his elementary school, with some odd, and very funny results (click the link for the full 2 minute animated film). My favorite part was his interactions with Barium. If my chemistry class had been as funny as this short was I probably would have paid better attention in class. The animation is the work of Christopher Hendryx and was his graduation project for Ringling College of Art and Design. This is a must see for any science fan, or heck, anyone who likes to laugh (and learn). Short, sweet, and very funny.

Vending Machine Silliness

The website MthruF is a blog that is part of the Cheezburger group of humor sites. MthruF focuses on funny work related pictures. One of today's images was so much fun that I had to share it. It's a light post but it made me crack up laughing. And I'm off work today and not really in the mood to post too much. Enjoy the silliness.

Eddie Izzard

I hardly ever watched stand-up comedians before I met Jeff. I would occasionally watch someone like Jeff Dunham or catch a bit of George Carlin's act but I never consciously sat down to watch a comedian. Jeff on the other hand can spend an entire evening doing nothing else but watching stand-up, comic after comic. After a couple years of marriage I have swung around to Jeff's point of view. Not only do I enjoy watching comedians but I'll actually seek out the routines of my favorite ones.
Such is the case right now with Eddie Izzard. Jeff rented Eddie's Glorious routine a couple years ago and we were hooked. Since then we've been slowly renting more of his material, and I've even found myself heading online to find more routines. Eddie's comedy is stream of consciousness. He basically stands up on stage and says whatever comes to mind with hilarious results. He mumbles, he rants, he speaks in French, and he's absolutely brilliant. What I love about Eddie's stand-up is that it's intelligent humor. He never plays down to a crowd and you really have to be listening to catch all the jokes. He tends to be a very rapid fire talker so you have to keep following along. He discusses religion, history, his life, and occasionally does whole sections in French or German. And even those I find hilarious (without speaking a word of French myself). He's a master of the non sequitor and you'll often find discussion on jam, dogs, and God in the same sentence. He will jump from history of World War 2 to supermarket lines in the same breath. For others it might sound odd, but Eddie pulls it off with laughs.

I've seen Eddie in a number of films over the years and always enjoy his roles. He even made sitting through the horrendous My Super Ex-Girlfriend enjoyable. A while ago I reviewed both The Wild and Madagascar. I hated Madagascar, but The Wild had one memorable saving grace, Eddie as a smart alek koala. I was also inspired by his recent charity work. In July of last year Eddie started running and running and running. He ran 43 marathons in 51 days. All of this with only a couple weeks of training. All done for charity. I keep telling myself that I couldn't run one and he goes out and runs over 40 in less than two months. That shut me up quick. Then I flipped on more of his comedy and started laughing again.

Sadly Eddie's reputation often seems to overshadow his comedy. As one of the only transvestite comedians working out there, it is often his clothing people are talking about. Eddie never really uses his different dressing style in his act and as he puts it, just wears what he likes. But for many it is distracting. Perhaps that's why his recent material has him ditching the heels and eyeliner more often than not. Which is kind of sad for me. I don't find it distracting and actually think he looks rather good en femme. He can certainly walk better in heels than I can. That kind of individualism is pretty darn attractive. But the really attractive part of him is that intelligence. I'm drawn to his comedy because it makes me think. It challenges me. And it makes me laugh.

This picture, which appeared on ROFL Razzi, is what inspired this post today. Not his typical stuff but still very funny.

New Cartoon

I'm a small child at heart. I love animated films, picture books, comics, and cartoons. Anything childlike or whimsical catches my attention. In my free time I read about children's book authors and gifted animators. So it would seem likely that I'd enjoy the Disney Channel. But up until recently I haven't. Too many live action dramas and musical series. Too many people, too adult. Not enough children's stuff. So when I happened to flip by a couple weeks ago, I was shocked to find a cartoon. I was even more shocked to find out that it is a Disney Original and that it happens to be great.

I'll admit it, I'm suddenly addicted to Disney's Phineas and Ferb. The story follows two half-brothers who fill each day of summer vacation with marvelous inventions and exciting adventures. They can build pretty much anything . They are dogged by their older sister who is constantly trying to get them in trouble. But somehow the evidence always manages to disappear (normally without the boys' help) before she can show their mother. In fact the boys want their parents to see what they are up to. Along with the boys' adventures there is the story of Perry, the family's pet platypus. Perry may seem like just an odd pet but he's actually a crime fighting platypus who's mission is to thwart the bumbling, mostly evil Dr. Doofenshmirtz.

Each 30 minute episode has two cartoons. And each cartoon has both the Phineas and Ferb storyline and the Perry the Platypus storyline. These typically intersect at the end of the cartoon in hilarious ways. I'll admit that while I enjoy the Phineas and Ferb segments, I adore the Perry the Platypus one. His interactions with Dr. Doofenshmirtz are witty and clever. I enjoyed one recently where Perry arrives at the Dr.'s office to be told that Doofenshmirtz was still in the planning phase. He can't thwart his evil plan yet because he hasn't even been able to write his evil monologue. So Doofenshmirtz offers Perry the chance to help him so that he can then be thwarted faster. We see them grocery shopping together to pick up all the necessary ingredients for the evil scheme. When they run into Perry's boss, there is a brief silence and then Doofenshmirtz simply says, "well that was awkward." Witty, hilarious, and a little offbeat.

The Phineas and Ferb sections have just as much wit and can be just as funny. The difference is that the storyline there takes itself more seriously. The actions aren't quite so tongue in cheek and there is a sweetness to many of the resolutions that doesn't occur on the Perry side. But it is always a wonder to see the fantastical inventions and where they take the boys. Each cartoon also has a musical bit. And the songs might have to be the best part of the shows. One of my favorites has to be a song (played in hip-hop style) about Candace (the boys' sister) getting squirrels in her pants (it's much more chaste than it sounds). Or the song that Dr. Doofenshmirtz sings about covering his perfect brother in pigeon poo. Hilarious and surprisingly catchy. If you get a moment check out Phineas and Ferb either at IMDB or at the Disney Channel site. Well worth some time. I don't remember the last time I enjoyed a new cartoon this much.

People of Walmart

Now I don't shop at Walmart. I know too many small business owners to shop at what my family refers to as the evil empire. But after checking out People of Walmart (thanks for the suggestion Em), there are other reasons not to shop there.

People of Walmart is a blog dedicated to displaying readers' pictures of people they find in Walmarts. There are the poorly dressed,

the crazies,

and the "what were they thinking?".

I'm not brave enough to post a picture of the mostly dressed although there were plenty of those. It's a mix of some of the oddest pictures you'll ever see. And almost all of them are funny and sad and frightening.

Jeff and I spent part of the weekend, while recovering from shopping, clicking through the many pages. I was both humored and scared by the end. I'm amazed people leave the house looking like that but I'm also a bit scared for society in general. There are some odd people out there. And most of them are shopping in Walmart.

Pixar's Presto

I just started reading Animation Blog and stumbled upon this Pixar short that I have somehow not seen. Considering how much I love Pixar's work this is shocking to me. I'm not kidding when I say that this is the funniest thing I have seen in a long, long time.

Pixar's Presto.

Seriously, click on it. You will not be disappointed.

Heinous F%$&ery

I mentioned yesterday that I'm reading Christopher Moore's Fool and this title just about sums it up. And I mean that in the best possible way. If you have never read Christopher Moore, you need to pick up one of his books. I'd recommend Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Friend but you could easily start with any of his others and be just as happy. I've read almost all of his books and have yet to be disappointed. Fool is a light-hearted bawdy romp through Shakespeare with a bit of modern sensibilities.

Fool is the story of King Lear, told by his court fool, a small but mischievous man named Pocket. The tragedy of the mad king and his scheming daughters becomes a comedy when given to a fool to tell. For those of you who are not aware of the Shakespearean tradition of the fool, this is not a simple court jester. A court fool was often the only person in the court who told the truth, no matter how painful. And Pocket certainly lays it out on the line. Most of the royals around him want to hang him, the king threatens him regularly with violence, and he ends up in more beds than should be allowed. There is intrigue, madness, sex, death, and tons of swearing. Heinous F...ery as Pocket calls it.

The story starts with the mad King's decision to split his lands based on which of his daughters loves him the most. Two of the daughters profess their undying love and receive portions of the kingdom. The third, and youngest, says that she loves him as a daughter, nothing more. She is banished to France. From that point on Pocket is scheming to get the daughter back into the country. And the daughters are scheming to take the rest of the kingdom away and rule the entire country. All through this Pocket, bells merrily jingling, seduces and bribes his way through the kingdom creating war, havoc, and ultimately death.

Moore may be telling the story of King Lear but he doesn't confine himself to one story. The witches of Macbeth play a role in this story, and Moore uses lines from at least eight other plays that I counted. The character of Pocket is wonderful. I love him the way I loved stories of Harlequin, there is something wonderful about being bad. Pocket shags every unmarried and sometimes married women he can, swears constantly, and is regularly deriding and verbally attacking any character in sight. He's a scoundrel but a lovable one. He is surrounded by a cast of enjoyable characters and one rather randy ghost (there's always a bloody ghost). The book is full of puns, inside jokes, one-liners, and bawdy humor. And like all Moore's books, it was a wild ride that ends up being a ton of fun.

Ask, and You Shall Receive

I was asked about my favorite webcomics. I had planned to write up a brief comment and leave it in the comments section but it kept getting longer and longer. I have so many of them that I read now. And each of them is very different. So I decided that instead of a comment, it would be a post. Susskins, thanks for the idea and of course thanks for reading. Here are all of my favorite webcomics all in one place. Be warned, this could get long.

Favorite

Some of these will have their links to the right but I'll include them here as well. If you were to ask me which of my webcomics were my favorite I would have to say Sheldon. Dave Kellett is just consistantly funny. He posts everyday and almost all of his comics are hilarious. Sheldon is a 10 year old boy genius, who (sometimes) runs his own company. He lives with his out of shape and gently grumpy grandfather, Arthur the talking duck, Flaco a lizard that Arthur considers his son, and an incredibly hyper pug named Oso. An odd combination that leads to hilarious punch-lines. This one is a definite recommendation.

Story Based Webcomics

I have four webcomics that I follow that tell one long and mostly consistant story. If you start reading these you will want to go back and read from the beginning. Otherwise they simply make no sense. I'll start with my most recent find, Looking For Group. For fans of World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, and fantasy in general this comic is a must read. Funny, action packed, cartoony with a touch of darkness. I wrote a whole post about it here. The next is Dreamland Chronicles. This story follows Alexander who lives in two worlds. He is a normal college student during the day but when he falls asleep he returns to Dreamland, a place of his youth to try to save it. The story is indepth and Scott Christian Sava, the creator has clearly thought it through. Beautifully rendered this story is a wonderful fantasy comic.

The next of my story based comics is only partly that. Wapsi Square started out as any other webcomic with a great mix of characters and daily strips. It has evolved into an elaborate mystery involving Mayan time clocks, demons, and immortal girls. Paul Taylor creates a very interesting group of characters and I am constantly intrigued by where it will turn next. This is a great mix of touching, funny, and creepy. The last of my story-based comics is Order of the Stick. (link on the left) This comic follows a band of D&D adventurers on their quest to destroy an evil undead wizard. All the classic D&D archetypes are there: bard, warrior, rogue, wizard. The story pokes fun at the Role Playing genre with comments about random encounters, dice roles, and experience/levels. The characters play off each other well and the strip is just one adventure after another. Hilarious stuff.

Geekery

As I mentioned before I'm a geek. Actually pretty proud of that. Geeks tend to be some of the most interesting people. So I love geek comics. These are things that deal with video games, RPGs, computer stuff, fantasy, and SciFi. I have several. The most recent one is Weregeek, a comic about a reluctant gamer who is slowly drawn into the geek world while trying to keep his new game addiction a secret. I wrote a post about it here. Evil Inc is another new addition and one I've already blogged about. Set at a company for supervillians, run by supervillians this is a comic book fan's must read. Consistantly silly and funny, this pokes fun at the whole genre. PVP by Scott Kurtz is a comic about the staff of a video game magazine. This comic is filled with pop culture references, great characters, and one big blue Troll. PVP (short for Player Versus Player) is a model of geekery, discussing new video games, movies, and technology through its characters. The interactions between the characters is funny but the references are even better. The comic is currently following a separate story-arch involving a dwarven warrior and his bard.

Greg Dean's Real Life Comics follows him and his wife Liz in their daily life. Dean is a lover of all things SciFi, television, computer games, and other geekery. The strip tends to be random, jumping from idea to idea (just how life works) but the jokes are pitch perfect. You are guaranteed a good laugh with this one. XKCD is a bit of an oddity. It's not often that a webcomic is so intelligent, so interesting, that I need to go look things up after reading it. I am constantly heading towards google or a reference book after reading this very funny comic. The strip is very random jokes about computers, science, math, and physics. The drawings are mostly stick figures but the jokes are hilarious if sometimes over my head. I love that I not only laugh at this comic but get to learn a little.

Sweet

There are some comics I read for their humor and their sweetness. Little Dee by Chris Baldwin is the perfect example of this. The story follows Dee, a young girl, who is lost in the woods and befriended by a gentle bear, a sarcastic vulture, and a loveable dog. This is a comic that you will laugh at but also be touched by. The humor mostly comes from the animals playing off Vachel the vulture. This comic makes me go Awwww, so cute while I'm laughing. Another animal based story is Sandusky by John Prengaman. The story follows a mountain lion named Sandusky that was left on a man named Scott's doorstep. Scott, who lives with his husky named Bunker, can't turn the big cat away and adopts him. But as always happens Sandusky grows up and leads both Scott and Bunker on some interesting adventures. The strip is beautifully drawn and the story, which publishes three times a week, is constantly changing. The cast of characters are wonderful and Sandusky often become the butt of the jokes because of his now civilized ways.

A new comic that I've fallen in love with is Misery Loves Sherman. I wrote about it here along with Evil Inc. The story follows Sherman, a young boy who seems to always get the short end of the stick. He is joined by two aliens who live in his room, a small version of death, a bratty and often violent sister, and two parents who don't seem to understand him. Chris Eliopoulos's drawings are rounded and wonderfully cute. Sherman is an underdog that you can't help but root for. Unshelved doesn't really fit under cute but I can't quite find another place to put it. This hilarious strip follows the adventures of the librarians at the Mallville Public Library. Dewey (yes named after Melvil Dewey founder of the Dewey Decimal System) is the main character. He's a sarcastic young adult librarian who's not a huge fan of the rules and would rather be reading then helping patrons. The fantastic cast includes an overly perky children's librarian, a rule-setting straight laced library director, a technophobic reference librarian, and a large beaver who acts as both book mascot and book shelver. For a book lover and a librarian like myself this is just heaven. The strip is a great workplace comic with a ton of great book reference and SciFi references. Every Sunday the comic does a guest book review as well.

Pushing the Envelope

I know you're getting tired but I just have two more. These comics are the ones that constantly stretch the boundaries. Anything is likely to happen and often does. They are both hilarious but both could be incredibly offensive to the wrong person. The first is Sinfest by Tatsuya Ishida. This strip makes me laugh everyday. One of the funniest ones out there. The comic mostly follows Slick, a self-absorbed young man who is in love with Monique, a sexy and strong female. But the cast has pretty much everything. From the sweet Percy and Pooch (the artist's pets) to the devil and his succubi. Jesus makes regular appearances along with Buddha and God (or at least his hand which is often puppet covered). This strip will offend in so many ways. It pokes fun at religion, politics, sex, and drugs. It is incredibly risque but also incredibly funny. If you are easily offended this is not for you. If not, I guarantee you will laugh. The other I have just started reading. Least I Could Do is done by the two creators of Looking For Group. The comic follows Rayne a self-styling Don Juan. The humor is almost always focused on Rayne's attempts to have sex with pretty much every girl he meets. The comic is risque in the extreme but really funny. I laugh almost everyday at this one and am slowly working through the archives.

There you go, my current favorite webcomics all in one place. Be careful of what you ask for.

Let Them Eat Cake

This past week one of my favorite webcomics Unshelved pointed me towards a new blog. And this one is downright hilarious. I haven't laughed this hard since I found Fail Blog. The new one, which has already been bookmarked, is Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Horribly, Hilariously Wrong. And similar to train wrecks, you simply can't look away. 

The site is dedicated entirely to terrible cakes. (Well, there are some amazingly pretty cakes, but they are few and far between.) Sometimes the cakes are homemade, and the mistakes can be overlooked. But a lot of the times these are professional cakes done by professional cake designers. And they are awful. Some are completely incoherent, some are just in horrible taste. You have to wonder what the people ordering the cakes and the bakers were thinking with some of them. I haven't read through the entire archive yet mostly because my stomach can't take anymore laughing right now. But I'll get through it. 

Here is just one of the horribly scary cakes, and this is one of the tamer ones. If you need a laugh, this blog is for you. 

Thunderbolt Kid

I'm apparently on a Bill Bryson kick. Last week I read Shakespeare: The World as Stage and this week I just finished Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. I think I've read all of Bryson's books now and have enjoyed every single one of them. One of the better humor/travel writers of our times. I learned a lot from the Shakespeare book but I laughed a lot more with Thunderbolt Kid. While Shakespeare took me a couple days to work through, Thunderbolt Kid was gone over the weekend. I couldn't stop reading it.

Bill Bryson tells a hilarious story of growing up in the 1950s in Des Moines. As a Des Moines native myself this book is wonderful for all the great history. I know many of the places he talks about. The downtown Younkers building that he speaks of so affectionately was where I had my first job out of college. And not on the sales floor. I was working up in advertising and got to spend a lot of my time in the bowels of the building. It was an interesting building. Many of the streets he talks about are my current daily commute. (Grand or Ingersoll) Some of the houses he mentions in the South of Grand area are still standing. Some things may have changed but some things (like my love of Bishops cafeteria) will never die.

But the book is not just Des Moines history. This is the story of Bryson's family but also about the outside world in general. His discussion on nuclear energy and our plans for it in the fifties are enough to make me cringe and laugh at the same time. As he puts it, we were apparently indestructable. I guess at one point the government was even looking into rocket mail delivery. This was the time when some of my favorite SciFi writers were really ramping up. Space travel, Mars colonies. Bryson describes all of the scientific fever of the day brilliantly.

The Thunderbolt Kid was Bryson's alter ego in the book. A superhero who develops x-ray vision for the purpose of looking under clothes. (and even removing restricting clothing) The fact that it can vaporize annoying people was just a side bonus. So Bryson goes through the book vaporizing stupid people, growing up, and exploring his city. So much of this book was laugh out loud funny. His stories about his family were odd and wonderful but I could also identify with them. All families are quirky in their own way. One of his closing stories, about a bomb one of his friends built, had me literally on the floor laughing. This book is a love story to a changed city but also a humorous reflection on what it meant to be a kid in the fifties. Well worth a read.

Epic Fail

For a while I've been reading Icanhascheezburger.com. Although I cringe at the language (English majors everywhere are whimpering), these are just too funny. For those who haven't been, readers submit pictures of their cats and other animals along with funny captions. They make my day a little brighter. And I've even got Jeff reading them. 

So today we spent a little time with the website and noticed that they had other tabs at the top. One tabs had nostalgic items, toys and shows from my childhood. Another had funny images of dogs with captions. And our favorite was Fail Blog. This has reader submissions of pictures and videos that are just wrong. A sign that may not say what they thought it said. Spelling errors on tattoos. And just general human stupidity. I laughed until I cried. My stomach hurt. I'm still working through the archives but this is just hilarious stuff. 

One of my favorite pictures.

And here is my favorite video so far.