BTALD: Asparagus

So I framed some cartoon originals for my husband to hang in his office. This was one of the ones that I picked. I kind of forgot that he works in a pretty conservative law office where this might be, well, um, troubling. I guess. So here it is, I will put it here where those who appreciate the true humor of asparagus can see it. Since I think we're going to have to frame a different one for my husband's office. Heh.

Is that a Trombone in your...

A while back one of my kids was jumping on the couch, and I noticed a sort of glint that would appear every time she landed. I investigated, and discovered that there is this whole region inside our couch that I didn't know existed. And then I extracted, seriously, a box of stuff out of there. Jewelry, foody bits, toys, clothing... wow. I mean, I knew about that weird gap between the driver's seat and the center thingy in the car, where if something falls down there you can't ever have it again - but I didn't know the same thing existed in couches. So, if I ever need to hide the plans for galactic invasion or the formula for everlasting gobstoppers, I'll know exactly where to put it.

BTALD - That's not your dog.

Okay, so it's common knowledge that people often look like their dogs. That's why I find it especially amusing when I see some burly guy walking what is clearly his girlfriend's little tiny dog with the rhinestone collar. On the one hand I think, "Dude, that's so obviously not your dog." But then I think, "That dude is really nice for walking what is so obviously not his dog." Since he has to put up with looks from people like me. And the dog is thinking, "Cool! I get to go out with this burly dude." So it works out.

BTALD: Bird Poop Furniture

There's a nest of baby birds outside my window currently. The nest they're in is a used one, that's been there since last year. I meant to take it down, but I was pretty sure that no other birds would come use it again because, well, it's full of baby bird poop.

I hadn't thought about baby bird poop until I got to observe this whole process up close last spring. But I guess if you're doing nothing but sitting in a nest, and eating, it follows that there'll be poop. In the nest.

Ick.

Well, the birds are back and re-using the poopy nest.

I keep thinking I'll peek in there and they will have made little poop sofas and stuff.

I'm definitely going to take that nest down when they're done with it - so they can get a fresh start next year. That's just gross.

BTALD: One-Hit Wonders

So, the B-52's just came out with a new album. I heard them interviewed about it, and they basically said, "Well, we still tour and we still play all the same songs and we figured we should have some new songs."

Anybody who's been to a concert knows the part where the first notes of some popular song come out and everyone cheers. I'm sure that's a rush if you're the one who wrote it.

But, jeez, what about after the 50th or 100th or 1,000th playing? Wow.

And then there's the music you hear at the store and stuff. I mean, does Sting realize that he's become the wallpaper of our life? I don't know.

I suppose walking to the mailbox for that royalty check makes it all okay.

But like the B-52's I'd sure be looking to write some new stuff. Just so my hands wouldn't freeze permanently in the chords for "Rock Lobster."

Or, you can just go off the deep end like Michael Jackson - I don't suppose too many people bug him to sing "Beat It" these days. Just guessing.

Cat Butts Are Evil.

This cartoon, as you can probably tell by the lack of formatting, is on the old side - probably early 90's. But it does express a sentiment that I feel is relevant even today - the fact that cat butts are evil.
My cat's butt is the unforeseen toxic hazard of my home-based workplace.
Not long ago, my cat, who is middle-aged, lost the ability to swallow dry food properly. So, he now gets the gooey, byproducts-of-byproducts stuff. And whoooo-eeee, can that stuff produce some stench.
Sometimes, when I walk in the door, I know something is wrong. Something is lurking in the back of the house. As I get closer, it gets worse. Until I get to the study, where I am supposed to be able to think and draw and exist peacefully. Except that it is now the Land of Pew.
Dang. I open a window, and I try to remove the offending item as quickly as possible. But meat byproducts have really heavy molecules I think, so that awful stench just sits there.
I did not foresee my cat's butt as an issue in my career. But when the air is heavy and acrid, my thoughts just sit there like -- well, like a turd. It's awful.
Fortunately it's getting sunny out, so I can grab a sketchbook and head for the yard. Quickly. While the various byproduct molecules clear out.
I love the front end of my cat. Shoot, I love his sides too.
But his butt is kind of career-limiting at times.
So, I guess to keep working here I'm just gonna have to accept that being fast with a scoop is a job skill I need. Badly.

It's 3am, and your kids are... right THERE, lady!!!

Many of us as parents know that feeling when we momentarily lose our kid in a crowd, or around a corner... and we call out their name really loud, and everyone looks... it's not great.
However, when you are a duck, you have the added disadvantage that things like, say, getting more than 20 feet away from your ducklings can cause you total confusion. Even in the middle of the night when there's nothing else going on.
So, you call out for them. And, nothing happens. So, you call some more.
In fact, let's just quote the duck here:
"Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack."
Pause.
"Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack.
Splash. Flap around.
"Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack."
After about 30 minutes of this going on outside our bedroom window, I decided to investigate what drama might be unfolding in the creek beside our house. I put on shoes that looked really good with my PJs, got a flashlight, and headed out.
From my new vantage point outside, I could hear more of what was going on. It sounded like this:
"Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack."
(Somewhere up the creek) "Peep. Peep. Peep. Peep. Peep. Peep. Peep."
"Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack."
"Peep. Peep. Peep. Peep."
This was beginning to sound like:
"Come over here!"
"No, you come over here!"
"No, YOU come over HERE!"
Enough. I tossed a pebble behind the duck and startled her toward her kids.
Not far enough though. So she stood there in her new spot and yelled some more.
So I threw another pebble. I really really wanted to go back to bed.
This time she got further down and apparently found her ducklings. There was much cooing and peeping and stuff. Best of all, it was further away.
Satisfied, I headed back to bed.
As I drifted off I could faintly hear her going on and on and on - and as I fell asleep it started to sound like, "Don't you EVER wander off like that again! Don't you know you can get LOST out here? How am I supposed to FIND you! You stay next to me from now on, you HEAR?"
"Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack....."

Drama.

This cartoon is a tribute to all those people we know who have more drama in their lives than the rest of us. And it's not because their lives are particularly more dramatic, it's because they know how to bring out the drama in pretty much anything.

We all know people like this - the people for whom a small blip on the radar means imminent galactic exploding traumatic disaster.

Come to think of it, we all probably trade off being this person.

BTALD: Undo.

For every home improvement, there must also be a way to undo it. Because whether or not it is an "improvement" may be in doubt when it's all said and done.

I have many cans of ill-advised paint out in my garage. I'm told that I can donate it to the pile at my local hardware store for people who might want them. They're not bad colors, or evil or anything, they're just... wrong. Like the beige that turned out to make our living room look like the inside of a giant lipstick. Or the red that in the kitchen kind of looked like vampires had been through.

But the best service that the home improvement stores could provide their customers would be: calm. Some kind of service that helps you to keep breathing and remain calm when all you want to do is Be Done. Because I'd bet that most of those things that require the "undo" products happen during that "I want to just get this done" phase. Like, spilling. And, breaking. Maybe meditation tapes, or yoga. I would suggest beer, but we know that would only result in more things that had to be undone later.

Do Animals Get Annoyed?

When I see a nature special, I often wonder how many of those animals are getting on each other's nerves. Do ground squirrels dig into each other's burrows? Does everybody think, "There's those hyenas again. They are SO irritating." And, what about those birds that sit on top of other animals?

We currently have a little nature event taking place in our attic. Someone small and furry is hanging out up there and making digging and scratching noises at exactly the same time every night. We tried to close the spot that we thought our friend was getting in, but the noise continues. So we are either acting out an Edgar Allen Poe story in slight miniature, having trapped him in there, or our friend has some other way of getting in and out. I'm guessing the latter. But maybe we'll look up there and there will be a mini fridge and shag carpet and bean bag chairs. I'll let you know.

BTALD: Trouble parking? Don't!

Parking is so weird. It's a by-product of the fact that when we go places, we take with us this big metal thing that we have to shed when we get to our destination. So we paint lines all over the ground and have all these rules about where you can put the metal thing, and where you can't. And which direction it should be facing. Unless you're in Britain, where apparently it's okay to just pull over whatever way you happen to be. I love that.
I am a self-admitted parking snob. I place a certain amount of my self-worth on how well I park. If I take up too much space by being too far over, I consider myself a bad person. I apply this to everyone else too. This is dumb. But I do it.
There is a parking garage in San Francisco that has regular sized spaces around the outside, but these eensy-weensy ones in the middle, mostly obstructed by poles. I've brought home my fair share of paint samples (bright blue mostly, I think that's Level 3) from that garage. It's amusing to watch people in enormous vehicles go into, and out of, these little spaces and eventually give up. Probably taking some of their own paint samples.
Anyway, I will never understand why everyone in the universe does not want to go everywhere by train. You can be exhausted. You can be drunk (or sobering up). You can read. You can work. You can meditate. And, you don't have to park. I mean, it just doesn't get any better. It's the greatest thing to just get off the train and walk to wherever. And, while you're on there, you can look at the person next to you and say, "You know, I'm a terrible driver. And I can't park worth a damn either. And it doesn't matter!"

BTALD: 100 calories of what?

What a great idea, putting little 100-calorie packages of food together. I mean, you can just grab em and you know what you're getting, and that's really cool. Except, whenever I'm at the store I look at those things, and they're all - well, gross. Like, 100 calories of weird little Oreo-like cookie things shaped like parts of a soccer ball. Or, 100 calories of strange fig bar things with sprinkles on them. What is this stuff? I mean, could you do 100 calories of something recognizable? Maybe I'm shopping at weird stores.
I know, 100-calorie packages of hummus. That would be neat.
I realize that if you did 100-calorie packages of foods we usually eat for snacks, it would get pretty ugly - I mean, 5 crackers or a piece of bread or a single chip in a package is not going to work. The reality of it would be hilarious and sad at the same time.
But I have to say, I do love the "eat crap and still lose weight" idea that our food industry seems so bent on selling. They make so dang much money off this stuff. Putting a little sign in the 100-calorie snack shelf that says "go pick out an apricot or apple" would lose some big important business people lots of money.
But soon, it will stop raining and we can all go outside and run around and then calories won't matter so much.

BTALD: Gadgets!

I know we're all supposed to heave a collective sigh of disapproval whenever we see some kid with his little game-playing doohickey... but I have to admit, I love gadgets.

I love little electronic things. I love my TiVo. I love my shiny phone.

When I was a kid, i figured out a way to NEVER lose at Space Invaders. I could actually play the game indefinitely. Or until I starved to death.

The fact that all today's gadgets work differently just makes them that much more entertaining. For me. I realize that makes a lot of other people want to dump all their remotes in a bucket of water and leave it at that.

I do have the TiVo problem, though. The one where you try to pause and replay things all the time. I try to do this with the radio in the car. If I miss something, I think, "no problem, I'll just rewind and hear it again." It's like looking for the instant replay when you're actually in the stadium at the game. Oh, I try to rewind live sports events too.

It doesn't work.

Anyway, yay for shiny gadgets. I know that they're all kind of screwed up and they break and are confusing and all that, but for people (goobers) like me, that's all part of the fun. It's the actual games and shows that you get when everything is functioning properly that could use some work.

BTALD: Weird Poofy Stuff!

This post is in honor of Memory Foam. Because, it's really weird stuff.

I used to have two pillows made out of Memory Foam. They got all sort of weirdly shaped after a while. And, I never got used to the way you put your head down, and then it slowly migrates into some other position/altitude while you are asleep.




Anyway, it is pretty fun to smash down and then watch it poof back up again. Kind of like earplug races. What are earplug races, you say? Why, that's where you take two earplugs, put em on the table, smash em flat and then see which one poofs up first.

Which is like Peep jousting. What's Peep jousting, you say? Why, it's where you put two Peeps armed with toothpicks into your microwave and then nuke em until they poof up

to many times their normal size and then stab each other. Tip:

Put em on a plate. That melted Peep is murder to clean up. We like to do this around Passover. That's another story.

Anyway, all hail weird poofy stuff.

BTALD: Earthlings Attack!

I know there are lots of movies about aliens coming to Earth and attacking us and people running scared in the streets and having bad experiments done on them and all that.

But, what if we turn out to be the ones who freak out other civilizations? What if we look like we're hurling big metal probes at people every time we launch a new satellite?

Never mind that nobody can come land on our planet anyway because they'll get pelted with space garbage.

One other question: On that golden record that we sent out into space that introduces the human race and has Beethoven on it and all that great stuff - why are the people in the little picture naked? Isn't that a little confusing? These are things I want to know.

BTALD: Compatibly Odd.

This cartoon appears in the February Funny Times. It pretty much sums up what I've figured out about marriage - the ones that last are the ones where the parties are compatibly odd.

People go around looking for the person who's the best-looking, or richest, or whatever, but let's face it - we're best off with someone who is the right kind of strange. Even if that means being so normal it's kind of.. weird.