Okay, I’m back. Seriously. My boss, Dr. Phil’s Good Twin, is back from his kidney-removal surgery, and so I can safely goof off again, though Poinsettia has now gotten in the habit of asking me how to do EVERYTHING, regardless of how many times she’s been shown how to do it before, and if said task involves her actually spending more than five minutes doing it, she sighs loudly and complains about how much work she has.
Anyway, here I’ve been sitting around feeling sorry for myself all month, and grousing about life and work and such, and being apathetic about nearly everything, and after all that, my wonderfulness cannot be hidden, and in fact is endorsed in print by The Washington Post. Not to mention my forthcoming CD release, featuring my solo which was stolen from a little child who still gives me dirty looks. It almost makes being mind-numbingly busy worth it. Almost.
My only joy in the past month has been in snatching up DVD bargains and hard-to-find bootleg movies and such. Like yesterday, when I bought this at Target for $29.99, even though its retail value is $90. I can only imagine the embarrassment in the stock room when the pricing mix-up is discovered.
I also FINALLY received my black market movies ordered well before Christmas – I guess the black market movie business gets busy over the holidays. So I got, much to my delight and Jet’s chagrin:
- Every episode of the original Space Ghost, featuring teenage siblings and a monkey
- Every Superfriends short produced between 1981 and 1983, featuring teenage siblings and a monkey.
- Every episode of Electra Woman and Dyna Girl –just one teenager and no monkeys, unless you count actor Norman Alden.
If you ever want a refreshing reminder of what you learned from mass media as a child, sit down to a few hours of back-to-back Superfriends episodes. It’s an eye-opening experience. Some common through-lines:
1)If you are NOT white and American, then your superhero name should probably include your skin color, or should be stereotypically representative of your cultural heritage. Oh, and you can ignore the laws of physics.
Exhibit A, the “International” Superfriends, who despite being from the four corners of the Earth, always seem to be hanging out at the Hall of Justice waiting for trouble:
Apache Chief - Can grow to 50 feet high by saying “Enek Chok”.
Wears a leather vest and matching loincloth - even though his crotch is plainly visible to anyone of normal size who happens to be standing under him. Once shouted “Enek Chok” over and over until he was BIGGER THAN THE EARTH. When saying anything other than “Enek Chok”, he speaks like he’s had a stroke.
Samurai – Can turn into cyclones, fires, and other things that the writers made up as they went along. Dressed in a green bathrobe-diaper sort of thing, which I’m reasonably sure real Samurais never wore.
Black Vulcan – “Hey, everybody, did you hear? He’s BLACK. Not that you could tell, what with his bikini shorts and tunic open to his navel. Better add the “black” in front of his name so everybody knows his race right off.” Black Vulcan can turn his legs into lightning, which enables him to do lots of things that real lightning can do, like fly through space unaided and travel through time. Shockingly, didn’t speak in jive.
El Dorado – He’s Mexican. You know this because he’s named after a Mexican City. An imaginary Mexican City. And he speaks perfect English except for when he has to say “yes”, or “friend”. He wears a blanket, which he can use to wrap around himself and disappear – just like real Mexicans!
Rima the Jungle Girl – Not quite sure what sister’s deal is. She’s from South America, but has white hair and doesn’t speak in regional dialect. She’s barefoot and wears a potato sack no matter the weather, and manages to find vines to swing from, even in the middle of Washington, DC. In her favor, she always has to be picked up for missions, and doesn’t seem to loiter in the Hall of Justice like the boys do.
2) Every scientist, astronaut, archaeologist, and teenager has access to a direct video uplink to the Hall of Justice’s “Trouble Alert”. One caveat: if a teenager’s crisis is particularly pedestrian or commonplace, then they apparently ONLY have access to the “teen trouble alert”, which bypasses the Superfriends proper and only alerts the Wondertwins, Zan and Jayna. Such commonplace problems include teens who drive too fast, sass their parents or spend nights in haunted houses on a dare. The Wonderwtins subsequently get captured or trapped, because they are tools, and have to be rescued by a real Superfriend anyway, so why they bother with their own alert system I’ll never know.
Jayna, as you may remember, can turn into any animal. ANY animal. But instead of turning into a kodiak bear or sperm whale and whupping some ass, she relies on a steady menu of sparrows, giraffes, gophers, and the like.
Zan can turn into anything made of water, ice, or steam. Like “gelatin dessert”, which he actually changed into once. I didn’t make that up. Zan apparently shares a sort of psychic link with Jayna, so that if she changes into, say, a kangaroo, he will instinctively change into, say, an ice bowling ball. (Kangaroos are renowned for their bowling skill, I guess). I didn’t make that up, either. Zan also feels compelled to announce that the object he’s turning into will be made of ice, even though THAT’S ALL HE CAN TURN INTO. Like, maybe, if he accidentally said “form of a wrench”, he might actually turn into a WRENCH, instead of one made of ice.
Retards.
Poor Dino, having tasted freedom for a brief moment, has had it snatched away from her just like that. You see, Jet installed a doggie door for our little precious, at the urging of the Gay Reverend, who was horrified when we revealed over dinner that Dino sat on the sofa all day watching BBC America and waiting for us to come home.
So after three weeks, we finally got Dino to go through the door without being manhandled, assuming that, since she came back inside while we WERE home, she would do the same when we WEREN'T.
Well, our kindly neighbor Miz Smif came over the other night to reveal that she had been called by Mrs. Kravitz on the next street over, who threatened to call Animal Control because Dino was outside ALL DAY, in the FREEZING SNOW, barking. Oh, you can't imagine our horror and sadness, and to think that we could have been a segment on "Animal Precinct"! So, the doggie door is closed until summer. Or until we get another dog to boss Dino around.
That's all for now. I pledge to be more regular from now on, don't despair!
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