You've HAD it, Noxley

Ned Noxley, who walks by my desk at least five times a day, yet has never smiled, made eye contact or said hello even though I have worked here for A YEAR AND A HALF, has waited until I start a diet to reveal that his "roommate" works at a bakery, and is apparently compelled to bring home all the leftover baked goods at the end of every day, which Noxley then brings to work (as it's patently obvious that he, himself, hasn't eaten a baked good in about 25 years).

He then sends out cheery e-mails with the subject line "Baked goods for all in the Meetings Dept!", meaning that to AVOID the temptation of sweet, delicious baked goods, I have to take the LONG way to get to the restroom or the elevators or anywhere else I need to go!

And then, today, the last straw: sending NO email warning, and simply placing the sweet, delicious baked goods in the kitchen, where I HAVE to go to get my sugar-free Jell-o cups and calorie-free water.

Damn you, Noxley.

Well, a word to the wise: if you're going to mess with me, and prance around not being friendly, maybe you should make sure there are no pictures floating around the internet of you being sold at a gay bachelor auction.




Oh, and PS - I know how old you are. You may think you've cheated the reaper by casting off all your free baked goods, but you're not fooling ME.

Oh, and PPS - you have the same name as my DOG, dude.

Grill of my dreams

So, LSBB, who has been complaining about her teeth for years (thinking they make her look ugly, which they DON'T) is finally to have them all shined up and/or replaced. I'm not exactly clear on the precise procedure, but I'm sure it involves needles and plaster, so I'm keeping myself ignorant of the details. She's certain her problems stem from our childhood visits to Dr. Eldritch, the Nazi orthodontist, who would clasp his hands together in glee when she would arrive for her check-up and say "Its time to tighten zee braces!", and then there would be a thunder clap in the distance (of course, I never had any problem, as my teeth straightened into textbook perfection with only eight months in braces and have remained perfect to this very day). At any rate, LSBB's teeth, in a few short days, will be transformed from this:




to THIS....





In other news, the National Enquirer is reporting that President Bush is drinking again. Thank God. Maybe things'll start to look up.

Can I get a little Aqua-Love?

Have you ever been next to someone who smelled so strongly of being unwashed that the smell stayed with you long after the person was gone? Well, if not, you should be sure and go to a comic book convention next time one rolls through your town, as I did last Saturday.

Lest you mock, be aware that I will brook no jesting, and have been looking forward to said event for two years, since I had to skip last year. So there.

The first time I went, I had a pitiful little twenty dollars to spend, and so bought my first black-market bootleg DVD, Song of the South. This time around, I came armed with plenty of dough, as well as a carefully-researched list of things I wanted and how much they cost on eBay, so I didn’t overspend in the heady rush of seeing real items in front of my eyes.

So, first to the bootleg DVDs, which I’m now careful to limit to things I’m certain will NEVER be released commercially:

• The Banana Splits (the complete 1968 series)
• Jason of Star Command
• Supergrass (a British movie with Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French)
• Pufnstuf, the Movie (with special guest star Mama Cass as Witch Hazel)
• Three unreleased super-hero tv pilots (Aquaman, Power Pack, and the Human Target starring Rick Springfield)
• And, for Jet: Captain Eo, the special edition

Then, on over to the comics side of the hall to pick up a ton of Adventure and Aquaman comics, bringing me ever closer to my lifelong goal of owning every 1970’s appearance of Aquaman ever.

Pardon?

Because 1970’s Aquaman rules, punk, and I won’t hear anything against him.

Now, if by “1970’s Aquaman” you think I’m talking about the lame-ass, emasculated fool on Superfriends who’s primary skill seemed to be riding a jet ski and sending small schools of perch to attack nuclear subs and the like, then you’ve got another think coming. Unfortunately, the powers-that-be (also know as Time-Life-Warner-AOL, or whatever the hell it’s called now), who seem to own every cartoon character EVER, have done little to correct this impression of Aquaman. Rather, they seem to have bought into it themselves, and have struggled fruitlessly to re-invent Aquaman for a cool, hip audience, instead of just going back to what worked just fine for, oh, about 35 years.

Don’t get me wrong - by “worked”, I don’t mean that Aquaman was ever a sales dynamo, nor is he ever likely to be. He is, after all, sort of limited by his environment (as LSBB remarks, “How much crime could there be underwater?”) nonetheless, he was a good, solid, dependable secondary character, who headlined his own feature through the “dark ages” of the early 1950’s (when Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and fellow second-stringer Green Arrow were then only other survivors), he had his own pre-Superfriends cartoon show, and his wife even had her own "Super-Queen Posin' Doll".


Yes, wife, for Aquaman was the first of the super-hero set to marry his long-time girlfriend, Mera. Mera was the queen of an inter-dimensional water world who forsook her throne in order to marry Aquaman and help him fight crime. She had the ability to make water hard (among other things, one would presume - rrrrrrowl!) and shape it into giant fists and battering rams and....well, yeah, that's pretty much it.


My presumption is that Aquaman hurried the wedding along to quell rumors about he and Aqualad, a purple-eyed Atlantean orphan that Aquaman had taken in years earlier. Poor kid always looked a little fey to me, despite the presence of his “girlfriend”, Aquagirl



Mera and Big A had a baby (wait for it…….Aquababy) who was later killed by Aquaman’s arch-foe Black Manta (a family death...another first!) Once Aquababy died, all bets were off. The powers-that-be set off on their ill-advised coarse of making Aquaman “hip” and “relevant” by:

• Driving Mera crazy, having her try and kill Aquaman, and then sending her back to her own dimension
• Having Aquagirl drown to death in a toxic chemical spill
• Having Aqualad grow up, become a sorcerer, and change his name to “Tempest”, and get a new costume that still made him look like a fag
• 
  
• Revealing that Aquaman had an illegitimate Eskimo son who inexplicably has Mera’s hard-water powers
• Having Aquaman get his hand chewed off by a school of piranhas, replace his lost hand with a harpoon, grow a beard (and sometimes chest hair, depending on the artist - a bright spot in a sea of bad ideas) and wear armor
• 
  
• Having Aquaman have an affair with a human-dolphin hybrid, who then had an affair with Tempest, who impregnated her
• Having Aquaman get a new hand made of water, and wear some of Abba's old stage outfits
• 
  

Currently on the comics scene, Aquaman has put his orange shirt back on, and protects the city of Sub Diego (previously San Diego, only now it’s submerged in the Pacific Ocean. Yeah, I think it sounds stupid, too.)

But, I have my seventies’ comics, and that’s just fine.

The wonderful world of Nature

Well, I'm not sure how wonderful it is. If this had fallen onto my head, instead of into our water feature, I might be dead now, or at least in the nuthouse:



What the hell kind of butterfly is THAT going to turn into? Mothra?

And just because I can, here are Dino and Frito Joe (photos courtesy Floozy Flingland, whose shapely gams can be seen if you look hard)





So, I guess Jet and I are high-falutin' bourgeoisie now, as we have a private trainer coming to the cave tonight to knock some sense into Frito Joe. Not that he's all THAT bad - but, when he was found chewing on the new area rug, that had been bought to replace the area rug he had ALREADY destroyed, we thought maybe something should be done. Oh, and I guess I'd prefer my underwear not be taken out of the laundry basket and drug around the backyard. Every day. Sometimes more than once.

Gee, Dubya

So, Bush's National Day of Prayer, and a Presidential service at the National Cathedral. I had to get up at o-dark-thirty to be at the Cathedral in plenty of time to sit around and wait for two hours til I could be escorted through security.

As for the service itself, once it finally started, I must grudgingly admit it was actually nice, and appropriate. I've been trying to think of something to be catty and bitchy about, but I'm having trouble.

Okay, I'll be a little catty - I sang a solo, and while I was singing, the only person in the Presidential party (Dubya and Pickles, Dick and Lynn, Condi, Rummy and Gonzo) that looked like he was enjoying himself was RUMMY.

Dubya looked up and smirked, I'm not sure if that meant he liked what he heard or not.

Condi, throughout, looked like she was absorbing everything for later regurgitation on an exam.

Dick, as always, looked like he crapped his pants and has been sitting in it for about an hour.

Laura has fresh blond highlights, and looks like she's had her face pulled back and stapled from behind.

Lynn, also, looked a little pinched. But I suppose I can't blame her, if she has to wake up next to Dick every morning.

Gonzo - well, he's short, and he was behind Lynn, so I couodn't see too much of him. I WILL report that he was the only one to cross humself at the end of the service.

Anyway, I digress... Bush spoke and sounded almost like a Democrat. One memorable line: "As we clear away the debris of a hurricane, let us also clear away the legacy of inequality." This, after a sermon (I can't remember the guy's name, but certainly he must have been hand-picked by Bush) that dealt with the story of the Good Samaritan, and spent a long time talking about how we, as Americans, must reach out to those less advantaged and raise them up to a level where they have a fighting chance.

I was seated behind Bush during his remarks, so I couldn't see him, but I was struck that his delivery sounded uncharacteristically natural and un-stilted...he didn't stammer, and only once did he say "drowned" when he meant "drown". If I believed that his policies would be in accordance with the words he spoke today (I don't), I would ALMOST be tempted to vote for him.

Geez, I feel dirty for saying that.

Well, pigs DO fly after all

So, after two weeks of doing everything possible to shift blame, and scolding others for trying to assign blame, President Bush finally takes responsibility for something.

Too bad his empty words mean nothing to dead people, and very little to those who know he's a pathological liar, a puppet of his handlers, and a dry drunk.

I'm just sayin'.

See you in church on Friday, Dubya!

If you get Raptured, can I have your car?

Right on schedule, the Baptists are falling all over themselves to blame Katrina on the gays.

This, despite the fact that the only area of New Orleans left relatively untouched is the French Quarter - WHICH IS WHERE ALL THE GAYS ARE.

Speaking of, I'll be singing at the President's Katrina Prayer Service next Friday. I'll have a full, snarky report. Watch this space!