Bingo, Bango, Bongo

Posted on May 19, 2015 by PMcG

Today in “The Fundamentals of Being,” we discuss the age-old question “What if Mr. Peanut got fired?” Hands?

Jimmy: He’d have to turn in his monocle, top hat, spats and cane, right?

Bob: What a kick in the nuts.

L-o-l-a Lola: You’re so predictable, Bob.

Trollope: Just another big shot who thought his shell didn’t have a crack in it. And then bingo, bango, bongo, he’s on the street with all the other nuts.

Chiquita: I think I saw him this morning. He was mumbling “Sometimes I feel like a nut, sometimes I don’t.”

Dr. McGuire: Could he find a new job?

Bilbo: Not if he were unsalted.

Sandy Baby: It would ruin that joke where a gorilla, a bear and Mr. Peanut walk into a bar. The bartender says “Are you the gorilla who was here last week with that little raisinette?” The gorilla puts a toothpick in his mouth and nods, wondering where he’s going with this. Then he says to the bear “You the bear who came in last week with this gorilla and his date?” The bear mutters “We all look alike to you, don’t we?”

Bob: His date? I thought she was a raisinette.

Frogman: So you’re saying this gorilla, bear and Mr. Peanut came into the bar last week as well as right now? Shouldn’t the joke be about last week? He’d still have his job and we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

Sandy Baby: So, normally in the joke, the bartender says “Hey, it’s Mr. Peanut. Where’s the other half of your glasses?”

Waldo: That’s the whole joke?

Zeus: Wait. Why doesn’t he say “Are you the peanut who came in last week with a gorilla, a bear and what’s her fruit?”

L-o-l-a Lola: You mean he can’t remember a talking peanut with a monocle from one week to the next?

Dr. McGuire: Observation: Without the monocle there’s no fun in Fundamental. Just da mental.

Peter Piper: You’re saying the only talking nut out there with a monocle is Mr. Peanut?  What about near-sighted peanuts, blind in one eye?

Sandy Baby: Bottom line: If Mr. Peanut got fired, the bartender wouldn’t know him from Adam. He’d probably say “Who’s the nut?” Then it’s a completely different joke. It’s like if a gorilla, a bear and The Hulk walked into the bar, he wouldn’t say “Who’s the green guy?”

Ludmilla: Adam who?

El Cid: Not all green guys are The Hulk, you know. Ever hear of The Jolly Green Giant? And, hello. Orcs?

Bob: Back to last week. Did the bartender recognize Mr. Peanut as Mr. Peanut?

Sandy Baby: If not, the gorilla would have said “That’s Mr. Peanut, you dodo.” And the joke would go on from there.

Waldo: A very long joke.

Don Diego: Did they hire a new Mr. Peanut? In which case, Mr. Peanut still has a job. Get it?

Fabio: Hold on. The Mr. Peanut who got fired—was he already a guy named Peanut, or maybe even Peanutski from the old country? Maybe he wanted to be taken seriously, so they called him Mister Peanutski. The ski being silent.

Isthmus of Panama: Of course his family name is Peanut. He’s a peanut! You think they’d hire a guy named Grape to be Mr. Peanut?

Fifty-six cent: How does the joke change without Mr. Peanut?

Sandy Baby: Well, the bartender would probably say to the anonymous peanut “What’ll it be?” And he might say: “Gimme a crude oil, neat. Make it a double.” The bartender says “Are you nuts?” And the peanut says: “Nope, just me. This guy’s a gorilla and that guy is a bear. Haven’t you ever been to a zoo?”

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2015, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Mistaken for Mr. Peanut

Posted on May 14, 2015 by PMcG

I think we all agree that a scary percentage of the 320 million people in the United States are what may charitably be called “one quack short of a duck.” Uncharitable bastards, however, still insist on labeling them “one duck short of a quack.”

How many of the 320 million people pacing back and forth between Canada and Mexico are we talking about? One out of five? One out of three? One out of you and little old me? How many of them live on your street, attend your family reunions or have friended you on Facebook?

To clarify, we’re not talking about people reeling from basic emotional upsets like feeling unloved or being certifiably unlovable–which only adds to feelings of being unloved, as does news that they are universally despised (even by relatives, especially M-O-M).

These relatively minor wounds are simply the price you pay for the joy of being alive and wishing you were dead. What we’re talking about here is what you get when you combine ignorance with flammables, i.e., whackos, loons and nutjobs.

There are people working for The U.S. Senseless Bureau whose job is to count nothing but nutjobs. And by nutjobs, I don’t mean harmless whack-a-doodles like Uncle Louie who is always ready to play the entire 1812 Overture on his fold-up, travel tuba, completely unprovoked.

For future reference, then, The Senseless Bureau defines a nutjob as anyone who:

• Enters politics.

• Enters politics to solve problems.

• Enters politics with only one hand out.

• Belongs to the TNT-of-the-month-club.

• Has resigned from the human race.

• Has been fired from the human race.

• Hasn’t showered or bathed since learning that God doesn’t care who wins any given football game.

• Looks over their shoulder every five minutes in fear of being followed by a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, a Muslim, John Travolta, a Democrat, a Whig, a white mime, a red mime, a black mime, a green mime, a blabbermime, a birdman, a dogman (possibly just a man in fringe), Hodor of Winterfell, a bearded man in a sleeveless sweater and no pants, an LGBT* married to another LGBT, as in L to L, G to G, B and/or T to B and/or T and vice-versa, but not exclusive of L or G and sometimes Y and W—and certainly not in the eyes of God, Yahweh, Apollo, Zeus, Mars, Snickers, Romulus, Remus, Uncle Remus, Aunt Remus, the Velveteen Rabbit or Mr. Big. But don’t quote me.

• Thinks everybody on the planet but them is a nutjob.

• Has a forehead tattoo that says “Do Not Lobotomize.”

• The Not is tattooed in boldface italics and underscored.

• Talks about when he was nearly killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq. Or maybe that was someone else in a different helicopter. (You been in one, you been in them all.)

• Has the markings and personality of a feral eggplant.

• Has written a dark manifesto, a raving screed and a cute limerick about a man from Nantucket.

• Says things like “My right to give a free speech is pre-paid, so I don’t have to worry about the bill of rights or leaving a tip.”

• Triggers a burglar alarm when breaking into song and dance.

• Marches to the beat of his own drummer, a scrawny guy working his way through embalming school who has never been formally trained on the drum but lied about it on his resume.

• Pulls the wings off of airplanes.

• Is often mistaken for Mr. Peanut.

• Is Mr. Peanut.

*Larry’s Got Basketball Tickets

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2015, all rights reserved.

Posted in Mockery and derision, News You Can Use (Sort of), The human comedy | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

A handful of panty hose

Posted on May 7, 2015 by PMcG

As I have noted publicly–while ambidextrously noting privately those who take no note of my noting—I am the honcho of the weekly grocery shopping. In that capacity I get the use of the Honda (sans le conductor backseato,) a black ball point pen, a sheet of Dollar Tree note paper and, as they lie in commercials, much, much more.

I am also free to park anywhere, except the space reserved for “Expected Mothers.” (If expecting your mother, park here. If she isn’t there by Tuesday, I don’t think she’s expecting you anymore.)

Like any good grocery commander, I know my supermarket, I know my aisles, I know where to find the organic toilet paper and the free range Doritos. I know the meat guy, I know the fish lady and the dude who puts gorilla glue on the cracked eggs.

Every now and then K-Mac rides along, like a UN observer checking for compliance with the Geneva Convention Center. She refuses, however, to wear the blue helmet.

But with K-Mac along, at least I don’t have to set foot in the panty hose aisle, filled with skeeving products like moo goo bedpan, oil of Jose, creamed spinach and much, much more–all destined for the secret alcoves and culverts of none of my beeswax.

Sometimes, when I am in that aisle, the teen-age stock boy asks what I’m looking for. I freeze. I’m afraid if I tell him, he will tell the meat guy.

Sometimes I will do a high-speed run-by, grabbing a handful of panty hose and whatever else falls off the shelf into the cart. If someone sees me I say “These aren’t for me.” But I know they don’t believe me.

On our most recent foray to the storeay, we stopped in the coffee/tea/cereal/candy aisle and picked up a box of steel-cut oats. It carried a “New and Improved” label that bragged “fewer steel shavings than ever.”

Nearby, a young woman paused at the Hershey bars and asked her young man “Do we have any chocolate in the house?” Her tone was flat and passionless, as if she was asking “Do we have any Albanians in the house?”

My basic, bottom-line rule of survival hasn’t changed since Kindergarten. I have never been in any house with chocolate in it that I didn’t know about and proceed to find and devour. On the flip side, I’ve been in chocolateless homes that cry out for love and get nothing but macaroons.

At checkout, K-Mac noted that I had forgotten club soda. I counter-noted that it was not on the officially sanctioned Dollar Tree grocery note. I lost, but ran heroically to the soda aisle.

As it happened, I fell in step behind a guy whose wife was pushing their cart one step ahead. She kept turning her head, talking sharply to him over her shoulder.

When she turned into the soda aisle, the guy peeled off and kept going. My best guess is that he’s in North Dakota by now. It left me right behind Cart Woman, stopped between the club soda and the cherry cola.

Over her shoulder she snapped “I’m getting the Dr. Pepper. You go get the Ex-Lax.”

“But,”I said, “I hate Dr. Pepper.”

With bottle in hand, she turned and stared, as if I were some lying, low-life anchorman.

“Where are you?” she demanded.

“I’m…right here,” I whimpered as I quickly grabbed for a liter of the grail.

Back at checkout, I handed K-Mac a bottle.

“This looks like Dr. Pepper,” she said.

“They’re out of club soda,” I replied savoir fairely.

I’m pretty sure she didn’t believe me.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2015, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision, The human comedy | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Holding your water

Posted on April 29, 2015 by PMcG

It’s hard to get across to new writers that for all the effort and pain they put into writing their poem, their novel, their hip-hoppery, those brilliant scribbles are nothing but a first draft.

I learned the hard way. I wrote a New York Times best-selling novel. As I finished typing a page I would set it face down on the pile of previous pages. When I finished the last best-selling page, I picked up the thick block of paper, put it in a box and sent it off, unsolicited, to a publisher.

The rejection slip came back so fast the mailman collapsed out-of-breath, at my mailbox.

But don’t just take it from me. Garrison Keillor, the novelist, poet and dancing bear says “All good writing is rewriting.”

Or take it from some of the world’s most famous poets. Read through the first drafts below of their most famous poems. Tell me they’re as polished as the rewritten versions that caused our eyes to glaze over in English 101.

Lines written above Tintern Abbey
By William Wordsworth (First draft)

People kept saying
“Wanna do some heavy thinking?
Go up that hill and take a peek
at Tintern Abbey.
Looks completely different
From up there than down here.
‘twill blow your mind
and that of your burro.”

So, here I am on a hill
overlooking Tintern Abbey.
So far, big whoop.
You see one ruined abbey,
you’ve seen them all.

Also, don’t see any tinterns at all.
I wonder if they have
a can down there.
Probably ruined. Sigh.
I might have to find a tree.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
By William Butler Yeats (First draft)

I will arise and go now, because I really have to go
to Innisfree, where I will seek out the nearest throne
and if none be close by
I may have to take a closer look
at yon lake

Charge of the Light Brigade
By Alfred Lord Tennyson (First draft)

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
Forward to the powder room
of the Light Brigade
‘though I may have taken a wrong turn
At the Valley of Death

Stopping by woods on a snowy evening
By Robert Frost (First draft)

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up
with my last eight beers.

A bad moon on the rise
By Sir John Fogerty (First draft):

I see a bad moon rising.
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightnin’.
I see bad times today.

Don’t go around tonight,
Well it’s bound to take your life,
There’s a bathroom on the right.

If
By Rudyard Kipling (First draft)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can hold your water just a wee bit longer
And if the lines aren’t long and there be TP…

Life is Fine
By Langston Hughes (First draft)

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn’t,
Too much coffee in my tank

A Red, Red Rose
By Robert Burns (First draft)

O my love’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my love’s like yonder privy
Not one moment reached too soon

Trees
By Joyce Kilmer (First draft)

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree
Hold that thought
My back teeth are floating

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2015, all rights reserved.

Posted in funny, Mockery and derision, News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

OOPS!

Posted on April 21, 2015 by PMcG

Hello from etherland

If you’ve already received and/or read this post, you are very special. But because of a technical error, yesterday’s post (Questions Without Answers Without Question) got chewed up in the food processor and was inaccessible to several key relatives readers. You know who you are. (BTW: Knowing who you are is very important in life. Congratulations.)

To those of you who don’t know who you are, check the laundry mark on your underwear for clues. In the meantime, I’m re-posting yesterday’s post so that it now becomes today’s post. I sincerely hope that is not too confusing.

This kind of thing happens all the time in big industry. We all make mistakes because not many of us are perfect. The person who caused the technical error has been identified, counseled and fired from a cannon. If you look out your window you can probably see him shooting past.

Have a nice day and remember to get a life next time you’re out.

PMcG

Posted in The human comedy | Leave a comment

Questions Without Answers Without Question

Posted on April 21, 2015 by PMcG

• Why do things like antlers and lawn furniture and Swedish meatballs come out your nose when you go into a coughing jag?

• Why do they call the Secret Service secret when we already know it’s not a secret?

• Will there be ice cream when we’re dead? Not talking about the post-cemetery luncheon. We’re not invited. We’re talking after-life ice cream (and not, by the way, frozen yogurt. Nooooo!)

• If a desalinization plant can remove salt from salt water, why couldn’t a desandalization plant remove sand from in between your toes?

• Why do we say people would roll over in their graves if something happened topside that would steam their trousers if they were alive? Example: “Poor, dead, Johnson. If he knew what his nephew Lum did to his treasured collection of teeny weeny toy soldiers that he spent his entire life hand-painting, putting in realistic details like eyeballs, and buckles and heat rash, he’d be rolling over in his grave.”

What good does rolling over do? Wouldn’t the correct expression be “Poor, dead, Johnson, if he knew his nephew Lum spray painted all 10,000 of his hand-painted toy soldiers in bubblegum pink, he’d be standing up in his grave, spitting out dirt as he phoned an excavation company on his cell and then called his dead lawyer, Chuckie, and toll him to get off his dead ass?”

• Why is gold gold and silver silver? When the first person picked up a shiny nugget and said “Hey, Blork, look at this gold thing,” why didn’t he say “Hey, Blork, look at this silver thing?” By the way, who is Blork?

• Do pigs squeal the same around the world? A friend went to Moscow and Putin, wearing nothing but pants and a horse, showed him around his farm. He heard a noise behind the barn. Putin said “Don’t worry. It’s just the pigs blorking.” My friend said “Don’t you mean squealing?” And Putin said “Pigs don’t squeal in Russia. Nobody squeals in Russia.”

• The world is spinning on its axis and I’m standing in Delaware. The world spins around so that Delaware is more or less on the bottom. Burning question: Why don’t I fall off the planet (presuming I’m not holding onto anything)?

Everytime I ask this question I get gobbledygook, science-nerd stuff about “gravity.” Please. Do I look stupid? Not only is there no “global warming,” there is no “gravity.” Will someone start telling the truth? And by the way, why don’t all my blood cells in Delaware rush to my head and bang on the frontal lobe demanding to be let in on what is going on?

• When we hear artillery firing in the distance, we turn to the someone standing next to us and say “Wow, that was a loud BOOM.” The person may respond “You are sharp today.” Or even “What did you say?” Here is the point: big big loudness just sounds like BOOM. It doesn’t sound like BOOD or NOOD or JOHN JACOB JINGLEHEIMER-SCHMIDT. BOOM is universal. You might even say that in the global village “We all speak BOOM.” So, why isn’t that a basis for getting all races and creeds together and negotiating a nice big non-BOOM treaty?

• When time flies, does it have to go through the TSA line?

• We say “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” and “Oh, for the love of Mike.” Why do we never mention Stan or Larry? From now on, let’s start saying “Oh, for Stan’s emu.” And “What in Larry’s poop is the deal?”

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2015, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, News You Can Use (Sort of), The human comedy | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Listen up, you maggots

Posted on April 15, 2015 by PMcG

The Japanese form of poetry known as haiku conveys observations about nature and/or boneheadosity in a 17-syllable verse. Traditionally, haiku are expressed in three non-rhyming lines of five, seven and five syllables. Here is a rare example of an ancient haiku screed, unearthed near Tokyo by a Japanese uneartherman.

At the TSA
If we seem less than friendly
Tough. Bwa-ha-ha.

On behalf of fear,
Thank you for being afraid.
Don’t pretend you’re not.

What’s an airport for
If not to remind one of
Kafka or Birdman?

Line up like cattle.
To the knacker’s yard you go,
Slouching toward steak-ums.

From this point on, please,
No jokes, no smiles, no mooning.
It scares the friskers.

If you don’t look like
A terrorist that makes us
Very suspicious.

But if you look like
A terrorist, do you think
We are that stupid?

Please remove your shoes
Because they are a perfect
Place to hide a foot.

Place keys, wallet, phone,
Hat, coat, pants, hopes, dreams, false nose
In lifeless gray bin.

Glum friskers feel up
Your life, your guilt, your bulges.
Why? Because they can.

Without us, a mad
Bomber, faking sanity,
Could get on the plane.

With us, all bombers
Must be sane! No exceptions.
We are not kidding!

Oh, wonder of flight!
You rise like holy angels
On frisk-scented wings.

At home, in luggage,
You find note: “We pawed your stuff.
Hulk jammies? Really?”

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2015, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments