Happy Thanksgiving from Ziggy!
Hello. I haven't seen you guys in a while. That's because I've been in rehab. I'll bet you never would have guessed a cartoon character could have an IV drug problem, but we have problems too. You probably noticed I'm in a different low-grade job in each strip. It turns out that walking around all day spouting off pseudo-philosophical wit isn't very marketable. That and I never wear pants.

The papers don't let me talk about stuff like that during the week. I can't really blame them, since we're supposed to be entertaining kids. Most kids don't seem to find my strip all that funny, though. Just the kids who have trouble with the big words in Garfield. Whoa, horsey! That's the kind of thinking that got me shooting up, so I better get back to happy thoughts.

Well, it smells like the turkey is almost ready. I got dragged into dinner with Cathy this year. I don't know what I was thinking. Well, I do know what I was thinking. I figured she'd be easy because she was so desperate for me to come over. I forgot how she whines incessantly, and how fucking ugly her face is. Well, we'll see how she looks after a couple of bottles of pink chablis. Don't tell the methodone clinic.

You got any cigarrettes? I sure could use a smoke and a shot of Wild Turkey. No? Figures.  ¶ 11:14 PM 0 comments

  Recipes
One of my favorite things is making a dish that is better than it actually tastes. The surest way to do this is to think back to your childhood, and pull out a recipe that used to be made by someone who is no longer there to preheat the oven or drop the dough onto ungreased cookie sheets.

The kids next door were one year older and one year younger than me. Originally I played with Jake, but at some point, started hanging out with Dave. Their mom, Kathy, was the quintessential mom. When I needed a haircut before the start of summer camp, and the barber shop was closed... it was Kathy. She was also a baker of great local repute (amongst pre-teen boys). The pinnacle was when she made us baked Christmas ornaments in the shape of football players and painted them with our favorite pittsburgh steelers. I got Franco Harris. Yes... it was a while ago.

The favorite thing she baked to eat, though, was GOBS. For people not from Western PA, they have been described as "homemade Suzie-Qs", or "happy cakes". One native Ohioan referred to them as "ding-dongs," but that may have been a joke at my expense.

So recently I dusted off the old recipe (or more accurately asked Julie to help me find it) and fired up the oven to 450F. Its about a 4 hour process, so I settled in for a night of baking. During the process, I chuckled inwardly at the icing recipe, that calls for shaking the ingredients in a glass jar. SOOO Kathy. I smiled as I lifted the baked cakes from the cookie sheet.

You see, Kathy passed away from cancer about 5 years ago. She left behind a good man in her husband, and my two childhood friends as new husbands, young fathers, and without one of the key lights of their lives. So when I eat a "GOB" I smile and think of Kathy. I also think of all those other recipes, that are a delicious and happy way to remember friends whose talents formerly tickled our palates.

So this Thanksgiving I will make Nana's pumpkin pie recipe, and carefully avoid Susan Stanberg's mother-in-law's cranberry relish recipe. I might even make a batch of my mother-in-laws best in class chocolate chip cookies.

The Nostalgic Gourmet  ¶ 11:34 AM 1 comments

  Compromise Tis the season to heal wounds, to forgive and to forget. In that spirit, I would like to propose a final solution to the ongoing dispute over the pledge of allegiance.

As loyal readers will know, the religious zealots feel very threatened by the possibility of removing "under god" from the pledge. Similarly, the secularists feel that the language threatens the separation of church and state that allows their soulless existence.

So... in the spirit of coalition building, I propose the following amendment that should assure a popular majority in the polls.

"I pledge allegiance to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, evolved under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. (where all is now expanded to include almost everyone, provided they have papers)"  ¶ 8:45 AM 0 comments

  'tis the season Snipe  [snahyp] noun, plural snipe, (especially collectively) snipe for 1, 2; verb sniped, snip‧ing. Any of several long-billed game birds of the genera Gallinago (Capella) and Limnocryptes, inhabiting marshy areas, as G. gallinago (common snipe), of Eurasia and North America, having barred and striped white, brown, and black plumage.

Snipe are widely known for being slow-moving nocturnal birds, ranging in size from a small chicken to a school bus. One of the species' defining characteristics is its inability to fly or defend itself. The bird walks mainly in open fields, and is thought to be extremely dim-witted.
The bird is a delicacy and is frequently hunted for its meat. Experienced snipers report that the bird can be captured in a canvas sack or even a paper bag. During the rut, male snipe will respond to loud whooping noises. Some old-timers claim that the preferred method of attracting snipe is to run through a field waving aluminum pie plates while making whoops.
Snipe were thought to be extinct in the lower 48 because none had been caught in a number of decades. However, researchers funded by an NSF grant recently recorded the unmistakable snipe mating song while tracking the birds in the prairies north of Dallas.
Snipe hunting season peaks in mid-November, as the birds migrate in all directions.

  ¶ 10:39 PM 1 comments

  Hi to you
Hello, nice vanilla face people. My name a Borat. You see my movie film? Is very nice! In my country... in Kazahkstan... we a... no think so bad about our selfs. No one can make us feel like our own assholes, not even great gypsy-killer Sakramev. When we feeling little down and sad, we go find gypsy to beat. Or we shoot dog and have a big party. It could be worse, yes? You could have tumor in your testes satchel, or your family could be bunch of dirty gypsies, or your sister could be really unpopular prostitute, or your country may be producer of inferior potassium. So have nice time and make a party. Make sexytime romance - verrry nice! I go now, I have plow to buy for my wife. When life is... bad, just say "Fuck to you, life!" "May your anus be fill with spiders, life!" "May my stink Uncle Youssef make dirt from anus on your face, Life"

Borat Sadigyev  ¶ 5:11 PM 0 comments

  Regrets... my life This morning I clicked on the hyperlink to our blog, conveniently located on my google home page hoping to find something humorous and uplifting. Instead, for the third time in as many days, I find a big glaring, "I'm Sorry" at the top of the page.

Not that I'm criticizing the author (who ROCKS), but it occurred to me how that has come to be my refrain in life. Sorry. I'm sorry for not being a better husband, a better father, a better friend, a better steward of the planet, a better individual. I'm sorry I'm not brave in the face of a diminishing culture that puts us in mind-numbing boxes. I'm sorry I don't spend more time with my parents, that I didn't spend more time with my grandmother who recently passed away.

And when you get right down to it, I'm sorry that I don't have the guts to cast it all aside and follow in the footsteps of the great men and women in history. I can now understand the appeal to which the 12 apostles and 100-odd disciples responded to. "Come with me and I will make you fishers of men" probably sounded a lot like, "would you like to run away from home and go on a 3 year camping trip at the end of which you won't be any poorer/richer, older/younger than you would have been if you had spent the 3 years mending nets and caulking boats."

So what do I do instead? And by the way, I'm not really alone in this. I go on trips that distract the mind. I read books that allow me to get lost in someone else's adventures of the body and mind. I cook or buy good meals that bathe me in numbing sensual pleasure.

And what will I do tomorrow? Get up early and go to work. Start thinking about lunch around 9:30. Actually eat lunch at 11:30. The weekend will begin, during which I will catch up on my share of housework, feel guilty for an hour of recreating, eat a half dozen meals and 2 or 3 pseudo meals.

See you at work Monday!  ¶ 7:46 AM 0 comments

  Open letter to all. I'm sorry.
Dear world,

I can't live like this much longer, so I have to come clean. Living the lie has taken its toll on me, and this is the last act of a desperate woman. It is time that you all knew the truth about my sordid past.

I'm a cheat. My personal history is dark with instances of me making my way in this world by slight of hand. Sometimes I didn't even care the impact in had on others. The most recent occasion, was probably the worst. I had been given an assignment, and insteading of standing on my own merits I chose to gain an edge,to inflate my value in the eyes of those in charge.

I don't even remember what impact this had on the rest of Mrs. Rentrell's 3rd grade class. By starting the "practice writing period" while she was still giving instructions, I was able to sneak in several extra sentences of neatly written cursive. The others must have struggled to fill similar volumes of copy, battling mightily in vain against my ill-gotten gains.

The day Mrs. Rentrell came by and turned my paper over to find two sentences of words, she couldn't even scold me! Whether she was so apalled that she considered me a lost cause, or if she was at a loss for words, never having known such perfidy, I will never know. Or maybe, because it wasn't a graded exercise, my sordid edge didn't really matter.

I can't live with that possibility because it makes my crime even worse. To cheat for gain is low, but to cheat wantonly.... oh the humanity!

Please forgive me. Please let me live contritely amongst you without shame.

Sincerely,



Virginia  ¶ 8:28 PM 2 comments

  Spam

I don't have anything funny to say, but I don't know if you guys (and gals) saw that we here at Nerds4Words have been SPAMMED! Yes, that's right... If you go to the replies to one of the Haggard posts - I think it is the one with the cartoon Jesus, shilling ad space whilst being crucified - you'll find this:

Hey,nice blog!!! I found a place where you can make an extra $800 or more a month. I do it part time and make a lot more than that. It is definitely worth a visit! You can do it in your spare time and make good cash. Make Extra Cash

Actually, it is pretty ironic that this unknown spammer picked that post in which to Spam us.

The last 3 words are a hotlink to some spam-a-rific site where you can enjoy all the yummy spam you can handle. Real Spam is gross and gooey, and it's kind of like dogfood, with the gelatinous goo it's packed in. Virtual Spam is worse, since it's devious, bogus, specious, and fatuous, all rolled into one. Also, it could be laced with a Trojan Horse or a virus or Spyware, who knows? It is a sign of a country gone MAD, MAD I say, with desire for cash - people will do ANYTHING to try to cheat their fellow man out of it, because they love it and need it SO MUCH.

So, beware the evil SPAM.

This has been a public service announcement by J.$.  ¶ 8:11 AM 1 comments

  I Sing a Song of the Matrix
I was reading Leaves of Grass, and I came to a passage where Whitman ponders the possibility that nothing is real. I imagine everybody has had the same thought at one point or another. What if reality is entirely inside my head?
And that led me, by free association, to contemplate The Matrix. Could the machines rising up and enslaving us be a metaphor for something that's already happening? I realized that I sat in front of the computer all the daylight hours working today, and here I am during my free time. It wouldn't be that hard to bridge across my remaining non-computer time with an Ipod or a video game console. That would leave maybe an hour and a half when I was getting dressed, eating, or showering that I'm not actually plugged in. I would say the machines have me pretty much locked up.
Leaves of Grass celebrates exactly the opposite. So many depictions of The Common Man, tilling a field or building a house, doing something organic and real. If I could make a movie like The Matrix, I would have a Walt Whitman character. He would look sort of like God on The Simpson, and he would take over Laurense Fishbourn's (did I spell that right? I always mess up his name) role. He would hand you a little green pill, and it would bust you out of the 21st century and drop you in the middle of a Bob Ross painting.
To conclude, please type Bob Ross Painting in Google, without the quotes. Click 'I'm Feeling Lucky', and indeed, luck will reward you.  ¶ 10:51 PM 1 comments

  Air quality awareness
As some readers may have gleaned, I harbor a sincere concern for the current status and trendline of our environment.

It occurred to me recently, that one of the problems is that air quality in particular is such an abstract problem, that it fails to gain sufficient attention to mobilize the individual interest on which national consensus would ultimately be built.

I thereby propose that we use a non-profit entity to install Continuous Emissions Monitors ("CEMs") similar to those used to monitor power plant stack emissions in our major cities. With 15 or 20 such monitors, we could facilitate sensational headlines like, "Over 15% of Americans are breathing air that is unsafe." Or better yet, "2.4 million school children breath poisonous air every day."

By making web access to the continous data readily available, people could have an air quality monitor on their google home page and start considering air quality when they decide to i) go to the public pool, ii) hit the jogging track, iii) watch a game at the ball park or iv) walk to work. With awareness will follow anger, and anger might just be followed by a call to action. "Global warming" is too vague and distant a threat, but "today's mercury levels are 5 times higher than are considered safe by the EPA" is a real and current problem, that might encourage us to take action now.  ¶ 8:01 AM 2 comments

  Haggard, a call to Prayer
Dear followers,

It is with profane sadness that we recently witnessed the untimely fall from grace of one of our brothers. He fell down on his knees in a way no Christian man should, and that gives us all an opportunity to do the same. Except, that while on our knees, we should pray.

The very reverend Haggard reminds all of us born again Christians about the real and present danger of temptation. The devil and his agents are everywhere, even among us. In fact, it is only through faith that you can know that I am not one of them.

Rightly, this will make you wonder about many of your advisers. Is your born-again accountant really a man of god? Or is he mascarading as one, to win your blind loyalty, I mean faith. As we all know, the bible is the only source of divine guidance, and when it was compiled, lending money for interest was a crime against God. So you really have to look carefully at banks, CDs, home mortgages, credit cards, etc. that charge interest. (note for advanced readers: Commodities seem okay though... hoarding any contango commodity effectively gives you the benefit of interest rate exposure, without technically being considered lending money. For that matter, writing long-dated options have an interest rate sensitivity so you can technically get around that silly little rule and make some mad cash.)

The point here is, that Haggard's fall reminds Christians and non-Christians alike that we are all fairly fallible. God's law was "to Love your Neighbor" (capital letters added for emphasis, quotation marks too) not "JUDGE your neighbor." We do not want it to be said that the heathens were more willing to forgive our brother than we were ourselves.

Your friend in Jesus,

Shadrak  ¶ 12:33 PM 3 comments

  What the hell is going on?
I suppose this is a follow up piece to my expose on Republican Mark Foley, who was discovered to have been involved in a House page scandal where he tried to solicit underage teenage boys for some good ol' fashioned clean Southern buggery. Now, splased across the headlines around the globe, comes an even more colossal and bizarre scandal. Seems Ted Haggard, pastor of the New Life megachurch in Colorado Springs, and the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and one of the 25 most influential evangelicals, according to Time magazine, has been up to some naughty, naughty secret business.

Apparently, Rev. Haggard has been soliciting male prostitutes for quite some time for clandestine, drug-fueled homoerotic binges. One of his man-whores apparently ratted him out when he found out who the guy was. It seems that Rev. Haggard has been VERY vocal about the detested and abhorrent practice of homosexuality, and has been lobbying pretty heavily in Washington against gay marriage and other gay-friendly bills. So, when this male prostitute found out that the guy he was pleasuring for money in a very "gay" way, was spending all his energy trying to defame and destroy homosexuality, this prostitute smelled a hypocritical rat. Interestingly enough, the prostitute claims that Haggard has been having these trysts about once a month for a number of years, while Haggard claims to have "never had sex with a male prostitute," and to have only bought crystal meth out of "temptation," but then threw the drugs away before using them. Hmmm... what a strange difference in accounts... I wonder which one is telling the truth? (And this brings up a delicious irony: How is it that a crystal meth-addled man whore can be more truthful than a mega-pastor who is president of the largest evangelical parachurch agency in North America?) Then, after Rev. Haggard was de-Reverened by his church, and de-presidented by the NAE, he finally admitted to some sexual misconduct. Wow.

I guess this doesn't really need to be said, but WHY WHY WHY would you, if you were a closet homosexual and drug fiend, would you become a pastor of a conservative evangelical church, take on the highly public role of NAE president, and spend all your time and energy trying to eradicate the very same homosexuality that you were secretly indulging in? It's just so phony and ridiculous and hurtful and deceptive, and can't help the NAE cause very much... What about all those thousands of people who go to this guy's church every week and look up to him as a "man of god?" I know that everyone makes bad choices and so forth... but this is just so stupidly hypocritical that I'm going to start a list of all the people who make crazy public statements from positions of religious power against any of the "liberal" causes - because then I'll know that they are probably the worst offenders of those sins in their own secret lives.

J$  ¶ 12:24 PM 1 comments

  Behold! A pearl of my wisdom, to share with the world! I think modern medicine has lost something, a way of thinking about the human body that the early physicians and metaphysicists had seen very clearly. I'm talking, of course, about the four humors that control our health. You will remember that these humors are blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. Any imbalance of these causes a person to go into a "bad humor", which can only be relieved with emitics, leaches, holes drilled in the head, and the like. Where the old healers missed the boat was in proscribing a treatment-- the above remedies usually did more harm than good, and we remember them as quack remedies. What was lost was the concept of balance, which I think was perfectly valid.
To wit. I always do my best thinking on the crapper. This can only be because I'm pushing out an excess of black and yellow bile, restoring what was an overly bilious state to a more healthy condition. The mind, now back in harmony with the celestial spheres (that's a blog unto itself), can work as the primordial cosmic designer meant it to work. So far I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but please keep reading. Here's where it gets novel and interesting.
So there I was, thinking with the utmost lucidity. And it occurred to me one of the things about my job that really bugs me is that there are a few people I've really taken a disliking to. But I realized there's something I can do about it. I made a resolution unto myself that I would make an effort to get to know those people, and to make the greatest effort to really understand the people I like the least, in the hopes that I'll like them better if I know more about them. I was so taken with the notion that I wanted to inscribe it on the bathroom wall, in keeping with the tradition of great thinkers in small Texas towns, but I had nothing to write with.
That's it. That's all I got. Sorry if you were hoping for more. Please forward this message to at least 25 people, and something wonderful will happen to you tomorrow.  ¶ 8:04 PM 1 comments