Superclassic

This one-page comic, done in haste for Eric Pervukhin's comic class in 1996, became a comedy hit a few years later on the University of Florida campus. Letters were written to the campus paper demanding that more comics in this vein be printed. Alas, such lightning strikes but once. Nothing else in my stable of pages has ever quite equaled it.

Skunky

Around dusk on Friday, I smelled skunk. Not uncommon where I work, and I'd smelled it a few times lately. I figured it was on Dummy, the black cat that hangs around my shop. Well, the smell got bastard strong. I saw nothing at first, but turned on some lights and found the skunk, slumped by a mower.

Oddly sleepy skunk, seemed sick or dying.

Before approaching this close with the camera, I rolled a round ball at it, under the length of a flatbed trailer. It seemed barely alert, but the ball did make it stand up and raise its tail a bit. Then it just lay there. I threw half a hot-dog bun at it, another crack shot that nudged right up to the skunk's head. Little effect. I think it finally sniffed the bun.

In this enhanced photo: weird skunk behavior, ball and bun in background

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Well, it was time to go home. I had planned on ordering Chinese food, but I forgot about that. The smell was quite bad, getting into my office even with the door closed. I finally chased the cat away, so he wouldn't block the skunk from leaving. Then I thought I had a good idea: leaf blower. Lots of dirt and sawdust on the floor would make it an unpleasant whirlwind that might drive the skunk out.

Well, it did make the skunk move. She just scooted under my mower and curled up. I poked the blower nozzle right near the mower deck, but she just hunkered. I just had to leave, but I left the garage door propped up on a brick so she could get out.

Saturday afternoon I checked. She seemed to be gone. But a more thorough search revealed her tucked under a shelf in the next room, right where I have to walk to open the bathroom door.

Well, I have a new roommate. New strategies for the coming week: water hose, lemon juice in squirt gun, hedge-apples rolled into corners, poison, maybe lasso training.

I also might need to get rid of the 20+ gallons of stale popcorn on the floor in a bag that I had been feeding to Dummy.

List Week Sputters Out

Good words to say in 2012:
“Punkbag”
“dicey”
“manticore”
“crotchy”
“avuncular”
“bilk”
“niggardly” (thrill-seekers only)

Please avoid in 2012:
"FYI"
“Lock-n-load”
“handheld” (as a noun)
“asap”
portmanteaus in general

List Week Drifts Toward its Doom

Pirate Ship Names Concocted to Encourage Heterosexuality Among the Crew

1. The Buxom Mermaid
2. Sodomy Sinks Ships
3. The Orphan Boy’s Had Enough
4. Hef's Wife: "She's Ballasted with Playboys"
5. The Wet Gal
6. Remember Tits?
7. Th' Bride’s Plunder
8. The Delirious Whore of the Sargasso Sea
9. Calypso’s Knockers
10. The Slave Girl’s Pearl Necklace
11. The Indecent Strumpet with a Penchant for Rough, Salty Pounding
12. The Talented Lady Parts
13. The Adventurous Female

List Week Hump Day

I saw a DVD of 9 Dungeons & Dragons cartoons for only 2.50 at Walmart. I talked myself out of getting it, but now I'm missing it. Hence, this list.

Spectrum of D&D character alignments, with celebrity examples
1. Lawful good (Jackie Chan)
2. Lawful neutral (The clock-punching sheepdog from old Warner Bros. cartoons)
3. Lawful evil (Newt Gingrich)
4. Perniciously gay (Simon Cowell)
5. Bashful (J. D. Salinger)
6. Ripping Drunk (Mel Gibson)
7. Neutral Good (David Letterman)
8. Neutrally Delicious (the California Raisins)
9. Chaotic good (The A-Team)
10. Chaotic evil (Octomom)
11. Chaotic stupid (Fla-vor Flav, The Noid)
12. Neutral Neutral (comedian Steven Wright)

List Week Drags On

 

List #2

Best ninja attacks, by rising difficulty level

1. Smoke bomb
2. Spiky metal puncture-pretzels (jacks?) tossed on footpath
3. Blindness salts
4. Nickel glued to floor, coated with contact poison
5. Celestial Monkey's Rape Simulation
6. Clothes pinned to the wall by throwing stars
7. Identity theft
8. Indoor Corn Maze
9. Stealth installation of faulty penile implant
10. Colitis Punch (creates or cures colitis, according to taste)

List Week

 
List #1
Little House Standards by rising emotional impact

1. Caroline must accept a stingy price for her eggs from Harriet Oleson 
2. Pa breaks out the fiddle and plays joyously
3. Mary goes blind
4. Pa sets out on an arduous search for employment
5. Neighbors die of a disease while Half-Pint selfishly eats their peppermints
6. Apocalyptic blizzard
7. Pa must slaughter the runt piglet in secret
8. Albert screams his way through a morphine addiction
9. Nellie Oleson tricks Willie into suicide
10. Pa looks tearfully to heaven in search of the Lord’s grace

Dental Synchronicity

Just as women who work together sometimes develop sympathetic menstrual timing, my wife and I have apparently been married long enough that our dental cycles are syncing up. Independently, and at two unrelated dentists, we will both be in the chair this May 22. Open a new X-File, Mulder.

To hold your appointment card to the fridge, we recommend a photo-magnet featuring your top moment of dental squirreliness.