Category Archives: silly

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Daily Evil: R is for Ridiculous

This is Donkey Oatie and Sancho Panda. Helen Burling Ottaway did a series for a book or a show or something in the early 1990s. I do not know if it was ever published. There is no date on this. This is colored pencil and the drawing is 9 by 12 inches. I think she did larger watercolors as the final project.

Is being ridiculous evil? I read that today is National Humorous Day. We need humor to let go of stress and blow off steam and to go from the fight or flight sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic relaxed one. Humor is a really good way to go. So watch those silly cat videos and laugh. Ok, not when you are at work. But even at work, my office manager and I needed to blow off steam and laugh. One day she was playing whale songs. I heard her say very seriously into the phone, “Oh, those are whale songs. Dr. Ottaway insists on whale songs.” I howled, because she had picked them. For revenge I made whale noises at her between patients all day. Anybody walking into clinic might have thought we were loons. I can do loon songs very well, better than whale songs.

I know a slightly different tune for The Dummy Line, a variation. There seem to be a bunch!

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Daily normal

This is normal during the Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race. Feathers, headgear, human powered land, water and mudbog machines, as well as Kinetic Kops and bribery of the judges. All trying to be Most Mediocre.

Not whacky, nope.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: whacky.

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Cautionary tale

I climb in a flower gullet
That’s eaten by a horrid pullet
Then an eagle with a mullet
Grabs and flies with the wicked pullet!

The pullet’s dead, I must escape
I climb the warm wet red throat like tape
crawl out her beak, I’m on her nape
Staring down at a far landscape!

The pullet swings in the thermal’s rise
I can’t believe I am alive
The eagle soars and then she dives
A nest with fierce small beaks: a hive!

I jump as the eagle lands
her greedy children shout demands
they tear the pullet wing to gullet
while the eagle grooms her bloody mullet

I crawl through the nest and jump away
eaten and freed in just one day
to tell the tale for many days
of eagle mullet pullet gullet

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: gullet.

Why doesn’t bullet rhyme? Words are weird.

I took the photograph in Michigan in 2017 in July, at my friend Maline’s garden.

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not really, right?

I ask a male friend of mine, older and perhaps wiser. “Um, the guys I have dated or even just hung out with are only interested in their interests. They are not interested in me or what I am doing. For example, I mention that I have a blog twice to two different males recently and they completely ignore it. I mention that I just did a poetry reading and one whips out his phone and shows me a family member’s poem. What is it with that?”

“Well,” he says, “Men are only interested in what a woman is doing, if they are in love with her.”

“Really?” I say. “Holy crap.”

“Absolutely.”

I am still chewing on this. I have dated various “gentlemen” for a couple of years each since I got divorced. One of them is still a friend. Last month he said, “I think you like writing better than I do.” Um. He has known me since 2008. Powers of observation, like a hawk in flight, heh.

I can think of seven guys since 2007, when my divorce was final, who really showed very little interest in what I was doing. Ok, one of them did read my blog and another admitted to reading at least one post, but refused to EVER comment. What the hell? Meanwhile they want to talk about their collections, their jobs, their lives, their interests.

And so I reexamine my ex-husband. He actually DID listen and WAS interested. Mostly he laughed at me, but medical school and residency were off the scale dysfunctional and ridiculous. And in turn I listened to his golf shots and watched Payne Stewart dress in NFL colors and plus fours.

But I don’t get it. Maybe the younger generations are a lot smarter and I think they are darn smart to say who cares about the XX or XY or XO or XYY chromosomes! There are lots of other chromosomes! Let’s get over race and gender! That stuff is shallow unless you are interested in someone in the pants zone.

And then men complain to me that they do not understand women. Really? I ask if they have ever read a romance novel. One said, “Those are for women. I wouldn’t do that.” So one romance would take away your man credentials? I say, well, you might understand what our culture indoctrinates women with if you did read a romance. Not to mention notice that Disney animation glorifies virginal princesses, but gosh, queens are either dead or evil. Doesn’t seem like a good career choice, breeder for the ruler. Especially if you’ll die in childbirth or turn evil.

I hope my male friend is wrong, but I am paying attention. And noticing if a man is not.


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Food needs

I am having a few friends over and am checking to see if there are any food needs. Since my March 2021 pneumonia, I can’t eat gluten. Weird, huh? But antibodies tend to rise as we get older, darn them. And there can be a rising baseline. Double darn.

Anyhow, I have some funny friends. My query “Is there anything you don’t eat?” got these responses:

“I don’t eat anchovies or dried fishies or grubs.”

“We eat everything in moderation.”

“shellfish, giant rubbery cooked mushrooms….”

“liver”

They crack me up! I think I invited the right people.

Now, let’s see, what is my menu, with no liver, gluten, shellfish, giant rubbery cooked mushrooms, anchovies, dried fishies or grubs? Tough, huh? Pretty narrow range left.

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I took the photograph at the Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race in September 2022. Pretty earnest discussion going on among an interesting group.

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Intransitivity

Intransitive verb

Intransitive? But you know
sometimes it will snow snow
sometimes it will snow sleet
while I’m awake or when I sleep
it may be snowing sleet or snow
but really I’m not sure I know
if it can also sleet snow

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Intransitive

He’s intransitive, just so annoying
Intensitive bastard, good old boying!
Sentensitively prosing about bird wings!
Insentivizingly verbing almost all things!
So intransitive, just boycloying
Intensitive batshard, boyhowannoying!

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: intransitive.

There is a red headed woodpecker in this picture, though it is not a very good shot. No, it’s not a red headed, they are east of the Rockies. A red breasted sapsucker? https://wildyards.com/woodpeckers-in-washington/

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Satirical

I am looking through photographs looking for a Satyr. Or Satyrs. I know that I have Fauns on a frieze in a very peculiar old repurposed Elks Club in Portland, but Fauns are not quite Satyrs. And satirical is from a different origin than Satyr.

Really, though, I am surprised that no one was dressed as a Satyr at the Great Port Townsend Kinetic Sculpture Race.

The costumes are always amazing.

Here is a sculpture with the rider. A Satyr or not?

This is the day before the race, with the parade and the brake test and the water test. The water is in the 40s or low 50s.

What do we call a female Satyr?

No, surely she is not one. Will the Judges permit Satyrs?

It does not appear that they will.

The cover picture is most satirical to me: the joyful silliness of the human powered race, on land, on sea and through mud, with a sailboat race in the background and Indian Island, with a crane and a military presence. Let’s have more more more joyful silliness.

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The Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race: https://www.ptkineticrace.org/

This is the 2018 Race.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: Satyr.

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Fancy hammock

Previous.

I am Elwha, cat.

Mother got us a hammock, a two story structure. Our food can be in the lower section and I can sit above and keep an eye on it. Even when the bowl is empty. I am still hungry, but she is being a little more generous. She still feeds us in separate rooms. My sister and I race to check each other’s bowl when she opens the doors again. I like the wet food. My sister likes the dry food. Mother gives each of us some of both. We trade.

I am still doing offerings in my bowl in hopes that Mother will be more generous with the food. My sister had her head in the food bag the other day but Mother saw her and closed it up. I wish I had hands. I would open more cans.

Meanwhile I do like the fancy hammock.

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: fancy.

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AI Oh

Old MacDonald has a ‘puter

A-I-A-I-O

And to this ‘puter he did mutter

A-I-A-I-O

With a mutter here and mutter there, here a mutter there a mutter, mutter butter fuddy dutter

Old MacDonald has a ‘puter

A-I-A-I- O!

Old MacDonald has a cell

A-I-A-I-O

The cell listens in full well

A-I-A-I-O

With an ad here an ad there, longer stronger 12 inch donger

Old MacDonald has a cell

A-I-A-I-O

Old MacDonald had a twitter

A-I-A-I-O

But the Chief Twit’s tweets got too bitter

A-I-A-I-O

Fire here fire there dumped and trumped everywhere

Old MacDonald had a twitter

A-I-A-I-O

Old MacDonald has an algorithm

A-I-A-I-O

His rhythm system slithers mythdom

A-I-A-I-O

Confusion here discrimination there mansplain what a pain cocaine human brain

Old MacDonald has an algorhythm

A-I-A-I-O

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I think we could come up with LOTS more verses. The photograph is of Boa, my cat who died in 2020 at age 17.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: mischief.