That's the cover, huh? Yikes.

For six months I've been planning on posting some rather racist covers from old issues of Cracked back when it was a marginally amusing magazine rather than a marginally amusing website. I knew they were laying on my desk, but it was too much trouble to scan or photograph them, so I just left them there. Now with Gary Coleman dying today I figure it's a good time to post these since he's on both covers.

On the first cover, Gary Coleman and Sylvester P. Smythe are boxing. Smythe has a black eye and Coleman has a white eye. Yeah. This was 1982. On the second cover (from 1980), Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges happily smear shoe polish on Sylvester P. Smythe.

I was fairly shocked at these covers when I dug them out of an ancient stack of magazines months ago. I know that these were most likely unintentionally offensive, but I still can't fathom this type of stuff being published on the cover of a national magazine in the early 80's.

[Pointless explanatory notes: The white guy on both covers, Sylvester P. Smythe, was (is?) Cracked's mascot. He's no Alfred E. Neuman. (I didn't link to the Alfred E. Neuman Wikipedia page because you should know who he is. And if you don't, then you should be flung onto a huge anthill.)

Both covers were drawn by the legendary John Severin.]

I know I put it somewhere!

You ever lose money in your house? Isn't fun wracking your brain trying to figure out where you put it? Asking yourself, "Did I accidentally throw it away?" This is exactly what I've been doing on and off since maybe October or November.

My money got mislaid after I had to move several tons of crap during some quasi-renovations. What was so annoying was the shear quantity of money that I mislaid: $170,185,000,000,001. I'm totally serious.

Of course it was Zimbabwean currency, which is basically worthless, but I paid money for it on Ebay and I was pissed that I might have accidentally thrown it out.

Earlier, I took a book off the shelf and the bills fell out. There's only ten of them. Why I decided to stick them in a book I rarely look at escapes me.

Now maybe I can find that 8GB USB thumb drive that got lost in the same quasi-renovation.

Sunday Thoughts

A couple of weeks ago I was thinking about time travel and how if I went back in time to before the wheel existed I could invent it myself. Then I started to realize how difficult it would be to make a wheel, let alone an axle to put it on. I'd be completely useless back then. So, in conclusion, I vow not to travel back in time.

More Lurching

Here's a short story type thing I wrote last year that was based on a scam email I got multiple times. I was going to submit this some online literary magazine, but then I decided not to bother since I could just as easily have no one read it here.

From Mrs. Rebecca Williams

NO 112 Rue Des Martyrs Cocody

Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire

ATTN:

DEAREST ONE OF GOD

I am the above named person from Kuwait. I am married to Mr. Benson Williams, who worked with Kuwait embassy in Ivory Coast for nine years before he died in the year 2004. We were married for eleven years without a child because I don’t like children. He died after contacting a rare disease from illegally imported kangaroo meat. I know it was foolish to make a stew with something as potentially hazardous as illegally imported kangaroo meat, but if you’ve ever eaten kangaroo meat you would understand. The outcome was tragic, yes, but still, sometimes I think it was worth it. There really is nothing quite like kangaroo meat.

Before his death we were both born again Christians. Since his death I have come under the influence of a necromancer named Steve. I have decided not to remarry or get a child outside my matrimonial home which the Steve is against. I asked why he was against it, but he just shrugged and said he didn’t need a reason. I guess that’s his business, but I would kind of like to have a reason. Sometimes Steve is so obstinate. Don’t you hate that kind of behavior in a person? I know he has a lot on his mind what with raising the dead for his own nefarious purposes, but he doesn’t have to be so uncommunicative and brusque.

When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of $2.5 Million (Two Million Five Hundred U.S. Dollars) in the bank here in Abidjan in suspense account. After he died he no longer deposited any more money in the bank. Some of my fondest memories of my husband are of him rolling naked in piles of money, screaming, “It’s all mine! It’s all mine!” Everyone has their curious peccadilloes and rolling naked in money was my husband’s. The funny thing was I never grew tired of watching him rolling and screaming while flinging armfuls of cash into the air. And he also never grew tired of rolling and screaming in piles of money. You would think it would get old after a while, but I guess it didn’t lose its appeal for him. The odd thing about all of this is I never had any real desire to roll in the money myself. Now I kind of regret not at least trying it out, who knows, I may have enjoyed it, but it’s too late now.

Presently, the fund is still with the bank. Recently, my Doctor told me that I have serious sickness which as far as can be determined wasn’t caused in any way by the illegally imported kangaroo meat or by my activities as an apprentice necromancer. The doctor thinks that I have what’s called psychic monkey fever, which is a rare condition where the infected person can communicate psychically with primates. I know it sounds exciting, but I tell you it’s no adventure having to psychically communicate with monkeys whenever they are within a 100 meter radius of me. The monkeys think only of food, sex, and territory. There’s no romance among the primates, so you can leave your sentimentalism about the animal kingdom in the First World. The one thing that disturbs me most is my knowledge that the monkeys know I can communicate with them psychically. I don’t think the monkeys like the idea of someone being in psychic communication with them, but it’s hard to tell what with their obsessions with food, sex, and territory.

You may ask why I don’t simply get my friend Steve the necromancer to reanimate my corpse after I die of psychic monkey fever. The answer is that I don’t wish to spend all eternity on earth as a member of the undead. No, it is best that I simply be allowed to die.

Having known my condition, I decided to donate this fund to an individual that will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct herein. I want a space ship built so that underprivileged astronauts can leave the earth just like those rich NASA people who think they’re so special. Also, I want enough of it set aside so that my corpse can be launched into outer space. It has to break the bonds of the earth’s gravitational pull. I won’t settle for being shot into a low level orbit only to reenter the earth’s atmosphere and burn up like so much space junk.

The Bible made us to understand that blessed is the hand that giveth. I took this decision because I don’t have any child that will inherit this money because I don’t like children and my husband’s relatives are not progressives and I don’t want my husband’s efforts to be used by unbelievers in affordable space travel for all. I don’t want a situation where this money will be used in a ridiculous way. Those relatives of his will use the money to pay for vaccinations for the poor, I just know it. This is why I am taking this decision. I am not afraid of death hence I know where I am going--into space! I know that I am going to be in the bosom of the galaxy. My dead body will be my space ship and it will travel for all eternity. Well, it will travel for all eternity unless it crashes into another planet or gets hit by an asteroid, but let us hope such a thing does not happen.

I don’t need any telephone communication in this regard because of my health hence the presence of my husband’s relatives is around me always I don't want them to know about this development. They will for sure foil my plans to launch my body into outer space if they found out about it. Why they’re so against space travel I will never know. With sufficient rocket power all things are possible. As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of the bank here in Abidjan. My happiness is that I lived a life of a worthy space-traveling necromancer. Whoever that wants to travel in space should be able to do it affordably, be they pauper, necromancer, or even electrician.

Contact me on the above e-mail address for more information; any delay in your reply will give me room in sourcing another individual for this same purpose. Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I stated herein. Hoping to receive your reply.

Remain blessed in the quest for affordable space travel.

Yours truly,

Mrs. Rebecca Williams.

Lurching Down Memory Lane

Here's a collage I made back in the mid 90's.

Burn it! Burn it, I say!

Last year while digging through a bunch of old crap I'd written, I found what's probably the oldest extant short story I've ever written. It was written circa 1985 in pencil on notebook paper. I was sixteen years old. I've typed it out for your pleasure rather than burning it like I should have done.

Murray’s Freezer

     Joe’s truck pulled into Murray’s yard. Murray didn’t have the five thousand dollars he owed Joe. Joe stepped out of his truck, he had large pipe-wrench in his hand. Joe didn’t bother to knock on the door, he just knocked it down. Joe was a large man, about seven feet tall. He weighed about five-hundred pounds. Murray was five feet eleven inches tall and one-hundred and ninety pounds.
     “Pay or die, Murray!” he said.
     “AAAAHHH!!” said Murray.
     Joe picked up Murray and threw him across the room, knocking him out. Joe picked Murray up and put him in the big freezer Murray kept in his garage. Joe then drove away in Murray’s new car.
     And for the next 40,000 years that freezer hummed on through great wars and famines. It was a good freezer.
     Two archaeologists dug up the freezer and were amazed it was still running, and that a guy named Murray was inside of it. Later at the University of Quau, some doctors thawed Murray out. After he was completely thawed and received electric shock a few times, he came around.
     The doctors asked him a few questions. He was confused at first, but then finally awoke.
     “Do you know that you have been frozen for 40,000 years” they asked.
     “I have? Like, wow, man. What a trip!”

Driving Around in Circles

A few days ago, through my job, I got an opportunity to go to my first ever NASCAR race. It was all free; all I had to do was chip in for the rental vehicle we used to drive up to Richmond.

Honestly, I'm not that into auto racing anymore. If this had been 1995 I probably would've been excited beyond control, but since it's 2010, I was only mildly excited. On the drive up my body decided a good substitute for excitement was car sickness.

About 25 miles outside of Richmond we had to pull over so I could throw up. As I barfed my guts out one of my coworkers got my camera out and took pictures of me. My own camera. Bastard.

Did anything else interesting happen? Not really. My coworkers tried and failed to get me drunk, I saw Darrell Waltrip, and sitting in the grandstands just below me were not one, but two girls with that stupid Kate Gosselin reverse mullet.

Here's Flickr links to big photos of Waltrip and the reverse mullet girls.