Today my wife had a nasty housefly in her office, and she posited it was a female looking for a mate. I have no idea what houseflies do, but I know that 30 years ago I drew this for no reason, and it still seems to make sense today.
The Old Wolf has doodled.
Newser reports that Home Depot is giving up in China; they have discovered that the Chinese prefer “do it for me” rather than “do it yourself.” Most Chinese live in apartments in urban areas, and have access to cheap labor.
However, I have often wondered if the quality of the work one gets done is not of the best, as illustrated in the following Lao Fu Zi strips (remember to read these from top to bottom, and from right to left):
If you’re not familiar with Lao Fu Zi (known as Old Master Q in English), you can become better acquainted here. Most of these are constructed to be funny even if you don’t read Chinese – the website provides translations as an added touch.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
This has been around the internet for a long time, but as far as I can determine, it was originally written by authors at the Onion.
WORLD NEWS:
CLINTON DEPLOYS VOWELS TO BOSNIA
Cities of Sjlbvdnzv, Grzny to Be First Recipients
Before an emergency joint session of Congress yesterday, President Clinton announced US plans to deploy over 75,000 vowels to the war‑torn region of Bosnia. The deployment, the largest of its kind in American history, will provide the region with the critically needed letters A,E,I,O and U, and is hoped to render countless Bosnian names more pronounceable.
“For six years, we have stood by while names like Ygrjvslhv and Tzlynhr and Glrm have been horribly butchered by millions around the world,” Clinton said. “Today, the United States must finally stand up and say ‘Enough.’ It is time the people of Bosnia finally had some vowels in their incomprehensible words. The US is proud to lead the crusade in this noble endeavor.”
The deployment, dubbed Operation Vowel Storm by the State Department, is set for early next week, with the Adriatic port cities of Sjlbvdnzv and Grzny slated to be the first recipients. Two C‑130 transport planes, each carrying over 500 24‑count boxes of “E’s,” will fly from Andrews Air Force Base across the Atlantic and airdrop the letters over the cities.
Citizens of Grzny and Sjlbvdnzv eagerly await the arrival of the vowels. “Bože moj, I do not think we can last another day,” Trszg Grzdnjkln, 44, said. “I have six children and none of them has a name that is understandable to me or to anyone else. Mr. Clinton, please send my poor, wretched family just one ‘E.’ Please.”
Said Sjlbvdnzv resident Grg Hmphrs, 67: “With just a few key letters, I could be George Humphries. This is my dream.”
The airdrop represents the largest deployment of any letter to a foreign country since 1984. During the summer of that year, the US shipped 92,000 consonants to Ethiopia, providing cities like Ouaouoaua, Eaoiiuae, and Aao with vital, life‑giving supplies of L’s, S’s and T’s. The consonant‑relief effort failed, however, when vast quantities of the letters were intercepted and hoarded by violent, gun‑toting warlords.
For what it’s worth, “rhythm” and “syzygy” are the longest English words with no vowels if you don’t count archaic forms like symphysy or names like Twyndyllyngs. Slavic languages or which use syllabic consonants can actually form sentences like “Strč prst skrz krk” (Czech for “stick a finger through your neck”).
Th Ld Wlf hs Spkn.
If you’ve visited my Banquet from Hell, you may have seen the entry about the Icelandic delicacy(?) hákarl, or fermented shark. Every now and then I get a strange idea in my head for a cartoon, and thought I can’t draw worth a cow pie, I have to get it on paper to quiet it down. Here’s one such misfortune (click it for the full-size penance).
The Old Wolf has drawn badly.
Occasionally a troll pops up on a discussion board. These are individuals who write inflammatory or disparaging posts, hoping for a flurry of outraged responses which they can then refute with further insults. In troll-speak, they do it for the lulz, meaning “for the joy of disrupting another’s emotional equilibrium.”
Image Source: Unknown
From this article in Science Friday comes a summary of troll behavior:
‘Trolling can
Wikipedia counsels, “Experienced participants in online forums know that the most effective way to discourage a troll is usually to ignore him or her, because responding tends to encourage trolls to continue disruptive posts.” This is usually summarized by forum participants as “Please do not feed the trolls”. If there are no lulz to be had, a troll has no reason for existence and will in general move on to what he or she considers greener pastures.
One forum I participated in fell victim to an especially egregious attack, which – sadly – resulted in the demise of that community’s incarnation (it subsequently went elsewhere, in a locale better protected from infiltration. In an astounding flurry of pseudo-creativity, the following piece of literary vandalism practically wrote itself, but I’m pleased with the outcome, because it served to get all my frustration with these sub-humans out of my head and down on “paper”, as it were.
with the most profound apologies to J. R. R. Tolkien
Troll sat alone in his filthy home,
He had no reason outside to roam;
His pimply face was a sore disgrace
And friends were hard to come by.
Done by! Gum by!
In a filthy home he dwelt alone,
And friends were hard to come by.
He’d surf the net, always on the watch
For nasty pictures that would tickle his crotch
But the thing he loved best was to curse and swear
And act like a total retard¹.
Bombard! Blackguard!
He’d yank people’s chains for laughs and lulz
And act like a total retard!
‘Ha ha!’, said Troll, ‘I pwn your soul.
So why don’t you shut your old cake hole?
Your posts are lame and I take control
Of your blog, you stupid loser!
Boozer! Schmoozer!
I can drool and spit and you can’t do squat²
‘Cuz I’m safe from poor old loser!
But the folks whose paths he tends to cross
Have naught but contempt for this pile of dross
So they simply pretend that he isn’t there
And Troll gets all the madder.
Sadder! Adder!
When poor old Troll doesn’t get results
He just gets all the madder.
‘For a couple o’ pins’, says Troll, and grins,
‘I’ll swear so much you’ll think I’m twins.
I’ll make you see you’ve got nothing on me
And your base belong to me now!
Hee now! See now!
I’m king of the world, bow down to me,
All your base belong to me now!
But just as he thought his victim was caught,
He found his hands had hold of naught.
The blogs were locked, and Troll was shocked
That everyone ignored him!
Bored him! Floored him!
He’d been dismissed, and was mighty pissed
That everyone ignored him!
But blacker than coal is the heart of Troll
Whose life is as barren as the Kansas dust bowl.
He’ll just move on to greener fields
Where folks will rise to his baiting.
Hating! Grating!
Old Troll laughs, when he hears folks groan,
And he thinks he’s won with his baiting.
But the folks who win, to Troll’s chagrin
Are the ones who learn the rule herein;
Ignore the Troll with the heart of coal
And he’ll quickly travel elsewhere!
Nose hair! Hot air!
His world’s so sad, but we don’t care
As long as he’s flaming elsewhere!
——————–
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Footnotes:
¹ Yes, I’m aware this is no longer a term to be applied to people who are mentally challenged.
² While composing this, I thought of a better rhyme – but I strive to write family-friendly material.
The Gibson Girl was the personification of the feminine ideal of beauty portrayed by the satirical pen-and-ink illustrations of illustrator Charles Dana Gibson during a 20-year period that spanned the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States. (Wikipedia)
I love the expression on the old guy’s face.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Charles Addams – shown in The New Yorker in 1959
Behind your Google Search
These have been floating around the Internet for a while, but they gave me a smile.
1) Triangular sandwiches taste better than square ones.
2) At the end of every party there is always a girl crying.
3) One of the most awkward things that can happen in a bar is when your beer-to-toilet cycle gets synchronised with a complete stranger.
4) You’ve never been quite sure whether it’s ok to eat green potato chips.
5) Everyone who grew up in the 80’s has entered the digits 55378008 into a calculator.
6) Reading when you’re drunk is horrible.
7) Sharpening a pencil with a knife makes you feel really manly.
8) You’re never quite sure whether it’s against the law or not to have a fire in your back yard.
10) Nobody ever dares make cup-a-soup in a bowl.
11) You never know where to look when eating a banana.
12) Its impossible to describe the smell of a wet cat.
13) Prodding a fire with a stick makes you feel manly.
14) Rummaging in an overgrown garden will always turn up a bouncy ball.
15) You always feel a bit scared when stroking horses.
16) Everyone always remembers the day a dog ran into your school.
17) The most embarrassing thing you can do as schoolchild is to call your teacher mom or dad.
18) The smaller the monkey the more it looks like it would kill you at the first given opportunity.
19) Some days you see lots of people on crutches.
20) Every guy has at some stage while taking a pee flushed half way through and then raced against the flush.
21) Old women with mobile phones look wrong!
22) Its impossible to look cool while picking up a Frisbee.
23) Driving through a tunnel makes you feel excited.
24) You never ever run out of salt.
25) Old ladies can eat more than you think.
26) You can’t respect a man who carries a dog.
27) There’s no panic like the panic you momentarily feel when you’ve got your hand or head stuck in something.
28) No one knows the origins of their metal coat hangers.
29) Despite constant warning, you have never met anybody who has had their arm broken by a swan.
30) The most painful household incident is wearing socks and stepping on an upturned plug.
31) People who don’t drive slam car doors too hard.
32) You’ve turned into your dad the day you put aside a thin piece of wood specifically to stir paint with.
33) Everyone had an uncle who tried to steal their nose.
34) Bricks are horrible to carry.
35) In every plate of french fries there is a bad fry.
The Old Wolf has *snrk* spoken.
“Nine out of ten voices in my head tell me that life lived without laughter is a sin. The other one is just crazy.”
-Wolfington X. Analemma
This guy just learned the meaning of Karma.
Instant comfort.
Attack Roomba™
Bang!
Unclear on the concept.
Again. And Again. And Again.
I can relate to this. What’s more, we have a kitten and that’s just about right.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Edited to reflect the fact that all the lost cartoons but one have been located.
The New Yorker was a constant guest in my home as I was growing up in New York City in the 1950’s. My parents were both actors, and it seemed like it was always there, along with Variety and any number of other publications. Of course, at that age, I was interested in the cartoons most of all, and developed a deep and abiding love for the work of Charles Addams, although there were others I became familiar with as well, including W. Steig, O. Soglow, Jules Feiffer, to name just a few.
I have this picture in my mind. I can see it as clearly as if it were on the desk in front of me. It’s done in that pen-and-ink with grey wash style so popularized by Addams, and it shows the interior of a warehouse at the Heinz factory. A worker on a ladder way, way up at the top of a rack finds a single lonely can, the shelf lovingly labeled “58.” I don’t think I’m making this up, but I have never, ever, been able to find that cartoon anywhere – even with the miracle of the Internet.
I came close, though. Gluyas Williams, a wonderful cartoonist in his own right, depicted the scene in his series of industrial crises, but it’s just not the picture I had in mind.
Click the image for a larger size.
Closeup of the offending product!
Yes, this was funny. But it’s not what I had in mind. If anyone out there knows what I am talking about, or has seen or has a copy of the panel I have described, drop me a comment here. I’ve already had success with one or two other “lost” cartoons, including this gem by Howard Shoemaker (thanks to Mark Breeding for the awesome find):
My favorite Jerry Amerongen of all time (thanks to Mark Stanley for knowing the artist and the collection it was found in):
(I love the old lady strung up by her thumbs, it cracks me up ever time I look at it. Banks are really like this…)
And the iconic “retching jackal” by Al Jaffee, recently found in his wonderful biography after decades of wishing I could find a copy.
Yeah, it’s twisted – but then so is MAD Magazine, and I loved it as a kid.
There’s one more. This one I know exists, because I used to have it in my collection, but what happened to it I’ll never know. It would have been in Datamation, or one of the other comparable trade pulps, in the mid-1980’s. (See edit below)
This is a Xerox series 2700 laser printer, but when attached to a Wang OIS word processor, it was OEM’ed as an LPS-12 or an LPS-24, depending on the engine speed.
EDIT: On February 2, 2018, the Internet finally disgorged the cartoon I had been chasing for decades. Found in PC Magazine, November 15, 1988:
EDIT: This one surfaced thanks to reddit. It’s not really off-color, but perhaps just a bit risqué: another one that I had remembered for decades and never been able to find again, located for me by redditor /u/Haze793:
Playing in the World Game 