Leave Gome alone

Alan Wagner lives in a much more interesting neighborhood than I do.

I’m so glad I’m getting my first vaccine shot tomorrow, and I’m so glad I don’t have a lawn.

Floating down the stream

My friend Joselito always seems to know when I need some silly stuff to cheer me up, especially during this pandemic and election cycle and … oh geez, end of the world? Can we tell? For the past couple of days he’s been posting photos of library cats and creepy newborn baby dolls and suchlike to one of my social media pages, and my favorite of all is this one:

And boy, this really sent me down a stream of consciousness that was pretty nice. Not a “mind racing, when will this madness end” sort of thing, just a meandering stream. Something I haven’t enjoyed in a while.

At first I started thinking about what a nice place it must be to have a sign like this on the bus. And what a nice place it must be if people actually followed the directions and said “ding ding.” I wanted to know where this place was.

Turns out, it’s someplace in England called Barnsley. Barnsley is famous for their football club which is nicknamed “the Tykes,” and also for a delicious-sounding cut of lamb chop. Calypso Cove and Penny Pie Park are some public attractions in Barnsley. Nearby towns are Cudworth and Grimethorpe, and it has a sister city in Germany named Schwäbisch Gmünd. I can’t decide if this sounds more like Wes Anderson or Roald Dahl. Or Untitled Goose Game.

Now that I’m thinking about it, one of the final challenges in the Untitled Goose Game is to steal the beautiful golden bell from the miniature town and put it in your secret hiding space. When you run with your bell, everyone in the village is alerted to your presence… because you are going “ding ding” as you run.

That’s it. Barnsley is the town in Untitled Goose Game. I want to go there so badly now. When will this pandemic be over? Joselito, do you know?

Over, under, sideways, down

Gort found this flyer the other day:

I can’t read the contact info, but I’m intrigued. If it’s just some dude with a Thomas Guide, he has my full support.

Sticken the thonge out

A friend of mine who directs horror movies found this flyer the other day near his home around Griffith Park:

It’s too perfect, right? It can’t be real, can it? But it’s also too perfect to not be real. I don’t know what’s going on.

I also just realized that I know of at least one other horror movie director who lives in the general vicinity of this flyer. Is this some sort of new screenwriting pitch technique? YOWHOO!

Movie or not, I’m sueing the city

I found this flyer in Elysian Park a couple of weeks ago. Usually I can follow the story in these sorts of things, sort of, but this one has me stumped. I can’t even get started – the 777 = 21 seems like it’s going somewhere, but then the other numbers just muddle everything up. Anybody want to fill me in on the conspiracy theory here?

Is Zardoz involved?

I’m your Huckleberry hound

Don’t be alarmed.

This fuzzy gargoyle is named Huckleberry and he has an Instagram feed. Thank you, Huckleberry. Thank you for all you do.

I would give a photo credit for the “don’t be alarmed” notice but I don’t know where this originally came from. Now I’m pondering the etiquette of providing a link to a twitter feed that doesn’t give photo credits. I don’t think I need to provide that link. 

Please be carful

My friend Mike encountered these warning flyers at the Old Zoo the other day.

I’m glad someone is putting up warnings, because I for one do not want to encounter a flaming baby or a ginger police demon. The most menacing thing I’ve ever seen at the Old Zoo at midnight is a roving gang of Pokemon Go hunters, but I don’t think I should press my luck.

It just stopped raining and I don’t consider myself particularly macho.

Photos by the ever-adventurous Mike Biggie

If you see Kay, tell her I’m not voting for her

When I was in high school, I wrote a humor column for the school paper. One column was about my not getting accepted to the college of my choice; against my advisor’s judgment, I titled the column “If You See Kay.” My advisor’s point was that I could have gotten away with it without much parental/administrational backlash (people actually read this newspaper, see) if I had bothered to set up a fictional “Kay” in the column, rather than just letting that dumb chestnut of a joke float unmoored in the headline. But I hadn’t bothered, and the paper came out the morning of the day I had a scholarship interview with my second-choice college’s representative… who just happened to be the principal of our high school, who had been fielding obscenity complaints from parents since lunchtime. I did not get that scholarship.

Anyway, I don’t know why I’m telling you this. My friend Lyman found this impassioned bit of electioneering up in San Francisco this weekend; he directed my attention to the fine print at the bottom. I’m guessing that this anti-Dan Neel committee definitely has meetings on Tuesdays, and could possibly be headed up by my old friend Kay. Good luck against this tarnishment, Dan. Kay can really fuck things up for a person.

I don’t know what’s in the bulb

I think someone is giving sidewalk chalk to grass/poison Pokemon.

I can’t read all of your message, Bulbasaur, but I am a little concerned by what I can read here. Don’t cut again!

Your vote counts, but has to use its fingers

Don’t worry; I’m not going to talk about the US presidential race. I could barely handle all the “fuck you”s that my unflattering Jollibee post engendered years ago, so there’s no way I’m going to take on something as obviously volatile as this year’s contest for the Oval Office. Instead, I’d like to take a moment to shine a light on some candidates for the US Senate that my fine state of California has on its ballot this year. If you’re like me, you know that these lower-ticket races are just as important as the big one, but there aren’t any Facebook memes about these candidates so you actually have to do a little homework to know who to vote for.

The big thing to know is that there are 34 aspirants vying for one seat. That is a pretty big field to get through. Thankfully, thirteen of those candidates couldn’t handle submitting candidate statements, so I will eliminate those guys right off the bat. As for the remaining 21, I am happy to say that the spectrum of opinions presented is wide indeed. Here are some of my favorites.

There’s the 70-year-old Eagle Scout:

the alarm clock:

the mysterious acronym enthusiast:

the mainstream Facebook president with driving core values:

the Christian who actually seems to embody good, decent values and somehow that’s very confusing to me in this day and age:

the … okay, this guy can go suck it with his Andrew Jackson nonsense:

the only candidate willing to speak up about mind control slavery (tl;dr: she is against it):

a beautiful video game unicorn:

and the guy I’m probably voting for:

So many different voices, almost too many choices! It’s such a breath of fresh air, isn’t it? I’m sure I’ll find someone who speaks for me. And you 13 who couldn’t turn in a statement? Try harder next time.

You can click on any photo to enlarge the image for ease of reading, or don’t. It doesn’t really matter.