The Thing on the Doorstep. On the way out, we may hope.
This is the scariest Halloween I can remember.
Thank Cthulhu so many people voted early. Only the Great Old Ones know what the sluggards are likely to do come Tuesday, as they crash hard from Saturday’s sugar frenzy followed by Sunday’s end to daylight saving time. Probably cast write-in votes for Mars-Wrigley, the Dread Lord of Type-2 Diabetes, or worse, Darth Cheney.
One thing seems pretty certain, though. If we don’t punt the Not-So-Great Pumpkin off the national porch next week, Halloween 2021 will be even scarier. Boogity-boogity-boogity.
He’s not just a Good Old One. He’s a Great Old One.
For those of us of a certain age, there was only one James Bond.
Sean Connery has gone west after being unwell for some time, according to his family. He passed in his sleep, in the Bahamas, but no doubt Scotland was on his mind and in his heart; he had long been a staunch supporter of Scottish independence.
As a squirt in Texas I read every Ian Fleming Bond novel there was, and I always pictured Connery as 007. Everybody else was just play-acting.
Connery won his only Oscar for playing a Mick cop in the Kevin Costner-headlined remake of “The Untouchables.” But then he turned up in a lot of interesting places, as King Agamemnon and a fireman in Terry Gilliam’s “Time Bandits,” and as Daniel Dravot, an ex-soldier likewise bound for a crown in “The Man Who Would Be King,” a John Huston film based on a Rudyard Kipling story.
No matter who he was playing, or in what, you just knew he was having a whole lot more fun than you. Enjoy your work and the paychecks will keep coming, he seemed to say.
And it goes without saying that he was an inspiration to the rest of us handsome and charismatic bald fellas.
So fill to Sean the parting glass, and drink a health whate’er befalls. …
He was born Thomas Sean Connery on Aug. 25, 1930, and his crib was the bottom drawer of a dresser in a cold-water flat next door to a brewery. The two toilets in the hall were shared with three other families. His father, Joe, earned two pounds a week in a rubber factory. His mother, Effie, occasionally got work as a cleaning woman.
In comments Shawn wonders whether we accept donations here at Ye Olde Chuckle Hut.
The short answer is “No.”
I’ve thought on it for the better part of quite some time, because everyone likes to get paid for work, especially if they are me. And a blog, even a dime-store model like this one, is work.
Also, there are expenses. They’re not massive, but still, yeah, money goes out. None comes in.
Nevertheless, I’ve resisted setting up a subscription model, or a tip jar, for a variety of reasons.
First and foremost: The blog and its various side projects constitute a hobby, not a job. I’ve had jobs, and frankly I can’t recommend them. They suck all the joy out of work. And for what? A little bit of money.
Since 1991, when I left the newspaper game and opened my own little free-range rumormongery, I have cashed checks more or less regularly and outlived a number of publications that wrote them.
Over the years editors and publishers occasionally proved irksome, as they will, because they are running what they believe to be businesses, not open-mic’ nights in some dank basement.
Thus the blog, which commenced sometime in the Nineties, I guess, possibly at AOL. A window to shout out of. “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
At the blog I got to be not just a cartoonist, writer, or editor, but all of these things, plus photographer, videographer, podcaster, and publisher. The last four involved something of a learning curve (and still do), and a student really shouldn’t expect to get paid.
As The Patrón told Doc with a shrug in “Sweet Thursday,” “You have to pay to learn things.”
But not here. If you learn anything here, which seems highly unlikely, take it with my compliments (and a grain of salt). The bike magazines, God love ’em — the ones that survive, anyway — haven’t caught on yet; they’re still paying me. And so is Uncle Sammy, until he gets the camps built. Direct your extra pennies to some worthy cause.
* The sharp-eyed may notice that the coin changing hands above is a quarter, not a dime. That’s inflation for you.
I’ve somehow gotten myself on Patagonia’s mailing list, probably through buying stuff from them — and good stuff it is, too — and they sent me a note the other day linking to a piece by Mike Ferrentino.
Yes, that Mike Ferrentino, he of the Grimy Handshake. His stuff is even better than Patagonia’s.
Anyway, Mike wrote about wilderness, and why he no longer poaches trails there, and it’s worth your attention.
Mad Blog Media 