I will run to the beans. But if I cannot run to the beans, let me be brave in the attempt.
	This prophylactic ad maintains that nothing says practice safe sex like a seriously pissed off 5-year-old. “Avoid spending the next 18 years coddling one of these by covering yours with Trojan brand!”
	Archie later recalled at the deposition, “The Pussycats had just finished their set and had left on a beer run. Except for Josie. Jughead lit up one of those funny cigarettes of his. Then everything gets sort of hazy. But I remember his eyes. The madness in his eyes.”
	I’m pretty sure this is an ad for an erectile dysfunction remedy. Travis has just received papers from his soon-to-be ex-wife’s lawyer. Irreconcilable differences. Note the disposition of the garden hose.
	Oh gosh, yes! Growing mechano-boys need lots of rusty steel wool and ball bearings to help them grow!This is how Speed Racer must have looked as a boy.

Category: Stuff  

Holy Crap! It’s Labor Day!

Well, technically tomorrow is, but Labor Day weekend marks the traditional end of Normal Time and the beginning of the Halloween Season. Garage and basement workshops shift into high gear as haunters glance up at paint-smeared calendars and realize that there are only 8 weeks left until the big night. And for those of us who open our haunted yards early, time is a bit more pressing.

Spooky Blue Studios bustles with activity as new zombies line up to be painted and sealed. Veteran undead, high on their shelves, stretch and yawn, some complain about cracked bones that need attention. The Grumble grumbles in his corner, patiently waiting for someone to put his arms back on. For a Grumble, that equates to only two or three promises per hour to dismember you at his first opportunity.

Some new armless nightmares perch on the workbench. These glowing globular residents of the pumpkin patch, denizens of some demented blotch of vegetable nightmare in an otherwise pleasant and peaceful field, practice twining their long viney stalks around anything they can trip up; mainly S. Blue and other team members. From time to time you can hear a loud “snap!”, then munching noises. I haven’t been bothered by a fly or a moth in weeks.

In celebration of the long weekend, the project list has been updated. Need skulls? Make your own from paper mache.

Hooray!

Category: Stuff  

Category: Stuff  

Summer Abides

Somewhere a lawn sprinkler spits a catchy rhythm to the accompaniment of a thousand cicadas. Yards are beginning to brown nicely beneath the unrelenting gaze of summer sun. The color of baked turkey. Labor Day is next week. One year without our sheepdog Gracie.

Far off music announces a carnival out in the middle of a hay field. A warm breeze of corn dogs and hamburgers, cotton candy, hot sun-baked hay raked into rows by a gang of boys riding on a huge wagon. Hot work and dry enough to choke a skeleton.

Soon the cicadas’ song will end, red-eyed monsters crawling beneath the baked earth to slumber, alarms set for seven years. Snug and safe from the stirring storms to the north. For now just a faint rustle, a foretelling of a long night coming. A murmured promise, a single snowflake touching your spine, to remind you that the season of death is closing.

But not quite yet. Snug Harbor, in its baked orange outland splendor, is still alive with color. The birds still swoop and sing, the crickets and cicadas continue their competition for best thousand member vocal group. Tomatoes and watermelons ripen, children ride their tricycles up and down the hot asphalt driveway with jet black feet, and sunflowers riot in gardens and along fence rows. Summer abides.

Click Here – S.Blue’s gallery of rioting sunflowers

Category: Stuff