gary chocolate-bear may have/might have eaten bread

Gary Chocolate-Bear, by a strange confluence of non-events, namely non-events of the never-eating-bread kind, had never eaten bread. At some point between when he first never ate bread, and when he, at the time of this story, which isn’t so much a story as it is not a story, had never eaten bread, Gary developed an irrational fear that America’s favorite sandwich bookends would, upon ingestion, turn him rabid. And when Mrs. Chocolate-Bear confronted her husband over breakfast about his peculiar belief by reciting Eleanor Roosevelt’s maxim that a person should do one thing that they fear to do every day of their lives, Gary simply responded that he was “sure she didn’t mean ‘eat bread’, though.”

Coincidentally, Gar (I call him Gar) was right. Eleanor Roosevelt, as Mrs. Choclolate-Bear was well aware, being an amateur Rooseveltologist, indeed meant everything but ‘eat bread’. Furthermore, she (Mrs. Chocolate-Bear, not Mrs. Roosevelt) knew that Eleanor Roosevelt meant everything but ‘eat bread’ because she herself (Mrs. Roosevelt, not Mrs. Chocolate-Bear) inexplicably contracted Rabies after eating what was evidently Rabies-inducing bread at her husband’s inaugural banquet. Mrs. Chocolate-Bear (not Mrs. Roosevelt), wisely, in my opinion, mentioned none of this to her husband, neither at that particular breakfast, nor at his inaugural banquent. Did I say banquent? I meant banquet.

Point is, Gary Chocolate-Bear never ate bread. Unless you consider a scone, bread.

Then, never mind.

The End.

litter

jekyll

hyde

legs

trap

live from the bottom shelf

It's up. Thanks, Minh!

wichita lineman

A few months ago, in the dead zone of Newmanpicturesblog, Minh Le, or rather, Roscoe P. Hargrove, over at Bottom Shelf Books posted a hilarious and weirdly insightful critical analysis of Hippo! No, Rhino that is one of the coolest souvenirs I've collected (insofar as one can collect a piece of the Internet) from my short children's book career. I emailed Minh to let him know how much I liked it, and that led to an interview that we just finished up last week, in which we talk about all sorts of things, including the song I want played at my funeral. It might be Wichita Lineman. And then again, it might not. I'll post a link once it's up.

box

i love your (my) blog

Since my writing skills have admittedly worsened in the last four months, I find it difficult to put into words my thanks to Matt Cordell for tagging me with this "I love your blog" award. And I mean it. I really can't remember which words to use, or how to string them together, grammatically. If anyone can help me construct a note of appreciation, you'll be rewarded with a letter from me, written by you, expressing my heartfelt gratitude.

Now, I don't know where this award originated, but it's an award, and that's good enough to satiate my ego demons until the next full moon. As I understand it, I now have to pass this award along to seven other blogs, or I will die.

Here are the blogs (asterisk = not safe for kids):

1) *The Adventures of Blanco Niño
2) *Things My Boyfriend Says (tragically cut short, presumably because the author stopped dating her boyfriend)
3) *Greenspeak
4) *Ralph Snart
5) The {Prefix}iest Thing I Saw Today
6) E is for Eric
7) John K Stuff

Of course, my love does cost a thing, so functioning blogs that I mentioned, listen up. According to the official rules crafted by the faceless and probably sinister entity that also created this award, rules which have been passed down through potentially thousands of anonymous hands, calling into question their very authenticity and value, you must:

1) Add the logo of the award to your blog
2) Add a link to the person who awarded it to you
3) Nominate at least seven other blogs
4) Add links to those blogs on your blog
5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs

Failure to comply will result in you not publicly admitting that you love other blogs. Not death. I lied about that to get you to do it.

neck

"the blasted treeline"

day two

God, this is hard.

But at least something happened to me yesterday, so I can write about that. If I can remember what is was. I mean, I know something happened. I made a mental note to the effect of "blog about this tomorrow", but I guess the note should have been about what it was, rather than its noteworthiness. Or maybe the note should have been half about the nature of the event, and half about its importance, because if I just remembered the event, instead of remembering to write about it, I'd be in the same boat I'm in now. Then again, if it was an event of note, I probably wouldn't need to remind myself to write about it. I'd just write about it.

What was I talking about?

writing season

You know how, when you stop doing something, like writing, for instance, or you only intermittently do that thing, like occasionally writing a dumb story about a family that goes to the moon, you start to forget how to do that thing. You know, like writing, for instance? Yeah, well, I didn't forget how to write. I just wanted to know if that's ever happened to you. That's all.

See, I can totally write. I just haven't. I just didn't want to for the past four months, because it was, like, summer and everything. And that's the only time I can do squat thrusts on the beach and bench and stuff. It ain't easy to write with your hands wrapped around sixty pounds of cold steel. That's sixty pounds in EACH HAND, btw. Go ahead, try it. I'll wait.

What'd I tell you, bro? I don't lie.

But now that it's fall, I might give this writing thing another go. If I don't find something better to do.

gun

doctor weaselbomb

chocolate-bears go to the moon

On Thursday morning, the papers announced that Gary Chocolate-Bear and his family would be the first Chocolate-Bears in space.

“Congratulations on the moon trip, Gary”, said Ronald Tewilliger, the Chocolate-Bears neighbor, as Gary was leaving for his job at the sewer factory.

“Thanks, Tewilliger”, replied Gary, and he drove into Tewilliger’s mailbox with his Hummer. The Hummer was Gary’s first big purchase from the endorsement money the Chocolate-Bears had received for winning the space contest. Oh, and he hated Tewilliger. That part is important since it would seem odd, based on their brief exchange, for Gary to have reacted in such a manner, unless it was an accident, which I’m telling you it wasn’t. He hated him. It doesn’t matter why.

The space contest, or the Space Race, as the Chocolate-Bears had come to call it, was just that: a race. So it really was neither strange nor clever that they referred to it as such. As it turns out, millions of Americans were doing the same thing, including most of the press. But by a rare coincidence, none of these people happened to know the Chocolate-Bears, nor did anyone in the family read the phrase in print, or hear it on television, so they were unaware that their "beats were stale", to quote a great, fictional doctor and part-time deejay.

Now, as I said, this contest, the contest won by the Chocolate-Bears, was a race, and in particular it was a race from Boston Harbor to the beaches of Peniche, Portugal, sponsored by Crest. The contestants were not allowed to use boats or planes, or any means of transportation other than their own limbs; however, they were allowed to carry with them as many tubes of toothpaste as they could manage. And it was this gift of hygiene that cost the lives of several hundred entrants, including the Chocolate-Bear’s youngest, Trudy, who, like her fellow departees, used her fingers to brush instead of swim. Mrs. Chocolate-Bear lamented the family’s loss in a brief, impromptu, floating funeral, claiming that “it was worse’n when somebody gits hit by a truck wearin’ durty drawers”, because, let’s face it, no tooth has ever been cleaned with a finger brush no matter how vigorous the scrubbing, and to meet one’s fate with a scuzzy mouth is probably the worst thing that could ever, ever happen to anyone, anywhere. But the Chocolate-Bears had entered the Space Race with great determination to win, and at all costs. And they did. I said that at the beginning of this story, and again in the first sentence of this paragraph.

And now the four Chocolate-Bears, previously known as the five Chocolate-Bears, were going to the moon. The moon, where seldom man has tread.

And they did.

The End.

mike and jeff

coyote

true story

I'm getting married in just over a week, so things have been pretty hectic, lately. On top of the typical wedding stuff that most couples have to deal with, Jodi and I are doing the design and signage work for the whole event, ourselves. Okay, Jodi's doing most of the design work. Okay, all of the design work. But I am contributing the cover of our ceremony program, a comic stip relating the bizarre but true story of how we met. It's a little ditty I call "Modern Love".