Mister Scribbles

      When I was a kid I had a Whitman Classic copy of Tarzan.  At back was an "Official Ape-English Dictionary!"  as it said on the cover.  I really tried to memorize this just in case.  My youth is best visualized as looking something like the two little girls in "The Shining". Official.  

                           The only idea I have today is the one that is always there. 

          Normally a towel would not be needed, but I must observe common decency and restraint. 

     Yesterday a squirrel got into the house.  We almost wrecked the kitchen getting it out.  All five of the younger cats slept through the commotion.  It was the older fat kitty that cornered the terrified thing, with my brother almost killing me but not hitting the furniture.  We chased it around until it took refuge in our Have-A-Heart cage.  What good is that going to do my brother said, do you think it is going to run into it ha ha ha.  We took it outside and my brother was going to video me letting it go but I was convinced that if ever anything I had to do with went viral on the internet it would be a YouTube sensation of me trying to get a squirrel off my face. So I said no.

     My contribution to the Vietman debacle.  Us kids were barely aware of it, I never watched the news as I was outside as much as possible.  I loved war movies and was convinced that anything the American nation did was ipso facto noble and justified.  This scene is approximately January 1968.

     I finished reading "Red Harvest" Saturday night.  When I first read it, I liked it but thought it wildly overdone.  It is still overdone, but not wildly.  Not in the states, not yet.  It turns out that "Yojimbo" was based on "Red Harvest".  The book has also been filmed as "A Fistfull Of Dollars", and "Last Man Standing".  The scene above has nothing to do with Hammett.

     This is the same picture as yesterday. My brother says that only a complete bum doesn't ink his drawings.  I got bullied into inking this.  Ink, composition white, pencil.

     I think we are in for genuine trouble, this time for real.  I sure hate seeing my country commit suicide.

August 27th, 1942.  Retired Constable Jacob Vouza is captured by the Ichigi Detachment as he scouts for the Marine Corps.  The Japs found an American flag on him, and used him for bayonet practice.  Hours later Vouza wakes up and chews his way through his bindings, and then crawls hundreds of yards to the Marine position.  He tells the commander that an attack is on the way.  The resultant battle eradicated the Japanese.  (misnamed the Battle of the Tenaru).  Vouza was promoted to Sgt. Major in the Corps, given a Silver Star and various other honors.  He was later a Knight Batchelor (?)and respected Elder.  I forgot to mention that all this was at Guadalcanal.  Vouza was a Coastwatcher, and someday I'll post something on Donald Kennedy at Segi Point, an unusually good story from the most interesting front of the war.  

     Churchill advised us to never, ever, ever quit except for considerations of honor or good sense.  The crisis is coming, and when it does real men will prevail.  'Nuff said.  Oh, and "Befehl" is misspelled.  I hope that is close to the way the Swiss would spell it.  And, of course, "Tyrant" is spelled with an "a".      While I'm editing this let me point out a flaw in the William Tell story.  We are told that Tell took out two arrows with the intent killing Gessler if he had missed the apple and hurt his son.  Great story, physical impossibility.  Those crossbows had to be cocked with a windlass.  No way someone is going to watch a man who has just been forced to kill his own son reload a very powerful weapon.  The only way that the Tell story could be true is if he was using a bow.  I drew the crossbow 'cause all the accounts say "crossbow".  Other than that it ...

     Here I am finally trying to fix my wind damaged roof.  It seems that the sun has weakened the fiberglass.      (Poem quoted is "Renascence" by Edna St. Vincent Millay.)