Your pal and mine Mr. Cousins has been having a bit of foot trouble lately. By “lately”, I mean “over the past two years”, which is roughly the time he’s been suffering in silence (not counting the more-than-occasional swear word) with plantar warts. The most recent part of “lately”, however, has seen insult added to injury. Now that they’ve upped the dosage of the treatment (i.e., something akin to battery acid, only less gentle) used to cure (i.e., burn away) the aforementioned plantar warts, Mr. Cousins’ every step has become an exercise in uncompromising dolor. Desperate for succour (and remember, folks, there’s a succor born every minute), The Feet of Cousins have sought solace through regular dunkings in a solution of the crystalline panacea known to the world of science as magnesium sulfate, and to the rest of us luddites as plain old Epsom salts.

      Curious about the efficacy of this traditional remedy for tortured tootsies, Cousins conducted an exhaustive web-search lasting upwards of a minute, before making a momentous discovery.  It would appear that Epsom salts are far enough up The Great Chain of Being to warrant the existence of something called The Epsom Salt Council to maintain and defend their interests. You can find the website of this august institution by clicking on these pretty blue letters.

     From The Epsom Salt Council, you can learn of the myriad uses for the eponymous mineral compound, beyond its most obvious ones as a pedal palliative. The Council touts Epsom salts as a must-have for every corner of the home and garden, as well as extolling their virtues as an indispensable aid to household arts and crafts (Christmas is coming—take note, all ye merry fabricants of homemade ornaments). They even offer a link to something called “The Epsom Salt Song”.

     It’s agreeable enough to listen to, if you’re in the mood for that sort of thing, I suppose. I can’t say I’m not disappointed that neither Mr. Cousins nor the Epsom Salt Council ever looked us up here in Funsville. They’d have found out that one of the town’s unofficial anthems is a much more tuneful paean to Epsom salts, sung to the melody of “Edelweiss” from The Sound of Music. 

     The visual of Christopher Plummer gives you a rough idea of the flavour of this little ditty, but to get the full effect, you have to hear it played by the 112-piece Funsville Epsom Salt Sinfonia and Chorus. This is an experience you will scarcely fail to have at least a dozen times during Funsville’s annual week-long Salute to Epsom Salts, the indisputable highlight of which is the Epsom Salt Derby. This is not a horse race, but a hat, worn by the Grand Marshal of the parade which runs (or limps, as the case may be) from the swank but hilly Footsore Promenade district on the edge of town to Funsville City Hall’s communal sitzbath. Due to a hearing defect (and other impediments to comprehension) on the part of the chairman of the inaugural Salute to Epsom Salts, the parade Grand Marshal is referred to by the title “Buddy Epsom”.

     Random googling of the sort that turned up the photographic basis for that cheap gag also yields unexpected nuggets of information, such as the existence of multiple images for the name “Jedi Clampett”.

     The one above (minus the semi-amusing speech balloon) can be found at the MySpace page of quite a fine little bluegrass combo called (it should come as no surprise) Jedi Clampett (click link to see and hear more).

     But I digress. And as long as I am digressing (and there’s no point in doing anything else—we’ve come too far now to turn back), it’s worth noting that Buddy Ebsen (a.k.a. Jedi…er, Jed Clampett) was the first choice to play the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz.

     He had to stand down after nearly asphyxiating on the aluminum powder used for his make-up. That’s something not even Epsom salts could help with, I’m afraid—song or no song.

Uncle Fun

Today, The Funday Sunnies featuring Duncan is taking a coffee break:

 

Sometimes when you take a coffee break, it’s the coffee that breaks you.

Hello there, folks, it’s Moose again.

Before we get started, I want to get one thing straight. I’m neither one way or the other about Hostess going all Twinkies-up. People look at me and assume that the little fat girl must have a deeply held opinion on the subject of snack cakes, but as far as I’m concerned, if you’ve tasted one cream-filled hunk of extruded Styrofoam, you’ve tasted them all. It’s Sparky, not me, who has a Proustian epiphany whenever he remembers what a Vachon Miami smells like (google the name—it’s beyond a simple explanation). It’s Sparky who can distinguish between a Moon Pie, a Wagon Wheel, a May West, and a Jos. Louis, based on the sounds they make when you step on them.

It’s also Sparky who can’t spell his way out of a Ding Dong wrapper, so he’s dragooned me once again into taking dictation for him. None of the speculations that follow are based on anything that resembles clear thinking or common sense. That doesn’t mean they aren’t worth mulling over, though.

First of all, I want to stress that Sparky knows that the victims of the Hostess bankruptcy are not the consumers. Things like the Donner Party, he says, are proof that people will eat anything. In fact, as Sparky sees it, a snack food company could put something called “Donner Party Mix” on the market and count on basic human curiosity to sell out the initial production run.

No—the sad fact of all of this is that people will lose their jobs. Prospects being what they are these days, a lot of them may be forced to seek out sources of income that aren’t, strictly speaking, legal. This situation is no respecter of persons, either. The uncertain future of the individual Hostess brands means that many of the company’s most trusted faces could be thrown back on their own resources, and be forced to earn their living by their wits—or worse. Fruit Pie the Magician could certainly put his skills of legerdemain to lucrative use by running a successful short con…

 

…and Happy Ho Ho is already dressed for a career in highway robbery.

 

That’s bad enough for sure, but more troubling still is the threat to commercial shipping that could be posed by Captain Cupcake, should he place his navigational experience and expertise at the service of high seas piracy.

 

Not even Hostess’ most beloved corporate icon could resist such a temptation, if things get tight for him. What bank vault or armoured car could keep its treasure safe from the larcenous lasso of Twinkie the Kid?

Thank goodness he’s no longer kosher. If Israel could use him as a mercenary, all bets would be off for a cease-fire in Gaza.  

Moose

(dictated by Sparky )

This week, The Funday Sunnies featuring Duncan looks at the relationship between theory and practice in the visual arts:

 

 Manifestoes are well and fine, but it’s results that count.

This iz one’a them times when I feel even sorrier fer journimalists than usuwall. Y’see, them whut reports th’ news iz only allow’d ta tell whut they’ve found out happen’d er whut someone told ‘em happen’d, an’ not whut their own kids could tell ‘em iz ackchewally goin’ on — as if they dint already know it yet. As both a kid an' a fickshunal-type cartoon character one at that, I'm under no such prohibishun, so here goes my mouth about ta run off with itself again. Now, I dunno if this whole whatchamacallit with Petraeus (notiss how I spells th’ complickatud names kurreckly, folks?) iz er iz not a spy story (betcha a nickel it iz, tho’). All’s I know iz, if th’ best th’ C.I.A. an’ th’ U.S. High Kummand has ta offer iz a couple’a guys who come up short in th’ discreetness an’ discreshun d’partmints ta Gen’l Halftrack frum Beetle Bailey, then th’ whole world’s in kinduva mess.

 

That’s all’s I gotta say.

Sparky

The Funday Sunnies featuring Duncan welcomes the proprietor of this blog back from the American Society for Theatre Research’s annual convention:

 

This probably isn’t one of the things they research, but every brick added to the edifice of knowledge is…well, something or other.

When a mathematician wins a Nobel Prize, should there be a separate award for Best Supporting Factor…?

     Breathe easier, all you who yearn for explanations for the inexplicable: I’m here once more to make your lives make sense again. You remember me—I’m…

…Science Boy.

     Uncle Fun thought it would be appropriate for me to address all of you on the subject that keeps him from having time to blog this week. This year, he’s chairman of the decorations and kitsch committee for Funsville’s annual Russell Johnson Day festivities. The name “Russell Johnson” may not ring as many bells as, say, Quasimodo or Mike Oldfield, but he’s probably a familiar face to most of you. Perhaps too familiar, some of you would say, since he’s best known for his role as the Professor on Gilligan’s Island.

     It’s a thankless job, but somebody’s got to do it. AC generators powered by stationary bicycles constructed out of bamboo don’t just make themselves, you know. Russell Johnson Day recognizes the necessary but often overlooked contribution made by those selfless men, women, and sometimes androids who have set aside dreams of personal glory to keep film and television plots moving along by providing exposition phrased in long-winded and confusing scientific-sounding jargon. Having served in this capacity on many occasions, I can tell you how hard it is to keep a straight face as I look at a more important character and say words that amount to “something akin to magic is about to happen, because the writer has written us into the impossible situation of having to rely on magic while still believing that magic doesn’t exist”. So here’s to you, all you folks in lab coats and vaguely unfashionable haircuts, who have to use phrases involving words like “interface”, “matrix”, “threshold”, “anti-matter” and “polarity”, as if they actually meant something. I salute you.

     At the same time, I have to warn you that your days may be numbered. This development is thanks to rave reviews generated at trade shows and supermarket demonstrations by the ExposiTech 1550.  This bold advance in user-friendly expository dialogue operating systems was achieved by combining software used to predict complex weather patterns with the random sequencing platform originally developed to help Jerry Bruckheimer create forty-seven “CSI” spinoffs using a single limited premise and set of characters.  Not only does the ExposiTech 1550 deliver exposition with a higher degree of accuracy, relevance, and narrative continuity than its predecessors, but an improved wireless capability and a wider range of downloadable apps make it compatible with almost any hand-held device. The day is not far away when all a main character will have to do to get plot-ready science talk is subscribe to a Twitter feed.

 

    Even the venerable James Bond franchise, which boasts a state-of-the-art level of pseudo-scientific exposition, may soon hand it all over to the next generation of ExposiTech products.

 

     If further field tests prove successful, the ExposiTech 1550 will soon replace the venerable but much-maligned Expositron “C” series as the new industry standard…not to mention replacing a host of underappreciated but essential secondary characters. No more will a crime lab need a computer tech who can mine the most heavily-encrypted networks at the Pentagon for traces of code so faint that a Commodore 64 could conceal them on its hard drive. Coroners in cop shows will be mute walk-ons, handing their reports to detectives and district attorneys, then scurrying back to the morgue. Spock and Data will fall silent. Doctor Who will be played by a different actor every nineteen seconds, since no-one will bother to ask why he shouldn’t keep bumping into an infinite number of versions of himself.

     By the same token, though, the origin of the Doctor’s evil adversaries the Cybermen will finally be revealed.  As it turns out, each Cyberman is a replica of a prototype designed by a robotics engineer and entrepreneur named Cy Berman.

 

         So it shouldn’t be a total loss.

The Funday Sunnies featuring Duncan reminds you that Halloween may be over, but its spirit lives the whole year through:

 

You should see what these two wear when they want to get out of tipping at restaurants.