Another edition of The Funday Sunnies.

Another cartoon featuring Duncan.

That just about covers it.

The Great Leveller sometimes needs a shim or two…

Hiya, all you alive people out there:

I call ya that ‘cuz ya cooden be readin’ this if ya wuzzent alive. And’ if ya wuzznet alive ya wooden be readin’ this neither, an’ ya wooden’a knowed I wuz sayin hiya to ya.

(That’s whut Uncle Fun tells me iz call’d sumpin’ call’d a ‘taught-ology’, which I guess iz whut it’s called ‘cuz ya has ta be taught ta think all good’n saffisstickated like that-all. He also says whut it also goes by th’ name’a ‘circular reasoning’, which I guess means b’cause th’ circle iz th’ most perfickt geyametrickul figger, it must mean it’s th’ perfickt type’a reasoning as well.)

This is another perfickt figger…at least in my estimation.

(He’s buttering me up, folks. I sense a kick coming.—Moose.)

But enough’a this persiflage (this iz not a word Uncle Fun taught me…I found this in Missus Cuzzens’ thesaurus. It wuz underlin’d, so I guess that means it’s dirty). I circkularly reason’d that, on ackount’a how this week’s eppysode’a Science Boy vs. Professor Proteus hazza lot ta do with death an’ non-aliveness an’ funerals’n stuff, that we otta share a few words about deceasitude (which is NOT in th’ thesaurus…least, it wuzzent ‘til I wrote it in there).

The trouble iz with death iz that it’s all so seeriyus. Life is funny. Life ends. But that shooden mean th’ laffs otta end with it. One’a my relatives died forty-some-odd years ago an’ he’s still laffin’. ‘Course, that might be on ackount’a he wuz elecktracyutid with a joy buzzer.

So…we empanulled a cammittee (which as it turns out, duzzent mean that we met in a room with simyulashun woodgrain coverin’ th’ walls) ta figger out at least if we could make funerals a little less on th’ wailin’ an’ gnashin’a teeth side’a things, an’ a little moreuva sellabrashun’a th’ life’a th’ stiff whut wuz. Th’beauty part’a this is, it kin work both ways, that bein’ either everybody’s glad fer what ya wuz when you wuz here, er they’re glad ta see ya go already. I had Moose take th’ minnuts’a th’ meetin’, so’s the spellin’d be acyuritt.

(What did I tell you? There’s the kick. I am to be held in no way responsible for what follows—Moose.)

Re: Funerals (lack of enjoyment therein, suggestions for the lessening thereof)

* The ceremony to begin with a guessing game called ‘Does the dearly departed look more dead than Ron Paul?’

(The mortician’s assistant was bang-on with the makeup job, but they forgot to pin back the ears.)

* A prize to be awarded to the mourner who can make the most puns using the word ‘corpse’.

* A special stick to be set beside the coffin, for the benefit of those who want to prod the body just to make sure. (Note from Sparky: this one really works—it helped to break the tension at my grandmother’s funeral. The tension wasn’t all that got broken, either. The combination of a handy stick plus Grandma finally not moving enough to throw things at people proved too much temptation for some of the relatives.)

* The eulogy to be followed by a rebuttal from informed and interested parties.

* The entire ceremony (including the cortege, whenever possible) to be filmed, then played back at a later date, sped up à la Benny Hill, and with ‘Yakety Sax’ dubbed in the background.

* Pop-up caskets (the committee leaves the particulars of this to your imagination).

* The standard reading of the Twenty-Third Psalm to be replaced by “Casey at the Bat”, or any limerick whose first line ends with the word ‘Nantucket’.

* Official party of mourners to include at least one old woman in gypsy garb, who will place a mysterious bundle on the chest of the deceased, muttering “there, master, I have brought you the soil of your native Transylvania…may you rise again.”

* (For Anglican funerals only) The minister’s remarks to be interrupted by the sudden appearance of three men dressed as knights in full armour, shouting “en garde, Thomas à Becket—this time you won’t get away from us!”

* Two words: Exploding Flowers.

(If this has offended anyone—and I mean anyone—in the entire world, I apologize on Sparky’s behalf. I will prevaricate enough to emphasize, however, that gallows humour is often the best way of coping with some of the unavoidable sadness and misfortune that life—and death—throw at us.

–Uncle Fun)

I cooden’a said it bettur myself.

(Mostly because you’d have misspelled every other word.—Moose.)

 Aw, spellin’s fer witches, anyway. If ya’ve got this far, click on the blue letters just ahead, an’ lissen to Episode 4 of Science Boy vs. Professor Proteus. Just r’member, tho’—ya can’t spell th’ word ‘funeral’ without ‘F – U - N’.

Sparky

Once again, it’s time for The Funday Sunnies, featuring Duncan:

Ladies and Gentlemen, and Children of All Ages:

   Well, that ought to cover everybody. In keeping with the theme of the latest instalment of Science Boy versus Professor Proteus, I’d like to introduce you all to a dear friend and longtime business associate of ours...

...Dermot the Circus Worm.

   We first crossed paths with Dermot when Sparky and I were scouting talent for a worm circus we had recently acquired in lieu of payment for services rendered. (Worm circuses provide the customer with less in the way of thrills and spills than flea circuses, but offer the impresario a steadier long-term investment, and one which is far less likely to disappear on the back of a passing dog.) A versatile performer, Dermot is what we in the business term an ‘all-rounder’, his skills extending from acrobatics to aerial artistry to feats of dizzyingly death-defying daring. The endeavour which first attracted our attention to this intrepid annelid was his unsurpassed aplomb at lion-taming. Although confident that we had a sure-fire crowd-pleaser on our hands, we did run into some initial teething problems involving the scale and cost of this particular part of Dermot’s act. Not only do crowds have a hard time keeping a seven-foot-long lion and a seven-inch long worm in their field of vision at the same time, but our budget extended to barely a portion of the down payment on even the most reasonably-priced pre-owned circus lions on the market at the time. A suitable compromise was reached, with the help of a hamster of our acquaintance who had a certain degree of training as a method actor.

   Be all that as it may, Dermot’s chief purpose in making an appearance here is to provide a highly tenuous segue to the next episode of Science Boy versus Professor Proteus. Click Here to find out what awaits our hero…and our villain…and our hero’s sidekick…and our whatever-it-is-they-call-the-sidekick-of-a-villain-if-that-sidekick-rates-rather-significantly-above-henchman-status…er, and so on and so forth.

Uncle Fun

On this, the 45th anniversary of Max McGee's greatest moment, we offer something else entirely...

Greetings, one and all:

   We at Fun Central are finding it hard to believe that it’s the middle of January already. Here we are, one-twenty-fourth of the way through a year, and once again without a thing to show for it. And to think that this should happen on Edward Teller's birthday, too. Just so that you’re all sure to whom I refer here (and it’s not the magician who doesn’t speak with the tall talkative friend), here’s a little musical tribute (?) to The Father of the Hydrogen Bomb.  Long may it gather dust and remain unused (the H-bomb, I mean…not the song about it).  

   Be all that as it may (or be that as it January, whichever comes first), it’s Sunday, so that must mean it’s time for another edition of The Funday Sunnies featuring Duncan. This one is sort of inspired by the fact that we all gathered Chez Cousins last night to watch (read “fall asleep in front of”) that timeless classic of Japanese cinema, War of The Monsters (a.k.a. "Gamera tai Barugon") *, which features a couple of atomically-mutated reptile-ish creatures who have remained dormant since their kind walked the earth in the long-forgotten Rubbersuitian Era.

   Enjoy.

Uncle Fun

* Seriously…I wanna know why Kurosawa turned down th’ chance ta direct this’un. A couple’a fire-breathin’ rubber lizurds wooda pepped up Th’ Seven Samurai considerubbly.

Sparky

P.S. Those of you with a burning desire to find out who Max McGee is when he’s doing things on the 15th of January can click here.

Uncle Fun

Science Boy vs. Professor Proteus: episode 2

***INITIATING STANDARD NON-THREATENING GREETING SEQUENCE***

hello again everybody

i am CyberSparky

remember me <question mark>

***RESPONSE NEGATIVE***

ah well skip it

my human masters have determined that i am the appropriate one to introduce the second episode of SCIENCE BOY VS. PROFESSOR PROTEUS

this is based on two interrelated but largely irrelevant factors:

1. my thematic suitability based on the central role of cybernetics in the plot

2. my immunity to superstitions concerning the temporal demarcation factor known as friday the thirteenth

i would say that it is an honour to be chosen based on these themes

but as we all know there is no honour among themes

***ERROR***

***ERROR***

***INSUFFICIENT PHONEMIC CORRELATION***

***PUN SEQUENCE ABORTED***

***COMMENCING SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE ON WORDPLAY APPARATUS***

<reboot sequence commence>

<reboot sequence complete>

looks like friday the thirteenth is no respecter of persons

no wonder humans hate it so much

click on the link to listen to EPISODE 2 OF SCIENCE BOY VS. PROFESSOR PROTEUS while i get fitted for a new motherboard

that is all

The Funday Sunnies--first edition

Greetings, one and all:

   This being the first unofficially official Sunday of the New Year (New Year’s Day itself doesn’t really count, being more a day of recovery than a day of rest), we thought it high time to start a new tradition that will last as long as we can get access to the computer at Casa Cousins before the señor and señora of the household wake up. Being that new traditions are usually best started by rehashing old ones, our contribution to the trend takes the form of a little graphic break from the cares and worries of the week. We’ve chosen to entitle this feature The Funday Sunnies for two highly compelling reasons:

1. It’s a pun of the worst order, and as such relatively immune to being used by anyone with a shred of common decency and sense;
2. That’s what it came out looking like when Sparky wrote it down on the handbills he photocopied and distributed around the Greater Funsville Area.

   What we’re about to unleash on you is the product of another of Our Friend Mr. Cousins’ once-a-decade-whether-he-needs-to-or-not attempts to do what he laughingly calls ‘update his portfolio’. In amongst piles of crumpled-up doodles, broken pencil crayons, and form rejection letters, Sparky and I uncovered some single-panel cartoons which, sometime in the dim dark distant past, were our friend’s attempt to launch yet another wordless comic-strip legend along the lines of Henry, The Little King and Ferd’nand in the general direction of an unsuspecting public. A draft cover letter to syndicators which began “To Whom it May”, and ended there, seems to be as close as these things got to seeing the light of day.

 Until now, that is. One man’s false start at a career is everyone else’s free entertainment: as always, we at the Uncle Fun and Sparky Clearing House are passing the savings on to you. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the first offering from a character apparently meant to be known to the world at large as Duncan.

   Duncan’s easy to spot in this picture: he’s the one who isn’t saying anything (get used to it, folks—that’s the gimmick).We promise to give you one of these a week until they run out, or until we find something else hiding between the dust bunnies under the bed in the Cousins’ spare room. We also promise that future editions of the Funday Sunnies will get right to the point without a lengthy preamble.

Uncle Fun

   P.S. If you are a syndicator, well…just keep an eye on this space on Sundays, and look us up whenever you get a notion. That’s all I’m saying. Mr. Cousins’ life of ease is bound to come to an end soon, now that his vast holdings in Hungarian government bonds have been demoted to junk status. Sparky and I can’t mooch off him forever, if he runs out of the wherewithal to let us do it.

Introducing...SCIENCE BOY and PROFESSOR PROTEUS...(don't all applaud at once)

Hello, eagerly awaiting world:

   With many signs and omens pointing towards the distinct possibility of a Mayan-style apocalypse (and remember, as far as doomsday predictions go, what’s Mayan is Mayan and what’s yours is yours), the time could hardly be better to clue you all in to an ongoing battle in the war between Good and Evil…or, in this case, between Occasionally-Slightly-Better-Than-Average and Evil. If you’re one of those cut-to-the-chase types who don’t care for preliminaries, click on the blue link to hear the first dispatch from the protracted theatre of conflict known as (drum roll please)...

Science Boy versus Professor Proteus.

   For those of you who need a little background before diving headfirst into this saga, here’s what you need (and might even conceivably want) to know…

   The origins of that defender of truth, justice, and the periodic table of elements, Science Boy, are shrouded in mystery.

   Some say that he is a mysterious visitor from a future world or another planet, one whose knowledge far outstrips us in many respects, but which lags woefully behind in most matters of practicality and common sense. This view is given credence by Science Boy’s persistent inability to comprehend the necessity of getting a transfer when paying by cash on public transit.

   According to another theory, Science Boy is the result of experiments employing ultra-advanced techniques of genetic engineering, but somewhat less-than-ultra-advanced techniques of choosing test subjects. Wherever he came from, Science Boy felt ill-enough-equipped to cope with this world of ours that one of the first things he did was to create his own mentor, Doctor von Sciencestein, from spare bits and pieces he happened to find strewn about the laboratory after yet another near-fatal explosion. Amazingly (or perhaps not so much so), the newly-created von Sciencestein instantly possessed a wealth of learning and wisdom far beyond that of his creator/protégé. This includes the secret of using transfers on public transit; legend has it that he once circumnavigated the globe on a single off-peak-hours fare paid for with a discarded token he found on the platform of the J train near Flushing Avenue in Brooklyn.

   Spurred on by a combination of duty, gratitude and guilt towards his adopted world, Science Boy wages a never-ending crusade to make the human race safe for all forms of technology, now and in the future. Or maybe that’s “make all forms of technology safe for the human race”…to be honest, I don’t think he’s too sure, either.

   It doesn’t matter—for, before he can even begin to accomplish this goal, Science Boy must rid the world of its single greatest threat to date (not counting door-to-door utility bill scams and hidden service charges on supposedly ‘no fee’ bank accounts)…the evil Professor Proteus.

   Like his sworn enemy Science Boy, Professor Proteus has a shadowy past. During his years as a respected member of academic circles, Professor Proteus performed numerous services to humankind (as long as payment in advance was remitted to a numbered account in Switzerland). One of these was the perfection of the Random Euphemistic Comment Generator, which has since proven invaluable to professors and teaching assistants while grading exams and term papers. With a few simple adjustments, markers can replace potentially inflammatory, if accurate, terms such as ‘numbskull’, ‘bubblehead’, ‘halfwit’, and the now-obscure yet highly descriptive eponyms ‘Jethro’ and ‘Gomer’ with subtler epithets when assessing the work of students who haven’t demonstrated the research skills necessary to look up the meaning of what they’ve just been called.

   In a cruel stroke of irony, it was the good Professor’s greatest discovery that led him from the virtuous path of scientific moral ambiguity, and straight into a life of crime. Having discovered and subsequently inoculated himself with a serum for eternal life, Professor Proteus failed to discover a way to get any university to waive its standard mandatory retirement age for tenured faculty. Doomsday machines and death rays just don’t get built on the pension of a professor emeritus—shipping costs alone for some of the more intricate components are exorbitant, to say the least. The only course left open to him, if the human race’s store of knowledge was to increase—whether they wanted it to or not—was to study and adopt the practices and tactics of history’s most cold-hearted and ruthless individuals…infamous scourges of humanity such as Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Prince John, Margaret Thatcher and any one of a numberless host of broadcast executives and record company A & R men. Having embarked upon a highly lucrative campaign of plunder, whose first masterstroke was the construction of a private tollbooth for unattached women under the age of 25 entering and leaving the Kennedy compound, Professor Proteus continues to finance a dizzying array of not-entirely-legal experiments by any means available to him.

   There—if you’ve sat through this tedious origin story, you deserve a break. Here’s a reprise of the link to Episode 1 of Science Boy versus Professor Proteus, so you don’t have to worry about scrolling back up to it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Uncle Fun

Would a criminal organization for making predictions be called ‘The Cosa Nostradamus’…? ...oh, never mind…

Happy 2012, Fellow Denizens of the Worldwide Web:

   Many thanks for having stopped here in the midst of your Google-searches for hangover cures for the New Year’s Day after the New Year’s Eve before. The year 2012 promises to be a pivotal one, providing as it does the vital link between the years 2011 and 2013. With so much in the world today in a state of flux, limbo, abeyance, uncertainty, and escrow, we thought it apt to furnish you, the timorous and fearful masses, with a few words of certainty, if not comfort. To that end (and sparing no expense to the management), we have engaged the services of our acquaintance Professor Proteus and his sometime adversary and fellow techno-savant Science Boy (about whom more in the near future) to retrofit CyberSparky with a prototype of something called ‘The Predict-o-Tron Module’. As a test run, we fed the newly upgraded CyberSparky a series of questions concerning events in the year to some. Here is a sampling of the more plausible results:

   We’ll start with an easy one…

-For the first time in four years, days in February will not fall on the same day of the week as days in March. Things will return to normal in 2013, when March 1^st will happen on a Friday, the same as February 1^st.

   Now that we’ve got that cheap success experience out of the way, on to the trickier ones. The one-half-billionth of the world’s population aware of current events in Canada can read the next two; the rest of you can skip ahead:

-Quebec City will get a new arena. The day before it is scheduled to open, a provincial board of inquiry will charge all those involved in securing the contract for the arena, and every construction firm involved in building it, with multiple counts of fraud and influence peddling. The arena will be converted into a minimum-security prison to house them all.

-Stephen Harper will start carrying ball bearings in his hand, clacking them around as he mutters incoherently about finding whoever stole his strawberries. Not even his wife and family will notice the least bit of difference in him.

   As a bonus (?) for those of you who haven’t moved on to what will happen to more significant parts of the global family, click on the azure-hued link which follows to hear something about one of the pivotal years in Canadian history.

   The rest of CyberSparky’s prognostications are grouped by category:

WORLD AFFAIRS

-Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy will jump in a Ford Model A sedan together and go on a rampage of machine-gunning mayhem around Europe, telling anyone who isn’t too busy ducking bullets, “We’re Bonnie and Clyde. We ruin banks.”

-In a related development, the EU will put Russell Brand in charge of its economic policy, secure in the knowledge that it couldn’t make things any worse.

-In an attempt to re-connect with disillusioned voters in the 18-to-30 age bracket, a third party will draft Super Mario as a presidential candidate.

Mario will immediately face severe press scrutiny over the issue of whether or not his U.S. citizenship is valid. Even more severe charges of nepotism will follow, when his brother Luigi is named as the candidate for Vice-President.

However, Super Mario’s promise to distribute coins with magical powers will resonate with the electorate, and will be adopted by congressional and senatorial candidates for both the Republican and Democratic parties.

SPORTS

-In an effort to increase the medal count of host country Great Britain, the International Olympic Committee will declare gurning, skiving, and whinging official demonstration sports.

(The man(?) pictured above will carry the Olympic torch into the stadium during the opening ceremonies.)

ENTERTAINMENT

-Charlie Sheen will try to start something called the “Occupy Charlie Sheen’s Bed” movement.

-To commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the Titanic disaster, Céline Dion will officially be declared as having sunk without a trace.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

-Geneticists will find a way of fusing Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Gwen Stefani, Christina Aguilera, and Fergie into a single living being. The creation will be called “Bat-Sh**-Crazy Woman” and will live forever, freeing the world from having to care about when the next version of this same tired old act is going to come along.

-During researches into the Higgs boson, a lab assistant will spill coffee on a control panel, causing a miniature Big Bang in the Hadron supercollider. This will be taken as conclusive proof that the entire Universe is really just one big accident after all.

   As you can see, there are still one or two bugs to be worked out in CyberSparky’s programming. However, the way things are going, it wouldn’t surprise any of us at Fun Central if these were some the least strange things to come to pass in the next 366 days. With any luck, we’ll have every one of those days to find out if the Mayans were right after all.

   Right then, all of you—back to more important things…like tweeting to your friends about the most ridiculous-looking floats in the Rose Bowl parade.

Uncle Fun