Here's a beacon of consistency in an uncertain world...

Sparky continues to be missing in action, and Uncle Fun has organized a search party, but The Funday Sunnies featuring Duncan is here right on schedule for all of you to marvel at.

It’s good to know you can still rely on some things in life.

   For those of you who have gotten used to postings on Fridays, and were expecting the latest instalment of Uncle Fun and Sparky's travels with the fabled (and possibly genuine) explorer Vasco da Gama, an apology is in order. Today is Wernher von Braun's birthday, so as he generally does to celebrate this festive occasion, Sparky is trying to convert the Funmobile into a reasonable facsimile of a working moon rocket, using his standard combination of baking soda and tonic water, shaken to within an inch of its life in a cement mixer. Meanwhile, Uncle Fun has (as is also now an annual tradition) been on the phone all day with his insurance adjustor, trying to get an advance quote on any claims that will need to be made against his home and casualty policies. Things will return to normal as soon as Sparky returns from as close to orbit as he gets this time around.
   In the meantime, enjoy this semi-topical song by Tom Lehrer on the subject of the late lamented birthday boy.

P.S. As you'll notice from a previous posting, I need to teach Moose how to spell Dr. von Braun's first name. It's a variant spelling anyway: don't deduct any marks.

Another Sunday.

Another edition of The Funday Sunnies featuring Duncan.

Where DOES the time go?

The Great Expedition of 2011 (Part 2)

   As you may (or more likely, may not) recall, last week’s posting began the account of our travels with the legendary (and probably anachronistic) explorer Vasco da Gama, as we attempted to make it around the one of Great Lakes with him. We pick up the story from Vasco’s journals, as we make camp in the Michigan marshes…

The Day after the Last One, in the Year of Our Lord This One,

   We are soon to have being arrivèd of it in the city of which El Sparky, he is saying it is for to be the calling of it the name of Detroit Rock City.

 (This is the thanks I get for getting you that box set of Kiss albums for your birthday.—Uncle Fun)

(Don’ menshun it. –Sparky)

It is much of the carefulness we are being of the having of it, because El Sparky he is telling-it to me of the extremelemently dangerous Chuds, which is for the name of it to being of the Cannibalistic Humanoids Under Detroit.

   (The actual name of the creatures in the movie “C.H.U.D.” was “Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers”, and they lived in New York City, not Detroit.—Uncle Fun)

(Whut he don’t know won’t hurt us. Otherwise he wuz fixin' on bunkin’ us up in th’ sewers. –Sparky)

The Uncle Fun, he is for to the telling it of him to me about the fabulous Renaissance Center, which of it is in the Detroit Rock City of the waterfront on it. This will I at the first thing of the dawning of the morning for to be the claiming of it in the name of me myself, The Great Vasco da Gama, and the making of it into the base for of the operations and the conquistadoring of the entire Detroit Rock City. Once I have it for to conquerèd the Renaissance Center, then shall I be for to commanding-it to him the Leonardo da Vinci for to the making of it the machine of the flying so that I myself, The Great Vasco da Gama, he is to be the making of it the attacking of the hairy owl on the Detroit Rock City, and for to forcing of it the surrendering of it to me myself, The Great Vasco da Gama.

Fortunately, this did not come to pass. What you’ll hear by clicking this blue link probably also didn’t happen, but it involves our man Vasco, so you never know. The idea of Vasco teaming up with Leonardo da Vinci is unsettling, but at least it makes more sense than him meeting El Greco. By the way, I think “attacking of the hairy owl” is Vasco’s way of saying “aerial attack” …at least, I hope so.

Uncle Fun

Today’s special Daylight Saving Time edition of The Funday Sunnies featuring Duncan goes out to all you users of public transit whose schedules have gotten an hour out of whack:

(This is the bus I used to have to take to work.)

The Great Expedition of 2011…now it can be told!

Greetings, Lovers of Adventure and Endeavour:

   My apologies for picking Kurt Vonnegut’s pocket for the title of this little missive. In a posting from last year, (click here to refresh your memory), we told you that Sparky and I had gotten separated from the main body of the Cousins Caravan during its return from Indianapolis. Our peregrinations in the Funmobile took a turn for the Homeric when we crossed paths with a long-lost associate, the renowned explorer Vasco da Gama.

I wanna innerjeckt at this junkchoor that we ain’t sure if he’s jus’ some guy what thinks he’s th’ ackchewal Vasco da Gama, er if it’s th’ reel’n genyuwine Vasco an’ he’s bin so lost fer so long that he ain’t run ackrost nobuddy who could tell him that it’s th’ 21^st Century already an’ he otta have bin dead now fer th’ better partuva half of a whole millennyum even.

Sparky

   All that is true, but when you’re around Vasco, it’s best not to ask questions of any kind. One question you definitely don’t ask Vasco under any circumstances is anything that sounds like “are you sure you know where you’re going?” Vasco has a habit of phrasing his answer to this question in very broad strokes…of a very sharp sword, that is.

   We encountered Vasco as we were traversing northern Ohio, within sight of Lake Erie and within hailing distance of the Michigan border.

 By that, he means we fish’d him outta th’ lake b’fore th’ cardboard box he wuz floatin’ in went down fer th’ third time.

Sparky

   Just so. Having accepted his offer to help us navigate our way home (and therefore not having accepted the business end of his sword—see above), we set off with Vasco on what proved to be rather more epic a voyage than was strictly called for under the circumstances. I quote, as evidence, from Vasco’s own log of the journey:

The last day of the month of Augusto, in The Year of our Lord One Thousand Four Hundred and Six Hundred and Eleven,

   We arrived-it at the fablèd city which is called of-it Toledo, which for it means that we are now in the Spain, and close therefore to my belovèd home of Portugal. How good it will be for to seeing-it of my lord and sovereign, Prince Henry the Navigator, to be to the telling to him of all the many lands which I have been for to claiming of them in his name as well as the name of me myself, the great Vasco da Gama.

The same day plus seven more, the same year exactly,

   One whole week it has for to have been gone by in this ‘Toledo’ city, and I am not for to seeing of it at all El Greco! This city is a liar, and does not know what it is or where it is at all, for this is not the city that is the Toledo of which I know it is in the Spain where it was last when I am for to finding it. I now must keel them all.

   The continued existence of Toledo, Ohio (Google it if you don’t believe me) is proof that we managed to dissuade Vasco from this particular momentary ambition.  I have no idea how Vasco latched onto the idea that he was ever going to meet Prince Henry the Navigator, who died before Vasco was even born, but that’s our Vasco for you. The latest edition of Uncle Fun and Sparky’s Radio Colouring Book that has been posted webside contains what purports to be one of his many presumably apocryphal adventures. Click on the blue letters you just saw; you know the drill, and don’t say you haven’t been well and duly warned.

Uncle Fun

 

This week’s edition of The Funday Sunnies featuring Duncan has a happy ending…for somebody, at least.

I get the feeling that somewhere, R2D2 is laughing at me...

Hey out there,

Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed. This entire week has been one of those days. I just get finished digging the Fortress of Funitude out from its third blizzard of an otherwise green winter (don’t ask where Uncle Fun and Sparky were…they have a sixth sense for impending storms, and impending work involving heavy lifting) when I find out that I’m no longer the only version of me kicking around.

This requires explanation. Operating on the sound scientific principle that no-one’s life is complete until they have a robotic double of themselves, Science Boy has taken it upon himself to design a motorized android replica of me. As you can see, CyberMoose is by no means the most flattering thing anyone has ever come up with. S.B. claims that Sparky put him up to it, on the grounds that his own robotic double, CyberSparky, was lonely and needed a friend. I believe that about as much as I’d believe Werner von Braun saying that his life’s ambition was to work for NASA.

Apparently CyberMoose runs on atomic power, so the only way I have of getting back at someone who knows his way around weapons-grade fissionable material is to say that Science Boy only has a minor part in the episode of Uncle Fun and Sparky’s Radio Colouring Book that you’ll find by clicking the blue-lettered title link you just skimmed past. I just hope this CyberMoose thing doesn’t know how to make automated phone calls, or I’ll be in for a world of hurt from Canada.

Moose