So I’m in the back yard a few days ago, firing up my monthly Al Capone, when Neighbor calls to me from across the fence.

“YOU sure get up early,” Neighbor says.

I’m puzzled. It’s late afternoon. I have no idea why Neighbor is telling me, in a clear accusatory tone, that I sure get up early.

So I smoothly ask, “Huh?”

“YOU sure get up early,” Neighbor says again.

I drop the Al Capone to my side so as not to blow smoke in Neighbor’s face, and I move over to the fence.

“What do you mean?” I ask (thus smoothly expanding on my earlier theme of “Huh?”).

“I mean you’ve been getting up and going outside awfully early.”

I’m still puzzled. “Not that early. Barb and I walk the dogs down the road about 6:45 or so.”

Neighbor says, “No. You’ve been out between 5:00 and 5:30 several mornings in a row.”

This is not the case. So I explain to Neighbor that Barb gets up about 6:00 AM, or sometimes a few minutes earlier, and goes out to the end of the driveway to get the newspaper. So it’s Barb that Neighbor has been seeing in our driveway, although not quite as early as 5:00 or 5:30.

“No,” Neighbor says. “Not in your driveway. You’ve been walking between our houses.”

There’s about a 30-foot wide strip of grass between our houses, extending back from the street forty yards or so to our back-yard fences — where it dead-ends.

I’m beyond puzzled now. “Wait. You mean you’ve seen someone in that grassy area between our houses between 5:00 and 5:30 AM for several mornings?”

Read More »

In honor of the first of November I invite you to check out Lupo the Butcher. It is definitely vulgar, profane, and probably not work safe, but it’s funny.

In the days when I worked in comics, I brought in a floppy (remember floppies?) with a bunch of sampled lines of dialogue from Lupo, which soon became alert sounds for all the Macs in the office: the startup sound for most computers in the art area was “Bum! Get a job!” and the shutdown sound was “I don’t knooooooow…”

We actually have a signed cel of Lupo, given to the spouse by Danny Antonucci, his creator, because Spouse turned so many people on to the Butcher. This no libary buy or get out.