Juan of the Dead

First there was Dawn of the Dead.

Then there was Shaun of the Dead

And now ... now ... there will be Juan of the Dead ... as slackers and undead brain eaters head to Cuba.  Coming in 2011.

Juan of the Dead

Juan is a typical forty year old Cuban slacker.  One day, Havana begins to fill up with zombies.  Juan decides that the best way to cope with it is to go into business.  "Juan of the dead killed their loved ones" is his slogan, and his mission is to help people get rid of those infected around them ... for a price.  But the situation gets worse -- while everyone is escaping to sea as a means to get away, Juan is left with no choice but to become a hero, staying to defend his country and protect his own on an island that has turned into a real bloodbath.

   

Little Pablito is walking home from school, another day in the glorious revolutionary Cuban school system, learning about blood-sucking yankees and imperialists.

   

He enters his house only to discover that his mother, father, and beloved grandpa have all become zombies!!!

   

As they close in on poor little Pablito, the scene stops and in steps Juan, telling us that the family wants a piece of the child.  "Grandpa is more active than usual."  But ... be assured, he says, "Juan of the Dead, we, have a solution."

   

Suddenly the doors burst open and Juan and his sidekick jump in and start beating and chopping the zombies to death.  "Call," says the voice-over, "we will solve the problem for you.  For a reasonable price, we will make sure your family never troubles you again."  Little Pablito is clapping at the spurts of blood and dead zombies on the floor, covered with bloody gore.

   

"Call us at 555-8326660.  Juan of the Dead.  We kill your beloved ones!" 

No Noose Is Good Noose

When the prisoner was told by his lawyer that he had gotten a stay of execution, he smiled and said, "Well, no noose is good noose."

I don't have a dog, but it is doing just fine.  My kids are all grown and out of the house, but they are all doing their homework and house chores and all go to bed on time.  I don't have a car, but so far it has not given me any problems, the carburator is still holding out, and I don't need to buy new tires.  I don't have a house, but this month I had trouble making the house payment, what am I going to do?  I don't have a life, but now and then I can sit on the couch and just relax and breath deeply and say, ain't it all just amazin'?

Short Short Short Story 1: The Day I Met A Wondrous Curmudgeon

I am starting a series here ... short short short short stories.  This is the first.  I hope you enjoy it.

Is it not today to be a wondrous day?  And fine, too, is the weather!  Hot so!  Warm so!  But it not snowing yet is!  Oh, how joyous!  I today am walking the street along, and I come suddenly to a stop!  There, in front, is a curmudgeon!  Oh joy!  They have been these many years extinct!  I thought I would for joy fill my pants with poop!!  I sauntered up to him, as I casually am, and I asked him to tell me what it is the time.  He at me looked strangely and said, "What do you think I am, a clock?"

Oh!  My heart for joy leapt out of its network of arteries and burst nearly!  "Oh, no, dear sir," I said, as casually as ever I could, fearing to reveal my great abounding joy, "I would never mistake you for a clock!  You do not have moving hands on your face, nor do you tick!"  Ha ha!  I was so proud at my very clever response.  This curmudgeon must surely take a liking to me!  "Get lost, freak!" he said, and the sound of those words buried themselves into my heart forever, and I had tears in my eyes, so great was the joy!  "Yes, good sir," I said, as to be politely as possible, "I will surely, with all my power, endeavor to lose my way, but I fear that I know most of the routes all too well, so this could difficult be for me."


The rare curmudgeon creature rolled his eyes...oh, how does he do it?  And he tossed his head upwards sharply, and I do believe I heard a puff of wind come out of his held-upward nose.  Oh, the sheer delight in observing this creature's behavior and mannerisms!  I in utter disbelief stared at it for seconds (I could have for days stared!), but alas!  The curmudgeon sauntered off, leaving me behind alone.

Yes, even though there is no hint of snow on the horizon, in spite of the threatening forecast of weather, I nevertheless have had great joy today!  I was, how do you say?....snubbed...yes, that must be it....snubbed, by a real live curmudgeon.  Scorned, even!  Oh, joy!  Joy!!  I shall not be able to sleep tonight, so strongly does my heart beat with sheer wondrous joy!

Wit, Thou Art My Greatest Aim

I once shot an elephant in my pyjamas.  How he got into my pyjamas I'll never know

-- Groucho Marx

Wit, thou art my greatest aim
Always just beyond my grasp
How to find thee, to corral thee
And to learn the jester's game.
Wouldst that I could learn to be
So clever with a nice turned phrase
Then I should count myself among
Those few who dare to spar with thee.

Moonlight Sonata, by Ludwig Van Beethoven

 

I made this short video.  Apologies to all other Zombie Productions in the world ... This is my fictional "production company" that put this film together.  I think the Moonlight Sonata is one of Beethoven's more compelling pieces, and you can find countless versions of it on the internet.  Here is yet one more.  I hope you like it.

On Cold Days

This poem is taken from the collection Ten Thousand Lives,

by the Korean poet Ko Un.

On cold days
icily cold days with hail spitting down,
loveliest in our neighborhood, Chae-sŏn's Mother
loveliest and youngest in our neighborhood,
Chae-sŏn's Mother
her tiny face
full of smiles
full or sorrows,
perhaps coming back from her parents' home
which has not so much as a fence,
carrying little Chae-sŏn on her back
with the carrying-blanket wrapped high around her
and Chae-sŏn waking from sleep in the dark inside,
borne along with the darkness,
.....
Doing laundry in deep midwinter
she plunges her frozen hands into the icy water,
the paddle beating the washing resounds,
echoing in fold after fold.

Ko Un is not well known outside Korea, despite his meetings with, and the respect he has earned from, Western poets like Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Seamus Heaney.  At home, he is revered, known as an amazingly prolific writer and a nationalist pro-democracy activist.  A former Zen monk, once a dissolute and despairing drunkard, and now truly the people's poet of Korea, Ko Un began writing an epic masterwork, Ten Thousand Lives (Maninbo), putting into poems (poem-portraits) the faces and lives of all the people he has ever known or known of.  Ko Un conceived this work while imprisoned in the late 1970's and early 1980's for rebellion against the military dictatorships then controlling Korea.  Maninbo has been published in 20 volumes in Korean, with five more volumes intended.

Bad Poetry That We Cannot Live Without

It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is there

-- William Carlos Williams

Speaking of bad poetry that we cannot live without, else we will die miserably....here's one I composed just for you, dear readers...

My tongue is red

My eyes are green

I think that I 

Misplaced my spleen

But never mind

It seems that I

Don't care at all

So spleen, goodbye!

My Mailman Should Be A Comedian, His Delivery Is Perfect

I am a great lover of puns.  Wikipedia:  "Puns are used to create humor and sometimes require a large vocabulary to understand. Puns have long been used by comedy writers, such as William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and George Carlin."  Even Scott Adams uses puns in his Dilbert cartoon strip.  He has a pun mailing list: "Can Napoleon return to his place of birth? Of Corsican."

Puns are a kind of litmus test....there are those who groan out loud, visibly demonstrating their distaste for this "lowest form of humor."  Admittedly, there are a lot of bad puns, and sometimes it all depends on one's humor.  Even I don't like a person who resorts to lame puns, such as "oh, that's punny."  I am careful which puns I send to my associates.  I don't want to overdo it (But, if I keep sending puns out late, then do I overdue it?).  So I walk a fine line, knowing that some people have a strong visceral reaction to puns.

From time to time, I will include a short pun in this blog, just to change up the pace a bit.  Please keep coming back.

"Sonnet" - by Hayden Carruth

Well, she told me I had an aura. "What?" I said. 

"An aura," she said. "I heered you," I said, "but 

you ain't significating." "What I mean, you got 

this fuzzy light like, all around your head, 

same as Nell the epelectric when she's nigh read-

y to have a fit, only you ain't having no fit." 

"Why, that's a fact," I said, "and I ain't about 

to neither. I reckon it's more like that dead 

rotten fir stump by the edge of the swamp on misty 

nights long about cucumber-blossoming time 

when the foxfire's flickering round." "I be goddamn 

if that's it," she said. "Why, you ain't but sixty-

nine, you ain't a-rotting yet. What I say 

is you got a goddamn naura." "Ok," I said. "Ok."

Never Leave Home Without It

So I says to the guy, look, this is my coke and I'm going to drink it...you gotta problem with that?  He decides to hit me in the nose.  Well, let me tell you, that hurt something awful!  That's not your coke, he tells me, it's mine.  MINE!  So keep your hands and your mouth off it, see?  Well, I thinks to myself, ok, it's only one small can of coke, what's the big deal, just give it to him and everything is gonna be ok.  But, no...I'm not that smart.  So I pulls out my Visa credit card (valid until 2012) and I slice him up with it.  He just falls in half and lays on the floor, bleeding and stuff.  I sorta knew Visa was a good credit card and that's why I always carry one...You never know when it will come in handy.

The Most Boring Day in the 20th Century

Boredom!  The Princess Who Never Smiled, by Viktor Vasnetsov

A computer program named True Knowledge has calculated the most boring day in history, or at least, in the 20th century. That day is April 11, 1954.

True Knowledge, the creation of William Tunstall-Pedoe, came to that conclusion when fed some 300 million facts about "people, places, business and events" that made the news.  Reportedly, on April 11, 1954, a Sunday, a general election was held in Belgium, Abdullah Atalar, a Turkish academic was born and an Oldham Athletic footballer called Jack Shufflebotham died. Aside from that, according to the software, nothing much happened.

Tunstall-Pedoe said: "Nobody significant died that day, no major events apparently occurred and, although a typical day in the 20th century has many notable people being born, for some reason that day had only one who might make that claim - Abdullah Atalar, a Turkish academic.  "The irony is, though, that - having done the calculation - the day is interesting for being exceptionally boring. Unless, that is, you are Abdullah Atalar.

A Pig, A Centipede, And A Vacation Poem

What do you get when you cross a pig and a centipede?

Bacon and legs!

Vacation Poem

It feels so good just to heed

my unsatified inner need

just to stay home and read

not go anywhere, just read

read, read, read, read, and read

read my head off...indeed

No tweeting for me.  

No facebook for me.  

No texting for me.

(but sub-texting is ok...

and I can text in Chinese...)  

No instant communication for me.

Just old-fashioned email for me.

Slow motion email for me.

Just reading printed books for me.

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