But also, I’m now officially a year closer to geezerdom.
These combined to make me tired and not all that productive this week, lol…
Still, I did stuff… I think… I hung out with my friends, ate a bunch of pizza, doodled in my sketchbook at the garden club meeting…
Ricky ain't afraid of nothing, but there's a few things he'd rather steer clear of.
… And I worked on some boring website updates (but still didn’t finish the press kit… ugh…) and I brainstormed a couple novella ideas about Ursula’s adventures in shirking school and schoolwork that I need to get working on that would probably be free downloads for my subscribers.
We’ll see how long that all takes.
What sort of adventures would you like to see Ursula go on?
URSULA’S LAMENTS
It’s the third week of the month and that means it’s Ursula’s turn to hog this space. Take it away, Ursula:
OK, so there’s this iguana that lives down the road here and the iguana’s name is Zamo. I know people think iguanas don’t talk but this one totally does and I’m not making that up.
Zamo’s making gold in her secret basement lab but she won’t tell me the recipe and she won’t share any of the gold.
And I yelled, "You're supposed to share!"
But Zamo just laughed at me and said, "Oh? Is that what the communists who run the school board told you? Well, get this through your monkey skull, Karla Marx: you don't need my gold and Iguana have no ability to wish to share it with you! Now beat it!"
So I told Daddy about it but he says I’m just imagining that Zamo’s making gold, but I’m not imagining it. Zamo’s real and the talking’s real and I’m pretty sure the gold is real too but Zamo won’t share it with me and that’s not OK.
Imagine how much candy I could buy with a gold bar!
I could turn it into a tiara, too.
But Zamo won’t share and I think that’s not OK. You’re supposed to share. That’s what all the teachers say.
I mean, I don’t like to share my stuff, so I leave it at home so I don’t have to. But Zamo should share the gold with me.
I told my friend Ricky who lives around the corner and he said Zamo’s mean but also Ricky said he wouldn’t help me break into the secret basement lab so I could have a fair share of the gold. He said he was still on pro bay shun from the last time he got caught drunk street racing so he can’t. And the pro bay shun is for another couple months and that’s really too long to wait.
Anyway, I told the Cartoonist she needs to make Zamo share and she said if she knew how to make iguanas share their gold she would have already moved to Mexico with the gold. So that’s not very fair because I want to move to Mexico too.
Unless they have school there, then I’ll have to find a better place to move to with the gold.
I told Ricky’s girlfriend’s cousin Myles about all this stuff and how Zamo won’t tell me how to make the gold and Myles says that Zamo’s just lying and doesn’t actually know how to make gold.
So I asked Myles if that means Zamo has a leprechaun in a terrarium making the gold for her and he just laughed and drove off. I think that means yes, it’s a leprechaun.
And no one will tell me how I can catch my own leprechaun and what kind of terrarium I need to get Daddy to buy for me to keep the leprechaun in, so that really sucks.
Uh… thank you for that, Ursula…
MYLES’ POETRY CORNER
This week’s poem by our own half-mouse pal Myles is called “Date Night”:
Gold… all she wants is gold
I rented a Lambo
picked her up
drove to the roadhouse
“Ooooh… you must make a lot of money!”
I pretended I forgot
my wallet in the Lambo
went out to get it
but drove home
Buy your own damn French fries
Two gold diggers in a row… what are the odds?
LATEST VIDEO
I did a nifty little flip-through of Bring Me the Royal Flip-Flops: A Noah's Archipelago Comics Treasury over on the YouTube:
In this week’s Wednesday blog, we had exercpts from an unfinished parody of an Atlantic profile of Bono that I wrote about Noah:
“…scarcity-minded folks tend to be resentful and unhappy no matter what they achieve. Perhaps it is different in the case of a scarcity of common sense rather than financial scarcity, but in any case, Noah doesn’t seem to have a resentful bone in his body (we will ignore a not-very-family-friendly joke Noah made about what other sort of bones he might have on offer instead.)”
Over on the Substack, I posted a trio of videos that intrigued and entertained me last week and my usual Sunday blog. This time we talked about making handouts for a workshop I’m teaching this week, reader magnet ideas, and a possible way for me to revive my old radio show thanks to Twitch’s DJ program… which I might not get around to any time soon.
SONG OF THE WEEK
Dunno why, but Myles’ poem reminded me about this old classic by Unknown Hinson, “I Cleaned Out a Room In My Trailer For You”:
...but dude was a brilliant guitarist and frontman as well.
UPCOMING “HOLIDAYS”
It’s a running gag with Noah’s Archipelago that Noah loves any National (Fill In The Blank) Day or other observances and holidays. Here’s a couple fun ones happening this week:
Tuesday is National Day On Writing® which is all about trying to get you to write more in whatever format
Wednesday is National Reptile Awareness Day… no, Zamo won’t be sharing any gold with you, even if it would help you be more aware of iguanas being superior to us monkeys
Sunday is National Greasy Foods Day… not like I need an excuse to grab a burger
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Well, in honor of Ursula’s battle with Zamo this week, have you ever pretended to have something and someone called your bluff? What was it?
Well, that’s about it from me and my cartoon friends for this week. Be sure to have some greasy fare and write about it.
If you know anyone who might find this newsletter fun, be sure to forward it to them.
Talk to you again next week.
Pyra
Bring Me the Royal Flip-Flops: A Noah’s Archipelago Comics Treasury: https://a.co/d/00sf3GJK
