The James Monroe Song

James Monroe

Was the last

Pres-i-dent

To wear a white wig

He died in New York

Broken and broke

But unlike Millard Fillmore

He did not become a Whig

The Millard Fillmore Song

Oh I love Millard Fillmore

He’s on the ball

He’s got the scoop

Oh I love Millard Fillmore

He’s so perfect

He doesn’t poop.

He’s got two eyes, a nose and a mouth

He bent over backwards to appease the South

Oh I love Millard Fillmore

Even though he was two inches shorter than Chester Alan Arthur

 

Morty Comix # 2503

 

Morty Comix # 2503 is a little guy, a microcomic. It was drawn on the birthday of our 13th president, Millard Fillmore, born Jan. 7, 1800. I tucked it into a loose bit of rubber moulding along the floor in a corner of the Post Office in McCleary, Washington. 

There are no less than five Morty Comix in secret places in the McCleary Post Office as of tonight when I checked my PO Box. A couple of them have been there since Spring.

Although there are parts of the world out there where I still see Morty Comix remaining where I deposited the art months ago, this place has the highest concentration of the little devils. So interesting how many public places have anonymous pockets where no one ever looks.

I used to just post them on the bulletin board there, but then I became aware someone was systematically taking my stuff down, ripping it up, and throwing it in the trash. It's the ripping it up part that intrigues me. Sometimes I think McCleary would've made a great locale for a Roger Corman-Vincent Price film. We have no shortage of weird people. Fortunately, I can prove I am not one of them.

When I was 9 years old our farm house outside of McCleary burned. It didn't burn completely, it was just gutted to an uninhabitable degree. So we lived in a mobile home for 8 glorious years. When I was in college I came back to the farm one summer, in 1975, and took down the burned house to salvage and sell the old growth lumber that built the dwelling in order to earn more $$ for school. I recall finding a dead mouse in a bottle and writing my college mate Lynda Barry about it. The rodent could see freedom but could not attain it. Something like that.

Anyway, in between the 1st and 2nd floors, where the pipes for the gas lights originally ran, I found this wood planer lying on its side. Someone had built over this thing. The blade is still sharp. I have this tool to this day. The last time it was used Woodrow Wilson was still President, I am guessing.

So, maybe someday someone will find a Morty Comix in the same way. A little time capsule art bomb. My challenge will be to find more difficult hiding places in 2013 and to make the distribution method more unusual.

City Limits Gazette # Bowling With Fred (Nov. 1991)

The Bil Keane Watch, some eerie Fillmore/Arthur coincidences, bad cover versions of I'm Only Sleeping, I'm So Tired, In My Life, Inner Light, It Won't Be Long, It's All Too Much, It's Only Love, I've Got a Feeling, I've Just Seen a Face, Julia, Lady Madonna, Let it Be.

A List of Strange and Eerie Coincidences of Cosmic Significance Concerning the Lives of Millard Fillmore and Chester Alan Arthur

Full title: A List of Strange and Eerie Coincidences of Cosmic Significance Concerning the Lives of Millard Fillmore and Chester Alan Arthur : Earthshaking Evidence Which Will Change the Course of American Historiography.

Unrevised, marked-up, rough 1st edition, 1987, blue cover, regular digest size.

2nd edition, somewhat revised and bit less messy than the 1st edition, 1988, white cover, regular digest size.

I have no idea how many of these are out there, but it can't be too many. The 2nd edition, I think, was printed because a library in Montana actually requested one via interlibrary loan, so I cooked up a new edition with a very small run.

This was churned out on my old typewriter and looks it. The idea became a full exhibit at The Evergreen State College Library in late 1987. I later used most of the exciting facts as part of the story in How Two Ex-Presidents Went Up My Nose.

In my world view of predestination there is no such thing as coincidence or free will. So these Millard/Chester facts are not as eerie as they seem.

Sarah believes the world would be better off not knowing these Fillmore/Arthur facts. To broadly paraphrase her, she thinks civilization is not ready for this cosmic connection.

How Two Ex-Presidents Went Up My Nose!

1st edition, 1994, 40 copies, ivory cover, regular digest size.

1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, July 2005, 5 copies, red cover, regular digest size.

I have long been fascinated by the eerie "coincidences" in the lives of presidents Millard Fillmore and Chester Alan Arthur (Arthur's middle name was pronounced "Ah-lawn" in case you wondered, and some historians believe he was born in Quebec, not Vermont. Truman claimed Arthur kept a prostitute in the White House). Arthur had made an appearance in one of the first two issues of Cranium Frenzy in 1982. I'm too lazy to look up which issue it was. In fact, it is hardly worth the effort of typing this sentence saying it is hardly worth the effort.

Anyway, I had put together a pamphlet on their eerie "coincidences" in the mid-1980s which I'll no doubt be posting here in the future. It served as the source for many of the astounding trivia bombs dropped in this comic.

Trivia:

Page 9: One branch of my relatives were big wheels in the Free Will Baptist Church. Before that, up in the Cumberland Mountains of Virginia, a part of the family were called Hardshell Baptists, they were extreme fundamentalists. For example, one of my great-grandfathers believed the Earth was square because the Bible made a reference to the four corners of the World. And yes, this was still in the 20th century. The other Virginia Cumberland branch were nonbeliever criminals, murders, black marketers, bootleggers, etc. so I guess it all balanced out.

Pages 21-23: Totally true event. I really did inhale a dead person. And people wonder why I choose a sedentary life, safe and snug within the boundaries of my own home.