Asian Haze

Cliff Mass tells us the haze we are seeing here in Western Washington for the last few days is not from one of the area forest fires but instead traces back to Asia.

Phone photo 1732

Tidelands Resort sign with Sasquatch figure

Near Copalis Beach, Washington

The Sasquatch icon is a very popular one throughout Grays Harbor County.

Favorite Movie Quotes: Last Man Standing

"My fear is my curse. What's yours?"

Phone photo 1730

Dreamer celebrates Independence Day on my front porch

Favorite Movie Quotes: Who Framed Roger Rabbit

"I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way."

Phone photo 1729

Buster and Hettie

Morty Comix # 2408

Morty Comix # 2408 was left under a loose floor tile found in a business in Aberdeen, Washington. This tile was next to a door. And the door was on the second floor and led to nowhere but a long fall.

I am sure there is an allegory or omen there if I invented hard enough.

The scene in the background is the Chehalis River.

Phone photo 1728

Charlie and Dreamer

Favorite Movie Quotes: All in a Night's Work

"But Harry, you don 't understand, it's not just tears. I mean I CRY. At weddings, at funerals, once I even cried at a hockey match. I don't know what it is or why I do it, but I'm very emotional."

Phone photo 1727

Phone photo 1726

Phone photo 1725

The Fab Furry Four

Has "Mostly Butter" become a reality?

My nephew Zach took this photo at the airport and asked if someone had swiped the "Mostly Butter" business concept I cooked up long ago. I first came up with the "Mostly Butter" idea back in the 1980s, but didn't communicate it in print, so far as I can recall, until 2002 in Bezango WA 985 #5.

(Click on second image to enlarge and read the scenario)

As it turns out, the "Butter London" business is apparently for nail polish. Perhaps they should change their name to "Mostly Nail Polish"? Or, "Butter Fingers"?

Phone photo 1724

Favorite Movie Quotes: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

McCoy overhears a discussion from two 20th century medical professionals in a hospital: "Sounds like the Goddamn Spanish Inquisition!"

Phone photo 1723

Phone photo 1722

McCleary, Washington

Phone photo 1721

This Shelton, Washington scene reminds me of the weirdest TV ad jingle I ever heard. It was in the mid to late 1970s:

Fred and Barney are enthusiastically singing these lyrics in an ad for Pebbles cereal:

"When you put sweet Pebbles in your mouth
You'll never have rocks in your head!"

Morty Comix # 2407

Morty Comix # 2407 was a new experience. I placed an order at an Italian restaurant at the mall on Oly's Westside. Then I wandered outside while waiting. And I saw an empty alcove where there was once a cash machine, but now all it displays is an empty display frame.

So I place the Morty Comix, am served my food, and then get in the car to leave. But while in the car something new happened. For the very first time I actually witness someone discovering my cartoon bomb. He was a young, large security guy. He did a double take when seeing the comic. He picked it up, flipped through it, and smiled. He carried it for a couple hundred feet and kept examining it. Then he vanished behind a door on the other end of the building.

Phone photo 1720

 

A property owner of mountain timberland in Mason County, Washington decided the way to keep those thoughtless, selfish and destructive ATV and ORV riders out of his road was to block it with an old motorboat. 

Most original.

Morty Comix # 2406

Morty Comix # 2406 was a bit unusual. I had purchased a DVD of the 2005 movie Sahara at a library book sale, but the copy was too defective to watch. Which was too bad, because I enjoyed the 30 minutes or so I got to see before the disc freaked out. Give me VHS every time.

Anyway.

I flipped the paper wrapping and drew the front and back cover for the plastic container, and then included two more drawings in the package drawn on the vast supply of 1990s discarded Gaylord circulation cards from the library at South Puget Sound Community College I rescued from the recycle tub way back when. They were placed inside the container.

Then I placed the whole thing in one of those groady real estate brochure outlet booths in a very funky part of Tumwater, Washington. I have come to realize no one ever opens up one of these sad dispensaries, and putting a Morty Comix in there is equal to placing it in a time capsule, where someone will find it after the rest of us have been dead for a few decades.

Phone photo 1719

Morty Comix # 2405

Morty Comix # 2405 was tucked into a bus stop in Tumwater, Washington

Phone photo 1718

A dream caught in midstream by economic reality and left as a rusting monument

Tumwater, Washington

Washington, My Home, Wherever I May Roam

While the rest of the country bakes those of us in Grays Harbor County, Washington are still getting soaked with rain. It is almost 9 o'clock here, still light, and the rain is coming down steady. Just took this photo a few minutes ago of the wet sky framed by my elm and black walnut trees.

Phone photo 1717

Morty Comix # 2404

Morty Comix # 2404 was drawn on a notepad given to me as an incentive to subscribe to the magazine Golf Digest, which is very strange since I have never played golf and have no desire to learn. In fact, the whole world of sports strikes me as incredibly and expensively absurd, but I recognize I am very much in the minority view here in America and realize millions find joy and meaning in this activity. This is a major part of the human experience most people find very important but has somehow escaped me. I just don't get it. But I'm OK with being a freak in this regard.

Sports have appeared in my comix. In my book Dog of Dawn Dog of Dusk I highlighted the historical sport of Dog Butting, introduced to me by my friend Bob Richart, who was featured in an altered way as a character in the story. Also in State of Beings # 5 I proposed my new baseball team, the Stationary Pus-Filled Pancakes.

Sarah introduced me to Robin Williams' great take on golf a few years ago. The fact I have a healthy dose of Scottish blood made me laugh even harder.

Page 2-3 of this Morty Comix came from two leftover old post-its I had from Morty Comix # 2394, which were affixed to an outside door almost two weeks ago and were, incredibly, still there when I drove by  today even though the weather here has been rainy and windy!

Anyway, since someone in my town has seen fit to take down anything I put up on the Post Office community bulletin board, rip it into shreds and throw it away, I decided to tuck this Morty Comix behind the bulletin board. I know who the perpetrator is and I highly doubt she follows this blog, so I think this one will survive her strange and unvoiced hostility to my work.

McCleary is kind of a weird place. I tried to capture the culture in my Bezango WA 985 series. We enable our many local eccentrics and that adds to the surrealism.

Phone photo 1716

My modern a-go-go groovy wall hung toilet, which has caused a lot of damage to a wall and floor, has finally been exiled to Recycle-Land. This had a date inside the tank revealing it was manufactured in 1969. So at the same time when Neil Armstrong was the first human to set foot on the Moon, this hip artifact was being produced. Makes you think, don't it? Well, maybe for a few nanoseconds.

My other toilet, which has a date of 1966, is a normal, drab, ordinary device and it works just fine. And drabness, as I am fond of saying, is goodness. Give me normal and drab over cool any day.

Favorite Movie Quotes: Star 80

"They seem like really nice guys. Al is from from Racine, Ford. And Henry and B.B. are from Seattle, Oldsmobile."