Comic: Liars Across America

Despite most consumers thinking people who work in sales are liars, there's an old saying in sales that "buyers are liars", so apparently the distrust goes both ways.  This cartoon looks at many of the creative or not so creative lies customers tell sales professionals.  To read the comic, I suggest clicking on the image and making it full screen.  You could also download it after you click on it for the primo view, I suppose.  I've also loaded the panels individually below if you like scrolling down (it works either way).

For more fun (albeit words, not pictures), read one of my novels, such as the latest, Fast Guy Slows Down!  Or if you want to wait (but why would you want to?!), the new one comes out next week.

Music Video: OH, Jeff (4 May 1970)

 

When I lived in Kent, Ohio USA initially, I wasn't much interested in the May 4th tragedy where the Ohio National Guard killed a bunch of anti-war protestors, but over the years I gradually took an interest in the subject and read several books about it.  I even had shooting survivor Alan Canfora visit my classes a couple of times to talk about the incident.  I would say the best book (though likely not the most historically accurate, though it seems to get the crazy spirit of the time the most) is Kent State:  What Happened And Why by James Michener, which weirdly seems to be out of print now.  In any case, of all the victims, I felt the most affinity for Jeff Miller because he was a fellow rock and roller.  This song was written probably a quarter-century ago now, so it's astounding to realize that the song's subject would be an old man if he had lived, so I made the video a meditative set of visuals around the retirement that Jeff never got to have.

For more Wred Fright music, listen to the Yeast? 7" or give his latest album a listen or download at your favorite digital music site such as Soundcloud, Spotify, or Bandcamp!

New Single!: Scatological Scat

wredfright · Scatological Scat

This song is fairly sophomoric, but it makes me giggle, so here it is.  Maybe it will make you giggle also.  This area of songwriting is little explored except for GG Allin and Screaming Jay Hawkins and maybe some others who find toilet humor amusing (Zappa?).  It's mainly fake bass (low notes on a guitar with the bass turned up on the amp) and drums (including a wooden toolbox whacked with a steel pipe).  Lyrics are below.  Be aware that the song is catchy, so be careful if you are humming it at work tomorrow; don't sing the lyric unless you want to get fired or something.  

We have to talk.
There's something I have to tell you.

Better call the Marines!  There's something in my butt!
Better call the Army!  There's something in my butt!
Better call the Navy!  There's something in my butt!
Better call the Air Force!  There's something in my butt!

There's something in my butt!

Better call the Space Force!  There's something in my butt!
Better call NASA!  There's something in my butt!
Better call the NSA!  There's something in my butt!
Better call the CIA!  There's something in my butt!

Butt Butt Butt Butt Butt Butt Butt Butt and scat

Better call the mayor!  There's something in my butt!
Better call the governor!  There's something in my butt!
Better call the president!  There's something in my butt!
Better call the pope!  There's something in my butt!

For more Wred Fright music, listen to the Yeast? 7" or give his latest album a listen or download at your favorite digital music site such as Soundcloud, Spotify, or Bandcamp!

Edwin The Victorian Vampire Versus Elizabeth Dole

  

I was getting rid of an old notebook, and I stumbled across this old story that I don't think ever made it out of the notebook.  One of the characters ended up in My Man Gertrude, the longest Grumblebunny story, but I don't think this story itself did.  Anyway, it made me chuckle.  Maybe it will make you do the same.  Some references more obvious in 1999 may need to be explained in 2024 alas.  Anne Rice has died since the story was written, but maybe, like some other deceased authors, her publisher will get her to keep pumping out new books (with artificial intelligence, a.k.a. plagiarism machines, this is perhaps even more likely), so maybe she is coming out with a new book still.  More obscure now are The Doles.  Probably most folks have forgotten about them, and younger folks have probably never heard of them, but they were fairly prominent in politics in the late 20th Century/early 21st Century.  When this story was written, Elizabeth, or Liddy as she was often called, ran The American Red Cross and was paid a pretty large salary, though there's some kerfuffle about how she didn't accept her salary for a year or two.  After losing a presidential election, Bob made some dough hawking Viagra.  I updated the story for this post.  Liddy is still living somehow.  Perhaps she is a vampire?  Obviously, I was not a fan of the Doles at the time, but this story is still some weird sort of Dole fan fiction, I guess.  Eat a banana, like the fruit company, as Bob would say, and enjoy.  Anyway, here's some silliness.

Edwin the vampire was reading as usual in the duct system of the central blood bank when he noticed the time.  "Ah, brilliant," he thought as he ducttaped the new Anne Rice novel to the wall of the duct, "I'm bloody dying for a drink."

He turned off his flashlight and floated down the duct a bit, bored with levitation, shimmied the rest of the way, doing the swim and the twist and the anteater shuffle.  He peered through the duct grille.

Nobody home.  A drop of spit strolled down his right fang as he viewed the door to the walk-in refrigerator that held the newest blood.  He pushed the duct grille off the wall and got his growing blood belly through the hole into the room.

"Ugh.  I've got to lose a little weight," he mumbled out loud after not very gracefully dropping to the floor.  

He contemplated tearing one of his arms off.  That would take off a good chunk of weight in one go, but decided against it since that would be a bit extreme.  Instead, he sucked up his gut, opened the fridge door, and strolled into the blood fridge.  He walked down its rows of red-filled plastic bags and wanted to cry.  A kid in a candy store.  A man in a pornshop.  A woman in, well, a mall.  Let's skip the gross generalizations shall we and catch up to Edwin as he toured the vampiric equivalent of a wine cellar.

"Hmm," he pointed, "Perhaps I'll start off with some O.  I'm feeling cosmopolitan tonight.  Then maybe some B+ washed down with some A-.  Oh, and some B- for a daycap."

"I should have brought a shopping cart," he said as the bags piled up.

"Oh, well, I'll just reduce my load now," he said with a cackle.

He was about to slit open a bag of delicious O when a figure stepped from the shadows and said, "Not so fast, you blood-guzzling freak!"

Edwin halted and raised his eyebrows.  A Victorian gentleman never guzzles.  Admittedly, he does gargle with goat blood every so often, but that's only when he has human flesh caught in his teeth, which to be perfectly honest is fairly rare these days.  The blood bank is so much nicer.  It's like farming instead of hunting.

The figure moved closer, high heels clacking.

Edwin gasped as he recognized her as she emerged from the shadows.  Elizabeth Dole!

"That's right.  No more free lunches for you, Drac!  The Red Cross called me in as a special agent when they noticed that this area was always under an emergency blood supply."

"Curses!" Edwin thought.  He probably shouldn't have thrown those parties for his fellow creatures of the night.  Otherwise, he probably could have kept up his blood bank residence for years.  Nevertheless, the situation wasn't entirely lost.  After all, Liddy might make a tasty fresh snack.  Fresh food always beat frozen food anyway.

Edwin cleared his throat, looked the former head of the Red Cross up and down, and said, "No wonder that old man needed Viagra."

"You rude meanie!" Dole yelled and slashed at Edwin with her color-coordinated nails.
    
Edwin ducked and threw a pack of B+ at her.

Elizabeth caught it full in the face and fell over.

Edwin pounced and sank his teeth into her delicate faded Southern belle neck.

"Yuck!" he recoiled in horror, spitting.

A brownish liquid spurted out of Dole's neck.

"You taste like an automobile!" Edwin said in disgust.

Gears ground in Dole's neck.  She got up.  "WD30 to be exact."

She grabbed the vampire by the neck and picked him up like a doll.  "Now you know my secret No-No-No-Nosferatu!  That's why they sent me after you.  I'm an android created by Richard Nixon himself."

"But what about Bob?" Edwin choked out.

"He never knew," Liddy smiled as she pulled out a vintage placard sign with "Dole For President" on it.  

She flipped it over and Edwin saw the wooden sharpened stick point coming his way.  He used his vampire strength to swing his feet up and caught Liddy's arm before she planted the sign in his chest.  "Sorry, Liddy, but, like most dead people, I vote Democratic," he said, then executed a flip-twist-switch and planted her on the floor.

With her grip around his neck broken, Edwin let go of her arm with his legs and dashed backwards to the refrigerator door, grabbing a couple more pints of blood for later as he went out it.  As he slammed the door shut, he heard the yard sign penetrate into it, but it was too late.  Edwin was out a window and flying into the night.

"Drat!" he thought as he downed a pint quickly in mid-air, "Now I'll have to get another copy of the new Anne Rice."

The Front Yard War isn't out yet (only one more section to proofread for you scorecard keepers at home), but the previous Wred Fright novel is!  You can read the others also!

Music Video: A Kiss, A Cheek

 

The original recording of this song was on the Let's Get Killed compilation, so I threw that album on the video.  The kisses and cheeks are courtesy of myself, my mother, and my old Escaped Fetal Pigs pal Mark Justice.  Since there is the mention of a goat in the song, I asked Steamboat Goat to be in the video, but he told me he was too busy preparing for some mysterious role in the new Trump administration, so he told me to use his public domain appearance in Steamboat Willie instead.  I thought it came out all right.  With luck, you and the other ten people who watch it will enjoy it also.

For more Wred Fright music, listen to the Yeast? 7" or give his latest album a listen or download at your favorite digital music site such as Soundcloud, Spotify, or Bandcamp!

Book Review: F==k Your Flag: The New Wave Of American Political Violence - Vol. 1 by Randall Fleming

 

One of the most fun zines of the 1990s was The Angry Thoreauan by Rev. Randall Tin-Ear.  I am happy to report that the former reverend is back and now writes books.  He was kind enough to send me his latest for review, and, as I expected, it's a very good read.  He takes as his subject the interesting subculture of right wing flags, primarily found in rural America, but something that can be found across the country if you look for it (the love rural America has for this urbanite is quite astounding).  Since it looks like Trump will be returning to the presidency (it's election night as I write this, so it's not official yet), it will be interesting to see if a left wing subculture of flags will develop as a resistance and that might be the subject of a sequel (I did see some Harris signs in Sandusky, Ohio this election season).  We'll see.  In any case, back to the current book.  It has many photographs of flags taken by Randall along with some excellent journalism.  I probably don't subscribe to the same cultural analysis results that Randall does (I find Trumpism more amusing than threatening), but he deserves an award for his journalism.  Anyone who reads this blog regularly or my novels probably knows that I occasionally grumble about the quality of journalism today (with some notable exceptions such as Glenn Greenwald, Greg Palast, and Matt Taibbi).  For example, the last time I bought a New York Times (earlier this year), one of the articles was one journalist interviewing another journalist in the newsroom.  I don't remember the topic since it was a few months ago, but it struck me as pretty bad journalism.  Instead of going out in the world and investigating something, the journalist was just going to interview his colleague on the topic.  There might be some occasions where that might be appropriate, but the topic of the article was not one of them.  It read instead as if the journalist was just too lazy to do any actual reporting.

Not Randall.  Apparently, the dude got shot at more than once taking his photographs.  And I can believe it.  I ran into those types when I worked for the Census, and I'm sure the folks who fly those flags have gotten more paranoid over the last few years since then.  Randall also digs into things, investigating for example the companies that manufacture the flags, which seem to be mainly made in China.  No one seems to want to answer any of his questions, but kudos to him for asking them and sniffing out when something seems rotten.  Randall's bullshit detector is working.  That is in stark contrast to most of today's "journalists" who seem content to parrot uncritically government authorities and corporate press releases.

I found all of the book compelling reading, but the chapters I found most interesting were the ones on how the comic book character The Punisher's symbol has been adopted by militant second amendment types with Disney's acquiescence, the anti-Joe Biden flags (whatever happens tonight will at least result in us being free of that disaster soon), and the flags manufacturers possibly being linked to a subtle Chinese attack on America.  As Randall concludes, "These flags are cheaply made, easy to buy, and seemingly everywhere. If any Chinese import should have a heavy tariff (a burden that ultimately rests on the buyer), it should be this shit. There’s nothing patriotic about buying desecrated U.S. flags from a hostile nation that uses buyer data to further inflame American politics."

It will be interesting to see if this subculture continues to flourish.  I did see a firefighter version of the thin blue line (police state flag) Randall writes about.  This one had a red stripe instead of a blue one, so it appears the subculture continues to grow for the time being, something that Randall clearly thinks is not a good sign for the health of the country.

The book is available from https://metrohopbooks.com.

If you want to read something else after you read Randall's book, then my latest novel is available at https://www.wredfright.com/p/fast-guy-slows-down.html.  The new one, The Front Yard War, is almost done being proofread, so look for it soon as well.