Yesterday, Saturday, I was awakened after only a three hours sleep by two telemarketing-type calls. This was around Nine and Nine Thirty in the morning. I thought that even normal Day People liked to sleep in on Saturday mornings. Is that not too early for them to be calling? It completely messed me up in any case.

I did enjoy some of my unfortunate waking hours watching two discs worth of episodes of the sixth season of the Simpsons and it is nice to be reminded of just how awesome that show was back when it was awesome. It is hard to believe that those episodes were like a decade and a half old now. Seriously, they should be feeding that stuff to the new kids growing up today. By force if necessary.

And now, because I can, here’s a story:

There was an astronaut called Deke Manly who was always getting drunk and getting in fights with horses. Eventually none of the horses in town would even let him get close to them. The scientists who he worked with didn’t know about his drunken horsefighting, so when they happened to notice that, no matter what, horses would not come within twenty feet of Deke, they naturally assumed that Deke had some sort of horse-repelling field. As it turned out some horses had stolen a spaceship back in ’79 and colonized a planet where they were now massing their forces to return to Earth as conquerors. The scientists shot Deke into space and landed him on the Horse Planet figuring this would put the Horse Armies into disarray. Deke had no horse repelling field, so instead the horses just arrested him and threatened to kill him if Earth didn’t surrender. Earth didn’t surrender. For his last request Deke was given some booze and got so drunk that he had no problem taking on all the Horse colonists. After he’d clobbered all the Horses he didn’t know how to get home, so he brought all the Horses to the hospital and helped them get back to full health. Then they were all friends and the Horse Invasion of Earth was called off and Deke was finally cured of his drunken tendency to fight horses. The end.

In my office at work there is a radio that used to play Alice Cooper’s show at night, but for the last year has instead played a radio show by some other musicman who I don’t even really know or care to know. I could probably get a whole post out of just complaining about how I perceive this new guy to pale in comparison to the Alice Cooper show, but instead I have a much more specific complaint that isn’t localized to that show which makes the bulk of this opening paragraph a complete waste of space.

So anyway, I was listening to this show one of the nights this week and the topic of breast feeding babies in public came up. From what I heard everyone on the show came down on the “it should be allowed” side, which is where I land too, so I agree with them. But then, as always seems to occur when the topic comes up, some guy on the show started joking about how sexy breasts being out in public would be. This, I feel, is hurting the cause and yet it seems like it comes up every time the topic does.

Okay, I fully admit that my status as a heterosexual male is “amateur” at best, but even though I mostly try to keep out of that whole scene, I also reluctantly have to admit that I am sexually attracted to women. I do genuinely think breasts are pretty great. But when they’re stripped of an erotic context, they’re just body parts. I mean I can enjoy a woman’s lips or eyes just as much and they’re on display pretty much at all times, but not in an erotic context. I’m certain plenty of people are attracted to the chests of men, right, but those can be displayed just fine in most places. Why isn’t this the same?

A big part of the argument against breastfeeding in public seems to lie in the idea that breasts are somehow purely sexual things, which is pretty stupid considering their actual primary purpose is, you know, breastfeeding. Bare breasts have no special power that will corrupt society. If anything has that power it is the mystique that is built up around nudity the bare breasts that has apparently turned men into such slavering idiots that even the sight of a breastfeeding woman seems sexual to them. We should do something about that instead.

Anyway, I figure I should cut my rant short here because I know from experience that anything more and I will just be repeating the same points in different words. And anyway, nobody will ever let the mystique of nudity fade away. Keeping everyone horny is too useful as an advertising tool.

I guess it is worth mentioning that I made it to payday without running out of food. On the weekend my mother made a turkey dinner and I took home some leftovers which lasted for two days after that. And I also ended up buying a pizza with credit that I shouldn’t be spending. And today I got groceries and I am only, practically, out of money again instead of actually out of money again.

Haiku!

Deliver the mail
and you will be my best friend.
I’m quite pro-Mail Man.

I did not realize how much I liked mail men. Go figure.

Anyway, in a continuation of my thoughts from last week, it is still Winter here. We’ve been getting snow regularly enough that there are actual snowbanks as tall as me, which was the exact sort of thing I remembered from my youth that I knew we weren’t getting as much of lately. While it is somewhat reassuring to have things “back to normal” after several years of Barely-Winters, I still prefer the Barely-Winters because they’re easier to get through. Heaven help me if I ever actually have to go through a Heavy-Winter. When I got home from work last night my street was blocked off so that what seemed to be an army of plows could get rid of all the snow built up. It’s nice to be on an important street instead of some rural one who is lucky to see a plow.

But in spite of the Winter, I was awakened early today by sweltering heat in my apartment as the sun beat down on my windows. I was all dehydrated. Sigh. I can’t wait until I’m old enough that I can complain constantly about the temperature without feeling like I’m too young to be doing so.

I really do think there should be more words that start with X, but I don’t think these should be those words. Maybe when I do the next year’s worth of Phone Guys strips, I’ll have Jeremy try his hand and come up with something better.

And then a new Secret Government Robots:

And then, some other thing:

This is already the third comic I’ve done this year with characters standing on green grass under blue sky. I should lay off that for a while.

“I think I have some Mentos around somewhere… No, I better save those for the weekend.”

This is something I actually just said to myself. I was wondering if I had anything to eat. Being poor sucks. To eat between now and next Wednesday (pay day) I have three microwave vegetable/rice deals, some oranges, some matzah and that one pack of Mentos I got for Christmas that has been sitting around since. Just call me Rich Uncle Pennybags.

And yes, I did say that out loud. I like talking to myself. As for those who like to say that talking to yourself is a sign of insanity, I make the same case for talking to other people, so shut it.