Make the Gruel Thick and Slab

MACFARKLE
by Bill Fakesmeare
Act IV, Scene 1
Setting: a dark cave with

thunder and lightning
on the outside
and a GIANT pot in the middle.

DOUBLE, DOUBLE, TOIL
and trouble; fire burn, and

caldron bubble!

WELCOME TO ANOTHER serving of ABC Wednesday, this time, heavily seasoned with the eye of newty ELEVENTH LETTER! (For more spoons of this week’s Alphabet hell-broth, click the sidebarring button —>)

is for...

kicks!

HOW DO YOU get yours? Some of the ones I’ve best experienced have come to me through special words, namely, puns! (COME ON, does that really surprise you?) May I trick-or-treat you to some timelies? Hold out

your candy bag,
these are sweet!

WHAT HAPPENED when two vampires had a race?
They finished neck and neck.

WHY DO vampires play poker?
Because the stakes are high.

WHO DID

the vampire
marry?
The girl necks door.

WHY IS the air so clean and healthy on Halloween?
Because so many witches are sweeping the sky.

WHAT DO naughty ghosts use in school?
Cheat sheets.

WHY DO mummies have trouble keeping friends?
Because they’re too wrapped up in themselves.

WHY DO

cats
prefer wizards to witches?
Because sorcerers often have milk in them.

WHY DID the witch keep turning into Mickey Mouse?
She kept having Disney spells.

WHAT DO you call a skeleton that keeps pressing the doorbell?
A dead ringer.

WHAT KIND of plate does a skeleton eat off?
Bone china.

WHY DIDN’T the skeleton go bungee jumping?
He didn’t have

the guts.

WHY WAS the werewolf arrested at the butcher shop?
He was caught chop lifting.

WHY WAS there no food after the monster’s party?
Because everyone was a-goblin.

WHAT DID the doctor say to the witch in the hospital?
With any luck you’ll be well enough to get up for a spell.

WHO won the skeleton beauty contest?
No body.

WHY DON'T witches
wear flat hats?
Because there’s no point in it.

WHAT DO you get when you cross a witch and a clown?
A brew ha-ha!

WHAT HAPPENED at the cannibal’s wedding party?
They toasted the bride and groom.

HAD enough?
I thought so.

Toe of froggily,
SparkleFarkle~~~~~*

RIP, my Mollo.

P.S. CREDIT: Illustrated letter "K" by artist Kathryn Finter

Candy, Little Girl? (Post Toasty No. 2)

Mother’s Little Helper

LAST WEEK, MY PRAYERS were answered when Adventures of a Wanna-Be Supah Mommy declared, "Why bother spewing verbal vomit when you can sum it all up in one neat little Post-it note?" I said, "BRILLIANT!" and gave an arms-open-wide welcome to:

Click for details!

(Find today’s list of entries HERE .)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

My This Week’s
"GO" AT IT:

I WAS BORN in a small town during the early Fifties. My parents AND everybody’s parents drank. INCESSANTLY. And, for a lot of mothers, Valium was considered a continuous-feed vitamin. I remember one time, when I was just a smitch sitting near the reception desk in the doctor’s office waiting for my mom, who had an appointment, I overheard two nurses under breath-talking and eyebrow-raising about my classmate’s mom, Mrs. Weigert. Specifically, Pamela Weigert. It became confusing because after a while, they referred to her by a funny sounding first name. Many years later, I got the nickname-gist: "DiazePam." Anyway, here’s my point (and I DO have one): With present-day DUI accident statistics being what they are, I’ve come up with a theory:

EIGHT WORDS:

Image credit: Wistful Supplies
People were much better
drivers in the Fifties.

(hic!) Cheers!
SparkleFarkle~~~~~*
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

RIP, my Mollo.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

THIS WEEK’S All About MEme Monday
(sponsored by blog bud, SupahMommy ),
asks join-inners (You can be one, too!

Just "click" here!)

to Seinfeldy list

FIVE
"Breathtaking," White
LIES YOU'VE TOLD:

1. I’m sure none got in your hair, you don’t smell like vomit at all.

2. Sister-in-law? She’s more like a sister to me!

3. I NEVER pee in the shower.

4. I didn’t know it was loaded.

OKAY, OKAY. I HAVE ONLY one I’m willing to come clean about worth sharing:

5. I ONCE TOLD a hardly a favourite, braggart teacher that a ten-inch ball I secretly covered in a few layers of Reynolds Wrap was a foil ball our family (including grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins) had been adding to for the last umpteen years. (I may have claimed six, then again, I think I said eleven. Don’t quote me.) She was so impressed (Actually, I don’t know what she was being, but she did light up like a Christmas tree, that’s for sure, which truly fueled my excitement !) that she asked me to bring it to class, where it was passed around from student to student and made a MAJOR deal out of (lots of oohing and ahhing). A couple of details that the story wouldn’t be complete without: She was my daughter’ s third grade teacher and I was forty-five years old at the time.

SEVEN WORDS:

1937 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, image credit: straatis
Nose as long as
a telephone wire!

Honestly,
SparkleFarkle~~~~~*

RIP, my Mollo.

Fall is Falling!

"MAY MOTHER NATURE ALWAYS give

you the best baths." –John O’Neill

HAPPY
just about, give or take several hours,
Erin Go Bark
MONDAY!

(HERE’S THE GIST: Every first day of the work week, I get caninely and Irishy green around the edges, delivering a bow-wowed, feel good blessing inspired by my beloved pupsy companion, Janey O’ Sullivan, who says everything without having to say anything too out loudly and, occasionally, author John O'Neill, to warm the cockles and gently jumpstart the days in front. Then, it’s your GO FETCH! That is to say, take the poochified approbation, above, and bark about it expound on it-- OR, heck, just name something favorite of yours that is green! Today, I’m arfing about the latter:

ONE OF MY FAVORITE shades of green is

Photo credit: layoutsparks.com
when it turns!

Pile high and jump in;

repeat often.

SIX WORDS:
Don’t worry what the neighbors think.

Your pal,
SparkleFarkle~~~~~*


RIP, my Mollo.

Have Paddle, Will Go Up the Crik

WELCOME TO
Six Word
SATURDAY!

Wondering if Dracula ever has ticks.

(FOR MORE OF WHAT many others are doing, today, phrased or sentenced in six words, click this —> Six Word Saturday Shout-Outs , OR on the SWS button riding shotgun —>)

YEP AND UH-HUH! Trick-or-treat excitey I be and, also, pretty soon out the door to do some highly anticipated, extra-special thrift storing!

THE

library book

I checked out last week (Halloween: A Grown-up’s Guide to Creative Costumes, Devilish & Fabulous Festivities by Joanne O’Sullivan, Lark Books, New York, NY, 2003) was

chock full

of superlative sparks for Halloween dress-up.
I. AM. IN. SPIRED!
All I have to do now is
snag my main costume ingredient,

Photo credit: synergybeauty.com
a deep blue BIG dress,

and sew faux lilies and pads to it. This year, I will be going bump in the Halloween night to the tune of me as

Monet’s Water Lilies!

I MAY EVEN attach some freeze-dried pollywogs for effect. They sell those at Whole Foods, right? I’m going to make the suggested matching pillbox hat, too, lily-flowered and with a Giverny-esque, miniature fish tank bridge up top!!!

***light heady and breathing heavy like a rabid Peter Lorre***

GOOD GOOD GRIEF! All of a sudden, I have the urge to bob for taffy and pull some apples! <— Hmm, what can I say? This time of the year is so... so... SO EXHILARATING and

TWO WORDS:

fun size!

Love and

kisses,
SparkleFarkle~~~~~*

RIP, my Mollo.

Salad Days

Mom?!

"SOME FOLKS SAY it was a miracle. Saint Francis suddenly appeared and knocked the next pitch clean over the fence. But I think it was just a lucky swing." --Jack Handey

HAPPY
Jack Handey

FRIDAY!

IT’S GREAT that there are so many individually wrapped (for freshness) saints to pick from when you’re in need of additional woe-support (assistance during times when direct-messaging God isn’t cutting it, or He’s answered, but He's said "NO!"). Enter an irreverent Andy Samberg as Mark Wahlberg, my private faux St. Francis of Assisi:

"Hey, dog. How's it goin'? I like your fur, that looks really great. So you're a dog, right? What's that all about? (dog obliviously stares ahead) Okay, well it was great to meet you. Say ‘hi’ to your mother for me, okay? (stands up) Now I'm gonna talk to a donkey."

"Hey, donkey. What's goin' on? You're a donkey, I like that. You eat apples, right? I produce Entourage. (donkey just stares ahead, oblivious) Okay, talk to you later, donkey. (stands up) Now I'm gonna talk to a chicken."

"Hey, chicken. How's it hangin'? A lot of people wanna eat you, but I just wanna talk to you, okay? We should do a film together, whaddya think? (chicken looks around uninterested) Hey, chicken, I'm not joking around, okay? This is the real thing, I mean this could be huge! (chicken continues to look uninterested) All right, well, think about it. Say ‘hi’ to your mother for me, alright? Now I'm gonna talk to a goat."

"Hey, goat. It's good to see you. I like your beard. I had a beard like that in The Perfect Storm. Did you see that movie? (goat blankly stares ahead) Did ya, did ya see The Perfect Storm, goat? (goat, still staring ahead, doesn’t seem to care) Say ‘hi’ to your mother for me, okay?"

SOMEHOW, ALL OF THIS has me riding the Wayback Machine, again (I know, I KNOW. I think all that bicycle riding I did behind the bug spray truck when I was a kid has finally caught up with me.), remembering

my mom
slathering herself with a mixture of

iodine

(big bottle) and baby oil (Johnson’s economy-size). Disguised as a potential suitor (Mom was a --Gasp!– divorcee.), a forever, internally warring with overbearing mother-issues, local pharmacist ("Uncle Walt," to us smiches, whether we wanted to call him that or not), hoping to melanomically shave a few years off women’s lives, enthusiastically pushed the notion (even to suggest substituting the baby oil with Pompeian olive oil to get that famous St. Tropez tan).

MY LOOKING-FOR-MAN-BAIT MOM bought the idea ("You kids need a father.") and proceeded to baste herself in the backyard from high noon till 3 pm ("when the sun’s most important"). Peeking out from my bedroom window (To my neighborhood friends: "What? Uh, no. NOPE. That’s NOT my mom."), I saw her for what she was: a patent leather sweet potato wearing a bathing suit, morphing into an oversize baseball mitt after having to blot herself when the orange,

bubbling crude
finally got to her.

THAT SUMMER, Mom never got a tan, OR a "man," for that matter. She married my stepfather instead. (No, whew! NOT "Uncle Walt.") And on sunny days from noon until three, I played in my room.

~~~

SO, WHAT'S for supper?
TWO WORDS:

I yam!

Best weekend to ya!
SparkleFarkle~~~~~*

RIP, my Mollo.

The Jig Is Up!

WELCOME,
this week’s ABC Wednesday

letter number TEN,

Bob Barker getting jiggy.
COME ON DOWN!

(For ladles-more of this week’s Alphabet Soup, "click" on the above blog event caption, or on the sidebarring button —> )

is for...

YOU KNOW, IF I WAS going to stick with my original plan, I’d be asking you to give it up for

Jack-in-the-Pulpit.

Since the one in my backyard has just gone to seed,
I’d likely-probably --no, definitely, because that
was my intention in the first place before

I got distracted--

be going on about it’s

fairy, tomato red fruit

having some sort of magical hidden agenda, and throw in my two cents about the virtues of Campbell’s soup, too, I suppose. But, in the middle of the night-meanwhile, I came across another "J" --in my sleep of all places.

"J" is now for the brash, mean, cold-hearted, scoundrelly drunkard/gambler and, lest we forget, horse beater of whom I haven’t had a reason to think about since Pleasant Rowland and her girl gang over tah American Girl introduced my daughter Puppet and I to him in the Felicity: An American Girl book series.

HELLO,

Jiggy Nye! (?)

OOPS!

I mean

Jiggy Nye!
(You have to admit, there is a smitch of a resemblance

between him and Lost in Space's Dr. Smith.
OKAY. Humour me then. LOL!
***re-examining first blog image***
Uncanny!
Jiggy and Bob Barker may have been separated at birth! )

IN THE MOVIE based on the juvenile book series (Felicity: An American Girl Adventure, 2005), colonial tanner-on-the-edge-of-town Nye was played by actor

Geza Kovacs,

but in my Zs, cream cheese frosting-wigged (The mother lode of ala modes, let me tell ya!) liberal pundit

James Carville

assumed the "role of a lifetime," as he put it. Instead of an American Girl equine abuser, though, Carville’s interpretation presented his character as a that of town cryer outside our local Sundance Theater. "Jiggy" had heard "Bob" (Jimbo insisted on calling his idol that.) Redford was in the neighborhood, and he wanted to impress. "Mr. Nye" handed out smaller than Bitty Baby-size (<— another plug for Mattel) paper umbrellas –the kind you’d get in a cocktail, but without the cocktail, to which I said, "RATS!," because, by this time, I could have used a drink– as reminders to ALWAYS wear sun screen. Oddly enough, James was a convincing Jiggy Nye as well as a Coppertone spokesperson. People thanked him, some on bended knee, for his Baton Rouge-speak lightly sprinkled with the word "ye." My umbrella was red and wasn’t torn. My voicemail told me to come home and make apple heads.

(Carvilley, eh? AND Carve-ly!)

Winesap, anyone???
(Winesap? Was that the forerunner for

"Whatsup"?! OR just someone saying
"Winesap" with a head cold?
Only in my dreams? Thought so.)

THEN,

my alarm
went off. Thank God.

CAN YOU IMAGINE? All that WITHOUT the aid of a bedtime "pharmaceutical" as a dreamscape enhancer. Kudos to warm milk!

SIX WORDS:
Dream interpreters, please form a line.

Your sleepy time girl (Apologies: I’ve never been one to use the word "gal."),
SparkleFarkle~~~~~*

RIP, my Mollo.

Stick ‘Em Up! (Post Toasty No. 1)

MY PRAYERS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED! This from Adventures of a Wanna-Be Supah Mommy : "Why bother spewing verbal vomit when you can sum it all up in one neat little Post-it note? They can be fun, lighthearted notes to self, to-do lists or just plain bitch notes left for others. Your choice. Get creative. Here's a link for making your own POST-ITS. All you'll need to do is CREATE them, save them and then upload them to your blog post when you are finished. It's a terribly fun and easy way to get a great post! Come back to

("The Gist" button)
my blog
(For the latest Post-it Note Tuesday listing, click "my blog," above)

on Tuesday to link up your post with Mr. Linky and to meet some other fantastic bloggers. See what they have to say on "Post-it Note Tuesdays" with SupahMommy"

ARE YOU "in"?
I AM! Definitely:

I’ve discovered a rat infestation. I’ve been "blessed" with new neighbors! So, you know how it goes. You don’t want to start off on any wrong feet. But, although they haven’t been here long, already it’s been tough. For starters, when I attempted to Welcome Wagon-y introduce myself, I met Mr. and Mrs. Lack of Reciprocation instead. No kidding, they wouldn’t tell me their names! Politely, I smiled and "backed" home. Seriously, I’m allergic to static; I wish this could have gone better.

THEN THREE DAYS AGO HAPPENED, which I couldn’t leave unaddressed, or else I would have pulled all my hair out. The new neighbors departed early in the day with visitors who left their dog (the same pupster whose "parents" afforded unleashed freedom to him in our front yard that same morning, placing our Janedog at the end her rope, literally AND otherwise, and me having up to bring her inside till the coast was clear, which it never was until the new neighbors were on their merry littles) chained outside in their backyard while they were away for SEVERAL (<– Yes, ALL capitals.) hours!

BOOTS (My dog and I immediately got to over-our-fence know him on a first name basis. Too bad our new neighbors don’t

wear tags.

It would make it a lot easier to get to know them.) Where was I? Yeah, Boots barked incessantly for six, count ‘em, SIX hours straight! Poor guy, he didn’t know what was up. Jane and I pretty much babysat the lonely, little arfy all the live-long day.

FOR THE RECORD, our Janey is otherwise the only dog dwelling on our dead end street. I tried going door-to-door/phone calling to explain to the rest of our neighbors that the bow-wowish brouhaha wasn’t coming from our dog (who holds the record in canine courtesy extension by not speaking out of turn and, in fact, NEVER barks up the wrong tree either, just check Ripley's), but holding the distraught poochie’s paw turned out to be the easier approach, and truly the one in Bootsie’s best interest.

AT THE FIVE AND A HALF-HOUR MARK, though, I had just about had it. By that time, my Saturday had more than circled the drain. (No worries: I was careful not to let on to Boots about how annoyed I was; he was feeling bad enough already. Heck, at one point in the afternoon, he took an old chew toy of Jane’s and tried to make a communication contraption out of it to

phone home!

The day had definitely redefined the word "ruff" for him.) I probably shouldn’t have, but to gentle the smoke rolling from my ears, I gave Bootsers a scritch behind his ears and then posted this on Mr. and Mrs. Lack of Recip’s door:


ALTHOUGH I’M CONFIDENT that I'm okay in Boots' book (Treat-givers are meticulously filed away in treat-givees’ gray matter, seldom to be forgotten.), the new neighbors haven’t been so speaky with me. Not yet, anyway, but I’m going to allow them the benefit of the doubt, keeping in mind that congeniality isn’t their strong suit. But, oh, no, I’m not going to be careless about it. That is to say, if I see either one of them cleaning a shotgun on their front porch, I’ll scare up some packing boxes, PRONTO.

AN OUCHY P.S.: The morning after this adventure, I awoke to the sound of a single goose honking like they do when they’re heading south for the winter, but not in V-formation and much closer to the ground. I peeked out my window to see the "What gives?" and made eye contact with Boots at one of a lead and one of my new neighbors at the other.

FOUR WORDS:

Thanks, Supah Mommy, this has been simply exhilarating!
SparkleFarkle~~~~~*

RIP, my Mollo.