Author: Brian J. Noggle

To my cats, I’m a LEGENDARY HERO. When the eldritch and unholy vacuum cleaner, the chupagato, emerges from its primordial lair, I always meet it on the open plain of the floor to struggle and wrestle with the beast until it retreats again into the darkness of the hall closet.

Without me, surely they realize, the chupagato would suck them up.

Which is why they tolerate me.

As part of a Father’s Day craft, my six-year-old was asked a series of questions about his father which someone transcribed onto a piece of paper which my son decorated with stickers and his handwritten name.

He got the name and age right for me, and for my job, he answered “Office” which is a pretty fair description as I am not a professional hockey player.

However, when asked the question If my Dad was a superhero he would be[sic], my son replied Robin.

Now, it’s bad enough that my son did not choose a respectable Marvel superhero like Spider-Man, The Thing, Iron Man, Captain America, Quasar, or Speedball. No, he chose a DC superhero.

Worse, he chose a sidekick. A DC sidekick, I’d like to add. Not a respectable Marvel sidekick like Nomad, the Falcon, or Bucky.

But the unkindest cut of all: My children know who Nightwing is.

That’s right.

Not only am I a DC sidekick, albeit the best known sidekick in the entire DC galaxy (I refuse to call it a universe or mythos (which I call the Marvel milieu to put it on par with Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Norse mythologies, all of which the Marvel mythos has subsumed)).

But I’m not even the best Robin there is. I’m not the Dick Grayson Robin, I’m the Jason Todd Robin.

I don’t know what I’ve done to turn the child against me so.

Behold, the cartoonish Maison Martin Margiela Artisanal corset and veil embroidered with found objects featured in the most recent WSJ magazine:

It looks like that poor girl was first dipped in a glue vat and then fell into a junk drawer.

The model, the beautiful Sam Rollinson, looks as though she’s in on the joke with us.

Nobody would really buy something like that and wear it, ainna?

I don’t go dancing much these days, not that I ever did, but I really had only one set of moves.

I called them The Azathoth.

Because I danced like A GOD.

Also, because humans who viewed the eldritch and inarticulate gyrations to the unholy beat of the indifferent cosmos instead of the music tended to be stricken with madness at the sight of arms gyrithing like tentacles and a head nodding and grinning like an arisen Great Old One.

I was literally a terror on the dance floor.

When I was young, I set Seeing Halley’s Comet again as a personal goal. I mean, let’s face it, the last go-round was less than spectacular. I might have seen it one night/morning from the porch of the mobile home where I was living at the time, but I might have only hoped that the blur I thought I saw was it.

But now that we’re in the 21st century, I’m setting my goals a little higher: Now, I want to enjoy the millennial celebration of The Battle of Hastings.

Yes, I know: These events are only five years apart some fifty years hence.

But:

To celebrate the latter, I’ll have to obtain a passport at the very least. At the not-quite-worst, I’ll have to convert to a rival religion as well.

Eh, ask me again in thirty years, when this blog will still be chugging slowly along on the old timey Internet they had in the twenties. The 2020s.

At a sales pitch this weekend, we were asked to fill out a worksheet with this leading question:

Strangely enough, I did not answer good grammar or proofreading.

But the top three values in life are:

1. To crush your enemies.
2. To see them driven before you.
3. To hear the lamentation of their women.

Needless to say, I was not the easiest touch in the room.

Continue reading “The Obvious Answer” →

The City of Springfield is auctioning off an old police car, and it could be mine for $500:

You know you want it. I want it just so I could say “It’s got a cop motor… cop tires… cop suspension… cop shocks…”

However, you know if you bought an old cop car, you wouldn’t be jumping draw bridges with it. You’d be constantly in a pack of cars on the highway doing four miles an hour below the speed limit because they thought you were looking for speeders.

So I’ll pass on asking for it for Father’s Day.