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Most of what I've written has been published as e-books and is available at Amazon. Match Play is a golf/suspense novel. Dust of Autumn is a bloody one set in upstate New York. Prairie View is set in South Dakota, with a final scene atop Rattlesnake Butte. Life in the Arbor is a children's book about Rollie Rabbit and his friends (on about a fourth grade level). The Black Widow involves an elaborate extortion scheme. Happy Valley is set in a retirement community. Doggy-Dog World is my memoir. And ES3 is a description of my method for examining English sentence structure.
In case anyone is interested in any of my past posts, an archive list can be found at the bottom of this page. I'd appreciate any feedback you may have by sending me an e-mail note--jertrav33@aol.com. Thanks for your interest.

Wednesday, July 30

The Not-So-Funny Pages

When I was young, I and other young kids always raced to the Sunday paper to get the funny pages, that colored section featuring Popeye, Li’l Abner, Dagwood (Yes, even seventy years ago he and Blondie were around.), Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, Superman, Dick Tracy, Andy Gump, Batman, and enough comic detectives and superheroes to fill about six pages. They were the funny papers. And today we may not have many of the old ones and a lot of the new ones aren’t very funny, but there are enough straight stories on the editorial and front pages that at first seem funny but really aren’t. Call them the Not-So-Funny Pages.

Today I read that Red Robin has won first prize for serving the unhealthiest meal known to man, the Monster Meal of double burger, endless fries, and monster milkshake, all coming in at 3,540 calories. Is that obscene or what? But tain’t funny, McGee.

This just in from Iraq: “A little more than a decade ago, Mosul was home to 60,000 Christians who practiced their religion in the midst of their Muslim neighbors in Iraq’s second-largest city. No more. Earlier this month, Muslim extremists who had captured the city ordered all Christians to convert to Islam, pay a tax, or face execution. They later revoked the tax as an option.” No wonder they’re fleeing the country. Tain’t funny, McGee.

Another use for the ubiquitous cell phone? An Arizona man was just arrested on voyeurism charges for turning on the video mode and placing his cell phone in a shopping basket and placing it on the floor next to women. Not a “selfie.” Maybe it could be called a “pantsie.” That’s a new wrinkle on the old tiny mirror on a shoe toe. Tain’t funny, McGee.

A Phoenix man carried an AR-15 rifle into Sky Harbor Airport, and even though in this funny state that was legal, it was frightening and stupid. Tain’t funny, all you gun supporters.

A man in Texas writes to Abby, “I am a man who has recently fallen in love with a beautiful male-to-female transgender. She considers herself a woman, but on social media lists herself as male. I am wondering if I should consider myself gay, bisexual or straight.” Only now could we have such a strange predicament. Fergus, in The Crying Game, fell in love with Jude, a man he thought was a woman. Was Fergus gay, bisexual, or straight? Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) in Dallas Buyers Club, came to understand and love Rayon, a male cross-dresser and wannabe transgender. Was Woodroof gay, bisexual, or straight? Same dilemma as for Abby’s correspondent. The lines between male and female have gotten really confusing.

As I said, the “Not-So-Funny Pages.”

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