A short story in two parts (and in reverse order!)

Part one two: Why, Ziggy and his parrot are reading books in an attempt to explore each other's worlds and arrive at an understanding! What could be happening here?



Part two one: Ah, it seems that Ziggy ran across this bizarre amalgamation of walking and flying, and in an attempt to combine the two is collaborating with his parrot to discover the secret to levitation.

It ain't funny, but it sure makes sense.

A short story in two parts

Part one: Bird gets angry at our protagonist for perceived cheapness.


Part two: Bird poisons local food in a petty attempt at vengeance.

I tell you, I was the soldier in that photo!

It's a monument to all of the nobodies and unknowns in the world! Like the soldier and nurse who kissed at the end of World War II, masked people who rob bakeries and ghostwriters to celebrity memoirs! God bless you people for staying out of the way and giving credit to those with fame to spare.

Pychedelic Storytime Friday

The teller to the left leaned toward ol' Frizzy Hair and whispered, "He means the used cardboard boxes from the back. I'll go get them." Ziggy's nose upturned, he waited with baited breath and began to draw on the spirits and advisors of the astral plane within himself, that level of consciousness accessible by only the most adept and socially inept:


. . . And arrived on a tall mountaintop, to face that wizened, decrepit representative of his subconscious self, that bearded out representative of his submerged ego who only speaks in bland, occasionally-offensive platitudes like "Change we can believe in", "Send our window washers back to Kyrgyzstan when they came from!" and "Protect Social Security! Kill an old person with untraceable poison!"

This side of Ziggy's personality was not one he was proud of - it had been repressed for a reason - and yet in confronting it Ziggy began to sense something about himself, a hidden bigotry that could be channeled, perhaps, rather than become mere energy squandered. As usual, Ziggy's quest to make friends while discovering his inner self led him to dial an old friend from this astral plane, and so ensued an enthralling, largely imaginary, one-sided conversation which ended in the typical manner:


For while Ziggy's friends were eager to help him, their opinion of his intelligence was not to be overestimated, a characteristic which persisted into the astral plane. Ziggy's spirit journey abruptly ended, for the bank teller had arrived with Ziggy's precious, precious cardboard boxes and a cryptic message:


"Oh, it's you," she said, correcting herself. "Just the boxes, then."

Bedeviled Appliances

"And now, if you'll turn this way, I'll tell you the story of the Revengful Dishwasher, which will conclude the tour. Y'see, three years ago I had a habit of cooking up bootleg hooch in my Whirlpool. One morning, after finishing a particularly potent rinse cycle, the still within up and exploded, sending fortified spirits flying everywhere! Ever since it's felt a continual need to melt every plastic object within. This concludes the tour of my Hell House."

Creepy People Who Talk To You On the Bus One-Liner Sunday (Desperate Catch-Up Edition)

"They - they may take me soon. I realized that after they finally repossessed our walls. I'm going to make a run for the Dairy Queen. Meet me there in five minutes and we'll talk about your crappy GM."


Twenty minutes later, Ziggy had a fresh pair of slippers.


This is how Ziggy excuses himself when surprised by sudden visitors while viewing his cute baby animal websites.


Ziggy's visitors have already tagged this strip with the word "cynical." Perhaps that's warranted: the answer to this bird's question is that the base of the bath is a pipe that goes directly to the kitchen of a Golden Corral buffet.


"OO-RAH ONGOLO MAKEESH!" Agents of the IRS will often begin to summon demons as a way of intimidating the taxpaying American into not staying long.


Unfortunately those two words, in their dialect, translate loosely as, respectively, "white meat" and "dark meat."


Not to mention that fact that these aliens have finally learned about out culture and our lack of common sense and have gotten very efficient at "processing" humans.


"The other secret is that I murder everybody I tell this to in an effort to preserve the first secret! It's funny how life works - enjoy your sloppy joe!"


This anthropomorphization of a common household object would have been more convincing if Ziggy hadn't told us last week that his cat needed "meow meow" money for heroin.


Ziggy has a secret Telephone Computer Voice fetish that he satisfies at a costly $2.99 a minute.