Category Archives: The Humor Zone

The Good, the Bad, and the Scantily Clad

01 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Sci-Fi Themes, The Humor Zone

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From: Pinterest.com Legend of the Cryptids - applibot

From: Pinterest.com Legend of the Cryptids – applibot

In setting up my web site graphic, Searching for Light in the Darkness, I put a lot of thought into the graphic art to fit the brand (translation: burned-up days surfing the internet for artists and sites).  It was by pure luck I stumbled on Lori Nix’s “The Library” (thank you Google Search).  I get numerous positive hits on my profile page on about.me because of Lori’s unique dioramic photography.

I put the same amount of effort when working on characterization for my stories. I’m always on the hunt for that perfect face to fit a character; that unique combination of setting and portraiture that might even make a good book cover.  Sites like Pinterest, DeviantArt.com, and other graphic artist sites offer a plethora of ideas. When I find one I like, I collect them on my Pinterest Characters Board for future reference.

I’m in the middle of rewriting a fantasy; contemporary gal crash lands in a dark-ages alternate world, almost hanged as a witch, has to fight an ancient darkness, death, dismemberment, general mayhem – good wholesome fun. In my search for concept character art to fit the story setting, I discovered a disturbing trend.

What is with graphic art portrayals of warrior women in outfits befitting a harlot?

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Bacon – Won the West, Men’s Hearts, and maybe the Apocalypse

18 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by in Dystopian Subjects, The Humor Zone, Writing Dystopian Themes

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From Wikipedia Commons: Bartolomeo Passarotti – The Butcher Stall

From Wikipedia Commons: Bartolomeo Passarotti – The Butcher Stall

Bacon has seen a resurgence of popularity in recent months (not that it hasn’t been a durable headliner for those of us who enshrine smoked meats). Our local AA baseball team is hosting Bacon Days Friday and Saturday, September 19-20, a celebration of America’s favorite artery-clogger, to start with a 5K run that includes a stop to eat bacon.  You can read about it in the Morning Call, but I’ll venture a guess the event won’t be mentioned in Runners World.

I’m an enthusiast of foods we might see in the aftermath of apocalyptic events (see my earlier article, Expiration – Never). The cured and smoked belly of Sus scrofa domesticus, better known as the domesticated descendent of the wild boar, has been a part of ancient societies for thousands of years.  Along with flour, beans and brown sugar, it kept people alive when pioneers wagon-ho’d to the Wild West. You could say bacon is a founding food. It’s a national treasure, like the bald eagle.

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Romance on the High Seas

03 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Musing, The Humor Zone

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Kovacevic - DepositPhotos.com

Kovacevic – DepositPhotos.com

Romance writers love to tell period tales of pirates, sailors, sea captains, and the women whose hearts are broken by them. Might have had something to do with why seafaring men of yesteryear considered the presence of women on ships to be bad luck.  Much has changed since then.  An entire industry evolved around getting folks on cruise ships to find or rekindle love’s illusive spark.

A recent weeklong cruise gave me an opportunity to observe romantic rituals of people sequestered on today’s modern SS Gluttonous Seas. Enthralled by the dichotomy of behaviors, I discovered love could still be a challenge for some, despite the best efforts of ship crew to conspire, coddle, and coerce folks to love the one you’re with. The following is a summary of my questionably unscientific study.

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Sign-otopia

20 Tuesday May 2014

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From: WarningLabelGenerator

From: WarningLabelGenerator

We have a global addiction to signs.  Somewhere in human development, common sense became … not so common … requiring we put warning labels on everything to protect ourselves from … ourselves.  We’ve become, in a sense, a signotopian society.

Journalists have an unending supply of stories where miscreants scream at the government for letting them be so reckless, followed later with an equal amount of disdain of government’s heavy handedness infringing on individual rights.  Don’t believe it?  Both sides of the argument have a team of lawyers who’d be glad to send you a brochure.  Where it’s led us is a profligacy of visual aids with words and stick figures.

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Bride of Frankenchicken

07 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by in Dystopian Subjects, Future Trends, Sci-Fi Themes, The Humor Zone, Writing Dystopian Themes

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From: amusingplanet.com

From: amusingplanet.com

Anybody out there think last year’s weather was normal?  Bounty hunters are still looking for Punxsutawney Phil.  Or is it Phyllis now?  Who can keep up with the changes anymore?  Harder still, I’m unsure what’s considered normal. What I do know, based on the regularity of Chicken Little teeth gnashing, much of the world is warming, and farmers have been encouraged to rethink industrial agriculture.

A recent article in a local paper by Evan Halper, described how food scientists are Hot on the Trail of New Food Sources better suited to endure the hazards of climate change.  You had me at “new food sources”.  I love it when geneticists and agrobiologists talk shop, especially over cocktails, and think of ways to further jigger the natural world.  It gives us writers of dystopian fiction new fodder in a currently overcrowded, literary genre.  I had a little fun on the subject last year with the idea of synthetic meat, How Do You Like Your Schmeat.  Never mind that we’ve have thrown in the towel on global warming, for a new arena of carnival freaks about to make their debut, I can’t wait for the ticket booth to open.

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Villainous Nyms and Roller Derby Girls

27 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by in The Humor Zone

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From: derbygirlart.com

From: derbygirlart.com

Everybody loves a good villain, even better, a good villain name.  To find a villain name that over time becomes a trademark of evil, the very mention of which instills a chill, is every author’s dream. Hannibal Lector, Darth Vader, Count Dracula, Cruella De Vil, Freddy Kruegar, Dr. Doom, Adolf Hitler – to name but a very few. Marvel and DC comics popularized pseudonyms to associate functional similarities like, Magneto, Dr. Octopus, Mystique, Joker, or Blackheart. For me, the most inventive process of nomenclature for faux villains are pseudonyms used by Roller Derby girls with altered famous names, aptronyms – a name that matches the occupation of its owner, or charactonyms for fictional characters suggesting a distinctive trait.

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Never Too Old to Wii

22 Wednesday Jan 2014

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From: Photobucket.com

From: Photobucket.com

Now before you go and think this an advertisement for adult pampers, check the spelling.  It’s called “Wii”, that home game craze every family owns for entertainment (except mine of course).  I remember a time in my life when video games held my attention.  I was obsessed with the game, Doom, and subsequent upgrades.  Then life came along, kids, a little thing called responsibility, and gaming took whatever form entertained the kids.  Doom was not on the approved list.  Now that the kids have flown the coop, I haven’t touched a game pad of any kind for two decades, and never felt a need to rediscover anything that keeps me from writing.

While together with my daughters over the holidays, they introduced me to Wii. My first reaction was … it’s a kid’s thing?  I mean, really, it lacked serious graphics popular in today’s gaming community, it’s character icons a throwback to Weebleville. Doom had better resolution in the nineties.  And what a creative name for it … wee … something toddlers scream when riding the plastic horsey at grocery stores.

You know where this is going.

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I’ll Take Door Number Fun

19 Thursday Dec 2013

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Ninamalyna - DepositPhotos.com

Nina Malyna – DepositPhoto.com

I went to one of those holiday parties where gifts were distributed at random, opened, then gamed, with participants allowed to “steal” from one another. Never understood what the appeal was. Since everyone knew what they got, the poor sap who recieved a bottle of wine, promptly loses it to someone who got the fingernail clipper. Where I come from, in homage to Let’s Make a Deal, and the great Monty Hall, gifts are proffered and exchanged before you open them.

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Things I’m Still Waiting For:

04 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Sci-Fi Themes, The Humor Zone

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Things I'm still waiting for.

From:  Fantasy and Sci-Fi Rock My World

While safely bunkered during Black Weekend (used to be Black Friday), giving thanks for what we already have, a quiet moment alone (always a dangerous scenario), had me pondering of things we’re still waiting for as a modern society.  I grew up expecting we’d have flying cars by this time, and believed the book “2001 Space Odyssey” to be less fiction, more coming soon, give or take a few years.  Hell, we put a guy on the moon in the sixties, a first step to our planetary neighbors. Granted, I was a kid, and never considered serious concepts of economic reality, but really, it’s 2014 already.  Why aren’t we throwing Frisbees on Mars?

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Tis the Season to be Gluttonous

24 Sunday Nov 2013

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From: trainforthegameli.com

From: trainforthegameli.com

With Thanksgiving around the corner, thoughts turn to chilly days, roseate cheeks, the promise of snow, and the advent of blubber season.  Some are of the opinion that our annual glutton festival begins at Halloween, evident by tacky fingerprints from stealth-diving into the kids goodie bag. As far as I’m concerned, the starting bell for the World Series of holiday binging, technically rings on Thanksgiving Day. Unlike our puritan ancestors, who ate foods native to the New World, our modern tables groan with big-breasted birds, carbs the density of a black hole,and sugar confections to send us all to diabetics anonymous.

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