Did you draw a cartoon lover’s name this year? Are you chafing because your plan to give everyone on your list an Arlo & Janis t-shirt fell through? Well, I have a suggestion for you. Check out “Team Cul de Sac.” Cul de Sac is the engaging comic strip drawn by Richard Thompson, the talented artist and illustrator whose blossoming career as a comic strip creator was cut off by the progression of Parkinson’s disease in 2012. The TCDS web site has for sale two books, and a portion of the money goes to The Michael J. Fox Foundation and to TCDS, both of which are dedicated to publicizing and funding the fight against Parkinson’s disease. One of the volumes is a collection of the work of various cartoonists—giants in the trade—assembled especially to benefit Thompson and the TCDS effort. Another is a beautiful collection of the work of Richard Thompson himself. Either would make a great gift for anyone who loves cartoons. It would make me feel better if you took some of that money you had set aside for A&J t-shirts and spent it one of these great books.
Santa’s Little Helper
By Jimmy Johnson
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55 responses to “Santa’s Little Helper”
Charlotte, your wish has been granted.
Hello, Chris! It’s a pleasure to meet you! I do miss Alice and Petey and even Big Shirley…and I wonder what Mrs. Otterloop’s Christmas sweater looks like this year.
Charlotte, the only way I know to do that is to go to yesterday, copy the comment, and paste it in today’s comment box. Not an elegant solution, but it will work.
Ignore my solution, Charlotte. sand to the rescue!
Oops, running late tonight. “Debbe 😉 ” has probably already been visited by the sandman. (That’s “sandman”, not “sandcastler”.)
Debbe 😉 America has royalty, too. Case in point…The King.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d2RfblImA4
No, Charlotte, choking on one of the peanuts in a Coke should not be a danger (although some mook somewhere has undoubtedly managed to do it.) You take a swig of the drink with some peanuts in it, chew them, and swallow. The sign of a “pro” is one who can make the Coke and the nuts come out even, so the the last swallow consists of some of both.
Oh, I forgot…I really don’t think milk with peanuts in it would be all that good. 🙂
GR6, excellant choice. It’s not Christmas without that song. I get to play it but once as Loon can’t stand it. Oh, she also dislikes my Elvis Pink Cadillac ornament that only I can hang on the tree.
Love this cover of Joni Mitchell’s “River.”
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ulr7MPyhPaY
Charlotte, the peanuts do not sink actually but float towards the top of the bottle. You must use salted ones to achieve the true salty/sweet effect. It really takes glass bottles to do this correctly, as the Coke will fizz and bubble and you need them to be REALLY cold. Then you guzzle the goobers and the Coke down in big swallows all at once. The peanuts come out with soda and you don’t chew them, just swallow.
Mind you, I have not done this since 12th grade, so my technique may be rusty.
On a marginally connected thought, Southerners eat boiled peanuts, which are put up in cans and which I had never eaten even one until a few years ago. My mother and my mom’s baby sister who traveled with us loved the things and I had to buy them for them. This is the song, “Eating Goober Peas”.
Another Southern peanut item are fried in the shell peanuts. You eat the shell and the peanut inside, as the shells are soaked in a flavor brine, dried and then deep fried. Or so I was told when I asked. Eating the shells creates a high fiber snack! I have eaten these.
A highly popular peanut treat when I was a kid that you always drank a Coke with were peanut patties. They were died a repulsive deep pink color and the peanuts were surrounded by a pure sugar candy, also pink, poured into a round mold about four inches across.
Anyone else want to contribute to our gourmet discussion?
Love, Jackie
Sarah also covers Gordon Lightfoot well. Canada might not be heavily populated, but…
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UV4F2yfEt9o
Stupid spell check changed dyed/died! Although some people might have died from the sugar in those things.
Ghost, you chewed? I don’t remember that step?
When Cokes were available in vending machines for 25 cents you could go into the local bottler in my hometown and get a bottle out of their machine for a nickel. The building has been sitting vacant for many years as has the one in Pensacola. They stand as monuments to a time gone by .
You’re talking about peanut brittle which is a necessity when growing up in the south. My great Uncle John boiled peanuts for sale and I always enjoyed visiting him up in the country.
Yes; I chewed the peanuts. You get very little flavor from them if you swallow them whole.
Parched peanuts…Yay! Boiled peanuts…Ack! Boiled peanuts have the sliminess index of (I can only imagine) poached squid well marinated in oyster liquor. Or of boiled okra.
Did anyone and your girlfriend/boyfriend ever go to the local commercial bakery and get them to pull an unsliced and still-hot-from-the-oven loaf of light bread off the line and put it in a paper bag for you and take it home and tear it apart with you hands and put real butter on it and share eating it with your girlfriend/boyfriend? I’m pretty sure I remember doing that when I was a teen.
Jackie, here you go: http://www.oldtimecandy.com/walk-the-candy-aisle/peanut-patties/
I remember a stick bubble gum that was a strange reddish-pink and had a taste that was different from any other gum. Don’t recall the name, but chewed a lot of it. Bought it in a curb market inside a log cabin type building next to my grandparent’s favorite Phillips 66 station. Now there is a Rite Aid on that site.
Also liked Clove, Teaberry and Beeman’s Pepsin chewing gum. But I gave up gum chewing years ago.
Gourmet discussion? Where?
The only soda I bother with is root beer, and won’t go to much trouble to have that. Peanuts, roasted but unsalted, are for eating straight, Thai food, and grinding to make real PNB, available at the co-op, smooth, un-homogenized, keep in fridge to avoid separation. Milk? [You know this]. Yep, av. quart/day. Reminds me, time for 8 oz. of light ice cream. Gotta go. [Illiterate speelczech doesn’t recognize ‘gotta’.]
Peace, emb
My good deed for the day was to agree to stop at Wally World and pick up an order for someone who did not feel up to it herself. (You knew there as a woman involved somehow, didn’t you?) Holy Mother of Pearl, the parking lot looked like the vehicle staging area for Operation Overlord!
As quietly as a little LRRP mouse, I made my stealthy way to customer service, without being ambushed by any of the battalion-sized group of middle-aged ladies patrolling the aisles, any of whom might have suspected me of trying to buy the last one of some item on their “must-have” list. I then obtained a position of advantage and waited while two WW employees attempted to retrieve my package from wherever the Quartermaster Corps had logistically and magically placed it, possibly at the bottom of a pile of 3 million life preservers.
However, as I waited, I struck up a conversation with an attractive, shapely and pertly accoutered young matron of the redhead persuasion as she also waited for her package to be located by a recovery team. While I do believe that virtue (the package pick up) is its own reward, I have to say that sharing close quarters with a nice-smelling female who also offers a significant cleavage display (the redhead) is a nice bonus.
And yes, I got to sub-vocalize some of those steam-venting-words on a few drivers in the parking lot. “That’s right, you $&%#! Sit there and block the lane while you wait for the van whose driver is loading 40 bags of swag into it to leave so you can take that space. Everyone behind you has all *@%#$^+ day! Oh, and have a Merry Christmas, Reverend.”
Last night I got to stand in the pharmacy line at WW and present my picture ID’s twice while they ran me against the drug dealers list. I buy so much medicine I was afraid I might be on it!
There is the sweetest female clerk there who was still smiling happily and being pleasant at 5 minutes until closing, which I considered a Christmas miracle. She was wearing a Christmas tree hat on her head, all decorated and twinkling. She has a different hat for each day I think.
You know what is rewarding? Running into your local Dollar General and having the cashier and stocker on duty greet you with “Here’s our favorite customer! What do you need today?” and then getting a ladder and dragging it down for me and loading it in my car while I talk to the cardiologist’s assistant about my mama’s heart!
And not having anyone here making snide remarks about Dollar General, WM or people wearing overalls. Mama and I had brunch at “Smells Like Bacon” today and Santa came in wearing camo overalls, rubber boots, a cap that said “We don’t call 911” and a Duck Dynasty teeshirt with the sleeves cut out.
On my way to pay I had to stop and tease him about how much I loved good facial hair and how much he looked like Santa. His wife showed up in a flash that I was moving in on her husband!!!
I will admit I was stroking his white beard!
Love, Jackie
Reread those two posts up there above. This may be where Ghost and I get bad reputations!
The two of you brighten my day [almost bedtime, actually]. Peace, emb
Dear Sandcastler, thank you ever so much. You are very kind to help me out, especially since I simply CANNOT learn to “cut and paste”. Now to scroll up and see the rest of the comments. I scooted down here to answer as soon as I got back on the computer.
Charlotte in NH, the only milk I find drinkable is buttermilk. Preferably not the cultured type. Or regular milk with Ovaltine or malted milk powder in it.
The comment above from eMb is exactly how I feel. You guys are so funny and good-natured, and I’ve learned amazing things today that I never knew before … about peanuts, soda pop, and other “gourmet treats”. (When I was growing up in New Hampshire, soda was called “tonic”. No kidding.)
Good morning Villagers…..
GR 😉 thanks for the Elvis tune…..and the laugh…..been a long time since I’ve heard “Holy Mother of Pearl”…..and I don’t do Wally World, I avoid it like the plague.
Jackie, I love going into Dollar General, or is it General Dollar that I go into on payday. They know us too, as we’re in there every Friday, and I also go in there once a month to buy supplies for the hen houses.
Gotta go…..and yes, the sandman does come early on some evenings….first I fall asleep in the recliner, wake up, have some milk and cookies, and then onto bed and I’m awake around 3:30. Vicious sleep cycle. But at least I wake up 🙂
JJ, you are a very generous man.
ya’ll have a blessed day.
today’s grin: https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/8263434240/h18AE993A/
Village family – you make me smile. Thank you!