One of the things a person quickly learns as a beginning cartoonist is that he or she must master onamonapia, a word that replicates a sound, as in the “clink” of glasses. Of course, in the case of cartoonists, we most often are called upon to invent our own words using onamonapia. Using the above cartoon from last November as an example, how does one replicate the extremely arresting—and grating—sound of that horrible horn, the klaxon, which blares repeatedly when the heavy metal doors are about to close and you have 30 seconds to get to the last shelter on earth before the nuclear bombs start raining down, or the sound a game-show contestant hears when giving a disqualifying answer. Well, this was my stab at it. Onamonapia can be fun! Splut. Blop. Plap. Try it at home.
237 responses to “The Sound of Mayhem”
Luck is with me for a change. My long post crossed your short one, but still reads appropriately.
Tend to enjoy both the high and the low-brow.
Please judge kindly. (;
Morphy I once was told by one of my customers to “never play loser’s poker with a failed Cajun oilman.” That is good advice because all of us make bad and good choices in life.
My youngest daughter always seemed amazed when men both recognized and remembered me. She’d always ask why I didn’t marry them and I’d always tell the truth. “I thought he was going to be a clergyman, I had no idea he’d end up with a prestigious art gallery and an ambassador.”
Sometimes I wish I knew how all the stories end but we are stuck with choices we made, few of us get do overs.
I made a mistake once, fortunately I also owned a backhoe.
Realized my hi-low comment may seem strange after Melcher’s ‘Priceless’ critique of last week(?). Let me try this: I like Friends in Low Places [thanks, Garth], as long as everyone presents openly. Jennifer Babcock’s humor from a feminine place I take at face value, as meaning something from that woman’s view.
Melcher’s humor is to take a piece of centuries old art, which may represent a very large effort by someone who has never considered the eventual existence of Mr. Melcher. He then takes pleasure in attributing a new message, frequently at odds with the prima facie image supplied. Often including a message that simply did not exist at the time.
If it were my work, I would be offended. And so am offended on behalf of an artist long mouldered out of existence. Fitzgerald may wonder at the scholarly interpretation of his billboard. But may take offense if the reader wanted the glasses to be Google.
Sand, I refreshed before post. Someone here told a story of an inmate getting the police to turn over his uncle’s garden for him by admitting as much.
Burying a mistake…humm.
Jackie, you are probably underestimating my age, although you might not think so to see me. Everyone in my family tends to not look their age, even though they also tend to live to advanced ages. Oddly, three or four people have told me lately that my hair appears to have less gray in it than previously. One of them was P&PHS, who I would assume could tell if I were coloring it, which I am not.
Truly hope you are not getting sick.
Morphy, a high school classmate married several times. The last time was a serious mistake since she apparently murdered him but no body was ever found. It seemed like every time I went home to see my Mama they had dug that yard up again.
Frankly I think I would have moved rather than face constant reminders of suspicion. We have an ongoing similar case here in our little town. No body has been found and the husband has to face posters on every door in town, rewards offered, flyers handed out and constant suspicion as the entire community judged him guilty.
There has been much digging here as well.
Now a comic to warm us: http://www.gocomics.com/bushy-tales
Three words…ground penetrating radar.
Oh, Jackie! Truth can be stranger than fiction. But I was recalling a punchline told by Old Bear, or Sand, or forgive me I don’t recall.
Frankie? was serving time at Sing Sing and couldn’t care for his uncle’s tomato garden.
He sent his uncle a letter (he knew would be read) saying not to disturb the garden.
Next day, a squad of the cities finest young men turned it all over for him.
The next letter arrived explaining that was the best he could do from jail.
Sorry for the horse before the cart.
On the extremely rare occasions when I get really ill, such as back in August, with whatever bug I picked up at the hospital while I was there with my mom, I always assume it is Dave Barry’s Martian Death Flu, as described below…
We have the flu. I don’t know if this particular strain has an official name, but if it does, it must be something like Martian Death Flu. You may have had it yourself. The main symptom is that you wish you had another setting on your electric blanket, up past “HIGH,” that said: “ELECTROCUTION.”
Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth because (a) your teeth hurt and (b) you lack the strength. Midway through the brushing process, you’d have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a couple of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam would dribble sideways out of your mouth, eventually hardening into crusty little toothpaste stalagmites that would bond your head permanently to the bathroom floor, which is where the police would find you. You know the kind of flu I’m talking about.
I spend a lot of time lying very still and thinking flu-related thoughts. One insight I have had is that all this time scientists have been telling us the truth: Air really is made up of tiny objects called “molecules.” I know this because I can feel them banging against my body. There are billions and billions and billions of them, but if I concentrate, I can detect each one individually, striking my body, especially my eyeballs, at speeds upwards of a hundred thousand miles per hour. If I try to escape by pulling the blanket over my face, they attack my hair, which has become almost as sensitive as my teeth.
There has been a mound of blankets on my wife’s side of the bed for several days now, absolutely motionless except that it makes occasional efforts to spit into a tissue. I think it might be my wife, but the only way to tell for sure would be to prod it, which I wouldn’t do even if I had the strength, because if it turned out that it was my wife, and she were alive, and I prodded her, it would kill her.
Me, I am leading a more active life-style. Three or four times a day, I attempt to crawl to the bathroom. Unfortunately this is a distance of nearly 15 feet, with a great many air molecules en route, so at about the halfway point I usually decide to stop and get myself into the fetal position and hope for nuclear war. Instead, I get Earnest. Earnest is our dog. She senses instantly that something is wrong, and guided by that timeless and unerring nurturing instinct
that all female dogs have, she tries to lick my ears off.
For my son, Robert, this is proving to be the high point of his entire life to date. He has had his pajamas on for two, maybe three days now. He has a sense of joyful independence a five-year-old child gets when he suddenly realizes that he could be operating an acetylene torch in the coat closet and neither parent would have the strength to object. He has been foraging for his own food, which means his diet consists entirely of “food” substances that are advertised only on Saturday morning cartoon shows; substances that are the color of jukebox lights and that, for legal reasons, have their names spelled wrong, as in New Creemy Chock-’n’-Cheez Lumps o’ Froot (“part of this complete breakfast”).
Crawling around, my face inches from the carpet, I sometimes encounter traces of colorful wrappers that Robert has torn from these substances and dropped on the floor, where Earnest, always on patrol, has found them and chewed them into spit-covered wads. I am reassured by this. It means they are both eating.
The Martian Death Flu has not been an entirely bad thing. Since I cannot work, or move, or think, I have been able to spend more Quality Time with Robert, to come up with creative learning activities that we can enjoy and share together. Today, for example, I taught him, as my father had taught me, how to make an embarrassing noise with your hands. Then we shot rubber bands at the contestants on “Divorce Court.” Then, just in case some parts of our brains were still alive, we watched professional bowling. Here’s what televised professional bowling sounds like when you have the flu:
PLAY-BY-PLAY MAN: He left the 10-pin, Bob.
COLOR COMMENTATOR: Yes, Bill. He failed to knock it down.
PLAY-BY-PLAY MAN: It’s still standing up.
COLOR COMMENTATOR: Yes. Now he must try to knock it down.
PLAY-BY-PLAY MAN: You mean the 10-pin, Bob?
The day just flew by. Soon it was 3:30 P.M., time to crawl back through the air molecules to the bedroom, check on my wife or whoever that is, and turn in for the night.
Earnest was waiting about halfway down the hall.
“Look at this,” the police will say when they find me. “His ears are missing.”
I had a wonderful conversation about the ministry and a calling with a young nondenominational hospice chaplain this afternoon. I know, I have some interesting chance meetings, we were both waiting for our vehicles. He looked to be about 15 even with a beard so I asked and he was 27 and ordained by one of our Oklahoma church schools.
So, we were talking about having responsible jobs at a young age but looking so young. Hence his beard. I was laughing at myself aloud over my younger days and he thought I was his mother’s age. Turns out I am his granny’s age, he could not believe that, had knocked a lot of years off, bless him.
Perception is often based on many things not biological.
I like younger people because when you find smart ones they make you younger by mental challenges. My late husband apparently liked physical challenges in all he did. Mental wasn’t part of some apparently.
Of course I am guilty of some of those same prejudices.
Dave Berry doesn’t just command the English language, he makes it do tricks. Big ones. Like Cirque d’Solei in newsprint.
Thank you for Dave Barry whom I love. I laughed all the way through the Martian Death Flu even though it hurt to laugh.
Everyone working for me has the flu. Tony came in to work today and stayed away from me as much as possible but I have been around everyone a lot prior to this. No, I don’t want to be sick. I have been remarkably well.
Earnest is like Dickens, she licks those she loves to try and make them feel better. There’s a hairy nose buried in my left elbow right now.
Ghost I think you are a very young and fit 60 or so years which is OK. Read what I said about perceived age. You planning to not retire but go on doing whatever it is you do until someone stops you?
Probably.
Jackie vice Debbe 😉 Feliz Navidad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3hVoG2qiyM
Ghost, back around 1979-80 time frame when the F-4s were still based at Ramstein Germany, I was waiting for at the Pax terminal and watching a flight taxi down the runway (tarmac?). They were returning from a mission and had their canopies open. Of course I waved at the pilot and one of them waved back.
Addendum: I was waiting for a flight back to the states.
My happy place to revisit, Shell Beach, St Barts. What is yours?
Today’s TIP BlogSpot. Likely a rerun but I don’t recall it. Sorta sad. Melcher must be sur les vacances. His ‘comic’ is an atrocious, anonymous seasonal card; been on all week.
http://thatispriceless.blogspot.com/
Sand: The former Green Mt. Lake Farms, Pawling, NY.
Peace,
Chris, I can do you one better. I was stationed at an undisclosed remote location when the Thunderbirds flew in to do a performance. As the four primary aircraft taxied in trail back to the flight line to park after their show, they passed the structure where I was on duty, standing on a platform about 10 meters above the surface. I saw the pilot of Number 3 tilt his helmeted head back to look up at me, so I gave him a thumbs-up, which he returned.
At that moment, Number 2 slowed to make the left turn toward their parking area, and Number 3 had to hit his brakes hard enough to compress the strut of his nose gear a good bit. For a moment, I could picture the comment in my AF record, “…distracted the pilot of one USAF Air Demonstration Squadron aircraft, causing it to collide with another aircraft on the ground, resulting in significant damage to both.” I mean, it would have had to have been my fault, amirite? 🙂
Ghost, I would assume that they out-ranked you so Yes it would have been your fault!
All this thinking about brushes with Angel’s made me start thinking about our next door neighbors son Van H. (Shep) Shepard who was a famous test pilot and flew the XR-70. He died in a plane crash in 1970, sort of ironic. I remember his death and funeral but can find little on him, yet he was a big deal then. A super hero, he was in his 40s then and I 20 years younger thought he was an old man.
How time changes our view point.
By the way my head hurts so bad I cannot stand to.move and I feel awful