winnie the puke

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Disney drives another nail into Edward Bear's coffin with a new movie. Elsewhere, the discussion included someone saying that the series wasn't so bad when Disney was doing adaptations; that they only got awful when they started doing original material. I beg to differ. No, that's not emphatic enough. I DIFFER!

Wasn't it the first movie that had the godawful scene where they're playing Pooh Sticks and Eeyore comes floating by? In the original, the dialog reads something like this:

"What are you doing, Eeyore?" cried Rabbit.

"I'll give you three guesses, Rabbit." said Eeyore. "Digging holes in the ground? Wrong. Jumping from limb to limb of a young oak tree? Wrong. Floating on my back in the water, waiting for someone to pull me out? Right. Good old Rabbit. Give him time, and he'll always get the right answer."

Pure Eeyore. Unhappy, bitter, and sarcastic. In the movie, it came out something like this:

RABBIT: What are you doing, Eeyore?

EEYORE: I'll give you three guesses, Rabbit.

POOH (or somebody): Digging holes in the ground?

EEYORE: Wrong.

PIGLET: Jumping from limb to limb of a young oak tree?

EEYORE: Wrong.

RABBIT: Floating on your back in the water, waiting for someone to pull you out?

EEYORE: Right. Good old Rabbit. Give him time (etc.)

Pure bleeding Disney garbage. The exchange is divided up in a way that makes no sense whatsoever, and serves only to remove the point from one of the choicest bits of sarcasm ever written. Right up there with Linus's "Why don't you take a pill for relief of nausea caused by sight of little brother clutching blanket?" and MAD's "What does the button [by the hospital bed] do? Nobody knows. Maybe it lights the Christmas tree on the White House lawn."

I might buy into the premise that the early ones are less disgusting than the later ones. In fact, I wholeheartedly endorse it and declare it to be true as long as nobody requires me to take even the briefest look at any of the series at all to back it up.
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sic transit

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I tried Googling on "Pirate Adventures with Captain Hook" and various combinations of the words today, and none of them pointed to the former Christian kiddie show of that name. How quickly they forget. What's that? You too?

Okay, here's the situation. A biker had an accident that took a hand away, and maybe part of a leg... it's been a while. What do you do in a situation like that? You got it! You produce your own Christian kiddie show, with yourself as a pirate. It's just obvious, right?

The show also featured Mrs. Hook, who labored mightily to tell vague, boring parables. I remember she did a sermon of the five dollar bill, which somebody had and spent on something, and somebody else spent it on something else, and so on. I forget whether it had a point, but it probably filled the time they had available, and since they didn't have to part with the bill, it cost practically nothing.

The Gospel Ship was also peopled with a crew of sincere fellows with as many bad English accents as there were, um, actors. They performed skits and supported the Captain, and swabbed the deck.

Besides the humans, there were also puppets. Terrible puppets. Puppets that demonstrated beyond doubt that some Muppets do indeed have sex with close family members. And for some reason, there was also a second rank of even worse puppets that prove the same thing about the first bunch of puppets. I expect the offspring of the latter bunch were non-viable. Maybe just little knots of foam rubber, gibbering on the floor. The first time I tuned in, I happened on one of the first group, portraying the shorn and blind Samson, with white staring eyeballs, languishing in a jail cell. "Oh, WHY did I listen to my FRIENDS!" he lamented, at great length and volume. I was hooked! So to speak.

Alas, nothing lasts forever. One day geckoman was watching the show, and it finished with an announcement to the effect that the Captain had passed away, and the show had joined the snows of yesteryear, except for a fairly small number of episodes on videotapes in the homes of the show's fans. I'm surprised there's no memorial on the web.
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up on the roof

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The day of dread. The nastiest job of the year. I cleaned leaves out of the roof gutters. I didn't have to do this last year -- they put new gutters in, and I figured it was a freebie. No such luck this time.

Cathy and Sarah trailed along as I hauled the folding ladder over to the side with the lowest roofline -- a small bay window with a lower rooflet on it -- messed with the ladder a while. I tried to use it folded in half, but it lacked a feeling of security. I mean, even more than with the ladder fully extended. So, carefully defeating the reluctant locking mechanisms, I put it to its full length and set it up at a nice low angle. It rested on our new gutter, but Cathy said that was okay. I clambered up, clutching a watering head that I planned to use as my mucking tool.

So there I was, hating it, as always. It showed plainly on my face to Cathy, but Sarah didn't seem to notice the frown of fear that decorated my visage. She asked a lot of questions, or at least she asked three or four questions a lot of times. She said when she was big enough, she'd get the leaves out of the gutters. I will hold her to that. The leaves on top were dry, the ones under were wet, the lower ones were kind of nasty wet, and below that was the usual black sludge of asphalt from the shingles. My watering head (about 18 inches long and curved at the end) was okay for some parts of the job, but I still had to use my fingers -- my poor, betrayed fingers -- to scoop the nasty brew out of the gutters. Sarah wanted to go ride her new trike in the street, but Cathy kept calling her back and telling her to stay nearby. I mucked the part around the ladder, then worried my way to the far side of the garage, exposing drain holes that had been largely unemployed with the covering of leaves and ex-leaves. Then I did the patio side and worked my way over the peak to the front side.

First I worked my way over to the chimney and looked down it. Seemed nice and clean. It got too dark to see before I could see any obstructions. Then I sat down, thinking how nice it was to be next to the chimney, and not wanting to leave the security of that solid brick wall. A friend (rtred) apparently went up on his second-story roof one time to clean gutters, a thought that makes me shudder. To think I used to shinny up onto the roof of our old house to sit and peer at the distant train tracks and other scenic views. Right now, I'm thinking I'd like my next house to be one of those basements with a roof over it that I used to see. The front side is the longest side. As I worked my way across, I pondered what I'd land on if my weight shifted just one inch too far. I wished I had forearms about six inches longer. By this time, I'd abandoned the sprinkler head and was just doing it all by hand. My right hand did all the mucking, but it was my left shoulder that was starting to ache, from the strain of continually saving my worthless life. Thanks, lefty!

Last and least, I went back to the side with the ladder and finished the short side there. Something like a tomato plant was growing over the drain hole. I tossed it down to Cathy, and we subsequently stuck it in the hole we'd been digging with Sarah this morning (she was in a digging mood) back of the garage. Then I sat and breathed a while before working my shaky way back onto the ladder; always the worst part of the enterprise.

Done for another year. I think I'll go break into the minibar, so to speak.
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free at last

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We have two big trees in our front yard, which start dumping the leaves before any other trees on our street. We start raking before anybody.

Consequently, we finish before anybody, and while they're still breaking their backs, we're all done. Finis.

And that's where we are now. There can't be more than a hundred leaves left on those trees, which is why I went up on the roof to clean the gutters. It's so nice to be finished for another year. (Picture shows me in the one that just finished dropping 'em.)
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