Thursday, as the sharp-eyed or the long-memoried out there may know, was my birthday, 52nd in a so-far-unbroken series. It happens that it was a work day for me, and that ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger had a morning appointment in Ann Arbor that brought her to the brink of madness because every road leaving Lansing, driving between Lansing and Ann Arbor, and in Ann Arbor is under construction. But she got back shortly after my workday ended, and a little before her reading group was starting. Which is a long way of explaining why we didn't do anything, not even go out to the former Kokomo's where they don't have a roller coaster anymore and apparently have let the miniature golf course badly decay. I'm hoping we can get to an amusement park this weekend.
But bunnyhugger was kind enough to give me some presents. One is a book, a 1200-page anthology of humor writing. There's a lot of names there, from familiar names like PG Wodehouse or Robert Benchley through to names I kind of know like Petroleum V Nasby. There also seems to be a chunk of James Joyce's Ulysses in there.
More exciting, though less tangible, is a piece of art. bunnyhugger had commissioned a non-furry artist, Meike Wallum, to draw Austin in the style of a 1950s funny-animal comic book and Wallum just nailed it perfectly, getting a picture that's friendly and open and just looks like the covers of a Dark Horse reprint of Harvey Comics or something. It's gorgeous and I understand why bunnyhugger had been quivering with anticipation to give it to me.
bunnyhugger noted that she had had to sneak some information out of me, to get the name of an example 1950s funny-animal comic book to explain the style concisely. She'd done this by asking, apropos of nothing, what that kangaroo character I keep drawing was named. (Spunky, a character for Star Publications who kept disregarding his sleepy mother's good advice and then having an adventure, often a dream, that teaches him a lesson. See this story, from page 37 on, for a particularly wild example.) So once again, it turns out to be possible to hide something from me by just declaring, ``I am about to hide something from you, do you understand?''
Pictures of dear Roger got a good response yesterday so let's have some more from the same photo session.
Roger standing on the threshold of the unconquerable void of the floor.
Roger standing on the other threshold, having gone back to his pen's area and the fleece underneath his pen. He didn't have much trouble getting across the floor but he'd rather not have had to deal with the wood.
What he absolutely could not put up with was the fence blocking off the dining room, though.
bunnyhugger tries to talk Roger into posing for a film photograph.
Roger had his price for posing and that was food, but he would take headpetting especially if it would get him food.
And now he settles in for hiding under bunnyhugger's coat and getting belly petting in.
Later, he puts some more thought into the fireplace.
... Ooooor maybe he'll go home? Hard to decide. There's a fair chance he had smudged his chin on the fireplace stuff by now.
The completed version of a jigsaw puzzle which had had bunnyhugger stumped for months. The challenge is that the enclosed picture shows a moment shortly before the scene of the puzzle, so you have only a loose reference to find where pieces go and, you can see, that Turbo 3000 vacuum cleaner is a big, low-contrast segment that isn't in the 'before' picture.
There is a lot of funny stuff going on in the picture, though, with like every direction having something going on. It's not all bugs being confused and crying for help. Note, for example, the bug that's on the wanted poster; can you spot them in the scene here?
Do you spot the bugs making off with a battery? Or the bee promoting some bee pride, plus, the revelation of what that wanted bug had stolen three cents for. The bug declaring ``Oh come on'' was a longrunning source of joy around these parts.
The small bug that had been using the opened book as a half pipe and who's now crying out 'Hurt!' was one of those things making us lightly sad. It all looks bad for the bug city but note there's graffiti already saying 'Rebuild Our City', so, the residents have survived this before and will again.
Trivia: By summer 1962 there were about 12,500 miles of Interstate Highway System open in the United States, with another 34 miles opening on average every week. Source: The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers who Created the American Superhighways, Earl Swift.
Currently Reading: Comic books of various sorts.
