Shearing time

 I once had a brother in law by the name of Steve, who owned a small spread north of Alamosa, Colorado and when my sons were small we would visit the ranch a couple times a year.  One year we were there it was in mid March and Steve was busy shearing the sheep.  It was about 20 degrees during the day and dipped down to below zero at night.  I thought it was almost mean to remove all their wool when it was so cold but he had to so that when the lambing started there would not be an issue of the extra wool for the lambs to enter the world.

Another poem,  I started the poem and of course being a wife that she is, Ruth had to fix the rhyming a bit more.  Below is the original poem I wrote all by my self and actually it is my very first poem.  BTW, if you are wondering why Orville is sitting in a puddle of water, have you ever seen how a buck toothed beaver talks?

Poem Wednesday

The poem is actually done by my wife Ruth.  

She wrote the poem in about 5 minutes flat.  

She is truly amazing when it comes to silly poems.  

Probably from reading some many

 rhyming books to little kids over the years.

When Ruth was going to College up at University of Colorado Boulder,

for her Masters degree in the summer of 1990. 

 Each night when she took out the garbage

 to the dumpster in back of the dorm, 

there would be a family of five

 raccoons sitting up begging like a dog for her scraps.  

An idea came to me during the night, asking people who speak another language than English to compose a short 4 line silly and funny poem in their native language.  I can't pay you but I can give you star billing on the cartoon involved.  It would be nice if you do this for me to also provide the same poem in English.

This blog is viewed all around the world and I thought it would be fun to start doing some of these in other languages than English.

The famous puffy shirt episode.

The below cartoon is just me remembering an old episode of the Seinfeld show where Kramer's girl friend talked Jerry into wearing one of her "Puffy Pirate Shirts" on national television. Of course we all know that raccoons are basically Pirates at heart, they just don't wanna look like a pirate.

Nice to see George has his kids under control...

Rise and shine Troopers!

 Have you ever seen a flying rat?  I think George the rat

 is about to become the very first flying rat.

 I hope he got his flight insurance.

So much for the Ground Hog Day Prediction of just

 6 more weeks of winter, at least over Phil's burrow.

That is gonna hurt in the morning

Kids will be kids.

Have you been listening to the new young moms out there giving directions to their little kids.  They always end all their sentences with "Okay?"  Like they are asking the little 2 year old boy if it is okay to tell him what to do.  

"Bobby, don't hit your little sister like that...Okay?"  

I wonder if the new moms ever listened to their own dear old mother as a child and heard the very same thing come out of her mouth?  Do you think this mixed message will have any affect on our future generations of humans?

Anyway, have a nice Sunday and enjoy yourself...okay?

A poem by George P Ratt.

 Sorry Phil, no poem by Henry Gibson 

but how about a poem by my very funny wife.  

The idea of the poems by George P Ratt came to me watching some old LAUGH IN gags on Youtube.  

"The sky is blue and the grass is green, get off you butt and join the Marines."  John Wayne  

My wife Ruth loves poetry and her favorite poet is Jack Prelutsky.  He has a web site you can read his many kids poems.

He lives!

 I kind of messed up here and did not realize it until this very moment.  The butter fly in this cartoon is too small for the little mouse.
That aside the question here is actually am I giving God like abilities to the little white rats?  The ability to bring things back from the dead.  Actually the idea for this "gag" comes from the movie Paul.  Where Paul the space alien brings back to life a bird and then eats the bird.  "You didn't expect me to eat a dead bird did you?"  I was going to do one last panel of this cartoon where the little rat would have a long tongue and eat the butterfly.  My wife told me that would be gross, but most humor is gross.  So for now I will just leave that thought in your mind.
So here we have in THE VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, mixed metaphors of kind and gentle space alien white rats with God like abilities who like to toss their old man around in mid air.
Tomorrow will be the climax of this tale of weirdness and back to doing normal laugh a day cartoons.  Much more fun.  Oh yeah....and maybe a catch up with our hitch hiking rooster Moe..

A tear was shed

How about that the little fir ball

from the outer regions has a heart.  

We are now back in North Park where this silly story will be coming to an end shortly, hopefully.

Bob Joe & Ralph.

Today because this is a comic strip we can do this thing anywhere in the world so today we take you to Antarctica.  Why Antarctica? Because I have never been there and why not?

It has been proven under scientific study that Penguins
 have a very short attention span and little curiosity .

Zing Pow!

Today we have two stories going on.  One the spoof of the movie Village of the Damned and the other of Chicken Moe hoofing it back to his buddies in North Park.  
Scene 15 take 12.  Milo is playing a sports announcer describing the fight between George and his kids who it turns out are Alien beings from another universe far far away.  His color Commentator is a white rabbit wearing a hula shirt by the name of Bing.  Bing has never seen an actual fight in his life but why should that stop him being an expert on boxing.  But is this really a boxing match?  Now if you think today's cartoon is a bit on the strange side, wait until you see tomorrow's cartoon.

                              ****************************
Today, we find Moe the Foghorn Leghorn wanna-be, hitch hiking just west of Gun Barrel City Texas.  Who would pick up a hitch hiking rooster?  Tune in tomorrow to find out.  

Ping!

George is kind of stuck between a rock and a hard spot.

 Thank goodness Priscilla is here and can save George from his kids.  

 

I say there son, this is finger linking good.

 Today we join Chicken Moe, on his seemingly unending quest. Since Pass Over, he has been attempting to lead a group of baby Easter chicks out of bondage to the Easter Bunny.  The last time we saw him he was somewhere  West of Cucamonga, California.   Today, we catch up with him and his flock of little peeps outside Atlanta Georgia, ironically where a certain fried chicken fast foot joint has it's corporate headquarters.

Now Chicken Moe can get back 

to his friends in North Park.

HORA QUE?

 "You are about to enter another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, the Twilight Zone!"

For us today we are about to enter the cartoon version of 

the Twilight Zone.

 That is Guido the squirrel Mob boss he has some big bucks 

riding on George and does not want to loose to some 

pipsqueak rats.

Prairie Dog Warrior Princess Priscilla and her famous sword 

Katana as the hottie placard girl showing 

what round is coming up. 

Tomorrow we are going to catch up with Chicken Moe 

and his flock of 10,000 baby chickens he is leading 

out of bondage to the "Promised Land".  

On Monday we will be back with George and his epic 

battle of wits like so many parents have when it is 

bed time for their kids.

Along with George there will be some guest 

appearances by other cartoon characters as they 

come to the aid of George.

Luke....I am your father.

 Come on George show them who's the boss!

Man, I bet that is gonna hurt in the morning.  

Who are these little twerps anyway?

*********************************

Tomorrow it gets even more strange. 

 I will be resurrecting some old characters

 that  will be in George's corner.

Will George ever come back down to Earth and quit with the floating around..Hey George, I am not paying you those big bucks to just lay around up there!

Hello Father.

  Today for fun I am taking a kinda sorta demented twist to an old movie the Village of The Damned. All this is make sense in a few days but for now let's let the fun begin.  Scene one, George returns from his visit with Milo and Orville.  He opens the front door stage left.

                                   **********************************

 Space alien rats or spawns of the devil...

George, who have you been in a relationship with?  

You naughty boy, you.

                      Just a typical little kid, right?

Beebah has the Con. Prepare to dive.

    As I mentioned yesterday,  today Mee-mah or Grandma
     gets her revenge.  And of course Bee-bah or Grandpa,
               has no clue what is going on around him.

Please note the colors of the chair blue and yellow, these are the colors of the Ukraine national flag.  In remembrance of the fact that Russia has invaded Ukraine and are killing innocent Ukraine citizens.

They adore her.

Actually I am not going off personal experience here in relation to grandparents and grand kids.  Our grand kids are fun to be but we only have two of them.  I can only imagine what it would be like to be invaded by ten of the little rug rats at the same time.  Talk about a culture and mental upheaval from a nice and quiet environment to total chaos. 

More tomorrow, in what I am calling

 "Revenge of Meemah".

Paw prints.

Today we visit the Ratt home, where we find Meemah (Grandma) Ratt adjusting to life with ten 5 year-olds underfoot and in her old grey hair.

When I started this concept of ten little rats descending on   their grandparents home for a long term "visit", it was really pretty easy for me personally to imagine all the funny things that could happen between grand parents and those ten little ones.

Little kids love to smudge up windows, they love to push buttons real and mental, and they love to make lots of noise and throw stuff around, that is the human nature of kids.  Now take that concept a wee bit further, because these are not human kids they are scurry little rats who have no concept of right and wrong or what is proper in the eyes of Meemah.  

Things are looking up.

 Today we have a double header...Batter up!  I am still checking the baseball regulations to see if it is legal for a ball player to use his own tale instead of a bat.  So far there is no mention so I guess it is okay.

Play Ball!

We have added a new character today to our gang of wild critters,  a beaver who is playing catcher today against the Chicago Cubbies.  We are calling him Orville, the beaver. 

 Why Orville you may ask, I named him after the character Geoffrey Lewis played in the movie Every Which Way But Loose.  Imagine how he acted in that roll and you get an idea how Orville the beaver will be acting here.  Maybe I have seen way too many movies in the past 60+ years and even though we did not own a TV set when I was  a kid, I still saw all the great old Black and White TV shows. So if my cartoons look somewhat like an old TV sitcom you will understand.  

Tomorrow I will be doing more baseball cartoons even though the Rockies are not playing.  Gotta let Orville get up to bat, he has a really different way of hitting the baseball.  On Monday, I will head over to the Ratt house and see how MeeMah and Beebah are living with the 10 grand kids who absolutely adore their grand parents..Fun fun fun.  To think I used to wonder if I would be able to come up with another funny gag, Golly they are all around me...See ya tomorrow.  

Batter's up, swing batter swing..

..and it's a fly ball to center field, 

no wait, it's now heading over to left..

.now it's going over to right field.

..what the &*%($# is going on..

Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga!

This cartoon is paying homage to the man of many voices Mel Blanc as well as the Jack Benny Show.  He did a gag where he was the train announcer at the train station in Los Angeles and would always announce the trains coming in from "Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga!"  He would always draw out the town of Cuuuucaaaamongaaaaaa.  They always used those actual California towns because they sound so funny even though they are not actually on the same rail line.

 The other part of the gag is that Bugs bunny was always getting lost and  would always say, "I wonder if I took the wrong turn at Albuquerque?

They like you, they really like you!

 Any time I need a gag for George the Rat, all I have to do is think WWGCS or What Would George Constanza Say?  And poof up pops a funny narcissistic line.
Grandma or Mee-mah will now get the chance to get to know her ten grand kids and grandpa or Bee-Bah will now have to watch where he steps and sits.

The Ratts are coming home to roost

Imagine if you will, that George Costanza is a rat and that he has ten little kid rats to care for. His mate felt she needed her freedom and left him with the kids.  What is poor old George to do?  Go back to dear old Mom's "embrace"?  One little detail, he did not tell his parents he was coming, he knew that if he did, they would get out of Dodge faster than a flea jumping onto a dog's back.  

Now I have two new characters to create, I already know what they are like by watching the old Jerry Seinfeld shows and tweak them a bit, to be more crazy than than they were in the sitcom.

As for the ten little rat kids, they will always be forever 5 year-olds just like in Peanuts.

In the mean time Chicken Moe is still wondering around in the wilderness looking for the "Promised Land" all the while those chicks are growing up and Milo is keeping in touch of the two story lines by mobile smarty pants phone.  For fun maybe I should add in text messaging because that is what people do these days.  Raccoon's can't text?  Only in your world.  This is my little world where anything is possible.

Karl

At least Karl is following proper protocol for eating a      chocolate bunny, always start with the ears.

News flash.

We interrupt this regular comic strip, to warn the public that bears are finally coming out of hybernation.  since they have been sleeping for the last 6 months they are very hungry and they smell bad.  
We have lost contact with Chicken Moe & his little baby chick's that he is taking to the promised land but he has a cell phone and promised to check in with Milo the racoon tomorrow.

He has risen!

They waited for their Messiah and he came to them. But he did not have the same message they already knew and they refused to hear him.  Those in power over the people feared his message of un paid ministry and un-shackled love of all mankind and they killed him. 
Just as those who rejected Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago, when he comes back as he said he would, there will be many who will not accept him, because they will not see him... it is just a feeling that came over me...will I see him?

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son,

that who so ever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

dispatch from sagebrush country

Once again this dispatch to my blog comes from the lobby of the hotel we are staying in.  Across the parking lot is a McDonalds fast food joint and the smell of greasy hash brown potatoes fills the air like an old man who has eaten a bad plate of borritos from Toco Bell.  
Tomorrow is Easter, the day most Christians celebrate the day Jesus Christ rose from the grave after completing the final phase of the atonement, where he died for the sins of all mankind.  
As I sit here contemplating the fact that the SON OF GOD died for me, a nobody, I am humbled beyond compare.  At the same time, I have still no clue what I will be doing for tomorrows blog.  I am sure God will give some inspiration as always, this I have no doubt.  So until tomorrow enjoy your family and have great Easter or Passover.

Avast I say, behold today is the day!

Please note, that I had to make Moe look some what different from FOGHORN LEGHORN so that we didn't have some Warner Brothers lawyer come a- knocking on our door.  I have found that trying to translate all the feelings we attach to an animated character such as Foghorn into a three panel cartoon is impossible because for one thing there is no sound here and without Mel Blanc's voice there really is no Foghorn Leghorn.  But I shall try anyway I can.
My biggest problem doing these type of cartoons is that I visualize a complete sitcom type cartoon and all those voices talking in my head as well as the sound affects, it is so fantastic!

Are we there yet?

How's them apples, son?

                                 When it rains it pours.  Moe sure is long winded.