ChatFu: cartoonify your chats and other texts

click cartoon/poem to enlarge


click cartoon/poem to enlarge

This site cartoonifies any text you upload to it. I tried it with a couple of short poems of mine. ChatFu is located at: http://chatfu.com/
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The Brannock Device

Ever since I was four years old, I've wanted to own a Brannock Device. They are are an design masterpiece: elegant, rugged, graphically interesting, and absolutely functional. They have barely changed in 75 years. If you've ever been to a shoe store, you know they're cool.

Charles F. Brannock (1903-1992) began fiddling with foot-measuring devices in college. After a trial by fire in his father’s shoe store, Brannock's device soon gained favor over other systems because it measured foot length and width at the same time. His early drawing to the right shows most of the details of the final device—just like the Brannock devices used in shoe stores today. Brannock obtained a patent in 1928, and it's been The Shoe Size Thing ever since.

You can buy them new for $75 or so. . .but I found one on Ebay for $5 (see photo below), and it now sits in my office, in the traditional spot, right in front of a chair.


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My Grandma's tavern in Carnation, Wash.

Click photograph to enlarge. . .

Not long ago, I wrote here about my Great Uncle Guy Huber, his visits to Kent, Washington, and, of course, his wooden leg. I also wrote about my Grandpa Dell, last year, and how I teethed on his hook arm when I was a baby...

Grandma Vera Galvin was Uncle Guy's sister, and Grandpa Dell was my Grandma's third, and final, husband. Alas, I don't have many tales to tell of my Grandma. She died in either 1961 or 1962. My mother is not all that forthcoming about her exploits, and wouldn't answer several questions I posed (or said "please don't write about that"), sticking mainly to the bare biographical facts. This was much different than when I pumped her for information on Uncle Guy. In fact, I don't have a lot of memories of her either.

Grandma Galvin is pictured in this photograph at a bar she owned in Carnation, Washington. Carnation was a small village in 1949, when she bought the bar on the town's main street. She owned it for about ten years. Also in the picture, with his one hand on the register, is Grandpa Dell Galvin. They must have been about my age in the photo.

All my life, I've been fascinated by her owing a bar. When I was a kid, women seemed to rarely even go to bars, let alone own one. But then again, most grandmothers didn't get married three times either, or drink beer. There must have been some vein of iconoclasm in the family, since my mom ended up being a Rosie The Riveter during WW II, and eventually a U.S. Marine.

The bar is a little spooky. . .but that's mainly the taxidermy I think. . .there is definitely a stuffed owl, and I'm not sure if the other birds are pheasants or wild turkeys. . .or what? They look too small for grouse. Aanother critter at the left end of the bar could be a porcupine, a marmot, a wild baby boar?

When I knew her, Grandma drove a grey 1948 Plymouth. I remember several occasions sitting next to her driving somewhere. I also remember there was a "church key" for opening beer cans on her dashboard. I don't remember ever seeing her without a can of beer wrapped in a paper bag. She lived in a cottage (my mom calls it a shack) in Carnation.

She started the coal stove every morning--fat lumps of greasy coal kindled with tissues. The house had plumbing; I well remember the houses that didn't--and the cold treks to a fantastically rank outhouse. One of my only other memories of visiting her in Carnation was having breakfast with one of Del's daughters, who also lived in Carnation. She gave me half a grapefruit. I don't think I'd ever seen one before. I know I hadn't eaten one. They squirted. I liked it.

Dell died of a brain tumor in the late '50s, and Grandma sold her bar. Or maybe she went broke. Grandma Galvin was now retired, and was just about to move in with my family in Kent, when she went into a diabetic coma and died in about 1961. I remember my dad telling me one morning that she had passed away.

It was years before I could really tell the difference between passing away and passing out. Passing out from drink was not unheard of in my circles and yet even then, at say, the age of nine, I could smell a whiff of it--you sense the people passing out are treading an tenuous chasm between being numb and being gone.
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Portrait of President Bush five years and six days into his presidency

Click image to enlarge
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Poem: The mystery of the first amendment to the Ten Commandments

They didn't know
Whether it should be
The eleventh commandment

The first amendment
To the Ten Commandments
Or the Commandment Codicil

One bloc argued
There were loopholes
To be closed

Another group liked
The round number ten
Why spoil it with twelve or thirteen

One prophet who looked like Jerry Garcia
Said we forgot to tell them enjoy life
Follow the rules but have fun in between

And another camp voted for
Forty more commandments
Just to be sure

A quasi-Buddhist splinter faction
Pushed to add Jesus's words
Love one another

They never settled a thing
With the stone tablets
Missing

The Framer's intentions
Were impossible
To divine

They weren't even sure
Moses had turned the tablets over
To see the other side
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How do you like those apples Canada? Right wing fever breaks out north of the border.

How does it feel, my good friends 100 miles to the north? Hours after winning a minority government, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper promised to get to work implementing his top campaign priorities, many quite similar to Republican "reforms" and others even further to the right.

The Tories sweeping this election is that it might finally force the Liberals to clean house and come out as a revamped and appealing option in the future. Of course, we in the middle of North America said the same thing in 2000 and 2004. Same as it ever was same as it ever was same as it ever was. . .

I'm not happy about this, but I do remember the laughter, disgust, and derision that emanated from Canada as we elected, and then incredibly re-elected President Bush. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, how do you like your Man On Horseback?
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Alien Lore No. 61 - Ronald Reagan, Steven Spielberg, UFOs and aliens

On June 27, 1982, Ronald Reagan brought Steven Spielberg to the White House to screen ET: The Extraterrestrial.

After the screening, The President put his hand on Spielberg's shoulder and said "You know, there aren't six people in this room who know how true this really is."

At the time, the conspiracy nuts/UFOlogists discussed how the original E.T. had changed into a cartoon-like creature, unlike the Greys most contactees and abductees reported. In the end, the model for E.T. alien was based on a snapping turtle embryo with Albert Einstein's eyes. A government insider allegedly told Spielberg that the alien model was too close to the truth, and had to be changed. Obviously, this was never proved and Spielberg refuses to comment on the matter.

Spielberg told the story of Reagan's "how true this is" comment to Hollywood television producer Jamie Shandera while Shandera was helping a Japanese film crew shoot a documentary on Spielberg.

Since then Spielberg has refused to talk to reporters or researchers about his conversation with Reagan, according to several sources. Either he's been muzzled (the popular theory, of course), or he's sick of talking to nutjob UFO researchers. . .

James A. Baker III, Chief of Staff, Edwin Meese III, Counselor, and Michael K. Deaver, Deputy Chief of Staff, met in the White House Situation Room where the President participated in a briefing of the U.S. Space Program. Participants included six members of the National Security Council or National Security Affairs and no one from NASA. The absence of NASA from a Space Program briefing is highly unusual, especially since President Reagan would attend a U.S. Space Shuttle landing at Edwards Air Force Base just a few days later.

A couple months later, President Reagan showed up in Roswell, New Mexico to give a speech for the re-election of Harrison (Jack) Schmitt. Schmitt, the Republican Senator (and Apollo 17 astronaut) from New Mexico was the last man to walk on the moon.

Schmitt said, "If the government has any information on UFO's, it should be released to the public -- barring anything that might affect national security. We ought to be involved in a search to find out if there's any good evidence that UFOs really are spacecraft that are being piloted by extraterrestrial beings."

He went on to qualify that somewhat: "The existence of intelligent life elsewhere in our universe is highly probable. . .that such life would visit our star and planet, however, is unlikely, but not impossible given the large number of choices it would have for such a visit. Further, the so-called UFOs have not done a very good job of communicating for life (that's) intelligent enough to travel between stars."

President Reagan in his speech at Roswell said "It feels good to be here in the land of enchantment and far away from a place of disenchantment on the banks of the Potomac. Jack (Schmitt), are you sure you want to go back there? [Laughter] Of course, having once been an astronaut, Jack Schmitt is probably the only one who feels at home there; because Washington is in orbit most of the time about one thing or another."

President Reagan's speech at The Roswell Industrial Air Center was made just outside Hanger 84, the rumored repository for the UFO wreckage and bodies found near Roswell in July 1947.
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another photgraph of President George Bush and Jack Abramoff

Following up yesterday's photo, another shot of Jack Abramoff and The President has turned up:

As Time Magazine said, "[these photographs] are likely to see the light of day eventually because celebrity tabloids are on the prowl for them. And that has been a fear of the Bush team's for the past several months..."

According to a reliable source on the Vice-President's staff, "The Veep, POTUS, and Abramoff were having dinner and drinking bourbon at Abramoff's restaurant. They played various drinking games, blah blah blah, things seriously degenerated and finally, on a dare, The President stripped to his briefs and danced for a small crowd of officials and Secret Service agents."

Photo by Jonathan Schwarz.
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Bush and Abramoff captured together in explicit photographs

click photograph to enlarge

As the Abramoff scandal continues to unfold, envelop, and roil the G.O.P., the President's flacks have continually denied that he ever really met with Jack Abramoff, other than casually in large groups.

The online edition of TIME magazine is reporting they have "seen five photographs of Abramoff and the President that suggest a level of contact between them that Bush's aides have downplayed. While TIME's source refused to provide the pictures for publication, they are likely to see the light of day eventually because celebrity tabloids are on the prowl for them. And that has been a fear of the Bush team's for the past several months..."

All This Is That managed to find a copy of one of the alleged photographs, depicting the President and the lobbyist-felon in a hot tub with a young woman. According to our source, this is the most innocent of the pictures. Other photographs contain explicit three-way conjugations and pairings, and one humorous snapshot depicts The President and Mr. Abramoff "sword fighting," posed in a battle for the 'hand' of an especially pneumatic blond escort."
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Portrait of the Supreme Court of the United States

....click portrait to enlarge....

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A letter from President George W. Bush

Click the letter to enlarge for readability
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Painting: President Bush and Karl Rove hold a press conference to reassure the Republican faithful that all is well, and all will continue to be well

Click painting to enlarge
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