Connor and Daphne -- a Fred Classic.

First run two years ago (and given High Praise! at the time by the tastemakers at IMAO.us), "Connor and Daphne" seemed due for a rerun, it being spring at all. As always, your comments are welcome.

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Connor and Daphne: A True Enough Story

By Frederick Key

Connor was a bear who was polite to his neighbors but not your warm, huggy type. Connor was proud of his bountiful garden and his lush green lawn, which he tended faithfully every year.

One spring, a big family of meerkats moved in next door. Connor met Daphne, a dewy-eyed kid with a bubbly personality.

It being spring, a couple of dandelions popped up on Connor’s lawn. Connor came out of his shed with his tools and sprays, ready to do battle with the weeds.

But Daphne stopped him. “Connor, look how beautiful that little yellow flower is!” she cried. “How can you be hating on such a sweet little thing?”

“If I don’t get rid of them as soon as they pop up, they ruin the lawn,” he grumbled.

“They have every right to be here—as much as that grass that you have to buy seed for,” she said. “These so-called ‘weeds’ are native to the area, you know. And they’re useful too! You can eat them, or even make wine.”

“But—”

“Why do you hate flowers so much, Connor?”

“I don’t! I’ve planted all kinds of flowers in the garden.”

“Oh, I see. You only like the ones you planted. The ones that nature provides you have to blast with all kinds of horrible poisons, is that right? Those sprays are dangerous, you know. They make the wildlife sick and they get into the water supply!”

Finally Daphne wore Connor down. He promised to let the little yellow flower live, and grumbled all the way back to his shed.

In a couple of weeks, little yellow flowers popped up all over Connor’s lawn. He had to admit that Daphne was right—the yellow flowers were pretty, and a nice contrast with the green. Then they turned into white heads, and then the puffs blew  away. With all the seeds gone to ruin other lawns, Connor was left with a patchy landscape and ugly naked stalks with ragged leaves. Which, in addition to the other weeds Daphne wouldn’t let him kill, left…

Connor was pretty sore by now, you can bet. The dandelions saved by Daphne had ruined his grass, exactly as he’d predicted. He went down to his cellar to get his shovel and pick to start digging deep, for now the roots of the dandelions were well beyond his ability to dig them up with hand tools.

While in the cellar, Connor noticed he had an unexpected and unwelcome guest—a rat had taken up residence in his home. He steamed upstairs to go to the store and get a trap.

Daphne was outside. “What’s wrong, Connor?” she asked kindly.

“Got a rat in the cellar,” he said. “Going to the store to get traps and steel wool and things.”

“No, no! You mustn’t do that!” she said. “The rat isn’t hurting you, is he?”

“Not yet, but—”

“And yet you want to break his little neck? Connor, how cruel! And poisons, too, I’ll bet—that’s always your answer, isn’t it? Poison! Why do you hate living things so much?”

“Damn it, Daphne, I—”

“Anger is a sure sign that you’re losing the argument, you know that? That poor little rat! With his sad little whiskers and sad beady little eyes!”

“Why do you always have to go straight to the emotional appeal? It’s completely unreasonable.”

“Unreasonable? I’ll tell you what’s unreasonable. Ask yourself, who was here first, Connor? You and your artificial man-made house, or the native wildlife?”

“Fine! You go down there and catch him, and you take the rat home!”

“Why would I do that? He’s obviously happy where he is.”

Once again, Daphne wore him down.

But a couple of weeks later, when Connor found he had carpenter ants attacking his deck, he snuck out to the big hardware store and made a purchase.

Daphne and the dandelions and the rats and the carpenter ants and the termites tried to throw him a going-away party, but Connor had already left.

We asked Daphne what the moral of this story is.

We tried to ask Connor but—oh, well.

The end.

Coconut and Peanuts.

Back in the early days of Peanuts, Charlie Brown et al could often be found enjoying a sack full of mixed candy. Chocolate creams were the fave... but coconut was the antithesis of all things enjoyable.

I too for many years found coconut to be the enemy of good candy. I could endure it to get to the chocolate in an Almond Joy or Mounds or some such, but it required a manly, rugged endurance.

However, I find that I've come to like coconut sometimes. So much so that when I spotted this unusual treat up here at the Tractor Supply Company ("Making Southern Things Acceptable to Northerners Since 1938"), I knew I had my next episode of Things I Should Not Eat.

Yes, it's the poorly photographed, Neapolitan ice cream inspired Supreme Coconut Bar!

The Supreme Coconut Bar is the gift to the world from Macon, Georgia's Crown Candy Corporation, chosen just days ago as a Georgia "Face of Manufacturing." Crown claims to be one of the largest manufacturers of coconut candy worldwide.

How was it? Well, pace Charlie Brown and Snoopy, it was good. The flavors were not strong, but nor were they phony and weird, despite the use of artificial flavors and colors. The coconut was mild, well prepared, and smooth. I would indeed buy this candy again.

So there you have it: Coconut candy is okay! Anything with enough sugar in it has a chance in my book, anyhow.

All about thugs.

There's been a lot of nonsense thrown about these last few days about the word "thug," as it has been applied to the rioters in Baltimore. Actually, calling most of them "rioters" is an insult to real rioters. Real rioters, inflamed because of political oppression, may dump tea into the bay*, or storm the Bastille**. They don't loot a CVS, steal booze, burn down houses, and cut fire hoses.

President Obama used the phrase "criminals and thugs"---which he could have used to describe his IRS, but in this case used to describe the Baltimore looters. The looters understood that if they behaved like real rioters, or revolutionaries, by addressing violence toward the mayor or whatever passes for elected government in one-party Baltimore, they would face a much more motivated security force that would not just be told to stand back. So much easier and more fun to destroy private businesses and homes.

That's the kind of thing that separates the protester from the thug.

Some people have idiotically stated that those using the term "thug" mean it as code for that very bad N word***, including (one gathers) our president, who to his credit refused to pull back from his word choice. Trying to link perfectly good and descriptive words to universally declaimed ones is just a boorish way of trying to force people away from truth. The anti-language police would have done the same with any disparaging word used for the looters, to keep us from thinking negatively about people using a sad situation to endanger others and take or destroy stuff that doesn't belong to them.

Let's look at the word thug. Merriam-Webster tells us (as everyone who ever saw the film Gunga Din knows) it comes from the Thugs of India, an organization of assassins, whose name comes from the Hindi word for thief or deceiver. Thus the title of a John Masters novel about a Brit facing off against them during the Raj.

No, this was not just an excuse to show nekkid breastes on my blog.

The Thugs considered themselves children of Kali, in her early incarnation as a goddess of annihilation, death, and destruction. The encyclopedia Man, Myth, and Magic says of the Thugs, "These robbers and ritual murders in India strangled their victims as sacrifices to the goddess Bhavani, a form of Kali, the Hindu goddess of terror and destruction." The last known Thuggee practitioner was put to death in 1882.

Modern enemies of life and civilization like ISIS (or ISIL) and Boko Haram are the Thugs of the day, as they are death cults. It may seem erroneous to identify Muslim terrorists with a group that followed a Hindu goddess, but Wikipedia notes that "the Thugs traced their origin to seven Muslim tribes" and "While only Hindus worship Kali, a large number of the Thuggees captured and convicted by the British were Muslims." As radical, violent Muslims enjoy telling us, they love death more than we love life.

What does this have to do with the riots in Baltimore? People destroying for the love of destroying, people thieving and deceiving (perhaps even themselves)? I think thug is a perfectly adequate term, actually.

_________

*Not keep it for themselves, note, or try to sell it. 

**Which was a risky maneuver, let's just say that for the revolutionaries, so you have to give them credit for courage despite the many mauvais pommes that emerged later. 

***You know the one. Don't be coy. You trying to get me thrown off Google?

Bubble bread.

Against my better judgment I took one of those online quizzes, one that purports to tell you how OCD you are. They show you a series of pictures where something is a little off or very messy, and ask how much it makes you crazy. I scored 30%, which seems entirely too non-OCD for the way I feel. 

I think it means that things make me only a little crazy, but I feel very, very certain about that little bit of craziness. 

Take bread. I love bread. Bread bread bread. I loved the old Clinton-era USDA food pyramid that told us to eat tons of bread and made everyone fat. Because I love bread. 

But when I buy a loaf of the beloved foodstuff and find a big air bubble has compromised the structural integrity of some slices, my OCD level climbs. 

I suspect it may be a particular problem of swirled breads like the rye/pumpernickel shown below. Using two doughs together seems like an invitation to separation. But it's a problem with all yeast breads.

NOW what do you do? You can carefully smear the bread with mustard or mayo, having to avoid the hole so you don't break an axle on the knife or, actually, wind up with condiments on the plate and on your hands, defeating the purpose of the neat, portable sandwich. PB and/or jelly are right out; it's bad enough to leave this as a little meat window, but you can't have a sandwich made of condiment-like material when you have a hole in your bread. If the slice next to it has an identical hole, which it likely will, I guess you could go around both holes and have a sandwich that looks like it failed to save your life when it was in your pocket and you were shot. But you know it would be a problem. Anytime you picked up your sandwich your finger would go straight into the hole.

Okay, toast then. Except for the butter leakage!

A slice of bread with a hole in it would make Bruce Banner go green and smash things. It is a food menace, and we need to find a way to resolve this. CT scan each loaf before it ships? Ah, that could solve it. Send the faulty loaves to the stuffing factory before they get sliced.

Oh, suck it up, it's just a hole in the bread, says the 10% OCD guy.

Yeah, well, it makes me nuts. The thing is, I suspect that we've each got something that makes us nuts. The guy who laughs at my bread dilemma has probably wrapped a sand wedge around a tree somewhere, or thrown a fit because his velvet Elvis painting was five degrees off square after his girlfriend vacuumed it. It's not that some people are not obsessed about anything; it's that some people are just obsessed about fewer things.

At least that's what I'm telling myself. Over and over and over.

Got to spell it out for some people.

Gnome man is an island.

One of my earliest memories is going into a lawn center in Brooklyn and being surrounded by every kind of artwork known to man . . . that was made out of cement and rebar. Birdbaths, angels, big giant flowers, deer, bunnies, and what perplexed me at the time, the classic that came to be known disrespectfully as Mary on the Half Shell.

I knew she was nice.

One thing I do not recall seeing then or in neighborhoods around us for years afterward was the garden gnome. I may be wrong, but I believe the garden gnome was an Eurocism that didn't really come to our shores until later, after the American publication of Gnomes, by Wil Huygen, in 1977. I can't begin to tell you how omnipresent this book was if you weren't around then. While the rest of the country was getting its collective freak on in discos, the bookstores were taken over by gnomes.

Small but  mighty: 62 weeks on the Times best-seller list.

Along with the persistence of the Tolkien oeuvre (given a shot in the arm by the publication of The Silmarillion, also in 1977), it marked a change in speculative fiction from a focus on science fiction to a focus on fantasy. I have no stats to back it up, but I would guess that it was the first time fantasy overtook science fiction since the emergence of SF as a distinct genre.

Anyway, we've had gnomes for our gardens ever since, and jolly little chaps they are, too. Found a couple at Lowe's last week, in fact.

The gnome on the right is seated, with one leg up and the other crossed in front. In case you were wondering.

There are still many things that you can get for your yard, but small as he is, the gnome stands tall. After all, how many other things in the garden store inspired an animated movie?

We're not really gnome people here, but we respect the gnome and all his garden pals. Carry on, gnome! You may be small, but in the world of garden statuary, you're 15 feet tall. (Except for one 17-foot-nine-inch gnome in Nowa Sól, Poland---that's rather a bit too much gnome, don't you think?)

One last word on Mary: She deservedly gets a place of honor on many Catholic lawns, but what do they do with my man St. Joseph? Bury him upside down when they want to unload the joint. They even sell kits for the purpose now. Bad enough he has to be in a family where his son is God and his wife is perfect---try winning arguments in that house---but now he gets buried in the sod when you want to ditch the real estate. Awesome.

Rate the crap!

I cannot tell you how many times I saw this ad in comic books when I was growing up.

All of these things had a certain appeal, although even with a kid's impaired ability to reason we knew they would be disappointing. As one boy I knew once said (in a somewhat less elegant manner), "If X-ray specs really worked, they'd be standard issue in every doctor's office."

Honor House, which peddled this stuff and lots more to gullible children, always sold products that could not fulfill their promise, but the promise was enough to fire our imagination. I never ordered any of these items from them, but I did engage in any number of discussions on their supposed virtues and probable failures. Maybe being a New York City kid made us more wary, but I doubt it. Personally, I was just too broke to send away for anything. The price of the comic book cleaned me out.

Looking over this page, all jammed with goodies, I feel compelled to rate the crap. Herewith are my brief takes on the objects on this iconic page, bearing in mind that I have never actually held any in my hand. Ratings focus on appeal, schoolhouse experience, and probability of worth, largely based on recollections of discussions held decades ago.

X-Ray Specs
Top rating. Just because they could maybe work and wouldn't it be awesome. Note how the ad shows the guy looking at his hand, but in his line of vision there happens to be a buxom lass. Makes ya think, eh, boys?  A

Secret Book Safe
This one seemed likely to be legit. We knew it would never keep out a determined sibling, but camouflage and secrets are cool. A little too practical, though, to be that much fun. A-

Monster Size Monsters
Sharp eyes notice that the ad doesn't say what these things are made of. Paper cutouts, I believe, are what they turned out to be. Nice reminder, though, of the 1960s and early 1970s nostalgia for the great Universal horror movies of the 1930s. Now I'm nostalgic for the nostalgia. C+

Throw Your Voice
Eerily compelling, and at an age when you think it is possible to actually make your voice come out of some other place, highly suggestive of practical jokes. "Hey, don't pee! I'm stuck down this terlet!" Still, throwing your voice means throwing your voice, so even if it works people will figure out that's just you with a lousy Bela Lugosi accent or something. B

Naval Cannon
Maybe cool, especially if you looked up to the military vets in your family, or you just want to wake up Mom from her headache nap in a new and funny way! Funny for three seconds, anyhow. Otherwise, not that great. B-

Monster Size Skeleton
Smaller than the Monster Size Monsters, but supposedly glows in the dark. Every kid old enough to send away for this knew that glow-in-the-dark stuff is always disappointing. Would get an A if you had a nosy younger sibling that had skelephobia, but otherwise, meh. C

Onion Gum
Fool your friends! Might work. Probably be about as fresh as the gum that came with baseball cards back then. Worth a shot, if you can offer it with a straight face, and victims will accept it without examining the packaging. B

Bullet Holes
No one is going to fall for these. Yeah, someone shot up my car. Call the cops! Probably don't look that great. As pranks go, way below plastic dog poop. D-

Trick Baseball
Strange, possibly fun---but for prank purposes? Hmm. What if someone did manage to hit it? Would it break? Could be little more than a Wiffle Ball with coins in it; they also wobble in flight. Maybe it was just a version of that? If it was plastic no one would mistake it for a baseball. Too liable to be a flop. D

Moneymaker
If it really made good-looking bills, they wouldn't sell it. Maybe good enough to fool your little sister, but she's not too smart. And couldn't you get arrested for this? C-

Joy Buzzer
These were all over the place, and always so big and clunky that you could never hide one in your hand, and they didn't give anyone a shock. They just buzzed. Harmless indeed. Rare case of popularity sinking an idea. Kids don't normally shake hands, anyway. D+

Magic Cards
If the 10 tricks didn't suck, sure. But the cards had to look like regular playing cards, not something out of the Goofy Kidz Deck O' Fun. Risky. C

Jack Pot Bank
"Should not be used for gambling purposes"? What the heck else is it for? Maybe you can get some dummies to play. But if it works, they might win. Bleah. F

Smoke Bomb
Always fun in school, the smoke bomb was great for all-purpose laughs and smelled like egg farts. How much to buy them by the case? A

Boomerang
There wasn't a boy alive who didn't want to try one to see if they really came back. Seems like something you could get at the toy store rather than having to buy through a comic book, but never could. It would be great if it was of any quality. You could play catch by yourself when Dad was busy fixing the car or drinking or something. And don't they use these in Australia to cut the heads off kangaroos? Nice. B+

Skin Head Wig
Oddly enough, one thing we never considered was that for this to work, it would have to be the exact shade of the rest of your skin. And even if it did work perfectly, it wouldn't be much of a joke. "Hey, Joey! Where's your hair?" "Oh, I'm bald now." "That sucks." D

Karate Et Al
You can't learn sports out of books, but kids weren't all enrolled in karate classes in those days. Where else were you going to learn to be cool like Bruce Lee? If you just learned a few things... well, it might be the difference the next time Stinky Joe Blatz decided it was Swirly Day. B

Surprise Package
Way way way too dangerous. You figured you would definitely wind up with the 500 stamps from the other offer in the comic. Skip it. F