And Now For Something Completely Different..

From "Benny Lava" sort of by Buffalaxed

My loony bun is fine Benny Lava!
Minor bun engine made Benny Lava!
Anybody need this sign? Benny Lava!
You need a bun to bite Benny Lava!

I can't tell you exactly what has caused my terror induced sprint down memory road (mostly because I don't know), but I've been thinking about the past a lot lately. This is likely the most useless statement in the world, but here it goes; life is damned interesting!

I used to be a huge fan of the Peanuts comic strip. I also liked the animated TV stuff, but the REAL Peanuts was the strip. I must have had 20 different hard and soft backed Peanuts novels. So much that I started associating myself with Charlie Brown. (Of all the Joshua Butterfields in the world, I'm the Joshua Butterfieldest..)

One of the most memorable things (for me anyhow) that happened in the strip was Snoopy writing a story that started "It was a dark and stormy night..".

Here's the entire text of Snoopy's novel (which, alas, never got published by in-strip publishers..):

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night

by Snoopy

Part I

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out!

A door slammed. The maid screamed.

Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon!

While millions of people were starving, the king lived

in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was

growing up.

Part II

A light snow was falling, and the little girl with the

tattered shawl had not sold a violet all day.

At that very moment, a young intern at City Hospital was

making an important discovery. The mysterious patient in

Room 213 had finally awakened. She moaned softly.

Could it be that she was the sister of the boy in Kansas

who loved the girl with the tattered shawl who was the

daughter of the maid who had escaped from the pirates?

The intern frowned.

"Stampede!" the foreman shouted, and forty thousand head

of cattle thundered down on the tiny camp. The two men

rolled on the ground grappling beneath the murderous hooves.

A left and a right. A left. Another left and right. An

uppercut to the jaw. The fight was over. And so the ranch

was saved.

The young intern sat by himself in one corner of the

coffee shop. he had learned about medicine, but more

importantly, he had learned something about life.

THE END

*sniff* I laughed, I cried, I learned a little bit about myself. THAT, my friends, is writing.

So while I'm having all of these thoughts about peanuts, I'm also starving at work.. (typical) I walked over to the vending machine (completely atypical) to pick up some Swedish Fish. I put in my money, and instead of hitting the E and then the 10 button, I hit E and then 1 and then 0. However, to my surprise and chagrin, the machine wasn't waiting patiently for me to build a 10.. it saw E and 1 and went to town.

To my surprise, it dropped.....

......Peanuts.

Life is damned interesting sometimes.

I would like to take this moment to salute Charles M Schulz and all of the Peanuts crew. The life lessons I didn't learn from my Grandpa and Grandma, I learned from this crew.



Keep flying, Snoopy.. keep flying!