Back from Mouseland
Disneyland is an interesting place. I went there in October, expecting the crowds to be less than usual, due to the fact that the California kids should be in school in the middle of the week. As it turned out, Northern California kids were on some sort of holiday, so the place was jam packed with people.
They are in their 50th anniversary of Disneyland celebration, which means that they have a special 50th anniversary parade, a special presentation retrospective and a daily reenactment of the founding of Disneyland using Walt Disney’s original speech. They also have 50’s all over the place. By the way, there is a terrific Aladdin live-action musical thing, that is a must-see and I do not say that lightly.
The hotel where we were staying provided the Los Angeles Times every day for free, so I was able to follow this week’s editions of For Better or For Worse. I was sorry that Howard was not there to provide his perspective of the Kelpfroths’ being on the receiving end of Patterson-style justice. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the ARB posters had devoted a great number of posts to schmoosie’s proposal describing the disappearance of Howard.
First off was the presence of Professor Roy Hinkley, Jr. from Gilligan’s Island. I utilized the plotlines from one of my favourite Gilligan bits (the one where Gilligan turns into a human radio) and the other continuing gags where Gilligan on a bicycle provides the human energy for a lot of the Professor’s inventions. Then I tossed in the usual jungle jokes. 96.3 FM is actually the Toronto Classical radio station, which I figured would be a favourite of Howard’s, particularly during Metropolitan Opera broadcasts.
The toughest part was doing the genetic research on aging and homosexuality. Most of the genetic research on homosexuality concentrates on studies that were done some years back comparing the percentage of men that were homosexual as twins vs. the percentage that were not. After some looking, I found an obscure reference to the size of the INAH 3 nucleus of the hypothalamus in homosexual vs. heterosexual men. The reference compared the homosexual nucleus favorably to the size of a woman’s INAH 3 nucleus, so this became the discriminating factor to determine no aging for Milborough women and gays, despite the fact that the main conclusion of the research is obviously flawed.
Schmoosie posting as Brenda Starr mentioned porphyrias, the symptoms of which really don’t have anything to do with aging or homosexuality, but it does have to do with enzyme disorders. I keyed on the word enzyme as something that could be related to the running gag about tongues that I had been using for gay conversion. Much to my amazement, the recommended treatment for acute porphyria in the medical web page I was reading is actually a high-carbohydrate diet. That worked out so perfectly with our running gag about Elly Patterson eating pastries, I could not ignore it.
Finally, there was the aging. The standard disease for early aging is Werner’s Syndrome, which occurs after puberty and usually kills people in their mid-40s. It was a good match for the Milborough aging seen in Anthony and Gordon, but there is no cure for Werner’s Syndrome, so I dropped that idea. The other thing I spotted was a study on trying to prevent aging using a method to prevent telomere shortening. Taking the language from that study, I went the opposite direction to causing aging and linked all 3 conditions together, by having Howard cheat and say, “Somehow this happens.” Well, the other aspect was reading through all the scientific language and trying to boil it down to layman’s terms, so the stupid thing would be somewhat understandable to persons without a genetics background.
schmoosie as Brenda Starr was dropping hints that Brenda Starr and Howard had a meeting with someone who spent time in the Amazon and who would intimidate the Professor. I had no idea about whom schmoosie was talking. I tried to Google on comic strip characters in the Amazon, but the stupid thing gave me a gazillion listings for Amazon.com for comic strip collections. The only character I could think of was the Phantom. Unfortunately, the Phantom's country is named "Bangalla" and is generally considered to be located in Central Africa, whereas the Amazon is generally considered to be located in South America. So, if questioned about this matter, I will conclude that the Phantom could have visited the Amazon, even if he doesn’t live there.
aprilp_katje posting as Shawna-Marie spotted Brenda, Howard, and a man with an eye patch watching the Maple Leafs practice. The man with the eye patch had to be Brenda Starr’s husband, the ever-missing Basil St. John. I had Basil reinterpret his need for the rare black orchid to sustain his life to sustain his lust. Also, the recording of “One Night in the Starr” is a takeoff on the Paris Hilton’s “One Night in Paris” video, which was my favourite joke of the post.
I had originally planned to get Howard working the Mayes’ restaurant to get some snark on Michael from that direction. Much to my pleasure, phatsmacky reappeared posting as Michael, so I may be able to get some interaction there. phatsmacky seems to be trying to move Michael to a more sympathetic position in April’s Real Blog, so I have posted things in an effort to help him move that way. I think that will work out well, since the strip is playing Deanna Patterson as the catalyst for getting Mike away from Portrait magazine. Lynn Johnston constantly uses her female characters to move the action, but with Michael and Deanna, the action doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you consider Deanna’s motivation as a little insidious. Much has been made of Deanna’s role in her unexpected pregnancy with Merrie, but I also noticed that she was the one who sent Weed after Carleen, who eventually ended up living in the same complex of buildings as Deanna. Anyone familiar with the relationships of couples to each other, knows that the female-female relationship is the key to the relationship’s success. Deanna must really like Carleen, and that has not been explored in the strip at all, since Deanna originally played matchmaker for her and Weed. Also, exactly why is Deanna pushing Michael to quit his steady higher-paying job, for the riskier less-paying freelance work? The ARB posters have put Deanna into the “Elly is forcing me to do it” situation, but I prefer Deanna to have some say in it. Throughout the courtship strips, Deanna used to irritate me with her “I can’t get married unless this or that happens” stuff. She is a manipulator, just like her mother, but a lot less obvious about it. ellcee, who is listed as the poster for Deanna could have some fun with that. If not, Howard will, even though it will be 3rd hand.
They are in their 50th anniversary of Disneyland celebration, which means that they have a special 50th anniversary parade, a special presentation retrospective and a daily reenactment of the founding of Disneyland using Walt Disney’s original speech. They also have 50’s all over the place. By the way, there is a terrific Aladdin live-action musical thing, that is a must-see and I do not say that lightly.
The hotel where we were staying provided the Los Angeles Times every day for free, so I was able to follow this week’s editions of For Better or For Worse. I was sorry that Howard was not there to provide his perspective of the Kelpfroths’ being on the receiving end of Patterson-style justice. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the ARB posters had devoted a great number of posts to schmoosie’s proposal describing the disappearance of Howard.
First off was the presence of Professor Roy Hinkley, Jr. from Gilligan’s Island. I utilized the plotlines from one of my favourite Gilligan bits (the one where Gilligan turns into a human radio) and the other continuing gags where Gilligan on a bicycle provides the human energy for a lot of the Professor’s inventions. Then I tossed in the usual jungle jokes. 96.3 FM is actually the Toronto Classical radio station, which I figured would be a favourite of Howard’s, particularly during Metropolitan Opera broadcasts.
The toughest part was doing the genetic research on aging and homosexuality. Most of the genetic research on homosexuality concentrates on studies that were done some years back comparing the percentage of men that were homosexual as twins vs. the percentage that were not. After some looking, I found an obscure reference to the size of the INAH 3 nucleus of the hypothalamus in homosexual vs. heterosexual men. The reference compared the homosexual nucleus favorably to the size of a woman’s INAH 3 nucleus, so this became the discriminating factor to determine no aging for Milborough women and gays, despite the fact that the main conclusion of the research is obviously flawed.
Schmoosie posting as Brenda Starr mentioned porphyrias, the symptoms of which really don’t have anything to do with aging or homosexuality, but it does have to do with enzyme disorders. I keyed on the word enzyme as something that could be related to the running gag about tongues that I had been using for gay conversion. Much to my amazement, the recommended treatment for acute porphyria in the medical web page I was reading is actually a high-carbohydrate diet. That worked out so perfectly with our running gag about Elly Patterson eating pastries, I could not ignore it.
Finally, there was the aging. The standard disease for early aging is Werner’s Syndrome, which occurs after puberty and usually kills people in their mid-40s. It was a good match for the Milborough aging seen in Anthony and Gordon, but there is no cure for Werner’s Syndrome, so I dropped that idea. The other thing I spotted was a study on trying to prevent aging using a method to prevent telomere shortening. Taking the language from that study, I went the opposite direction to causing aging and linked all 3 conditions together, by having Howard cheat and say, “Somehow this happens.” Well, the other aspect was reading through all the scientific language and trying to boil it down to layman’s terms, so the stupid thing would be somewhat understandable to persons without a genetics background.
schmoosie as Brenda Starr was dropping hints that Brenda Starr and Howard had a meeting with someone who spent time in the Amazon and who would intimidate the Professor. I had no idea about whom schmoosie was talking. I tried to Google on comic strip characters in the Amazon, but the stupid thing gave me a gazillion listings for Amazon.com for comic strip collections. The only character I could think of was the Phantom. Unfortunately, the Phantom's country is named "Bangalla" and is generally considered to be located in Central Africa, whereas the Amazon is generally considered to be located in South America. So, if questioned about this matter, I will conclude that the Phantom could have visited the Amazon, even if he doesn’t live there.
aprilp_katje posting as Shawna-Marie spotted Brenda, Howard, and a man with an eye patch watching the Maple Leafs practice. The man with the eye patch had to be Brenda Starr’s husband, the ever-missing Basil St. John. I had Basil reinterpret his need for the rare black orchid to sustain his life to sustain his lust. Also, the recording of “One Night in the Starr” is a takeoff on the Paris Hilton’s “One Night in Paris” video, which was my favourite joke of the post.
I had originally planned to get Howard working the Mayes’ restaurant to get some snark on Michael from that direction. Much to my pleasure, phatsmacky reappeared posting as Michael, so I may be able to get some interaction there. phatsmacky seems to be trying to move Michael to a more sympathetic position in April’s Real Blog, so I have posted things in an effort to help him move that way. I think that will work out well, since the strip is playing Deanna Patterson as the catalyst for getting Mike away from Portrait magazine. Lynn Johnston constantly uses her female characters to move the action, but with Michael and Deanna, the action doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you consider Deanna’s motivation as a little insidious. Much has been made of Deanna’s role in her unexpected pregnancy with Merrie, but I also noticed that she was the one who sent Weed after Carleen, who eventually ended up living in the same complex of buildings as Deanna. Anyone familiar with the relationships of couples to each other, knows that the female-female relationship is the key to the relationship’s success. Deanna must really like Carleen, and that has not been explored in the strip at all, since Deanna originally played matchmaker for her and Weed. Also, exactly why is Deanna pushing Michael to quit his steady higher-paying job, for the riskier less-paying freelance work? The ARB posters have put Deanna into the “Elly is forcing me to do it” situation, but I prefer Deanna to have some say in it. Throughout the courtship strips, Deanna used to irritate me with her “I can’t get married unless this or that happens” stuff. She is a manipulator, just like her mother, but a lot less obvious about it. ellcee, who is listed as the poster for Deanna could have some fun with that. If not, Howard will, even though it will be 3rd hand.
posted by howard at 12:17 AM
4 Comments:
I must say, you have done brilliant work linking together genetic research, schmoosie's hints, and our established ARB running gags. Kudos to you!
I'm interested to see where you are going with Dee and her manipulations. Excellent point about her role in bringing together Carleen and Weed. Given that, it is odd that we don't see Deanna and Carleen getting together to chat, as we've seen Elly and Connie do for the run of the strip. And considering that Weed and Carleen live in the next building over, why don't they interact more as couples? (In the strip, as opposed to the letter telling us about their scintillating dinner conversation.)
I'm also intrigued by the idea of Michael becoming more sympathetic at ARB. It will be interesting to see what developed.
I enjoyed what you did with the gift basket, too. I couldn't wait to find out what "we" had given Howard. :)
aprilp_katje,
The gift basket was little tougher than I thought. It couldn't be something that went bad since they didn't know when Howard was coming back, it had to be something that April and Becky could afford and it had to apply to Howard's unique tastes.
As for Michael and Deanna, I do not know if phatsmacky's posting is a one-time thing, like the "RHETTA" yells and we won't see anything else for months or if it is return to more regular posting. I wouldn't mind playing off of phatsmacky as Michael. We shall see what happens there.
Sending virtual hot chocolate your way, Schmoo! Hope the mood passes soon--we'll miss you, and I sympathize. . . .
schmoosie,
You can add some virtual mini-marshmallows to the hot chocolate from me. I loved all the Disneyland hallucinations. Aside from killing off Howard, there are really no sacred cows as far as what can be done to him. I have abused him plenty (raped, beaten up, imprisoned, etc.), and there is more abuse to come. I have to get in what I can before Lynn puts him in long term jail with the November monthly letters.
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