July 23rd, 2011

Hell on Earth in a Can

by Wayno & Piraro

Bizarro is brought to you today by Wheel of Fortune Reject.

Here at Bizarro Headquarters, CHNW and I have had day after week after month of new cans of worms. We were in LA on business about six weeks ago and she got a phone call from Florida saying her (previously completely healthy) dad had just arrived at the hospital in an ambulance and might not survive. (He’d gotten a wicked infection that he mistook for muscular backache and didn’t treat until it reached his brain and rendered him unconscious!) I had to stay in LA for the week to make my meetings, but she jumped the next plane and rushed to his side. I had to return to NYC to get back to my deadline schedule and was unable to join her. One complication led to another for the next six weeks and she just got home yesterday. I’m happy to say that pop-in-law is fine and will be going home any day now. But man, what a month and a half it has been! More worms than we knew what to do with and a truckload of cans for recycling.

Come to think of it, the whole experience was not unlike a visit to The Disneyland That Time Forgot. You think everything’s going to be peaches and roses (if you are not fond of peaches and/or roses, substitute a couple of things you like: cigars and scotch, pajamas and neck rubs, pot and Jimi Hendrix music) but suddenly you’re being chased by a 30-foot-tall dinosaur-Mickey Mouse hybrid, with a hot poker up your butt. (I left the hot pokers out of this cartoon for the sake of younger readers.)

But all is fine here at headquarters again, for now, although New York City is on fire with the heatwave that has plagued the Midwest for the past month or so. Thanks, Oklahoma. Next summer, keep your weather to yourself, please.