Jim Flanigan Looks at the World
Turning the Mundane into Fundane Since 2015
Well, here we are starting the second half of my Twelve Days of Blogging. A Mite Be Funny is normally (if you can call anything about Mite Be Funny normal) scheduled for today, so let’s roll with a Christmas-themed cartoon.
Here we are halfway through my Twelve Days of Blogging. I’ll let you do the math to figure out how many days that is. I hope you received the gifts you wanted or at least gift receipts along with the crappy ones.
I received this thoughtful gift from my oldest daughter. Now I can go around smelling like I’m stinking drunk even when I’m not.
Examine those soaps a bit closer and you will see this …
Continue reading “Do I Have a Drinking Problem?”
On the fifth day of my Twelve Days of Blogging, I mainly want to wish you a very Merry Christmas.
But you don’t want to almost be able to see me. I know you want new content, but I have little to give other than that pic. So how about a Christmas Mite Be Funny from 3 years ago?
Here we are on the fourth day of my Twelve Days of Blogging, and I experienced quite a haul yesterday. No, I didn’t get a lot of gifts. (Thanks for that lack of gifts, by the way) My haul involved literally hauling these five 4′ x 8′ sheets of drywall up a tricky flight of stairs with a couple tight turns at the bottom and top.
No, I didn’t do it alone. I assisted my brother-in-law who is doing our bathroom renovation & expansion. But then, I got the bright idea to haul these bad boys up the stairs … by myself.
Continue reading “A Christmas Haul”
On the third day of my Twelve Days of Blogging, I’m going to offer you a rerun with new content. I hadn’t planned on dredging up this poem from 2017 filled with my winter ire. And I’m not talking about winter irie, which is a good thing.
Yah, mon. I wish everyone an Irie Xmas in Jamaica.
The reason I resurrected the poem is that I’m spitting-venom mad at winter. As someone who suffers from seasonal depression due to lack of light, I always happily celebrate the Winter Solstice. The days are getting longer now. Except this solstice pissed me off. I expected to wake up this morning to an early dawn. Nope, Still dark and cloudy.
And speaking of cloudy, I missed seeing the Jupiter-Saturn celestial convergence. If we had a clear night sky, I am sure I would have been one of many gathered on the local sled hill gazing at the heavens to see this once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event. Nope. Nothing but clouds. And I had this joke all ready to spring on my neighbors …
Continue reading “A Poetic Seasonal Rerun About Winter”
Here we are at Day 2 of my Twelve Days of Blogging. I thought it would be fun to show you the home project we decided to move forward with during the holidays.
We have an open concept house in our family room and kitchen area. It is a nice, large, livable, open space. We like it. However, we also have more traditional areas in the house like in our living room and dining room. I had hoped to continue that more traditional theme in our master bathroom that we are having renovated and expanded. This seems way too open to me …
I’m hoping for the next level up in privacy. But I do really like the convenience of this …
Continue reading “Way Open Concept”
There was a time when I was blogging daily, but complaints from blog followers were such that I had to cut back. I’m sure it was because the daily posts were soooo hilarious that readers couldn’t get anything done due to frequent bursts of chortling and chuckling all day when thoughts turned to my daily post with the end result being that they accomplished nothing.
But I’m back, baby. Twelve days of blogging to coincide with the twelve days of Christmas. Wait, what? Christmas is Friday? Uh-oh. Are stores open during COVID? Maybe I can coincide my blogging with the eight days of Chanukah. Wait, what? That’s over already? I completely missed Chanukah? I always feel like I slight Chanukah, and this year I’ve gone and missed it entirely. The least I can do is recruit a major celebrity like Motown legend Smokey Robinson to deliver a festive Chanukah video message.
Continue reading “The Twelve Days of Blogging”
I recently announced the pre-release of my book, now available for purchase for under a buck! But why would you want to purchase? Well, I can give you 16 reasons … the 16 short stories in the book. Well, maybe 15. My editor hates one of the stories that I quite like. You can be the judge. Purchase, read, judge.
Here’s a peek inside at the Table of Contents along with some editorializing on each of the stories …
Continue reading “BEYOND – Tales of the Afterlife – A Glimpse Inside & Bonus Offer!”
It’s nice that our neighbors behind us decided to install an airport landing strip in their backyard this holiday season.
I do need some trees trimmed in the back, so I’m not objecting to a small plane or two trying to land.
It’s not like we don’t have some of our own interesting decorations in our trees out front. Take a look …
Continue reading “Holiday Decorations in my Neighborhood”
I had to go and open my big mouth at the last Zoom meeting of the St. Charles Township Democrats and ask about whether we were fielding candidates for any St. Charles Township positions in the Spring election. Before I could say “the election is rigged,” I was drafted as a candidate. I figured that there was no way I would actually run since I couldn’t imagine getting the 240 signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. First, global pandemic. Nobody wants to answer their door. Next, it’s cold out. Finally, I’m lazy. As it was, I got about a third. The rest were gotten for me. Gulp. Looks like I’ll be a candidate for St. Charles Township Trustee on April 6, 2021.
I was a bit nervous about revealing my “professional” alias on my Statement of Candidacy below …
Continue reading “Vote for … Me?”
Gee, that kid in this blog’s feature image is homely. Anyway, I’m trying out new enhanced blog capabilities once again, this time embedding Twitter videos. Winter is finally hitting Chicago this weekend, so now seemed to be a good time to unleash some Twitter winter weather videos with a COVID theme, all from @RexChapman.
For now, my 2 youngest daughters are remote learning and my wife is remote teaching from home. We have “schools” in our dining room, kitchen, and family room. Thankfully, none of them look like this …
It’s just as well that we are all home and not having to battle icy conditions like this lady with a backpack.
Continue reading “Twitter Welcomes a COVID Winter”
It’s not often I get excited for a movie coming out. I was “very excite” for the Borat sequel.
We were rewarded with a better movie than the original Borat flick, in my opinion.
Now, in just a matter of days, here comes A Recipe for Seduction starring Mario Lopez of Saved by the Bell fame as … Colonel Sanders. Don’t be chicken. Take a look at this trailer and set your DVR to record.
Continue reading “Finger Lickin’ Good Entertainment”
Well, it took a while, but my book of short stories is finally finished. You can actually read it. It comes complete with real words, full sentences, paragraphs, grammar, quotation marks, hyphens, and mostly coherent stories. And not just a handful of stories, but SIXTEEN of them. You are guaranteed to enjoy some of them. I’ll detail each of the stories in future posts, but suffice to say that they are written to elicit some laughter and contemplative thought concerning our ultimate destination.
How much? How about under a buck at $0.99. That’s less than 7 cents a story, or under 6 cents per story if I include the preface. Why would I include the preface? Well, it’s pretty funny, but I also class it up by quoting Shakespeare. That’s right, THE Bill Shakespeare. Not Jack Shakespeare, my neighbor down the block. Here’s how it starts …
“William Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “To die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause.”
That’s just one of hundreds of Shakespeare’s quotes that I don’t understand. I’m not sure I even have a mortal coil. I think the surgeon removed my mortal coil during my emergency appendectomy.”
I’m sure the first 2 paragraphs of the preface have convinced you to buy this book. Click this Published Works link to purchase. Go ahead, do it. Not later. Now. Go on. I’ll wait. There, doesn’t that feel better. Now you have hours of chuckle-filled reading entertainment ahead.
And so ends the first of endless posts shamelessly promoting this book. Get ready for more.
The last time I updated you on my efforts to reach my weight loss goal of 20 pounds (for those of you still living in medieval times, that comes out to 1.43 stones), I had fallen short in September. I was stuck at 17 pounds at the end of September after really working out hard that month. With cooler weather coming, I faced the prospect of no more swimming workouts in the convenience of our backyard pool. I am simply not up for a nice winter swim as some are.
Canadians, eh? And I cannot handle this exercise below freezing …
Continue reading “Weighting Out Winter”There is a conspiracy theory circulating that the COVID-19 vaccine will contain a tracking chip. I know that’s a bunch of rubbish, but I’m all for it! As I get older and my memory gets sketchier, I think it might be handy to be able to track myself in case I forget where I am or where I am going.
You’ve all enjoyed suckling at the teat of this blog for free for 5 years now. But let’s be honest … most of this is crap. Free was the right price. Almost 200 weekly Mite Be Funny cartoons? Cartoons about mulch? What’s going to happen to this blog when I won’t have Trump to complain about anymore? You’ll be presented with seemingly endless angry screeds about pointless minutiae in my life like too much lint in my pants pocket. Oh, that galls me. I hate it when it makes little lint balls. See? See where this blog may be headed? And don’t even get me started about socks that don’t stay up and slide down and bunch up in your shoes. That’s the worst.
Or, we could make it interesting. It’s time to put your money where my mouth is and make a tasty deposit. I’m having new business cards made: Jim Flanigan – Word Whore. That’s right, I plan to sell myself. Well, not myself as in my body. That ship has sailed. But I will sell my writings. Check out the Published Works page on this blog. There you can buy my published short story without buying the book, my political potboiler novella from earlier this year, and my new book of short stories about the afterlife (Coming Soon!).
So, take a look at the Published Works page and pony up some of your loose change from between your couch seat cushions to make me a successful Word Whore, Paragraph Prostitute, Story Strumpet, Chronicle Courtesan, or whatever you want to call me. But please do check me out. My words are now available for a cheap roll in the literary hay.
Jim Flanigan Looks at the World 