Get Milked - Blog, Comics, Toons

A friend of mine went to a restaurant downtown recently. When they walked in the door a blonde woman suddenly appeared from behind a curtain and said "It looks like two! Follow me, please!" She led them to a central table from which they could see the entire restaurant. Only one other table had people sitting at it. Dozens of empty tables surrounded them. The blonde woman looked at them both intently and said "I hope you have the best meal of your life!"

A different woman, a brunette, appeared and took their order. Then she sat down at a nearby table and began folding napkins. Soon a bartender appeared from a doorway, scanned the room, and took his place behind the bar. When the blonde woman appeared, my friend noticed that he quickly ducked out of sight beneath the bar. The blonde woman looked around confused and went back through the kitchen doors. Almost immediately, the bartender popped up again and began cleaning glasses. But as soon as the blonde woman reappeared, he ducked behind the bar again. The blonde woman looked over at the bar confused, and turned to the brunette folding napkins and abruptly said "If you could have all of the food you eat taste like chocolate or meat for the rest of your life, which would you choose?" The brunette stopped folding napkins and looked blankly at the blonde woman. Then the blonde woman repeated the question, which resulted in another blank stare from the brunette. Finally, the brunette said, with absolutely no emotion, "Chocolate." The blonde woman giggled and said "Really? I don't know about that", and walked back into the kitchen which caused the bartender to appear again. Next, the food arrived, delivered by a different person. While my friend ate he noticed that the bartender kept avoiding the blonde woman by ducking behind the bar each time she entered the room.

About halfway through the meal the blonde woman snuck out of the kitchen and kneeled down in front of the bar. The bartender popped up from behind the bar and grabbed a glass. It made a clinking sound. Immediately the blonde woman stood up and faced the bartender. His face sank and he avoided her gaze. She immediately said "If you could have a live-in chef, a chauffeur, or a masseuse, which would you choose?" The bartender threw his hands up in the air and said "I don't know! And I don't care!" To which the blonde woman only said "Oh, come on, tell me!" So the bartender grunted "I don't know, a masseuse!" The blonde woman did a double take and looked shocked. "Really," she said, "I'd have a live-in chef for sure! That way I'd never have to cook! That's what I'd choose!" The bartender gave a shrug and turned away from the woman.

My friend said the food was terrible, the blonde woman overcharged them but wouldn't admit it without a prolonged argument, and that the entire experience was bizarre. He and his wife have no plans to return.

I think there's a lesson in this for all of us, but I can't imagine what it would be.

A friend of mine went to Siena, Italy with an ex-girlfriend some years ago, and as they placidly ate gelato in a local shop, he suddenly heard a mob approaching in the street outside. An enormous wave of screaming people pressed by the front of the gelateria. They seemed very intent on something as they moved through the streets, but my friend couldn't tell exactly what. After he and his then girlfriend finished thier gelato, they decided to follow the crowd (a little nervously since they were tourists). Down around the corner of a dimly lit street they heard the din of the mob. Neither of them spoke very good Italian, so they could not understand what words people screamed, or the buzzing gossip in the streets. As they approached the scene the sounds intensified. Finally, as he turned the corner my friend said he saw a dense mass of people completely filling up the small dark Italian street. Everyone faced a building that remained slightly out of view. My friend became insatiably curious, and he piled into the crowd, leaving his then girlfriend behind screaming "No!" The people were thick as concrete. He had to elbow his way through bodies and ocassionally he leapt into the air to see past the numerous obscuring heads. He saw people in a different gelateria, and someone was throwing pieces of paper out of the door. Someone stepped on his foot and soon after he recieved a hard shoulder in his stomach. But he finally made his way to the center of the crowd and a good vantage point. Then he saw everyting. There, in a small fancy gelateria, stood Richard Gere trapped by a mob. My friend said that he looked very angry and appeared to be cursing. Two burly bodyguard types blocked the door and every now and then threw out flyers for an American-based video rental store (he found out later that Gere was there for the grand opening). Eventually the police arrived and peeled Gere from the store and the crowd. The people in the store with him remained spellbound and starry eyed even after the frustrated actor disappeared. Once the police car sped off, the crowd dispersed.

The first time my friend told me this story (he repeats it often), he said "How awful of a life is that? Why would anyone want that for themselves?" I responded that many people indeed seemed to want such a life, but I couldn't tell him why. He shook his head and said "There would be no greater curse than not being able to walk through the streets of Siena freely and undisturbed." Taking his word for it, I nodded in agreement. Then he nodded. Later, we rented a movie.

The search for Penguin continues. Doubtless he knows that he's a wanted bird so we were very surprised when we received a new transmission from his traversal capsule. We have reason to believe that he's set up a profitable crabcake business with money granted to him from the Get Milked Foundation. This money was specifically earmarked for finding the meaning of life (see 8/21/2005, 6/6/2005, 4/17/2005, 3/31/2005, and 3/18/2005 below for details). But, as anyone who reads the history knows, Penguin has simply crossed the line between decency and belligerence. So what's this new picture all about? Is it a dodge or a diversion of some sort? Probably. Well, he won't get away with it. We're wise to his wiley ways. Just wait until our lawyer brigade finds... wait... something's strange. What's wrong? Hey. Is that the same penguin? I don't think it's the same penguin. Really, I don't. HEY! What's going on? What kind of stunt... What? He sent a message? Wow. Bold. It says "I AM THE SAME PENGUIN." What the...? I really don't think that's the same penguin. But we can use our ingenious "juxtapose" technology to investigate. Let's see here...

Call me a fool, but I really don't think that's the same penguin. ARGH! Another ruse! A decoy! Fie! Fie! First the underhanded and sleazy crabcake store scandal and now it looks like he's hired a contractor to take his place in the capsule! And all on our dollar! What kind of business model is that? We'll have to step up our efforts to nab the slippery varmit. Stay tuned. There'll be some teeth gritting tonight, I tell you.

I was sitting in a crowded mall cafeteria the other day and as I tried to identify this plasticine object embedded in my burger, two guys sat down at a table next to me. They began horfing their food immediately and one of them said, between bits of chewed burger, "You know, I really can't see a girl going to the bathroom. You know, I know they do and all, but I just can't see it. It seems so un, you know, not something like chicks would do and such. Especially number two." The other one swallowed what looked like two pounds of beef all at once and said "Yeah. I know. Geez. I always thought women, you know, just did their hair or something in there. I never thought about it either until I walked in on my girlfriend taking a whiz. She screamed and told me to get out, but I just sat there and stared because it totally freaked me out." The other guy said "Weird" and gobbled the rest of his fries. Then they left.

I think there's a lesson in this for all of us, and it is this: women do in fact go to the bathroom just like men and if you have any doubts about this, ask one.

Recently, a friend told me about this time when he was maybe five or six years old. His extended family would meet at his aunt and uncle's house every Thanksgiving for a whollop of a meal. Turkey, stuffing, potatoes, yams, pie. The works. As remains somewhat the typical custom, the family set up a table for the adults and a table for the kids. The adults ate in what seemed like a splendid dining room (to the kids, at least), and the kids sat at a small card table in the kitchen (in the opposite corner from the dog dish). A small hallway separated the two rooms by sight, but not by sound. From the dining room came gales of laughter, stories, and jokes. One of the typical jokes involved insulting the food. It probably represented a way to actually compliment "the chef" without actually going out on a limb with an actual verbal compliment. Emotion bad. Jokes good. So the children, sequestered to the kitchen, kept hearing things such as "this turkey is dry as the desert!" or "Are these yams plastic?" followed by explosive guffaws. My friend then thought he would join in on the fun. It seemed easy enough. He said, loud enough to be heard over the din, "These potatoes sure are runny!" Silence fell over the dining room. Since he couldn't see them and they couldn't see him, he thought maybe they misunderstood him. So he said it again "These potatoes sure are runny!" More silence. Nothing. Maybe they didn't hear him? He thought. So he bellowed with the fervency of a revolutionary "These potatoes sure are runny!" No laughter. No knee slapping. Just silence. A moment passed and his uncle suddenly yelled, his voice pregnant with anger and fury, "Maybe you should make them yourself next time!" Silence fell over everything. The other kids at the "kids table" looked at my friend as though he were the next in line on death row. Some hushed murmurs issued from the dining room (which my friend now thinks were his parents apologizing for their rude child). And everyone went about their business as if nothing had happened. My friend just picked at his food. He didn't even have any potatoes on his plate, he just thought the phrase sounded funny.

I think that there's a lesson in this for all of us, and it is this: social boundaries are as distinct as laughter from another country.

Lesson 1: Start young

Someone I know told me this gross story about his oldest son. His son's 6th grade phy ed class was running around the school's track after a day of heavy rain. The track was very muddy and worms crawled throughout the muck. His friends started talking about the worms, and a friend of my friend's son said he'd like to take one of them home. Of course he was only wearing the regulated school phy ed t-shirt and shorts. One of the kids said "take one", but this kid said "I don't have a place to put one." My friend's son said "you can put them in your socks." Brilliant! So this kid filled his socks with worms (about a dozen or so of them). The phy ed teacher had no idea, and neither did anyone else. So once this kid returned to class, he emptied the worms into a pencil bag, zipped it shut, and put it in his desk. This happened on a Friday afternoon.

The following Monday my friend's son went to school and noticed a huge line of people outside his classroom. They were all gagging. Another kid came up to him and said "Smell that room! I dare you!" So he did, and my friend said his son nearly fainted. The odor was like nothing he had ever smelled and was putrid beyond imagination.

The teacher finally arrived, smelled the class, and demanded that everyone get in and sit down. No one knew where the smell was coming from, and she wasn't going to cancel class because of it. She called a custodian. He sprayed the room while the children covered their mouths and noses and tried not to breathe. The custodian couldn't figure it out. But class went on.

Later, my friend's son realized that his friend from the track wasn't in class. He asked the teacher where he was and she said "He's on vacation this week." So, during a break he went over to the kid's desk and opened the top. The same stench, though increased a hundred fold, wafted into his face. with tears in his eyes he searched the desk. Eventually he found the pencil bag, opened it, and gagged at the site inside. He described it as "like ground beef with worms in it." Apparently the worms had eaten each other while zipped in the bag over the weekend, and this was the source of the stench.

My friend's son showed the teacher, who showed the custodian, who refused to clean it up. So the teacher forced my friend's son to clean the desk with disinfectant and soap. It took him two hours.

I think there's a lesson in this for all of us, and it is this: We sometimes pay dearly for the actions of others in their absence.

You know how the internet is full of pictures that have no meaning for anyone but a few people? Well, I wanted to jump on the bandwagon. Here are some pictures that will mean absolutely nothing to you but I'm posting them anyway.

A poem that means anything you want it to.

Ground Down Floor
---------------------
Ground down fez
And underwear fuzz
Cheaper than a nickel
Quicker than God does
I plugged you in right
In some gray dark corner
Suddenly I could see the back
The very tippy back
Of your tongue
Itchin' to and fro
Changing my mind
Black one Red one
Gaunt silky one
Makes my Hamster Wheel squeak
I pulled it back and went "eek!"
Somehow it's not connected
To the half-stuck piano
The mechanical beer waterfall
The wired remote
And the scary chocolate factory
Elephantitis warning of the sixth level
Red hood pool bank
It all happened here
But you happened up there

© 2005 Ed Womack
Without copyrights we wouldn't have rich people

It has now been six months since Get Milked sent a penguin on the road to find the meaning of life (see 6/6/2005, 4/17/2005, 3/31/2005, and 3/18/2005 below for details). Unfortunately, the money we dumped into this project hasn't bore much fruit (and we have since sacked our contractual mediator for flagrant negligence). Nonetheless, Penguin remains on the road, so we're trying to deal the best we can (due to an oversight on our part, we unfortunately have no way of contacting him). We were hoping to gain more out of this project, and we've been VERY understanding up until now, but so far the results have been dismally less than satisfactory. Today's communication (his first in OVER TWO MONTHS) is a case in point. You see the picture above sent by Penguin himself. Not exactly inspiring. He also sent a short message, and here it is: "GOOD CRABCAKES. PEOPLE BUY LOTS." Ugh. Apparently Penguin has set up his own profitable crabcake business on OUR time and money. Thus, we have dispatched envoys to find him. And when we find him... well... let's just say we're going to find him, and that the meaning of life might ultimately be found in litigation. Stay tuned.