20-Word Fiction (5 out of 10): The Stamps

Tonight, we continue with our series of 20-word fiction pieces. This is the fifth in a series of ten. After 11 years of blogging, it's hard to come up with new ideas, but hopefully this is working. And, perhaps, someone from a far away place like Vilnius, Lithuania, is reading this. Perhaps....

"Stamps. Stamps. Stamps. Where are the effing stamps? Gotta send that check to Duke Energy. I owe Verizon money too."

We dedicate this entry to the Verizon workers who are caught up in a labor dispute with the telecommunications giant. Yeah, despite the patriotic World War II stamp image, we aren't tea party people here.....!

Our Top Sunday Washington Post Comics of the Week for Dec. 7th

Greetings to our blog readers in Lithuania, Ukraine and Georgia!

There are many comic strips which don't get into even the largest American newspapers, such as "The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee," Bleeker the Rechargeable Dog," "The Flying McCoys," "The Fusco Brothers" and "Strange Brew," but here is a sample of comic strips which are in the "Washington Post."

The large metropolitan newspaper serving the nation's capital as well as much of Virginia and Maryland has an eclectic mix of legacy comic strips like "Beetle Bailey" and "Hagar the Horrible" as well as nationally established comic strips such as "Zits" and "Pearls Before Swine" as well as some trendy comic strips with cult followings like "Prickly City" and "Reply All."

"WUMO," a single panel import from Denmark, is perhaps our most favorite comic strip in the Sunday edition, but this Sunday's comic strip featuring a failed effort by a teenager to leap from the moon to earth didn't work for us, but some of our usual favorites, like "Lio," "Brewster's Rockit" and "Sherman's Lagoon" once again made the proverbial cut.

"Lio" focused on the title character having a false sense of confidence with his new paint by the numbers (hence the reason why we have the late Bob Ross for our top image), "Doonesbury," which came in second, focused on panels dedicated to each of the strip's anchor characters, and "Brewster's Rockit" featured a major brewhaha over a workplace coffee maker aboard a spaceship (Captain Kirk would be proud).

"Dustin," which has nothing do with Dustin Hoffman (bottom image), examined a father and son debating if an older man and a younger woman were romantically involved like the late Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon were back in the day or if they were father and daughter.

Meanwhile, "Sherman's Lagoon" also focused on dating, but for this comic strip, Jim Toomey had Sherman the Shark and Mrs. Shark going out on a date as a married couple who know each other just a bit too well.

Here is our top ten:

1) Lio

2) Doonesbury

3) Brewster Rockit

4) Dustin

5) Pearls Before Swine

6) Knight Life

7) Sherman's Lagoon

8) The Argyle Sweater

9) Foxtrot

10) Judge Parker

http://www.gocomics.com/lio

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

Sunday Comics Survey from The Washington Post: We Love WUMO

Greetings to our blog readers in Algeria, Serbia and Lithuania.

Today, we reveal our ten favorite comic strips from the Sunday edition of "The Washington Post," which came out on Sept. 21, 2014. The newspaper has an eclectic mix of comics, some of which are aimed at young demographics ("Reply All," "Knight Life"), some of which are aimed at folks over 50 ("Doonesbury"and "Sally Forth" ) and some of which are aimed at people who are 92 or older and living in a retire home in Bethesda, Md. ("Dennis the Menace," "Pickles").

The images above are of 1) the planet Mars which was the subject of a gag in "WUMO," 2) Mae West for "Sherman's Lagoon" since the strip was focused on Sherman's wife who is quite sardonic and 3) dragons in Varna, Bulgaria, for "Rhymes with Orange" as Hilary B. Price which had dragon ordering 'hero sandwiches' from a fast food place..........yes, we presume the hilarious strip will be misunderstood in Uzbekistan as well!

Here is the top ten:

1) WUMO

2) Pearls Before Swine

3) Sherman's Lagoon

4) Rhymes with Orange

5) Judge Parker

6) Lio

7) Speed Bump

8) The Argyle Sweater

9) Dustin

10) Frazz

http://www.washingtonpost.com/comics

For our "Roanoke Times" comics survey, go to our sister blog: http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

Bonus Road Trip (10 of 10)_ LA to Athens (Georgia, not Greece)

We will go ahead and tell you that the air mileage between Los Angeles and Athens, Greece, is 6,907 miles, suprisingly enough, Istanbul, Turkey, which isn't quite as south as the Greek capital is slightly closer to L.A. at 6,832 air miles.


But, the UCLA Bruins women's gymnastics team coming off a narrow, but impressive home win over the Utah Utes yesterday (196.075-196.025) will travel to Athens, Georgia, on March 2nd to face the Georgia Bulldogs, also known as the 'Gym Dawgs.'

UGA scored its own win on Friday night as they defeated the Denver Pioneers at home by a score of 196.525-193.700. The Gym Dawgs will next head to the University of Alabama to face the defending champions in the Crimson Tide. Alabama is also vying for a national titled in football tonight against LSU.

For the UCLA Bruins, Samantha Peszek paved the way by winning the all-around with a score of 39.45. The Bruins also have stand-out gymnasts in Vanessa Zamarripa, whose name we have previously spelled incorrectly (don't tell the Associated Press!; forgive the journalism humor) and Aisha Gerber.

Among the outstanding gymnasts for the Gym Dawgs are seniors Kat Ding and Gina Nuccio.

For our points of destination, we are choosing Garage Pizza on West Seventh Street in Los Angeles and Taquiero Del Sol (one of several locations) on Prince Avenue in Athens, Ga.

So just how far is this commute, in terms of driving time (we assume the Bruins team will fly into Georgia; we'd ask the Bruins coach ourselves, but we think she has more pressing matters to tend to); is the answer:

A) 32 hours and 30 minutes

B) 33 hours and 30 minutes

C) 34 hours and 30 minutes

D) 35 hours and 30 minutes


SIDEBAR: The answer to our last Bonus Road Trip was C. Incidentally, the Dartmouth Big Green's men's basketball team lost on the road at Harvard by a score of 63-47. But, Gabas Maldunas, from Lithuania, was selected as the Ivy League Rookie of the Week for the third time this year. We refered to the game in an earlier post. Maldunas scored 15 points and grabbed nine rebounds in the loss at Harvard.

Things We Learned on Google Today- Kaunas is the Second Largest City in Lithuania

NOTE: We sort of messed up as this entry was intended for our other blog "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time" and an entry on the Swedish soccer team IFK Goetborg was meant for here. We jumped up and down a chimp at the San Diego Zoo upon discovering this, but we are all settled down now. This series is a look at the 15 former republics of the Soviet Union. So far, with this entry, we have covered all but four of these countries, the last one was Latvia.

Kaunas is the second largest city in Lithuania behind Vilnius, the capital. The city is also the leading center of Lithuania's economic, academic and cultural life according to Wikipedia, which is, of course, always right.

Kaunas has two rivers: the Nemunas and the Neris.

In 1701, Kaunas was occupied by the Swedish Army (Editorial note: I didn't know Scandanavians were imperialists) and the Black Death plague cane to town in 1657 and stayed around until 1708. We presume this was the darkest period in the city's history.