On the Life and Legacy of Wendell Winkles

In which a quest undertaken leads unexpected places.

Mr. Wendell Winkles¹ awoke with a start.  He leapt from his bed and muttered to himself, "I need a fish."  This thought quickly left his mind as he looked down and realized that he was stark naked; which he found odd given that he had gone to bed in a flannel onesie.  He walked to his closet to find something to wear.  Would it be the black with green dots, the blue with red squares, or the brown with white stripes?  Wendell Winkles stood starring listlessly into the closet unable to decide when a massive shiver shook his paunchy, wrinkly body.  His hand shot into the closet and retrieved the first object that it touched.  Mr. Winkles wrapped the blue and red burlap cloak² around his body and strode out of the smallish room through his living nook and out the front door to retrieve his mid-day paper.

"I need a fish!" Wendell screamed to the heavens.  The sunlight shimmered off of his blondish-black stubble, "I need a fish," he bellowed again.  His neighbors looked at him with question marks in their eyes³.  Old Mrs. Zanklebabner walked over to where Wendell Winkles stood gazing at the noon day sun, mouth agape, breathing heavily.

"Are you alright, deary?" She asked softly.

Wendell's head snapped down and met her eye-line, crazy juice⁴ pouring from his nose and mouth.  His eyes widened as he screamed in the poor old woman's face, "I need a fish," and then took off running down the street as fast as he could go, all the time screaming, "I need a fish.  I need a fish."  Every thirty feet or so the screaming would stop as Mr. Winkles would pause and ever so calmly adjust his cloak and tighten his sash so as not to expose himself to the people he was running past.  Why no one suggested to him to simply double knot his sash is a mystery to this day⁵.

The screaming continued as the frantic Mr. Winkles entered the park.  He made a bee line straight for the large pond at the park's center.  After scaling the large boulder at waters edge he screamed one final time, "I need a fish," before belly flopping into the pond and swimming to the bottom.  Minutes passed and still Wendell did not emerge from the putrid waters, a crowd slowly gathered around the shore.  Suddenly, Mr. Winkles' blue and red cloak floated to the surface.  Quincy Adam Johnson, park ranger, family man, and three time grand champion of the Ologokie County Costume Contest⁶, approached the crowd and asked them what was going on.

"A man jumped into the pond and hasn't come up," a young mother of 3.14 kids⁷ said.

Ranger Johnson sighed and sat down to remove his boots when he heard a rustle in the bushes near the water followed by a giggle.  He approached the bushes with caution, pushing his way through the foliage.  When he reached a clearing he saw a single shaft of light illuminating the glistening, well known and somewhat controversial⁸ back hair of Wendell Winkle.

"Wendell, what are you doing out here?" Ranger Johnson asked.

Wendell's head turned, grinning he said, "I have a fish."

He raised his arms and proudly showed his prize.  In his hands was a slightly moistened and severely agitated squirrel.  The squirrel bit Wendell's thumb and scampered into the underbrush.  Wendell stood up and turned to Ranger Johnson.

"Balls."

Ranger Johnson looked at the very nude, still wet behemoth and simply remarked, "Indeed."

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¹ Of the Kansas City^A Winkles.
² The very same style of cloak that Minowag the VII Sovereign Mountebank of Greater Thanperia wore at his coronation ceremony.
³ All except crazy, old Tommy "Raven Hater" Billingham, who had no eyes^B.
⁴ Snot and drool.
⁵ Though some scholars contend that onlookers may have been temporarily hypnotized by the giggling fat, why others postulate that people were to busy mentally preparing themselves for the seemingly inevitable, yet entirely accidental, dong viewing.
⁶ For his first-rate portrayal of Lando Calrissian.
⁷ Don't ask.
⁸ For years there has been a debate amongst the townspeople about what Wendell's back hair looked like. Some said it appeared to be shaped like an albatross fighting a gazelle, while others saw a mermaid riding a mastodon.

^A That would be the Kansas City Kansas Winkles not the Kansas City Missouri Winkles.
^B Because a raven pecked them out.

On Random Thoughts

In which we quickly jump from topic to topic, and footnotes are used for the first time.

The key when eating a foot-long sub from Subway, much like eating Chinese food, is to wait a few minutes between the first half and the second. You aren't as hungry as you think, and if you finish it all now you will feel terrible and not have dinner ready made later on.


Note to self:  Before feeling concerned for the safety of a child presumably trapped in a runaway, homemade balloon check for the following warning signs that everything is not all that it seems. 1) The parents are nutty storm chasers who were on a reality TV show⁽¹⁾.  2) The aforementioned nutty parents named their child "Falcon."  3) Said parents also contacted new stations about their missing sun prior to contacting the police.  If one or more of these conditions apply the child is most likely safe in the attic and the parent may or may not be a d-bag⁽²⁾ who put his kid up to it for publicity purposes.


I am terribly excited for the new movie Where the Wild Things Are.  It is the first movie in many months that I would be fine seeing opening weekend and not waiting for it to be a Five Buck Club movie.  If you haven't seen the trailer yet here it is for your enjoyment.  Just watching the trailer makes me feel like a kid again, I can't wait to see this movie.


One movie that I will absolutely see opening night, and will drag along as many people as I am able, is The Road staring Vigo Mortensen.  It is based on Cormac McCarthy's book by the same title.  The book is beautiful and dark and hopeful and deserves much more than I can say in a simple paragraph so we will come back to it at another time.


If you find yourself ordering clothing online know that REI.com has the fastest turn around that I have seen on their shipping.  I ordered a sweater from them on Tuesday night and it arrived three days later.  Conversely, Amazon's Super Saver shipping is the worst, I've had items coming from Kentucky take 2 weeks to arrive.


At the request of Tim Street I will now talk about Lando Calrissian.  Lando is a good friend to Han Solo and a known scoundrel and all-round ladies man.  He is probably best know as the only black guy in Star Wars and for blowing up an uncompleted Death Star⁽³⁾.  Here is a picture of Lando in Lego form.  Calm under pressure Lando knows that Han will have that shield down, we've just got to give him more time.  Lando is in no way related to Dumbledore Calrissian who needed to return a ring to Mordor.


Sara Zimmer says, "Write about rabies."  Okay.  Rabies, not to be confused with scabies or babies, is a virus that is often carried by wild mammals.  If you have rabies right now you should probably stop reading my blog and go seek medical help, other wise you will probably die.  Apparently there are a number of countries where rabies is no longer present.  One of which is Australia (as well as a lot of Europe) at first this might not seem fair, but those guys have it alot worse...trust me.  Here are some important facts about rabies from Michael Scott, Regional Manager of Dunder Mifflin.

"Myth - three Americans die every year from rabies. Fact - four Americans every year die from rabies. How many of you know someone that has been afflicted or affected by rabies? Show of hands. One, two, three... too many to count. It is truly the silent killer. No, it is the foaming barking killer."

Thanks Michael, that was extremely helpful.  Hope you enjoyed my smattering of topics.  And the footnotes.

Seriously, who wants to see Where the Wild Things Are or The Road with me?
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(1) On the terribly named show "Wife Swap," I swear some TV executives need to be slapped or thrown in jail or both.
(2) If it turns out this was all some elaborate hoax the parents should have to pay back the tax payers money that was wasted chasing that balloon down.  If they can't afford it they should be forced to watch terrible reality TV shows until their eyes fall out.
(3) And he probably killed thousand of private contractors hired to complete the Death Star.  For a discussion on the ethical implications of killing thousands of non-combatants I invite you to watch this clip from the movie Clerks (click here) please note that this clip almost certainly contains vulger language.