Happy HOOOlidays!

Hello dear readers (read: nobody.) This holiday season has been stressful for all of us. I happen to feel I've had a unique set of challenges in that I've made a conscious decision to embark on a Yuletide bender about a week ago. I am still going strong. As such, here is this week's owl related greeting card (a Christmas one, no less!)

His name was Jesus. If you don't remember him, it's probably because this is the 21st century. (I will not go into detail regarding mine own personal religious opinions. For other people's personal religious opinions, may I recommend the rest of the Internet?) I celebrated my Christmas in the way of our founding fathers. I forgot about it until it came, at which point I celebrated with modesty and alcohol. The only difference was that I got the 25th off from work. I hope you had a merry Christmas. If you had a happy Hanukkah, then your beliefs are wrong.

Ding, Dong; Ding, Dong

Christmas is on Sunday, folks. I haven't bought any presents yet. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I've been spending this time stealing things from my loved ones. This is a cherished tradition for me (and me alone,) but once I stole that Matisse from my buddy Rod three years ago, I've found that I don't know anyone that owns anything heist-worthy. As one could imagine, this fills me with an inescapable ennui every Christmas; an emptiness that can only be filled with exotic flavors of Mountain Dew. As such, I'll mince no further words, and introduce this week's owl related greeting card.

Now that that's over with, go out and SPEND MONEY ON MATERIAL POSSESSIONS AND MODESTLY PRICED SPARKLING WINE!

A Christmas Reminder

The days until CHRISTmas are winding down faster than a Jesus on his way to Armageddon (the biblical end of the world, not the movie. It should be noted, however, that everybody loves Armageddon. Technically, this includes Jesus.) This is a very important time for you to have this card in your OWLrsenal.

Guilt trips are what this season was made for. Just make sure that you present this to someone who you actually know is an alcoholic. Plenty of people appear to be alcoholics this time of year, but they are simply the type of person who maintains an inebriated numbness from Thanksgiving to New Years because they work retail. (Also, regardless as to what the card literally implies, do not present this card to an OWLcoholic. These are lost souls who are chemically tolerant to the point that the only thing that gives them a buzz anymore is an elixir of macerated and fermented owl chunks. These people are beyond help, and you need to mind your own business.)

Here comes the Jew-Jew Train

I'm pretty sure Cchanukkkahh (or Haanuckah as some call it) is either going on right now or is coming some time soon. Either way, I feel I should do my duty as a greeting cardier and present to you the official MOAB Chhhanankaha card.

Chronica is immensely sacred to people, such as myself, who are of the Judaic faith (not to say that I'm Jewish; it's simply that I have a great amount of faith in Jews.) As a person who is not, and has never, been affiliated with the Hebraic, my knowledge of Jewunankahhh is limited to that one special episode of Rugrats where they were looking for the "Meanie of Channnuahaca."

AS SUCH, I WILL NOW TELL YOU EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HOWJUNKAH.

Every year, for no more than 12 and no less than 5 days (and nights) Jews gather together to put on big baby costumes and wander around recreation centers looking to pick a fight with any elderly person who bears a grudge against their collective "Grampa Pickles."

THIS USUALLY ENDS IN BLOOD-SHED.

Along the way, they stop occasionally to make potato pancakes. (This is just dumb. The best case scenario is that they are making pancakes intended for potatoes. Why do they do this? Potatoes don't eat pancakes. The worst case scenario is that they are making pancakes out of DIRT VEGETABLES. Yes, potatoes are dirt vegetables. There are holier vegetables to be reaped; one must simply go to Walmart and search for anything that doesn't look like prehistoric scat.)

They drink Manischewitz (pronounced Man-uh-shwumble-dumble) Wine. Manischewitz Wine is the best wine ever. It is the Juicy Juice of wines. If you don't believe me, drink an entire bottle by yourself, disregarding any bodily (or legal) impulse to stop.

The Menorah is a candleabra that is designed to resemble the mythical claws of the ancient monster the Jews called "God."

Children are given dreidels to spin. The outcome of the spin is gambled upon by participants. Children are also given tiny roulette wheels and little transparent green visors. The occasional family has been known to give their children dice, and, on nice evenings, send them and their dice out to the alleyway to use their dice to play the ancient dice game called "Dice." Children are also given baby-sized switchblades to keep each other honest.

They DON'T READ THE BIBLE.

On the last night of Chaunkaka, after the festivities are closed and the presents are open, every Jew goes to bed nice and early so that they can wake up the next day and finish up their Christmas shopping.

So that's everything I know about the holiday. Fortunately you don't need to know a lot about Chanukkah to make a greeting card about it.

LORDY LORDY; LOOK WHO'S 52

Tonight  is a very special day here at MOAB. This post, according to my calculations, is the 52nd post of this blog. Since I update weekly, that means that this is my ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!

Can you really believe that, one year ago today, on that frosty May morning, I began the 12 hour owl related greeting card challenge?

NO, YOU CAN NOT.

So much has changed since then. The biggest, of course, being the fact that when I started this blog, readers were scarce. Now that the blog (and myself, frankly) have had a chance to mature, there are no readers.

Here's a great anniversary card. It reaffirms your love for whomever it is handed to, and, in the purposes of this blog, reaffirms the fact that I would never change what happened a year ago; and would do it all over again in a heart-beat because I have a mental sickness.

And now, in honor of it being the 52nd post, I have an EXTRA SPECIAL OWL RELATED TREAT FOR ALL THE PEOPLE THAT ACTUALLY READ WORDS AND DON'T JUST LOOK AT PICTURES! I recently came across a recording from a lost episode of the monstrously unpopular UPN sitcom "Owl City." Since a lot of you are probably unfamiliar with "Owl City," I'll fill you in on a few fun facts.

1. The premise is that an owl is living in an apartment. (It sounds dull, but it's zany when you think about it. Who would rent an apartment to an owl?)
2. Many episodes were made, but few of them lasted longer than four minutes, even with commercials.
3. People often wonder why a multi-camera sitcom like this would not feature a laugh track. The simple answer is that it was actually filmed in front of a live studio audience, but they never actually laughed.

Well, that's it. Happy anniversary, dear reader. May we continue to consummate each other, over and over again, long after the guard has told us to stop four times and no longer cares.

Holiday Season

I feel that, at this point, I can call myself a seasoned greeting card creator. I've been doing this for far longer than twelve hours now, and I plan to keep going for at least twelve more hours. As a greeting card veteran, I am excited by the bounty that the calendar has been heaping upon me lately. All within a few mere weeks of each other lie the Big Six Holidays of America, or, as I call them, "The Big Six." These are Hallowe'en, Thanks Giving, Chanukkkahhjewh, CHRISTmas, Kwanzar, and New Years Rockin' Eve. Although the weather outside is slowly building into the force that, simply by being so frightful, makes you question the value of life every year, there are still six (BIG) reasons why you should be happy, thankful, or Jewish.

And so, this being Thanks Giving Week, I'd like to take this moment to remind everyone about divorce.

Divorce isn't just a Spring Fling, folks.

On a lighter note, I hope you all have Thanks Giving Days that are happy, but not as nice as mine, as that would make me feel bad about myself. I plan on preparing the traditional Thanks Giving meal that our American ancestors enjoyed during their third year in the New World. What follows is the menu, exactly as it appeared for the third Thanks Giving.

Aperitif: Pig Schnapps

Entree: Nothing

Second Course: A Gigantic, Pre-Historic Lobster Stuffed Inside An Eel That Is Slightly Larger Than The Lobster

Main Course: Human Chops

Salad Course: Milk-Weed Drizzled In A Water Vinaigrette

Dessert Course: Nothing

It is after this that the revelers will retreat to the Sitting Area (if you were a colonist and couldn't remember where the Sitting Area in your house was, it was probably the corner where there weren't any corpses.) Laughter and mirth unfold as the guests recline in their burning-ember-filled ditches, sipping warm glasses of tobacco leaves. They retell their fondest memories of life in the Old World, where comfort, though not abundant, seemed nonetheless closer. They recall the days of summer, when the sun shone and that one guy had not yet been eaten by them. They sing of the possibilities that await them in this great frontier and expound their thanks to their Creator, who, through providence and generosity unending, allowed each and every one of the hopeful and grateful pilgrims gathered together to not be the one that dies of consumption and is either fed to the hogs or used as building material.

I try to recreate this every year (except for the cannibalism ((as far as you know.))) It doesn't work too well because I have no friends, and Pig Schnapps is hard to render without a really, really big hammer.

Happy Thanks Giving! I'll leave you with a few words from the late Andy Rooney, which, in this season of thanks and rememberance, tug at a certain part of the collective heart-strings of all of us.

"Why do fruit need stickers? Who's putting stickers on the fruit? Sometimes I eat the stickers on accident."

-Andy Rooney

Dignified sOWLemnity.

As you may or may not be aware, last Friday was Veteran's Day in the United States. I had always thought it was supposed to be a day about reverent introspection upon those who defend our way of life. Apparently I've been doing it wrong. In America, as I've gradually discovered, Veteran's Day is the day where everybody, young and old alike, make an ambiguous and empty sentiment about anything patriotic on their Facebook status, and wait for the attention to wash over them like a wave of sweet tiger's milk.

This irks me.

But there is one thing that is far, far worse. This is the surest sign of the death of a holiday's meaning; and is the largest reason any given day of rememberance is destined for frivolity.

The worst thing you could ever do on a day like Veteran's Day is have a sale.

Suddenly the only thing veterans and active service members are good for is peddling mismatched box springs and transmission flushes. I honestly had no idea that this was going on until I flipped across page after page of Veteran's Day sales ads in the paper (I might add that this is one more reason why I feel that illiteracy is AWSUM!!!) This is a frustrating development that I've stumbled upon. In this post I was planning on giving you some fun and funky ways to decorate for VDay; or talk about how 11/11/11 will never happen again in our lifetimes (this is kind of cool, and technically true; but I'd be more impressed if it was actually the year 11.) Instead, I'll leave you my most poignant and haunting owl related greeting card yet; just in time for the Monday after Veteran's Day.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY (LITERALLY) NOV 14  2011: Scott tries to eat bowl of Frankenberry cereal, begins gagging after a few spoonfuls, questions what he will do with rest of box.

November.

So, I am in the process of rebuilding the blog we all know and tolerate after the nightmare that was OctCROWber. As you may or may not know, however, the current month is NOVEMBER. Which, of course, means CHRISTMAS!

I love Christmas, but I also happen to love food. So, technically, I love Thanksgiving too. To this effect, I give you my owl related greeting card related effort to bring back Dia de los Gobble.

Take THAT, Christmas. Maybe next year you'll stay in your own month.

(I should mention that I am writing this in great haste. My sponsor and corporate overlord, which I shall refer to as GAMESPLOT, needs me to be at work very soon. To celebrate my resentment of this fact, here's a message from our friend, GAMESPLOT.)

GAMESPLOT WANTS YOU TO POWER-UP YOUR EPIC REWARD PRE-ORDER!
RESERVE YOUR HARDENED DLC IS COMING TO POWER THE PLAY PLAY!
GAMESPLOT! GAMESPLOT! DOUBLE XP POINTS SCOOBY DOOBY!
MAP PACK DOWNLOADABLE FARTS!
MW3 POOP IN YOUR PANTS!
GAMESPLOT!

THE FINAL CROWNTDOWN

Hey, in case you haven't been watching the news, I have spent the last week embroiled in a monumental battle with the murderous murder of telepathic crows that had been holding my blog hostage for the past month. It's pretty violent and visually stunning. I haven't taken any pictures, but here's some recollections of the ongoing showdown.

1. Crows blotting out moonlight
2. Scott knocking crows out of sky with baseball bat
3. "Sabotage" blaring from the smashed window of a flaming Impala
4. Crows lighting upon peace-keeping zookeepers; skeletons in khaki shorts
5. Scott blasting flamethrower wildly into thick cloud of grackles

I clearly have been busy, and still am. As I write this I am entrenched in a foxhole I dug out on the roof of a Ben and Jerry's (it's pretty shallow and full of shingles.) So instead of a card, please enjoy this The Gruff Zunko Show simulcast from September 19th.

Yes... Still Crows.

Well, the crows are still here. In case you've been missing out on the drama because you're one of the many, many, many people who don't care, here's a recap. My quiet life of penning alternate history novels and drawing owl related greeting cards was interrupted recently by a roving gang of thousands of disgruntled crows. It was determined in Crow Court that I should be sentenced to a month of creating nothing but crow related greeting cards. I tried to launch a CAWbjection, but, of course, I was CROWverruled.

I have noticed something strange, however. Either I have begun to go native, or I have simply begun to see the beauty in crow-style living. They never wear clothes, and they can fly. That can be said about a lot of birds and several fish; but the crows carry with them a certain dignity. They also carry fish hooks with them so that they can hook peoples' ears or scalps or eyelids and fly away holding the other end of the line.

THEY ACTUALLY DO THIS ALL THE TIME. TRULY THEY ARE REMARCROWBLE ANIMALS.

So here's this week's crow related greeting card; straight from my heart to whichever bird functions as the heart within the single-minded flock of crows acting as one much larger entity in my back yard.

Here's a fun CROW FACT:

Did you know that there are several collective nouns assigned to describe a group of crows?

A murder of crows
A manslaughter of crows
A vehicular manslaughter of crows (only when each crow is driving a tiny RC car)
A counting of crows
A herd of crows
A rustle of crows
A cobra of crows (only when the group of crows has formed together to create a fully functioning cobra, complete with the ability to spit poisonous crows)