That is Priceless by Steve Melcher for July 02, 2021

“If I hang onto this ring, use my feet to climb the wall and kick out those bars, I will be a free man. Or maybe I will just warm myself in the sunlight.”

“If I hang onto the ring, maybe the guard won’t notice I’ve slipped off all the shackles. After he finishes this round I’ll have 20 minutes to make a run for it and get over the wall.”

The look of a man who was told he had an important missive coming…he thought the note was about his pardon when all it said was “We have been trying to reach about your car’s extended warranty…”

I don’t know if I should persist. I’ve been rapping this door knocker half the morning.

Even after all those years in prison, Frank kept practicing on the rings with the hope of making the Olympic’s gymnastics team.

“Hey, it won’t flush. The chain is stuck.”

“You just keep me hanging on….”

KNOCK KNOCK……..Who’s there? …….HARRY……….Harry who?…….HARRY UP, I NEED THE LOO.

“I keep pulling on the servants’ bell ring, but that cursed maid just won’t bring me my gruel!”

“Hey, pull my ringer!”

For fifty full star-years or more / he’d paced every inch of the floor; / had stared at the wall / and tried to recall / the life he’d been living before. /// His shipmates had left him behind, / alone, for his captors to find. / They’d locked him away / and forced him to stay / imprisoned here, losing his mind. /// He gazed out the window with dread, / remembering what Bones had said / to Jim Kirk and Spock / (as he lay in shock) / “That redshirt? Let’s go, Jim, he’s dead!”

“But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”…..Worse production ever of Romeo and Juliet because Reginald Gibson owned the theatre and damned if he wasn’t going to have the lead role of Romeo!

A full year after they took him down off the wall and his left arm still finds it’s way back up there.

Playind Dungeons & Dragons…..without the dragons.

aleksandr solzhenitsyn on an especially upbeat day…

What knockers!

At gymnastics, Alexander was “boss”./He’d never experienced loss !/ And his muscular feat/ that won every meet /was his one-armed iron cross !

In the dungeon he practiced all day/thus whiling the hours away/ but his time was not wasted/ when triumph he tasted/ representing the U.S.A….

But reality tempered his glee/ when, unwisely, he “took a knee”/ and as sure as hell/ he was back in his cell/ before he had time to flee.

What’s that ruckus over at the marketplace? Oh, a couple of drunks causing the commotion.

Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, half way through his 50 to life.

“Stone walls do not a prison make, / Nor iron bars a cage: / Minds innocent and quiet take / That for an hermitage. / If I have freedom in my love, / And in my soul am free, / Angels alone, that soar above, / Enjoy such liberty.” To Althea from Prison: Richard Lovelace (1618-1657).

To be or not to be in jail, that is the question.

♬"Sunshine on my window makes me happy!" ♪

“Waldo, the question is what are you doing out there?”

Jeb was always suspected to be the ringleaner … ah … ringleader of the gang.

It wasn’t well known that he was the inspiration for so many country-western songs about prison bars, lonely cells, freight train whistles, lost loves, and bad tattoos.

Just say you have Covid. They let everybody else out, so why not you…..

A Prisoner of the State: 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eastman_Johnson_-_A_Prisoner_of_the_State.jpg 

has info and links that point to more info about this roughly jumbo envelope size oil on board painting.

Again, a larger strip image is shown by (⌘- or Ctrl-) clicking the image at 

http://thatispriceless.blogspot.com/2021/07/masterpiece-2740.html 

I have added a comment there (awaiting Mr. Melcher’s OK) pointing to the artist info I used to point to here. So far, 4 works by this artist have been used here. 

https://www.gocomics.com/that-is-priceless/2019/10/01?comments=visible 

has the prior (my comment there pointed to 8 of the artist info URLs that I pointed to at Mr. Melcher’s blog entry).

John Brown planned the raid on Harpers Ferry, / but they faced a well-armed adversary. / Captured when the raid failed, / Brown, impaled and then jailed, / cursed all slave-holders and military.

If they let Cosby out, surely my release can’t be far behind.

I’m never going to get to my subway stop.

Reminds me of the AquaLung album cover. :)

I’ve been ringing for hours… damn that swine chamber maid. :>)

Penny …

Penny …

Penny …

Oh good! The thrush is here!

“Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks, and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the key-hole.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit.

Every once in a while, when he was feeling particularly low, he’d put on a nondescript overcoat and hang out anonymously behind the Ed Sullivan Theater, listening to the audience laughter. But otherwise, retirement had been very good to David Letterman.

" I keep pulling this, but room service never comes!"

Every evening the gorgeous woman in the lower apartment disrobes to take a bath. Oh how glorious!

I was supposed to be dumping the ashes of my last uncle in the headwaters of the Rio Grande. The prison guards were not sympathetic. It wasn’t a very good year.

The “inventor” of The Dab was defiant even in his incarceration for having been the inventor of “The Dab”.

He had hoped that his door’d be unlatched / if he twisted this ring he had snatched, / but the man, nearly blind, / couldn’t see that behind / him, the ring had a large bull attached. /// In this fight he was clearly outmatched. / It came close, but he wasn’t dispatched. / By the bull he was thrown, / (pitting bone against stone), / thus his arm became semidetached.

When he rose from his hospital bed/ surprised that he wasn’t yet dead/ he’d a sense (somewhat dim)/ that his now limp left limb/ could no longer scratch his head./// The bull, on the other hand/ from his stud farm was hastily banned/ and his fate was recorded/ in the tale rather sordid/ by Hemingway in Blood and Sand…

He thought as he peered through the grate / “I do not deserve this grim fate.” / “There wasn’t a trial.” / “Confined by Denial, / I’m a prisoner of the State.”

“If I had the wings of an angel/ Over these prison walls I would fly/ I wouldd fly to the arms of my Darling/ And there I would lay me to die.” The Prisoner’s Song. Sung by Johnny Cash.

“If I could turn into an insect / between these prison bars I would fly. / I would fly to the side of my darlin’ / and there I’d get bushwhacked and die.” [The Mosquito’s Song]