Monty by Jim Meddick for April 29, 2024

Tolstoy’s war (what is it good for)?

The current world situation was described in a science fiction story as “The Crazy Years”.

In his recent USA Today column, Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds gives a shout-out to Robert A. Heinlein’s pre-WW2-era “Future History” timeline which included a segment presciently called “The Crazy Years”: Very early in his writing career, about 1940, science fiction writer Robert Heinlein outlined a “future history” around which much of his writing would revolve, extending from the mid-twentieth century to the 24th century. Much of what he outlined hasn’t come to pass, but he nailed it in one respect: We live in the “Crazy Years.”

The Crazy Years, in Heinlein’s timeline, were when rapid changes in technology, together with the disruption those changes caused in mores and economics, caused society to, well, go crazy. They ran from the last couple of decades of the 20th Century into the first couple of decades of the 21st. In some of his novels set in that era — Time Enough for Love, for example — he includes random assortments of headlines that may have seemed crazy enough back then, but that seem downright tame today.

I’m not the first to make this connection — science fiction writers John C. Wright and Sarah Hoyt have remarked on it, and as Hoyt notes, “these are the Crazy Years” has become something of a stock joke among Heinlein fans.

(Contd)

Cereal serials!

Anyone else having a serial for breakfast?

I like the idea, but pages from Mad Magazine would be suited for my morning cereal box.

Try “Finnegan’s Flakes”. Most people can’t get past the first few paragraphs. Including me.

I prefer “Dostoyevsky” donuts.

Kings Kruchies will haunt you

Melville’s Malted Munchies ?

Have a whale of a good breakfast.

Original and now, Cinnamon Crunch.

Actually, not a bad idea, you toonists who like to create graphic novels should consider partnering with a cereal maker on this.

Do they have Lord of the Cheerios?

Actually, I always disliked Cheerios. Does the Dickens line have Grape Nuts Expectations?

Some of Dickens’ stories were originally published in installments in magazines, so yeah, they were in cereal form! (I see I was beaten to the punch with the pun, but I don’t care!)

Hand me the box of Faulkner Flakes.

Captains Courageous Crunch?

Cheeri O. Henrys?

Shakespeare Sound Bites?

Robert Frosted Flakes?

At noon we can have the William S. Burroughs “Naked Lunch-ables”.

I prefer the HARD Dickens cider

Easy to read. Either you can read like the older generation, or you can’t, like the younger generation

And Monty had such great expectations for his morning cereal.

It was the best of prepared grain cereals; it was the worst of prepared grain cereals.

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,Over a soggy and curious bowl of Weetabix, …”

What’s next, “Oliver Twixt” candy bars? More please, sir.

do they have Calvin and Hobbes Sugar Bombs?

I remember cereal boxes that did have reading material on the back.

I love it when so many join in. Didn’t we all have a good time today? Well, gonna finish my Sugar Smacks and hit the rack.

Drinking a whole bottle of vodka while sitting on an upstairs windowsill. (War & Peace). I used to read this book progressively each evening before sleep, when I was 24 y.o. I could read by then.

Anybody remember the cereal called “Crispy Critters”? They had a story on the back of the box and a flap you could open and read it while eating all that sugary goodness! I think it was a continuous story every month. Not sure about that but, I guess the cereal was discontinued and the story was never finished. 1960s.

Absolutely nuttin’-unless you’re Bloody Bibi…