Lio by Mark Tatulli for April 11, 2010

Death had a few spares laying around, so…..

How sweet!

Interesting!

That’ll be the death of me!

Lio is a very courteous and polite boy, is he not? –Writing a thank-you note with no pressure from Dad at all!

How sweet of Death. Is it Lio’s birthday? Or some other special occassion?

Oh yeah! I love the fact that Lio actually has Death’s address.

Buenos modales………

Looking at the chair and the lamp, I suspect that this isn’t the first time Death and Lio have exchanged gifts.

So … paperweight or object de art?

How thoughtful–Death helps Lio get a head in life!

Candle-holder!

I thought I was going to hear Shakespeare, then I remembered, Lio doesn’t talk.

Lio knows all the best people!

He has endeared himself further to me… warped AND with good manners!

I have a skull on top of one of my bookcases. Unfortunately, it’s plastic, not real.

Notice the vampire bat on the end of Lio’s pencil. I wonder if the skull is destined to be a toy for Cybil (who probably can get all the skulls she LIKES…….)

PS: With the Dr. Seuss talk yesterday, I hope everybody saw today’s “Pearls Before Swine”.

runar, I used to have a really nice life-like (so to speak) replica skull, but it got lost somewhere in the last 25 years. I’ve been looking for a replacement, but all I can find are Halloween props (fangs, stains, glow-in-the-dark, etc.) or medical models (springs, modules, and TOO clean). I haven’t found one that looks like it could serve as a believable Yorick in a good production of “Hamlet” (actually, for the graveyard scene you really need SEVERAL skulls).

I don’t know if it’s possible to get actual human dead people skulls anymore unless you ARE a medical student or something, but I don’t think I’d really want one anyway. Hamlet’s speech about the anonymous skulls he contemplates before being given Yorick’s hits too close to home: “That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once.” I don’t get freaked out by death in the general, nor even my own eventual return to “base uses.” But the idea that I would be using as a knick-knack that which was once someone else’s living head would freak me out. I’ve got a coyote skull on a shelf in my bedroom, which serves well enough as a memento mori, and I like the look on people’s faces when they ask where I got it and I tell them I had the vet save it for me when I had my dog put to sleep.

Nice lamp

This reminds me of an old joke.

A tourist to Vienna is aproached by a man selling curios, and buys the skull of Mozart for $10,000. The peddlar then offers him a second skull, about half the size.

“For another $5,000, you can have this and complete the set.”

“What do you mean, ‘complete the set’? Who was this?”

“Well, you already have Mozart’s skull from when he died. This was his skull when he was a child!”

Skullduggery?

I wonder what his dad has to say about this little affair…

“Alas, poor Calvin. I knew him, Grim Reaper.”

LOLDoc! Good one.

Fritzoid, a friend of my sister’s went to med school and now is a successful surgeon. She told me that if I ever wanted a real skull, she would get me one. I haven’t taken her up on it.

Gosh! Lio is so thoughtful.

I hope no one had to die to deliver his card.

Some people give gifts from the heart, but ol’ GR shoots for a higher goal.

I’m not sure Yoruq was quite finished with that yet. Now his head is all flabby and his hat hangs over his shoulders.

All GR’s mail is sent to the dead letter office.

That mailman really DOES have the route from (or to) Hell!

Awww, how thoughtful of Lio!

lio’s lamp is so weird

He sure is a well-mannered little boy.