“Lees on Life”, the Lees on Life “Blog” and more information about the author / illustrator is at www.mycartoonbook.com.
The site aims to host more than 2,000 “Lees on Life” cartoons and narrrative of high interest to visitors whose private and public views are welcome through the “comment,” “contact us,” “fully subscribed,” and “BIO” portions of the website.
Y.Y. Han
As soon as she saw Lieutenant Pinkerton, Madame Butterfly Smelled a Rat
It is no mystery why Madame Butterfly sensed, from the very beginning, that Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton would sooner, than later, reveal to her his true colors as a ne’er do well, unlike any of the other naval officers aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln anchored in the port of Nagasaki the day the no longer pre-pubescent 14 going on 30 Cio-Cio-San approached him dockside and asked, “Hey Joe, you got Kreenex?”
Pinkerton, intoxicated by her youth, blue cotton school dress, white anklets, and hey ya’ know — pulled out a snotty linen handkerchief from his back pocket and said, “Take this.”
Matchmaker Goro, watching from a close distance, intervenes and explains: “Excuse, please, Honorable seafarer. Without sanitary napkins, this pretty young girl never go horseback riding, salsa dancing, or run up and down the beach in tight, white shorts, if you get my drift, sea man.”
Lt. Pinkerton gives Matchmaker Goro a knowing smile, and turns to his mate Tex from El Paso and says: “Gimme your Coat Tex.”
Tex obliges.
Matchmaker Goro fashions a comfortable cushion under Cio Cio-san skirt and between her legs, hands Lt. Pinkerton a prearranged wedding contract, and says, “Sign here.” Lt. Pinkerton readily and Cio Cio-san reluctantly sign the contract then take up residence in a hillside house as newlyweds.
Lt. Pinkerton learns that night in bed that Cio Cio-san, on the rag notwithstanding, is not only versed in the art of alternative love making but that her father, a disgraced Samuri, is on his way to the couples’ love nest to kick his ass and then some.
“I gotta get outta here,” Pinkerton tells Cio Cio-san.
“Where you go?” she asks. “I am now American. I go too, no?”
“No! You stay here. Wait for nutty father and ask him to forgive you.” A duet by Pinkerton and Butterfly: “Just like a flying squirrel” ensues.
At the very end of the piece, Cio Cio-san’s Samuri father bursts into the room wielding a sharpened sword. He picks up Tex’s coat from a corner of the room and instructs his daughter to place it over her head before the inevitable. Lt. Pinkerton thinks this to be inhumane and hands Cio Cio-san’s father a small blue container wound with string.
“Plastic,” he says in a humanitarian tone. “You may blindfold her with a piece of dental floss.”
The lieutenant is stricken with guilt and shame crying out: “Oh, the bitter fragrance of this flower!”
“An orchid in a field of common flowers,” her demented father replies while picking his nostril.
Cio Cio-san understands what is about to transpire and recriprocates by putting a doll and a small American flag in Lt. Pinkerton’s hands. She takes her father’s dagger and steps behind a dragon festooned curtain and emerges a moment later with the remaining 300 feet of dental floss wrapped round her throat.
Cio Cio-san holds Pinkerton firmly in what he believes to be a last embrace and sinks to the floor.
Pinkerton, awash with guilt, puts his ear close to Cio Cio-san’s dying lips in search of redemption.
“Amen,” he says.
“Asshole,” Cio Cio-san whispers.
Distant guns salute the new arrival of a man-of-war, Pinkerton’s ship, and distract him.
“Plastic,” Pinkerton says in his best Dustin Hoffman impersonation to the Samuri slayer.
“Prastic,” Cio Cio-san’s father says. “I can dupricate this and you can sell it for me in my Honorable daughter’s adopted country.”
Cio Cio-san’s father bows to Pinkerton and smiles.
The lieutenant cries out “Kotex!” triumphantly as the curtain falls.
Cartoons for the ages by a man for all seasons — Frederick Lees are at www.mycartoonbook.com. The “Lees on Life” site is under construction and previews around 100 cartoons.
More than two thousand toons are planned for display to accompany a one-of-a-kind perpetual tale titled “How the Curse on the Lake of Vond was Lifted by Sophinismus” authored and illustrated by Lees.
More about Lees and his brilliance can be found at www.arthuriadofcatumandus.com.
An all points bulletin has been posted seeking information about a Russian-born fashion model who made $3 million helping 380 asylum-seekers file bogus applications over a four-year period.
Olga V. Mazurka Khasolnikovskaya, 23, posed as an immigration lawyer and coached natives of eastern Europe on how to claim persecution on religious, sexual orientation or other grounds, with a promise of asylum in Georgia and employment as runway models at festivals modeling babushkas and sneakers.
She charged $8,000 per person, according to officials who said they found $560,000 in cash and two gold bars hidden in floorboards of her 1976 Skoda during a 2007 raid. Authorities also moved to retain more than $1.3 million in seized cash and other assets, including funds kept in a Nigerian bank account reportedly now accessible to anyone prepared to advance an equivalent sum of money in the hope of realizing a doubling of revenue and instant celebrity as Mr. or Mrs. 419, the number which refers to the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code (Chapter 38) dealing with fraud.
If apprehended, tried and convicted, Khasolnikovskaya (who carries a Spanish passport) is expected to request permission to be allowed to continue to contact scam victims as a rich prisoner with a promise to share treasure with willing participants if they agree to send money to bribe not-so-bad looking prison guards who will become their pen friends.
“If this fraud was nothing more than about money I wouldn’t be worried,” Yevgeny Zheezuschristofski, a client dissatisfied with the process and who ultimately tipped off authorities to the operation, said, as a column of Russian tanks rolled past his new home in the town of Dzhava in the breakaway province of South Ossetia.. “I was expecting to be in Atlanta.”
Zheezuschristofski, who planned to go to the U.S. from Israel via Moscow, sharply criticised Moscow’s harsh military crackdown in the former Soviet republic and said he feared persecution for being a gay Jehovah’s Witness and Deputy Minister of the Interior of the country.
The attractive runway queen, meanwhile, has reportedly been seen most recently in Togo, Senegal and Burkina Faso.
Translation:
Faced with a permanent blockage in the vas derens that impeded fertility, Stanislaus Semen rallied
his singular per cutaneous epididymal sperm aspiration and charged with impunity from the
epididymis squarely into Peg’s round egg - SCORE!!!
