Is there an address, perhaps, that I could send a donation to? I’ve never trusted Paypal too much, and I’d like to send a check, if possible…

Mrs. Polly—

Thank you for the update.  I’m so glad to hear Strange is improving, yet the news about his vision is just heartbreaking, as you say.  You are all in my thoughts and prayers.

Finding favorite Strange posts and comments will be a labor of love.

Will do my best to spread the word about the fundraiser.

I posted this in the Rumper Room after my sister-in-law asked who Ron Paul was. Rather than explain libertarianism, I thought Strange poetically summed up the thoughts of the movement’s messiah during the debates:

FLUORIDE IS WHY SO MANY MEN NEED VIAGRA!

AMERICANS HAVE A GOD-GIVEN RIGHT TO GET CANCER!

NO AID TO ISRAEL, AND BUILD THE SPACE ARK!

GO ON THE COPPER CURRENCY STANDARD AND MOVE ALL AMERICANS TO UNDERGROUND CITIES!

And, my favorite:

RON PAUL: I WILL NOT NEGOTIATE WITH ELECTRONS!

Strange illustrates that you don’t need to tell the truth to say something truthful.

Thanks for the update.  Among Strange’s many posts, this one sticks in my mind:

Oh, Jesus. In some ways this is way worse than I expected, but it’s a little more hopeful as well. Strange is facing some incredible expenses and adjustments—for all his wit and sweetness, he and his family are going to be going through even more pain than over the past few weeks—but if those damn medical expenses can be vanquished, he could make a new life for himself. Any word of other fund raising efforts from his family or community?

I’ve linked to this over at BJ, so hopefully it gets front pages soon. My warmed-up PayPal finger has also been busy, so you should see something in the bit bucket from Toronto soon.

Thank you, you lovely folks. Strange’s family is wrestling with a number of challenges right now, so the fundraising is up to us.

I thought Strange was black!  (Running joke between us).  Oh, my heart is breaking.  Love that pic of Strange and it exudes the kindness I always felt from him.  On my way to donate and to write a post for ABL’s place about the fundraiser.  I will dig for fave Strange posts soon (so many of them!), and I continue to send him love, positive vibes, and a white light.  Thank you, RumpRoasters for all you’re doing for him.  Tell him he’s sorely missed.

Hmmm - decisions, decisions.  Shed tears because of Strange’s situation, or laugh til I cry at this (from Mrs. Polly’s link):

It is the “mercy fuck” of side-dishes—you only eat it because you feel so sorry for it.

This has been a rough year for me, financially as well as emotionally, but I’ll be making a contribution next week. It won’t large, but I’ll do what I can. Thanks for keep us posted. I’m so relieved he is out of immediate danger.

Thanks, Brad. ANY contribution is vital. You have had to deal with so much, and I’m very touched that you came by to help Strange. I know he would be, too.

I’m so sad about this while at the same time laughing at: “I WILL NOT NEGOTIATE WITH ELECTRONS.” I love Strange and will be donating.

-ABL

i wept when I read that he is blind.

I have nothing to spare right now, but I hope and assume this fund will be an ongoing thing where I can donate in a few weeks.

Thanks to all you Rump Roast front pagers for organizing this effort. Please convey our messages of hope to Strange.

Mrs. JP and I have had our ups and downs. And even though the downs have been more frequent than the ups, at least we both have our health and our most recent crisis is fading in the rear view mirror for now. I’ll kick in something to help out poor Appar8us since the whole idea of liberalism and altruism is to keep paying it forward.

I’m just curious, though: Since several bloggers have published their blog posts as books, has anyone thought to collect his and try to publish them in a book? It’s probably not something an avaricious, self-absorbed literary agent would be interested in repping (I know the routine- I’m a formerly agented writer who’s still beating his head against the brick wall of stupidity in the publishing biz) but if you could scrape up enough money to publish it on CreateSpace or for free on Kindle, it may generate some revenue for him.

Surely one of you hippies knows, or indeed, is a screen printer. That pic up top would make a badass t-shirt.

Thanks to unemployment things are a bit tight here but the Mrs. and I will kick in what we can.

JP, that is precisely what we were thinking: The Essential Strange, who knows what number of volumes. We have rejoiced not only in his genius but in his prolixity.

He has IRL friends who are noted illustrators, and have mentioned something like this as well.

Update: we have blown past the $1000 mark. Thanks to everyone for their overwhelming generosity! Please continue to spread the word.

How long will the fund be active? I might be able to pitch in some more after the holidays.

What justlen asked.  I’m a couple of weeks away from any extra cash.

It is going to stay active, folks, for now and ever and a day. We are going to keep running Strange pieces with our usual content, always with a link to the StrangeFund, whatever it will be called. So give now if you can, but you can give later, too. We will be mining the StrangeArchives and trying all sorts of creative ways to get whatever Strange needs accomplished. It’s ongoing. Blessings on you.

I’ve got some of our Socialist Commie Fascist Permanent Fund Dividend money that the conservatives spend just as fast as us freeloaders, so I’ll contribute to this worthy cause just as soon as Romney flipflops again.

DONE!

Happy to have to opportunity to give back to Strange after he’s given me so much laughter for the past couple of years.

A lot of Strange’s great lines were almost hopelessly contextual comments, but here’s one jewel taken from its Rumper Room setting wherein Strange has more fun than you might have thought possible with the Apocrypha:

I wanted to make friends with Holofernes, but he was too detached.

PS: Mock the Lost Books all you want, but just imagine how much more useful the Bible would be, had Sirach authored the sections on Home Remedies and Auto Repair.

Will donate what I can next payday.  In the meantime, I’ll boost the signal over at Bad Fiction.

Best wishes to Strange and his family and friends!

I’m one of those luddites like Scott who looks askance at the Paypal (not your buddy!).  When the P.O. Box is set up, I’m in.

Cauliflower really shines in Indian cuisine.  Aloo Gobi is really good.

Probably not the best of the strangebestest, but Strange has a way of making the moment and marking the day.

First—Sean, thank you so very much for reminding me of that brilliant piece, regarding the

Pilot Command Module for Poland’s first conflict-capable giant mechanical Savior, formally designated Combattler Yeshua Raydeen V. The 480-ton, nuclear powered Lamb of God—called simply “MechaChrist” by the locals. 

  I loved it when it was new, and nearly spit out my wine reading it again. 

What terrible news.  Sadly, I was a ‘Lucky Duckie’ for over a year and am still getting out from under that, but I will kick in a little dinero for the fund (I’m calling it the StrangeAppeal).  I love this site (though I rarely feel witty enough to comment) and have gotten much out of Strange’s posts.  Add mine to the pile of best wishes. 

Terence

I’ll keep an eye out for the PO box.  I’m trying not to do credit these days.

Would it make sense that if people want to make a donation by check they could simply email Mrs. Polly for a snail mail address?

Just an idea.

i just went in for $20. Hope it helps. And hopes for strange to heal as much as he can.

@JurassicPork - there are other self-publishing online outfits too, like Blurb. Would be a good idea, and no physical inventory.

@justlen - the snail mail address will be up in a day or two.  If we can’t nail down a P.O. box right away (and sometimes there are waiting lists) I’ll have a street address that can be used.

And again, thanks so very much to everyone who has donated or is planning to.  It will mean so much to Strange to know that so many people appreciate him, care about him and want to help him out.

I get paid on Thursday, so I will hook it up then.

Tell him we said, stay strong.

pwc, we’ll tell him. We’ve read him some of the great flow of warmth and support he’s gotten, and will continue to. It does make a difference, and he is able to absorb that positive feeling.

Just dropped by to say I will have some extra cash after the holidays, to help with helping Strange.

Thanks for going the extra mile and working up a snail mail address; that’s my donation target since I don’t use PayPal. 

I am heartbroken to hear that Strange has lost his vision.  My sincere thanks to all the senior Roasters who are doing so much and passing on our hopes and wishes to Strange.

Thank YOU, General and String. Our jolly little blog has helped cheer many of us through all sorts of hard times. Much of the jollity pulling us out of the dumps is Strange’s doing. It’s only right that we do our best for him now.

Here he is from the Rumper Room, possibly the only being ever to snark Gurdjieff:

@AltHippo

Gurdjieff also referred to his Western popularizer P. D. Ouspensky as a “gigantic fucking putz who couldn’t find the Tenth Sephiroth with both hands, a flashlight and a magnetic mirror.”

In both your reference and mine, I feel that obscurity is its own reward.

Forgive a personal comment, Rumproasters. To add a brief note to the photo’s background, (surprised, but pleased to see it posted) the above photo is taken from Strange’s photo-journalistic trip to Chihuahua, Mexico where he was producing content for XXXX .  It was originally dubbed, “Quetzal-Chipotlé,” circa AD 2000.

Kre8tr, please forgive the editing, but we need to keep Strange’s RL identity, including his clients, private.

I can tell the RR community, though, that you and Strange are a swell pair of crazy 8s, as was evident from your 10 hour drive to see your friend. Thank you for giving us the context for Strange’s splendiferous self-portrait.

I have some never-before-seen-in-public Strange material to share, but it requires a bit of a set up.

Remember Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally? Beck himself and many wingnut blogs were busily patting themselves on the back for the exemplary behavior of the rally attendees, ostentatiously measuring their virtue against that of the litterbug, unpatriotic, socialist hippie scum who had attended the president’s inauguration on that spot and swapping tales so mawkish they would make a fading child in a Charles Dickens death scene rise from her sickbed and flee the tidal wave of treacle.

Strange and I both worked from home, which can be somewhat isolating. This blog—and our occasional emails—served as something of a virtual water-cooler, and oh how I miss the laughter he brought to it.

Yeah, much as the blogosphere is currently missing a unique voice and take on things (and photoshopper extraordinaire), I’m another who works from home and shared enjoyable email chitchat and banter with Strange as well as what happened on the blog. It feels like I’ve lost daily contact with a workmate, never mind a co-blogger.

I would like to thank our friends for coming through for Strange, and remind you that posting Strange faves is encouraged. I, for one, had to admire his way with a collective noun, as when he assigned the following to our perennial foes, the PUMAs:

a clench of PUMAs

I think his collective noun for ‘Roasters was “a bludgeon of Roasters,” too.

OK, I overcame my allergy to PayPal because this is Strange we are talking about here, and I’ll be back for more when the PO box gets set up.

i gave my google ads profit for the month to strange’s get well fund. 

Count me in.  If that Paypal whatsit really works, a token of my appreciation of Strange’s wonderful work is making its way through an innertube right now.  Along with my hopes and wishes that he can adjust to this disability, and will always have his wit and intelligence and core sweetness about him.

Skippy, String,blessings on you both. And MB, he really enjoyed that sammich. He did, I happen to know.

Just a couple that made me laugh out loud…

Is there anything else we can do to help? Us d-list people out in the hinterland may have limited funds but can be pretty good at getting other things done.

The holidays are coming up. Maybe presents or something? If you started a gift wish list of things that would help or be appreciated I bet you’d get a good response.

“Nothing says “The Sport of Kings” like a shitfaced man-horse who runs one and three-sixteenths miles, then throws up at the finish line while trying to light the wrong end of a box of Newports.”

I remember that one, I thought I had ruptured an internal organ from laughing so hard. It actually reminded me of our annual PT test in the Navy.

Sorry, Mrs Polly.  Understood. FIngers get ahead of mind sometimes. My bad.

So I guess I shouldn’t tell anyone that Strange’s real surname is Appar8stein, huh? Mum’s the word!

I, too, work at home and have running email threads with my co-bloggers over at ABL’s place.  I can understand how the other Roasters are sorely missing Strange’s humor, wit, and heart.

No,  gil mann: Strange is totally Irish, and a glen mann if there ever was one. Slainte.

A couple of offhand Strange comments from the Rumper Room:

Note: This is the Sixth Sunday of Lent, which I believe entails gifts of orange Circus Peanuts and non-alcoholic floral after-shaves.

And from a hysterical discussion of a ladies’ razor ad:

I blame the Patriarchy, which has conditioned all men to believe that there is no “down there” maintenance issue that can’t be adequately resolved with cotton-wadding, WD-40 and a can of Glade.

Is there anything else we can do to help?

I know what you mean.  My first inclination is to make him some food.

Nancy, there will be other ways to help down the line as well as donating, but we have to sort out what he’ll need, where he’ll be, and all sorts of things we have no idea of right now. There will be updates here, as well as celebrations, compendiums, comix, Strangenalia swag, I hope, and all manner of ways to keep this guy rolling, if we can manage it. So keep watching this space.

For his sake, and ours, we’ll shortly be returning to our central mission, which is to snark the snarkworthy, point and laugh at the awful, and do our poor but earnest best to live by our sacred RumpOath. But there will always be information on Strange, and a link to his donation page, to be found here.

gil mann: ethnicity has nothing to do with anything but itself. There is nothing but humanity, no matter how fucked up it may manifest itself.

Now kids, kids~~~we need ethnicity, or else we wouldn’t be able to tell pierogi from pasteches. The day the dumpling is globalized, a little bit of joy will be lost from the world.

The day the dumpling is globalized, a little bit of joy will be lost from the world.

Well said, Mrs. P. I think I will commit that to needlepoint.

ethnicity has nothing to do with anything but itself

So it’s like me on a Saturday night, then.

we need ethnicity, or else we wouldn’t be able to tell pierogi from pasteches

Did we ever settle the peperoncini / banana pepper question?  Because it’s lunchtime and I’m hungry.

Banana peppers are fit only for pickling.  Peperoncini - now those are peppers!  ;-)

And just to update on the PayPal/snail mail issue, the bank trust fund is now set up and I slogged to the post office in the blizzard (well, OK, snow storm) we are having to set up the P.O. box only to be told that their system is down!  So I will return in the a.m. and hopefully get that last piece done.

Jiao-zi (Chinese dumplings), bitchez!  FTMFW!

Jiao-zi (Chinese dumplings), bitchez!  FTMFW!

asiangrrlMN—No argument there.  Yum!

And just to update on the PayPal/snail mail issue, the bank trust fund is now set up.

marindenver—Thank you so much for the update.  Also, too—snow already?

Not sure if you’ve had the chance to read La Palin’s Thanksgiving message (hint… evil librlz want to abort Trig while nice conservatives pat him on the head).  Can you imagine Strange’s take on that? 

I’m reminded of this post.  Strange’s comments are priceless.

daize, I think we can’t do without the rest of that comment:

I can’t believe what a shameless, opportunistic coward she is. Someday, I hope that kid turns to her and asks why every right he ever had to privacy and dignity evaporated after he popped out of her womb. Even the Elephant Man got more respect from his handlers

daize, I think we can’t do without the rest of that comment:

I can’t believe what a shameless, opportunistic coward she is. Someday, I hope that kid turns to her and asks why every right he ever had to privacy and dignity evaporated after he popped out of her womb. Even the Elephant Man got more respect from his handlers

Mrs. P—

Absolutely, yes.  Thank you for including that.  My apologies.

daize

Oh my goodness, daize, no need to apologise. Anywhere you drop the needle on a platter of Strange is pretty much going to work.

Also, too—snow already?

Well, it is December.  In Colorado.  Gotta keep the skiers and snowboarders happy!

And - P.O. Box number posted in update above.

Update for anyone checking into this thread (talked to Mrs. Polly a little while ago who is out in Pittsburgh again keeping an eye on Strange).

Mrs. P. reports that he’s continuing to improve.  He’s out of the step-down unit (which is a transitional phase) and into a regular hospital room.  Talking quite a bit and cognition is pretty good. Still very tired and sleeping a lot.  Getting some physical therapy and speech therapy most days.  Next step is a skilled nursing unit to keep his progress going until he’s ready for real rehab. 

Still got a long road ahead but way improved from a month ago when he was clinging to life. We just have to be thankful for the small steps - I don’t doubt that they’ll get bigger and bigger as time goes on.

The full measure of a man is
not to be found in the man himself,
but in the colors and textures that
come alive in others because of him.
- Albert Schweitzer

Permit me a personal note, dear Roasters, but as someone who has known Strange for over half his existence, I can personally attest to the fact that my life has been far richer and more interesting with him in it. He has been comrade, compatriot, competitor, companion, collaborator, confidant and, at times, combatant. (I’m sure he’ll love the alliteration.) And as witty, acerbic, hysterical and downright brilliant as he may be here, he is 10x – no, make that 100x, maybe 1000x – more so in person and on the phone.

Thanks for providing an outlet for his boundless creativity, and for showing him the love and admiration he so richly deserves.

Thank you, Doctor of the 8 Clan, for dropping in and sharing that with us. You are surely blessed to know Strange IRL, and let’s hope and do our best to help ensure that there’s a lot more of him to come for us all—and him—to enjoy.

Excellent, DoctorF8, and appreciated.

Thanks to all for the updates on Strange’s progress and for taking such loving care of him.  Please let us know if you need anything.

I’ll add my thanks to others, @DoctorF8, for commenting here from the perspective of someone who knows the guy, beyond his contributed pixels on a reader’s screen.