Monthly Archives: March 2015

March 22, 2015 · 2:58 pm

The Quest for Pinkie Pie

The day before yesterday I wrote a post for 1000 Voices Speak for Compassion that basically tore my heart out. It made me relive one of my worst defeats as a teacher who cares about teaching and students. I have to admit that I spent an awful lot of time crying the past three days. But I am not a sorrowful Sad-Sack with a sourpuss’ simpering sarcastic smile. Not I. I come back from downers by doing silly stuff… kinda like over-dosing on alliteration in that S-filled sentence. So what silly stuff am I up to after a triple-down darkness-dealing downer like the one from that post? (When Compassion Fails) I took up the Quest for Pinkie Pie.

I borrowed the My Little Pony image above from Jessica Ann Hughes whose very eloquent post laments the series update as a sexualization of the thirty-year-old toy franchise in the newer series, My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic.

But I have to argue that it doesn’t sexualize anything beyond the surface. After all, these ponies are really little girls that have charming little-girl personalities and act in stories that have little-to-nothing to do with sex. Yes, I have seen the wedding episode where Twilight Sparkle’s big brother gets married, but that episode is about trusting your own instincts when something seems wrong. If somebody like me is getting sexual vibes from that cartoon, then something is seriously wrong and that somebody should seek therapy to avoid becoming some kind of pedophile. I mean, it is important to self-censor. When I was getting a soda at QT this afternoon, I was happy to see two pretty girls in short pants for the first time in a long time. Texas weather has been rainy and dreary for the past few weeks and the sun has finally come out. But… wait a minute! Why am I looking at middle school girls’ legs? I am a miserable, broken-down, spotty old man. And I have been busily watching this My Little Pony show on YouTube where all these little girl ponies are walking around naked all the time! But, am I not over-reacting? Yes, the ponies have big eyes and shortened muzzles… but I haven’t been obsessing about ponies because of hormone imbalances or something. I thought the whole Brony thing was ridiculous up until a very short time ago. I mean, grown men watching a cartoon about little-girl ponies and singing the songs and buying the toys and wearing ponies on T-shirts. Is there therapy for that? I am hoping so… because I think I’m going to need it.

My doll-collecting mental illness began, as I tried to explain and tell lies about yesterday, when I was a child who had been given dolls for birthdays and Christmas (I meant to say Action Figures… No! Really!) and only really had sisters to play with at home (my little brother was eight years younger than me, and my friends from school lived in the country, miles away from town on farms.)

As a young man, I regained my dolls… I mean Action Figures, and tried to restore them (not play with them… I never said play with them). When I got married, my wife and I actively began collecting them. She was initially charmed by my love for my old pieces of plastic. We began looking for what was out there. Captain Action and G.I. Joes for me, Barbies for her. When she lost interest (or found a cure for that particular mental aberration), I kept on. The rules for collecting included; Twelve inch tall figures. Never pay more than $20 for a toy. Never spend more than $50 a month. Find rare dolls for little money. Rescue dolls who somebody once loved and played with, or that are on the verge of the ignominious end to be found in the department-store dumpster.

Rainbow Dash started me down the slippery slope to Brony-ism. I just happened to find, on an after-Christmas clearance table at Walmart with all the other damaged toys that didn’t realistically survive the seasonal play-with-it-in-the-store-while- mommy-shops damage, a cheap and forlorn Rainbow Dash with extra hair. She looked at me with those big, sad eyes and pleaded with me to buy her and save her from the dumpster (or the sadistic little girl that would buy and dismember her because she was just a cheap thing from Walmart). I’m too stupid to resist.

Then I began examining my purchase because I didn’t really know what it was… the Brony-thing warning lights were going off somewhere in the back of my goofy-old-man head, but it took some research before I learned what Equestria Girls were and that there were six of them. Six of them! A set of six to collect! But also the original ponies! A set of twelve!

And the disease had me.

So, here you see the tangible evidence that I am acutely infected. Brony-itis? Possibly. Fatal? Hopefully not. If you’re counting, they still are not all here. Apple Jack, Rarity, Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash as Equestria Girls. Apple Jack, Rarity, Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie as ponies. But no Fluttershy at all. And… what’s this? No Pinkie Pie? The most popular pony with little girls, I could not find her in Equestria Girl form? Well, I could… but not for under $20. I went shopping at Toys R Us yesterday with the Princess in tow. We bought toys, but no Pinkie Pie for less than twenty one. And this collection represents $14 in January, $30 in February, and $25 already this month. I’m guessing the rules might save me from this disease yet. Does that mean no Pinkie Pie ever? Well, I watch the stupid cartoons incessantly now on YouTube… I’ve learned that Friendship is Magic and as long as you can remain true to your friends, you can overcome almost all of life’s problems… together… with love. And Pinkie Pie is totally random… and funny… and everyone’s friend. There are good lessons being taught to little girls and old men who watch these things. Pinkie Pie’s is probably the most important one of all… So Pinkie is my favorite. I haven’t found her yet in a way that stays within the rules, but I am not some creepy old man who breaks the rules. I have the rest of my life to complete this quest.

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Tagged as Bronies, doll collecting, humor, My Little Pony, photo Paffooney, Pinkie Pie, playing with dolls, satire, the quest

March 21, 2015 · 2:08 pm

Why I Play With Dolls… erm… Action Figures

My daughter the Princess and I went to Toys R Us this morning to spend a little of the money I had earned by proofreading a technical paper for a grad student. I bought a My Little Pony Equestria Girl named Rarity (I already have the pony, I just needed the girl to add to the collection.) I also bought a Minecraft sheep thing that the Princess promptly named Jed. Apparently, in the Minecraft game online, if you name your sheep Jed, it turns rainbow colors. And I know I didn’t slip by you the fact that the Pony Girl was my toy. In this post I intend to explain to you why I play with little girls’ toys… and hem and haw… and rationalize… and lie… because it is really not what it seems.

It all began in 1965, on my ninth birthday, because I had discovered in the Montgomery Ward Christmas Catalog the first Action Figure, G.I. Joe, and I begged and begged and begged it for my birthday. There were four different flavors of G.I. Joe to choose from, representing the four branches of the U.S. Military. You could get either a sailor from the Navy, a soldier from the Army or Marines, or a pilot from the Air Force. Of course, I was wild about the Air Force, but I was clever enough to ask for a sailor Joe because my father was a Korean Conflict Veteran who had been in the Navy on board the USS Hornet aircraft carrier. Dad actually liked the idea and got the Navy Frog Man uniform to go along with it. I could change Joe’s clothes and make him a cool undersea adventurer. It only took a half hour to change him from a sailor into a frog man, and another half hour to change him out of his swim fins and wet suit back into a sailor. It was a doll with sets of clothes to change him into just like my younger sisters’ Barbie and Tammy dolls. Wait… what? I had been tricked into playing with dolls? It is like I lost my official man card even before I earned it… or even before I knew what it was.

Oh, well… it was all about the stories anyway. Yes, I was a story-teller even then. I built a submarine out of my Erector Set (a cherished toy from a previous Christmas) and my Joe led adventures through the vast undersea areas of our parents’ bedroom using Barbie (actually a Midge doll) and Tammy (little sister’s knock-off imitation Barbie doll) as crew. We added to the stories and adventures as time went on, and birthdays and Christmases passed, and we accumulated more dolls. I added Fritz, a Soldiers of the World G.I. Joe from Germany, an Air Force Pilot Joe, and an Astronaut Joe. My sister Nanette added a Francie doll, a Christie (the first African-American Barbie), and a G.I. Joe nurse. Little sister Maggie added a Francie of her own, a regular Barbie, and a Skipper doll to the submarine crew. And then the stories went through the roof when I got my sweaty little hands on Captain Action and his Super-hero costumes!

Captain Action was the creation of the now defunct Ideal Toy Company as an answer to the incredible success of G.I. Joe. You could take the basic Captain Action figure (seen above on the far right… this is the actual first figure… what’s left of him. The right hand is long gone. He has no fore arms. The uniform that he is wearing is not his original. It is basically holding his severed body parts together. I did successfully re-attach the head) and put him in a new uniform to turn him into Batman or Superman or… Aquaman! perfect for submarine adventures with sisters!

In the 1990’s my parents gave me the box of my old G.I. Joes. It was like a re-awakening of childhood passions. Several of my Joes were in terrible shape because my little brother and his semi-simian deviant friends had used fire-crackers on them a-la-Sid from Toy Story. I began cleaning them and restoring them. And then the internet happened. Old guys like me that grew up with these classic toys were now trying to recapture their youth by buying and selling the toys on E-bay. Seriously, check out this price for vintage Captain Action stuff (mint in box);

Aquaman on E-Bay (Oops! That $2000 toy that you can’t even play with has already sold!)

Collecting and trading dolls has become a fascinating hobby and potentially profitable (at least until age and death and bankruptcy winnow out all the old crazy guys like me who collect this sort of stuff). And why the added obsession with Barbies and things like My Little Pony dolls? Well, my sisters’ dolls had all been kept in a metal box. Attics in Texas can reach 600+ degrees Fahrenheit in the Summer. Have you ever seen a melted Barbie? Nostalgia made me do it… that, and having a daughter… well, that’s my story, anyway. And I am sticking to it.

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Tagged as doll collecting, goofiness, humor, photo Paffooney, playing with toys, strange hobbies, toys

March 20, 2015 · 12:31 pm

When Compassion Fails

When I was contemplating what this post for 1000 Voices for Compassion was going to say, I read this insightful post by Melissa Firman; When the Bully is the Teacher. It tore a few more holes in my soul. You see, I was a teacher. And I was not the safe, self-satisfied, sit-behind-the-desk-and-pontificate sort of teacher. I was the walk-up-and-down-the-aisles-between-the-student-desks teacher. I was the look-over-your-shoulder-and-care-what-you-are-learning teacher. I took the risks necessary to connect with kids and find out what was really happening in students’ lives. I was definitely aware of teachers who belittled their charges and used negative comments and punishments to motivate them. I did what I could to steer those teachers in another direction. I was involved in campus improvement teams. I provided in-service training to my fellow teachers on methods and implementation and best practices. I was a department head for middle school English for a decade. I tried very hard to get other teachers to love kids too. But I learned very early on that for every hard-won, consistently-practiced teacher super-power that I developed there was an even more powerful bit of Kryptonite lurking somewhere. Bullying broke my heart my second year as a teacher.

Ruben was an eighth grade boy who came to my class late in the school year. He had moved south from big-city San Antonio, Texas to our little rural school because of family upheaval. He was a slight, short, skinny child with large, liquid brown eyes and a haunted stare that could pierce your soul. Almost from day one he was the center of attention for one of the eighth grade attack roosters in our little school. Vicente Feyo (not his real name) was a beginning Gold-Gloves boxer following in his older brothers’ footsteps. He was a fairly short kid, too, but muscled like an athlete because he trained as a boxer. The girls all loved Vicente and followed him like a flock of hens all around the chicken house. His only obvious objection to Ruben was that Ruben existed and was defenseless against any mean thing Vicente could think of to do. Fortunately, Vicente had been hit in the head enough that he couldn’t think of anything too terribly evil to do to Ruben. He called Ruben a girl in Spanish, belittled his manhood, and constantly treated him to the Feyo Stare of Death and Dismemberment. He would corner Ruben and say things like, “Just go for it, vato. What are you afraid of?” He forced Ruben to back down in front of girls. He forced Ruben to back down even in front of Ruben’s own younger sister who had caught up to Ruben in grades and was in the same class with him. The child was dying before my eyes. I had to do something. Our principal was a good man with a good heart, but Vicente had parents who were very prominent and powerful in our little South Texas Hispanic community. He couldn’t handle having to risk backlash in reprimanding Vicente over something that he told me, “…is just part of our Mexican-American culture. Boys just have be macho and strut in front of the girls. He doesn’t really mean anything by it.”

One day, after class, I pulled Ruben aside and tried to talk to him. “What can I do to help?” I asked. “I am not going to put up with him acting like that in class, or in this school,” I said, “but what else can I do?”

“You can’t do anything, man. You are a gringo teacher. This has to be between me and him. You just don’t understand, man.”

I didn’t understand. I thought teachers were heroes. Teachers are supposed to be able to solve problems like this. Of course, I was just a second-year teacher at the time. Maybe there was something I hadn’t learned yet. It was not going to be beyond my power forever… but it was.

Ruben solved his problem the following year. At the time the Bloods from L.A. hadn’t moved into San Antonio yet to become the San Antonio Kings. The Crips hadn’t moved into San Antonio and become the Ffolks. There was only a gang on the South Side called the Town Freaks. Ruben moved back to San Antonio and became a Town Freak. Nobody was going to mess with him ever again. One night they stole a pickup truck and went for a joyride. Ruben was riding in the back. When the police chased them, the truck overturned. Six Town Freaks were killed. Ruben was one of them. Nobody was ever going to mess with him again.

What does this have to do with compassion? It tore my heart out. I can’t write this post, even thirty-three-years after it happened, without tears blurring my eyesight and sobs wiggling my laptop. I still believe that if only we could’ve found a little more compassion in our hearts for Ruben Vela… if only more adults would’ve honestly tried to see things through Ruben’s eyes… well… you know.

I never use the real names of students in posts. They have a right to their own stories. They need to have their privacy respected. Ruben Vela is different. Somebody needs to remember that boy’s name whenever we pass off bullying as inevitable, as a part of our culture, as normal. I have never forgotten. Remembering what happened to Ruben made me more aware for the rest of my teaching career. It will affect me for the rest of my life.

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Filed under 1000 Voices Speak for Compassion, compassion

Tagged as 1000 Voices Speak for Compassion, autobiography, compassion, school teacher

March 19, 2015 · 12:35 pm

Putting My House in Order

If you don’t remember, this is what my bedroom looked like when I first rubbed the magic lamp and wished for clean from Clean Gene the Cleaning Genii. Since that post in which my bedroom/writer’s nook (sickbed, deathbed, whatever…) looked like the picture above, the Genii has been stooping with a bad back, picking up papers and books and arcane detritus from the writer’s life of a messy, messy writer and artist. Did I mention he was messy? Did I mention he has arthritis, hypertension, diabetes, COPD, and two other incurable diseases? Did I mention he is having surgery on Tuesday? Did I say he was messy? Oops… too much repetitive redundancy being repeatedly repeated. (Purple Paisley Prose Paragraphs are like that.)

Did you figure out that he is me? I say all of this incredibly boring and inane stuff because it gives context to the miracle. Clean Gene granted at least part of the wish. It may not look it, but now the mess is organized.

You will notice that things that may be needed in the middle of the night are now accessible. And the room now actually has a floor again! Oh, and the dolls are not needed for the middle of the night… at least, not that I actively remember (or am willing to admit.)

In this view you can see more of my organized tornado aftermath. Under the books and Barbies in process of being repaired you see what used to be my drawing table, and is now more like a book case with attached tiny area for drawing. My daughter the Princess put the stickers all over the drawer on my 100-year-old-plus dresser when she was two, and I have never had the heart to take them off no matter what they do to its value as an antique. (It honestly has no value. Antique is just another word for very, very old.) And those are not dolls standing around in semi-action poses. Those are ACTION FIGURES!

And finally, this is my work space and writing area where I am currently writing this mundane little post about something that is more about nothing than anything Seinfeld ever came up with. Yes, I am a writer and an artist. Am I a professional? That is harder to say. I was paid for many years to teach writing as a public school English teacher. I currently am proofreading for a couple of professionals who are not writers but have to do it as a part of their jobs in health care. I am getting paid for that. I made at least thirty dollars for writing novels for three different publishers. I have had drawings published before in books and comic books, but nobody ever gave me a nickel for that… those were voluntary and contests I didn’t win. They did help other people make money, though. Maybe, now that I am retired as a teacher, I am justified in claiming that I am even though I don’t make the big bucks people assume I do when I tell them that little white lie. (If you thought that last paragraph was mainly about passing 500 words, you would be right.)

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Tagged as being a writer, Clean Gene, cleaning genii, cleaning house, humor, pathos, photo Paffooney

March 18, 2015 · 11:41 am

Dreary Days and Darklords

Al Capp was a genius. And he knows precisely how it goes. And no one describes it better. Storm clouds float directly over my little square head (I am a Midwestern German-American, and they all have cubes for heads… both literally and figuratively.) Anywhere I wander, disaster surely follows. The last few days have been an absolute and unrelenting disaster. And I can’t tell you all the details because it would compromise other people’s privacy. But I can say that no lightning stings worse than the lightning bolts thrown by aggressively profit-conscious health insurance companies. I will not name the hated company here because they will surely raise my premiums, but I hate them with a hatred more hateful than red-hot iron-grate-hate. I went to a doctor’s office yesterday, a doctor I was seeing for the first time because the new insurance company handling retired Teachers in Texas didn’t like the old doctor. The old doctor was too good and got paid too well for insurance to approve him. So I asked them to recommend a new doctor, a specialist of the right brand to replace the old doctor. They gave me a name and I made the appointment. I was told this new doctor was in-network. I got there and started filling out a small hill of paperwork that required all my personal numerology and the atomic number of several specific elements… and my shoe size. (And this was not a foot doctor.) As I was littering the doctor’s office with filled crossword puzzles of numbers, hard-to-spell drug names, and private information, I was called up to the receptionist’s desk and informed that the insurance company said that while the doctor was in-network, she was not in-plan. The specific plan I bought (chosen from a list of one) only uses doctors associated with Baylor Hospital in Carrollton… and this new doctor was associated with Methodist Hospital in Plano. I could only see this new doctor if I paid 100% of the fee. Being an independently wealthy retired school teacher on a fixed income, I had to decline that honor. This of course is not the only hyoomillagration (Popeye’s word for it, not mine… another explanation that requires another post and another day) that the last few days would bring. Having half a year’s salary as a working school teacher and half a year’s salary as a doddering retired person fully capable only of puttering and nuttering, the income tax situation tipped heavily in the government’s favor.. I had to pay almost $2000 dollars on the taxes that I filed through Turbotax on Monday. I was proud of getting the taxes done early, but saddened at the sudden deflation of my savings account to the condition of totally-flattened-balloon-hood. Worse yet, Turbotax sends bills under the name INTUIT, which I didn’t recognize on my bank statement. It took the Wells Fargo fraud expert all of ten seconds to figure out the mistake I made, which was two minutes and ten seconds after the previous banker I had talked to irreversibly closed my bank account and issued a new bank card and account number which will take two weeks to come in the mail. Now I couldn’t pay that doctor even if I wanted to. And there were other things biting my bum as well. The electronic car key is out of battery juice and I must now unlock it by hand. The dog is currently on another in a long line of poop-and-pee-in-the-house-sprees. I have a benign growth on my back that the other doctor I actually got to see this week says needs to come off by next week. It is hurting constantly and keeps me from sleeping. I am Joe Btfsplk this week for no reason that I know of and mad wizards are persecuting me relentlessly.

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Tagged as Al Capp, autobiography, cartoons, humor, paffooney, pen and ink, rant, unlucky days

March 17, 2015 · 6:34 pm

François

What I am endlessly burbling about today in purple paisley prose is a raw novel idea. I have not started to cook it, bake it, or even burn it at all yet. It is not ready for the writing oven. It is still that mass of daydreams, nonsense, and foofy-foofram that we former English teachers like to call Pre-Writing. (Note the capitol letters… teachers make this goop high on the writing-process, lies-the-teacher-has-to-tell list, because, otherwise students will glop out some words on paper and call it a final draft without even re-reading or thinking about the dang thing.) (Note too the use of the parenthetic expression that breaks up and uglifies the paragraph and identifies this writing as less-than-serious purple paisley prose.) This goofy post is obviously, then, not only about Pre-Writing, that’s exactly what it is… gloppy, sloppy word mash that I hope to one day boil into something stunningly beautiful.

So here’s what I actually have. I have a character. His name is François Martin (not pronounced the Iowegian way, Frank-oyce Mahr-tinn, but the French way, Fran-swah Mahr-tah… because the character is actually from France… duh!) (I will have to post an explanation of Iowegian and the foreign language the people of Iowa actually speak another day.) François is a recently orphaned young boy whose father, Rejean, was a masterful and loving parent who made the mistake of relying on relatives to take care of his children in the case of something bad happening to him and his wife. Car accidents are bad and tend to happen too fast to correct this sort of mistake. François Is sent to live with the family of his father’s American half-brothers and half-sister in Norwall, Iowa. Here’s where the trouble starts. Victor Martin, the eldest brother, is the only one of the three who even has a job. He owns and operates a seedy Midwestern bar in the middle of the tiny town and is universally disliked and berated by local church ladies (the heart and soul of any Midwestern town in the 1980’s. The other uncle and the aunt are even worse. They are lazy, detestable, foul-mouthed… and those are their good points. The other uncle, Richard, has a son named Billy dropped off one day by the hated ex-wife and made to live in the basement of the old house they bought when Ona White’s relatives actually decided to sell her house after her untimely death by werewolf. Okay, you see by now that this is a tragic story full of emotional heart-ache and pain… and bursting with humorous potential.

This nebulous family drama idea has a name. Originally I called it Little Boy Crooner because François can paint his face with sad-clown paint and sing karaoke like an angel… an angel who can potentially save his horrible half-uncle’s business and horrible-er family. I have re-titled it Sing Sad Songs… with Clowns because I added to this novel-notion the idea that François also loses himself in dreams and finds his way to H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands via the magic ways of the three clowns from the Dreamlands, Mr. Disney, Mr. Dickens, and Mr. Shakespeare. What a mess of an idea! but I am betting that if I live long enough to get to it, it will be among the best things I have ever written.

Broken People Parts (A goofy poem from messed-up Mike)

Sometimes people break,

And then, they fall apart,

And it takes a jigsaw master,

To Puzzle back their heart.

And if a foot falls off,

Quite busted on Monday’s hump

They may be legless, headless, limp

And lying in a lump.

But no face is ever busted

To a point of no repair,

And lips are pasted back in place

With a smile that wasn’t there.

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Tagged as artwork, colored pencil, drawing, humor, mending hearts, Paffoonies, poetry, self-help

March 15, 2015 · 1:59 pm

Cardboard Castles

After a long, lonely week by myself, unable to go with my family to Florida for Spring Break due to poor health, my isolation ended suddenly as they returned early. I woke up to find them already here yesterday morning. They were tired from travelling, having arrived in the middle of the night, and so they needed to sleep in… and I was suffering horrible cabin fever. It mattered little, though, that I longed to get out. I was still ill and unable to breathe outside of my sealed bedroom. My arthritic back ached and I needed to lie in bed on the heating pad for the better part of a Saturday. So, what could I do but use my creative talents to take me on a journey into imagination. I built a castle.

I used an old computer program I previously found at Half-Price Books, the big superstore thing on Northwest Highway in Dallas. I printed out castle parts on white paper with colored ink. I gathered pieces of reusable cardboard I had been saving for the purpose. I began to cut and paste and tape.

I nearly forgot the most important step. I put on a Dr. Who DVD I snagged at Walmart. It was An Adventure is Space and Time starring David Bradley (who was playing William Hartnell who was the first Dr. Who, so it was a movie about an actor playing a part in a BBC fantasy series in the 1960’s played by another actor who looked like the original actor… I mean, it was a story about telling a story and it was the true story of the telling… Oh, I give up! You figure it out.) (That was the second longest parenthetic expression I have ever written, by the way.) It also had a full four episode adventure from the very first Dr. Who story, An Unearthly Child, starring the real William Hartnell. So I watched and cut and taped and pasted and built castle all day.

It begins to get exciting as the pieces fit together and it actually starts to look like a castle. Of course, once it was finished, I had to play with the dang thing. I am old, and this is my second childhood after all.

Now, if only I can figure out how to keep female vampires dressed in red from invading my castle.

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Tagged as cut and paste, goofiness, humor, making cardboard castles, paper sculpture, photo Paffooney, playing with toys

March 14, 2015 · 3:15 pm

The Bicycle-Wheel Genius

I have just finished the final edit of The Bicycle-Wheel Genius. PDMI may not be ready for another novel from me, but it is ready for an editor or beta reader to be looking at it. I will not be making any further changes because of my perception of the shape, style, and meaning of the novel. I need input to proceed. I need to advance to publication.

Blue in the back yard

This novel is about a lot of things. It is science fiction. It is a time-travel and alien-contact story. But the thing it is really about, theme-wise, is friendship. It is about the friends we need, the friends we have, what makes a friend, and how you treat a friend. It is about love. It is about love that has nothing to do with sex. It is about love between boys and girls, about love between boys and other boys, about love between a man who has lost his wife and son and a boy who has lost his best friend, and even about the love between family members who love each other even when they disagree and don’t like each other very much. It is also about love between a boy and his rabbit and how it changes when the rabbit is turned into a rabbit-man by the time machine.

Okay, part of the reason that all sounds so terribly complex, is because of the structure I adopted for this novel. This novel is a unique sort of sequel to Catch a Falling Star. I call it a Prequel-Equal-Sequel because it takes place before, during, and after the events of the other book. The primary characters are also different. The main protagonists in the first book are only minor supporting characters in this book. The supporting characters from Catch a Falling Star, the inventor and bicycle-wheel engineer Orben Wallace, and his next-door neighbor boy, Timothy Kellogg (also the grand and glorious and ludicrously uproarious leader of the Norwall Pirates, a small-town liars club of country boys), have become the protagonists.

It was all a very complicated process to write, but also strangely fun and deeply engaging to do. I originally assumed because it was overly complex and facetious, that it was really not that good.

Re-reading and editing, though, has caused me to think that it actually a very good story. I know that it is not as good a piece of writing as either Snow Babies or Magical Miss Morgan, but it has a very significant part to play in the over-all story arc of my home-town novels. It develops critical characters like the two protagonists, Mike Murphy, Blueberry Bates, Cudgel Murphy, Mary and her daughter Dilsey Murphy, and, of course, Valerie Clarke. So, this is a sort of celebratory post. I have finished another project and must now move on to the phase where I must try to get it published and publicized, packaged and promoted.

Friday the 13th

by SeanC15 on DeviantArt

At dawn on Friday the 13th in the year of our Lord 1307 King Philip IV of France ordered Knights Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay and as many other members of the Order of Knights Templar as could be found in France to all be arrested. They were accused of crimes against God and the Catholic Church like spitting on the cross, indecent kissing, homosexual practices, and worshiping false idols. It was said they had found the mummified head of John the Baptist during their brief tenure as the rulers and defenders of Jerusalem. It was also said they used it in pagan rituals of black magic. The charges were assumed to be false, even by Philip, but through torture numerous Templars were forced to confess, and their confessions were accepted as evidence by Pope Clement. De Molay and the rest of the Templars in France were burned at the stake before the Vatican could mount an appeal (numerous Templars recanted their confessions as soon as they were out of the torture chamber). Templar property throughout France was seized and Philip’s war debts to the Templars were canceled. One suspects that this was a grand financial power-play worthy of a Bush family member. (Oh, no! Did I just say that in a post? Here comes the NSA.)

You know that historians generally do not credit the Templar story as the true origin of the Friday the 13th superstition. I’m not sure why they have trouble making that connection, but historians generally think that anything that is obvious to the common man can’t possibly be true. I suppose they may be right.

So, I sit here at home alone with my beloved family still Spring Breaking in Florida. It is raining outside. It is cool, almost cold. And I am contemplating sour luck.

One of the things I routinely do is work on a collection when I am feeling blue and subject to diabetic depression. It helps to be able to make a little progress in completing a set or something. Well, I made the mistake of trying to do that at Walmart. The Walton family have something in common with King Philip (and the Bush family) (Hackers added that last parenthetic expression, honest, NSA!). They know a little something about mercenary financial evil. Their empire was built on the backs of underpaid workers which they excuse by claiming they have to do that to keep offering “Always low prices”. But they use all kinds of cheap tricks to keep the big bucks rolling into big pockets and little bucks being sucked out of little pockets like mine. Case in point, I was trying to score another fix in my recent addle-brained Brony addiction by completing a set of Equestria Girls. On the bargain-clearance-sale table was the perfect thing. Pinkie Pie from the Rainbow Rocks series next to a price that said $11. Now, I don’t have Pinkie Pie. I have Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle, and Apple Jack, but Pinkie Pie is the one every little girl (apparently just like this crazy old man) wants first. So, Bazinga! For the first time I could acquire Pinkie Pie and come in under the $20 dollar rule. But, wait just a minute! This is Walmart we are talking about here. The nearest price checker was broken and hadn’t been fixed in months. So I asked a working Walmart minion stocking the toy shelves where the nearest working price checker was. Of course, they didn’t have one anywhere in the store. But shelf-stockers carry a portable pricing gun, and she checked it for me. $21.97! It was actually the same price it would normally be on the shelves. (Granted it is a lower starting price than Toys-R-Us, but it still breaks the $20 rule.) The $11 price was coded for the Rainbow Dash doll that was sitting there next to the Pinkie Pie. They count on me being stupid enough to run to checkout with the wrong price in my head and gleefully pay the higher price without thinking or looking too closely. So I outfoxed them. Rainbow Dash was sitting there at the shelf-damaged, clearance-sale price and it was (after careful inspection) mint in box.

So, that is essentially my point today. Conservative and mega-fearful paranoid people like your usual conspiracy theorist and distrustful Tea-Party Republican would pull back with venom and recount their Second-Amendment rights. Not me. Life gives me lemons and I make… frosted lemon cheesecake with a dash of rainbow. Sure, I think the Bush family are secretly Nazis… but you are not paranoid if there really is a conspiracy and you’ve seen the evidence. But Friday the 13th can be a lucky day. Good things can happen if you make them happen and use the talents and intelligence that God granted you for that very purpose. (I confess, I used to listen to Norman Vincent Peale on the radio and I actually believed his crap about the power of positive thinking.) Let me show you a few more of my bargain-purchase collectible accomplishments;

I do realize that I posed these dolls on Radasha’s face and that I ought to have put old drawings away in their proper portfolio place, not leave them out on the drawing board. But, what do you think I am? Some sort of irresponsible goofy old cartoonist who gets too caught up with playing with dolls, or something? Please don’t answer that.

The Tinkerbell dolls were also from the bargain table, only one of them was priced correctly on the table. The rest are showing you Barbie dresses on dolls I rescued from Goodwill and a Re-Sale store. These are dolls that were naked, abused, and previously loved and played-with by some little girl (or possibly confused little boy). I have a soft spot for rescue dolls that went naked into charity work at the risk of ending up in the garbage bin. They remind me of me when I went into teaching.

Ah, the power of positive thinking! (And I didn’t just add that last sigh to get over the 1000 word goal, either.)

Monthly Archives: March 2015

The Quest for Pinkie Pie

Why I Play With Dolls… erm… Action Figures

When Compassion Fails

Putting My House in Order

Dreary Days and Darklords

François

Broken People Parts (A goofy poem from messed-up Mike)

Cardboard Castles

The Bicycle-Wheel Genius

Friday the 13th

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