
There is considerable evidence that I am not a totally normal human being, or as Danny Murphy used to say “A normal human bean”. Danny is, by the way, a character in several of my novels, including Snow Babies and When the Captain Came Calling. He did the complete Circle Streak (running around the entire high school campus buck naked in a huge and chilly circle) more than once. And he was based entirely on one of my high school classmates and friends. That bird-walk about streaking is an example of the kind of quirks I am guilty of when I am being totally not-normal. I am now entirely off topic and must pull it back to defend myself by saying, “Nobody else is a totally normal human bean either!”

Among my many quirks and oddities is my love of baseball and slavish dedication to the St. Louis Cardinals baseball club. My favorite World Series memories are from 1934, 22 years before I was born. Dizzy Dean was a 30-game winner pitching for the Cardinals. Joe “Ducky” Medwick was their star hitter, and in the 6th inning he hit a triple and slid hard into the third baseman with his cleats up (a trick learned from former Detroit Tiger Ty Cobb) and the Tiger fans lost their cool in a big way (they were behind 9-0 at the time in the deciding 7th game). They began throwing things at Joe as he tried to play left field. He nearly missed an easy fly ball because somebody threw an orange and almost hit his glove. It is the only time in baseball history that a baseball commissioner had to eject a player from a World Series game for his own protection. (Needless to say, I love to hate the Tigers.)
I also love all the other ten times the Cardinals have won the Series, and I am proud of the eight times they nearly won besides.

Another of my odd quirks is a love of nudity in spite of my skin condition that prevents me from comfortably being a nudist. I first encountered nudism in a clothing-optional apartment complex where my girlfriend’s sister lived in Austin. I went from being shocked almost to apoplexy, to my girlfriend’s overwhelming amusement, to rejecting a chance to try nudism in the late 80’s, to actually spending a day at a Texas nudist park in 2017, and really enjoying the experience. My children are mortified.
And this quirk affects my fiction. I have some characters in a few of my stories based specifically on nudists I have known. I also wrote an entire novel, A Field Guide to Fauns, about a boy learning to live with his father and step-mother in a residential nudist park. Additionally, I have irrationally tried to use the word “penis” in every novel I have written. I only failed to do so when some editors insisted on its removal. So, I believe I may be 12 for 16 on that score.
But this particular quirk, no matter how totally embarrassing my children find it, is not a sexual perversion. I don’t write porn. And, as a survival matter after being sexually assaulted as a child, my nudity fixation has helped me to accept that I am not evil and unworthy when I am naked. My attacker had me convinced otherwise for more than twenty years.

I am also an aficionado of science fiction, classical music, and a faith that tells me rabbits make better people than people do.

My books are divided, for the most part, into Cantos instead of Chapters. This is because of my love for Classical Music and my dedication to the weird notion that novels should be more like epic poetry. Not necessarily written in verse, though if I ever get to write Music in the Forest, that one is written as poetry.
But paragraphs need to be written as purely poetically as perfect white pearls are poetically pearly.
But as poetry, my tendency towards comedy rather than drama or tragedy, leads me to write purple paisley prose (like all this p-word nonsense) which makes my paragraphs more Scherzo than Nocturne, Sonata, or Symphony.


While researching alien invasions for the novel Catch a Falling Star, the story of when aliens from deep space tried to invade Iowa, I came across internet information that ignited another quirky passion of mine, studying conspiracy theories. And it isn’t all just a plot to embarrass my children in front of people we know in real life. Although that is a definite side benefit. But conspiracies are an excellent source material for making humor. Comedy gold. Knowing who people like Alex Jones, David Icke, and Jesse Ventura are, gives me not only easily ridiculed personalities to make fun of, but also windows into thinking habits that may or may not turn up some real anomalies in the world of science and so-called historical fact. For instance, I can credibly argue that there is more to the Roswell Crash story than the government is willing to tell us about, and Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill JFK by himself, if at all.
And besides, my boyhood friend Robert was part of my small-town gang when we fought off the alien invasion in the 60’s, and he told me on Facebook that he remembered when that happened. Good old Bobby. He really likes beer and alcohol.
And I could go on like this for an entire book’s worth of silly jabber. But this post has to end for today. This blog, after all, isn’t the only quirky and crazy thing I have to attend to.
Coca-Cola Mind Control
If you’ve read very much of my goofy little blog, you’ve probably run across the fact that I am something of a conspiracy theorist and strange-twist believer… sometimes referred to as a tinfoil-hat-wearer, or that old uncle you don’t want your kids sitting next to at the Thanksgiving dinner table. And I’ve got another one for you. I discovered while obsessing about nostalgia and old ads in the Saturday Evening Post, that the Coca-Cola company is probably responsible for warping my mind as a child.
My plan in revealing this hideous conspiracy is to take a look at ads and illustrations that I saw as a kid addicted to reading Saturday Evening Post every week at Grandpa and Grandma Aldrich’s farm. I will scour them for hidden meanings and try to reveal to you the insidious plot underlying these mind-altering illustrations. Keep in mind that you should probably take everything I say in this article with a grain of salt. No, really, salt can protect you from subtle mind-control messages.
And, yes, I realize that not all the messages are that subtle. Sometimes they shout at you, “Drink Coke and you will have more sex!” And you have to remember we are trying to avoid that kind of mind control. We have to fight every instance of ad companies trying to take control over us by exploiting our baser animal urges.
So, let me take a momentary interlude, a break if you will. I have this big glass of Diet Coke I just bought at QT, and…
Well, that was good!
Coca-Cola has been at this for a while. This ad from the 1940’s is apparently attempting to win World War II through choice of soft drinks. Look at this feisty brew the soldier is about to quaff. It is actually struggling in the cup to get out and go bite some German soldier’s face off. Any American soldier who can choke this stuff down is tough enough to take on the Axis powers, Napoleon after Hitler dug him up and used Frankenstein’s scientific breakthroughs to re-animate him, and even several countries we weren’t actually at war with. Even Rush Limbaugh and his weird lesbian-farmer-subsidies theory can’t compete with Coke on this level of propaganda wars.
I also think Coca-Cola ads may have something to do with why I became a Cardinals fan when I lived in a place full of Cubs and Twins fans. I admit, I added the dialogue and the commentary, but I used to do the same thing in my head when I was eight and the Cardinals went to the World Series… and the Cubs could not win it all even with Ernie Banks on their team. The Cardinals beat the Yankees in 7 games!
I blame Coca-Cola. Especially their ad department. Cause the generic manager is telling the generic Oubs player to “Relax… take it easy.” But the Cardinals won because Bob Gibson had that laser-intensity stare that bored holes through Mickey Mantle’s bat! (It is Oubs, not Cubs, by the way. Look at the big “O” on his jersey.)
And you can’t tell me that the Coca-Cola ad seen here, the one with the white-haired goblin child casting a spell on you with his crazy eyes and pointing at your dark, delicious master isn’t seriously trying to mess with children’s minds. There used to be a big five-foot-tall metal sign with this very picture on it in the one and only alley in Meservey, Iowa. The one time I went to the barber there to get my hair cut I had to sit in that barber chair and stare at this evil thing staring back at me from the alley across the street. It warped me. For one thing, I never went back to that barber shop again… at least until I was in college and the sign was gone.
So, I seriously believe Coca-Cola was messing with my mind as a child. They did it through subversive ad illustrations in Saturday Evening Post Magazine. And if I’m completely crazy now, I blame them. You don’t see that kind of thing going on today, do you? Well, I mean, we should be very worried. Because it probably means they have gotten better at it.
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Filed under autobiography, baseball, baseball fan, commentary, conspiracy theory, foolishness, humor
Tagged as coca cola, conspiracy theory, humor, mind control, propaganda