Scherzo 4 – Rolling a Twenty
“So, Trav Dalgoda does it again. Your total roll of the dice with your skill of plus eight added to it is an impossible success of twenty. You fly the burning spaceship into a curly-patterned rendezvous with the Leaping Shadowcat.”
“That’s a load of bull-puckie, Mr. M!” said Arturo. “He always rolls a perfect twelve on two six-sided dice!”
“You agreed that he could use his jack-of-all-trades skill to do this.”
“But it’s a plus eight! That is just too unfair for a skill you can use to do almost anything.”
“You let me spend all my adventure points on that one skill,” Eddie said.
“He’s right you know. And besides, if he were to fail that role, then the two ships could crash, killing your two characters as well as his.”
“And mine too!” said Amanda. “Trav rescued Madonna from the slaver pirates of Mingo remember.”
“Yes,” said the game master, “and her little blue son too.”
“Aw, that little bugger is just an NPC that you put into the story. I really don’t care if he dies.”
“Eeuw, cold-hearted woman!” said Eddie.
At that moment, Dr.Hooey opened the front door of the young teacher’s apartment.
“Oh, hello. My time machine must’ve had another brain fart and brought me to the wrong time and relative dimension.”
“Wait a minute,” said Eddie, “Who the hell are you?”
“Yes, exactly, but maybe hell is a bit too strong. My name is Dr. Hooey. I am looking for a place to leave a baby from the distant future.”
“A baby?” Amanda gasped.
“Oh, yes. And who are you, young lady?”
“I’m Amanda Lilliput and this is my boyfriend Arturo Castrovalva.”
“Would you like to raise a baby from the future?”
“Um… no, thank you.”
“May I ask what you people are actually doing?”
“It’s a science fiction role-playing game. These former students of mine are all playing space-faring characters in a space adventure set in the distant future,” said the goofy-looking teacher.
“Oh, my. That is somewhat worrisome. Are you sure you don’t want a space baby from the future?”
“Oh, I do!” said Eddie.
“No, he really doesn’t,” said the teacher. “Thank you anyway.”
So Dr. Hooey left and closed the door behind him.
“That was weird,” said Arturo.
“Mr. M, I need to make a new character for the game,” said Eddie. “He will be a time traveler, and I will call him Dr. Hooey.”
”
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Obsessively Self-Reflective
I honestly hope you are not reading this blog to find advice on life, the universe, writing, or anything. That sounds more like something I myself might do, and I am goofy enough to think this purple paisley prosy thing is a humor blog. I don’t really give advice, good or otherwise.
Even as a teacher I didn’t tell students how to do things in a do-this, then-do-this, and then-do-this lecture format. If anything, I advised by showing them how I did things, leading by example. I taught skills and concepts by setting up tasks that let kids do things for themselves. Most people learn by doing.
This idea applies no matter what the learning goal is. If you want to do magic, you have to cast some spells for yourself. Roger Bacon’s students in the 13th Century learned to do alchemy and eventually chemistry by blowing up the laboratory repeatedly. If I am capable of any sort of artistical or literarical magic, I have achieved it only by trying to do it, trying to be creativical, and getting readers’ and viewers’ attention by being marketableical and somewhat ironical in my blogging with over-use of artificial -ical endings.
So, I treat this blog as way to generate ludicrous ideas and goofy content in order to fascinate readers and sometimes even make them laugh. And I have nothing more to write about than myself and my own experiences. It is obsessively self-inflicted observations about myself. Kinda like standing naked in front of the mirror and learning to laugh at warts and wrinkles. I believe in taking the clothes off of my life experiences and finding the naked truths that were previously hidden. And, no, that doesn’t really explain why it seems I like drawing naked people so much. It’s a metaphor, dang it!
So, that’s what this blog is all about. I am explaining what this blog is all about. I am looking at my own experience of life, the embarrassments, the sad truths, the disappointments, the triumphs, all the most personal, private, and public stuff. And I am laughing loud and long. Because that’s what life is. Mastering that fundamental skill. Learning to laugh at life.
Here’s a brief summary of the only good advice you can possibly find by reading this blog. If you want to write well, start writing and teach yourself how to do it. And if you want to learn to laugh, look for what’s funny and laugh loud and long and clear.
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