Category Archives: humor

May 1, 2022 · 6:44 pm

Stranger Dings

Yes, Singing Bare has no message on his chalkboard. He is clearly nonplussed by the dozens of strange small things that have been happening for which he can find no cause… rhyme or reason.

One of the reasons he is nonplussed (here meaning confused and disoriented, not the new, controversial definition of nonchalance) is that Mickey is having trouble actually getting writing done. And yet, Mickey is definitely not suffering from writer’s block. The ideas still come in a flood that, if anything, drowns out older ideas that didn’t get written down before the brainstorms increased. There are currently three complete novels in my head waiting to get written down, and I added to none of them yesterday.

Poppensparkle is threatening to do to her novella what her sister, Derfentwinkle, did to her novella, turning it into the novel The Necromancer’s Apprentice.

The barrier is, of course, 30,000 words. More than that is a novel. Less than that is a novella. So, how do you do necessary world-building with a world of three-inch-tall fairies and keep it spare enough to fit into the shorter novella length? One can’t let such conundrums paralyze your writing. And yet, one can’t rely on the details in the previous book not needing to be repeated in this one to build a consistent fantasy world.

The problem with the primary WIP (Work in Progress for non-writers) is completely different. I left off in the middle of a Canto, as I often do to keep the flow going from one writing session to the next. And that normally is something I can just pick up and write the next time I sit down to it. Three weeks later I still haven’t finished the scene where Valerie is in the hospital and has to explain why her cousin Tim did something stupid to land him in the hospital in a coma… to Tim’s father, Uncle Rance. It is already written in my head. Just not in the perfect words. And I know it is stupid to wait for perfect words to magically appear. But I did… and they haven’t.

But the strange little thing that has Singing Bare nonplussed is actually a nudist thing. Both he and I share the problem of wanting to be a nudist, but not quite being able to cross that barrier. For him, as an imaginary turn-of-the-century Native American boy it is the inability to cast aside the loincloth, not because he’s shy, but because that sort of nakedness can get your ads canceled on WordPress. (Not that Mickey has ads.) For Mickey it is a matter of not being able to join a local nudist club because, although they allow single men to join, and married men with supporting wives can also join, but men with objecting wives are barred from applying. My wife is okay with me being a nudist as long as she doesn’t have to get naked herself. But she is unwilling to give any kind of written or verbal consent that will be observed by anyone besides Mickey himself. She would be embarrassed for anyone else in her religion to know that it was true that she was okay with her husband spending time naked socially.

So, I am not ashamed that I like the naturist-nudist way of life. I am sad that it took me so long to embrace it as a fact in life. And my wife has known about my belief in nudism since before we got married. She has only ever been opposed to nudism because she believes her religion tells her it is a sinful act. Yer, the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Adam and Eve were perfect when they were in the Garden of Eden. and the Bible says they were naked when they were perfect. So, since Witnesses believe they will all become perfect after Armageddon, they must also believe they will be naked after Armageddon. Right? Ah, well, that’s just one of those little dings life puts in the enamel of my being. One of those Stranger Dings.

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May 1, 2022 · 4:01 pm

Them Bones

Harker Dawes asleep was certainly no prettier or better looking asleep than he was when he was awake.  You know how people will say about a demonically possessed child that causes chaos and havoc and dread in the lives of the people who gave life to him, “He looks like such an angel when he’s sleeping”?  Well, no one ever said that about Harker.  Even when he was a child, he looked more like a deformed potato with its eyes shut when he was sleeping.  His balding head had an odd dent in the crown that had been there since birth.  His kinky-curly red-brown hair was only a fringe around his ears and the back of his head that could accurately be described (and usually was by local Iowans) as Bozo-the-Clown-hair.  His eyes were somewhat bugged out of their sockets, giving him a look of being permanently surprised by life… or more accurately… permanently stupefied.  Mercifully those goofy-looking eyes were closed in slumber.Dem Bones

It was a benefit to Harker himself that his eyes were closed and he was sleeping.  And this was because he had accidentally fallen asleep on Poppy’s grave in the Norwall cemetery.  And also because he was currently surrounded by skeletons, members of the local un-quiet dead, standing in a semi-circle and ogling Harker with their eye-less eye sockets.

“Do we have to eat him?” asked the tall male skeleton with the seed-corn company baseball cap on his head.  “I mean, if it’s all the same, I’d really rather not.”

“I think you only have to eat his brain,” said the little boy skeleton.  “I don’t know for sure because that Night of the Living Dead movie didn’t become popular around here until years after I died and video tapes became popular.”

“How do you know about that then?” asked the church lady skeleton.  It was obvious that she was the remains of a church lady because she still had quite a bit of long white hair on her skull, along with a pillbox hat, and she was dressed in a tattered church-lady-type dress of green rayon with a printed pattern of red roses turned brownish gray by years under the mud.

“When I wandered into town one Halloween night in the 80’s, I looked in the living room window of the Martin family, and the two boys were watching that movie on what they call a VCR.”

“Was the movie any good?” asked the skeleton in the cap.  “I heard of it in life, but never watched it.  It would’ve been too scary for my daughter, the Princess.”

“The zombies were all fake.  And when they ate human flesh, you could tell it was all special effects.  They should’ve asked me.  I could have shown them how it really looks.”

“Heavens!” said the church lady, “They don’t actually kill people when they make a movie, do they?”

“I don’t think so,” said the boy.  “That may have changed since I passed away in the 60’s.”

“I still don’t think I really want to eat him,” said the skeleton in the cap, “even if it’s just the brain.”

“We can’t start the Zombie Apocalypse without eating brains and making new walking dead,” said the boy.

The other two skeletons turned and looked at the little boy skeleton.  Both of them let their bottom jaws drop open, but without flesh, it was impossible to tell if that was an expression of surprise, disgust, or… hunger.

“Do we really need to end the world with a Zombie Apocalypse?” asked the church lady.  “I’m not sure eating living people’s brains is a very Christian thing to do.”

“Aren’t there supposed to be bad consequences for falling asleep in a graveyard?” asked the skeleton in the cap.

It was then that they noticed a fourth skeleton had joined the group.

“Why, Bill Styvessant,” greeted the church lady, “I haven’t seen you in half a century!”

“True.  You were but a girl in the late 40’s when I passed on from a broken heart.”

“You remember me in life?” asked the church lady.

“Of course I do.  You are Ona White.  I sat with you the night you died, under the street light on Pesch Street.  You were mauled by those two dogs that shouldn’t have been loose.  I tried to comfort you as you passed away from shock and blood loss.”

“I thought you were an angel, Bill.”

“I was.  Angels take many forms.  An angel is merely a message from God.”

“Wait a minute!  How can a skeleton know who another skeleton was in life?” asked the skeleton in the cap.  “Especially if you died many years before she did?”

“It’s in the nature of angels, Kyle.  I know you too.  I watched over your family several times when evil lurked near… for a couple years after your suicide.  You are ready to take over that job now.”

“Kyle Clarke?” asked the church lady.  “You’re Kyle Clarke?  What’s this about a suicide?”

“You died before me,” said Kyle, “so you wouldn’t have heard.  I lost a third of the family farm to the bank in the early 80’s.  The shame and despair was so overwhelming that I shot myself to death in the barn.  It was the stupidest act of my entire life.”

“Well, I should think so,” said Ona White.

“Is that why we walk the Earth?” the child skeleton asked Bill.  “We all had a tragic death and were doomed to walk for all eternity?  How did you die, Bill?”

“Of a broken heart,” the old skeleton said.  “My wife died while mourning our son Christian who died in Germany during World War Two.  I lived alone for a short while and then simply expired from the weight of my sadness.”

“You didn’t join your loved ones?” asked Ona.

“Of course I did.  The same way you joined your father and mother, Ona.  Also the way little Bobby Zeffer here was joined by his father a couple of years ago.”

“You are Bobby Zeffer?” asked Ona, surprised.  “The little boy who died of Hemophilia?”

“Of course.  Who’d ya think I was?”

“But I don’t understand,” moaned Ona, “how did we get to be walking dead when we already have one foot in Heaven?”

“People die, Ona, but the memory of them lives on, and they continue to impact people’s lives in many ways.  We walk not as ghosts, but as metaphorical spirits of the past.  No man could live in the present if there had not been those who walked the Earth before him.  A life doesn’t end with death.  And the word angel has many meanings.”

“So we don’t have to eat this man who is sleeping on the grave of his father?” asked Kyle.

“Of course not.  I think that might have a very negative effect on the poor man’s dreams.”

“I don’t think he would taste good anyway,” said Bobby.  “He looks like a deformed potato, and I hate potatoes.”

“You can all go back to your rest,” said Bill.  “I’ll watch over this one and protect him.”

The skeletons all faded gratefully from view.

Harker Dawes woke up, stretched his arms and yawned.  He looked around at the graveyard and the dark of the night.  He smiled to himself.  He only ever seemed to remember the good dreams.

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April 30, 2022 · 7:07 pm

Art is What an Artist Do… or, maybe Doo-doo

Art? Or Doo-doo?
Doo-doo? Or Art? Definitely paper dolls and one plastic doll… mint in box.
Art? Or Food? Foo-doo?
Definitely about Doo-doo!
An Arty Picture of a Meaningful Moment that Probably is a Sin.
Puzzling Art.
Probably Doo-doo…
Meta-Art?
How is This Art?
It is not necessarily important to judge some things… Art or not… worth doing.

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April 29, 2022 · 8:36 pm

Mickey Goofying it Up

Normally people portray themselves as successful, competent, and worthy human beans. I confess to doing that too, especially when protecting my teacher-reputation. And those nice things that you say about yourself on Facebook, Twitter, Tik-Tok, Instagram, WordPress, and… (Not Truth Social, cuz Trump’s Twitter Clone is only for insulting people and claiming Democrats are pedophiles,) are not entirely (but mostly) made up of lies. And somebody who is trying to be a humorist will talk endlessly about everything that is wrong with that hairy, stupid tramp in the mirror. So, this essay is not about the good stuff Mickey does (if there is any,) it’s about the dumb stuff and the bad stuff and the goofy stuff Mickey does that we probably all do.

One thing Mickey does that nobody should ever do is write two books at the same time. Mickey thinks it is like baking a cake in the oven (the primary work in progress, He Rose on a Golden Wing) while, at the same time, boiling soup on the stove top (the novella, The Education of Poppensparkle.) Seems simple enough. But it is simply not simple. At the same time Golden Wing is baking, the sequel, (or is it an equal?) is taking shape (Kingdoms Under the Earth happens during the time that Golden Wing is set and involves characters from both novel and novella.) So, the potatoes on the stove top has some peas and carrots from the soup in it, as well as some frosting from the cake. And at any moment, something on top of the stove or inside the oven may explode. That is no way to cook a dinner.

And another thing stupid Mickey has been trying to do is to fix the plumbing in our old house by himself because he doesn’t have enough money to replace every disintegrating 1960’s lead pipe in the whole house’s plumbing system. When we finally called a professional plumber because there was finally a toilet clogging that Mickey couldn’t handle, (after sweet-talking three erratic toilets and occasionally hitting them with hammers for five years to keep them running,) he paid three hundred and ninety dollars to find out that it would take nine hundred dollars to get even one of the toilets working again by digging up the floor of the house and putting in PVC for rotten lead.

So, Mickey paid the pirates’ gold to the plumber and promised to call him again if ever Mickey could afford to fix a single toilet. And the family reverted to a plan of peeing down the bathtub drain (not connected to the toilets’ sewer link,) and going to the nearby grocery store any time we need to have a poo.

And Mickey continues to write both YA novels and nudist stories (because the nudists on Twitter are the only audience that reads his stories at present.) He longs to be a nudist. But in the house, he can only do that in his bedroom with the door locked to avoid offending she who must be carefully and completely obeyed or scaring the dog. And any and all attempts to return to the nudist park have been defeated by bad weather, allergies, a raging pandemic, and interfering responsibilities at .home (mostly due to spurting plumbing leaks in new places.) So, for the time being, naked Mickey is only a pretend nudist.

So, Mickey is not the wonderful person he portrays himself as on Facebook, or the good little nudist he pretends to be on Twitter. But he knows what the problems are. And while he may never defeat that warty, hairy guy in the mirror, he is okay… and still trying to make you laugh as he continues to laugh at himself.

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April 29, 2022 · 1:38 pm

Self-Reflection

Every writer, whether he or she writes fiction or non-fiction, is really writing about themselves. The product originates within the self. So, that self has to gaze into the mirror from time to time.

So, the question for today is, who, or possibly what, is Mickey?

I have been posting stuff every day for a few years now, and in that time, I have been much-visited on WordPress. Maybe not much-read, but then, you cannot actually tell if somebody read it or not. Most probably look only at the pictures. And, since I am also an artist of sorts, that can also be a good thing. Though, just like most artists, my nude studies are more popular than the pieces I value the most. But unless the looker makes a comment or leaves a “like”, you really have no idea if they read or understood any of the words I wrote. And you have no idea what they feel about the art. Maybe they just happened to click on one of my nudes while surfing for porn.

I rarely get below 50 views of something in my blog every day. The last three days were 86 views, 124 views yesterday, and 88 views already today. My blog has definitely picked up pace over the length of the coronavirus quarantine. But no definable reason seems obvious. Some of my posts are polished work, but Robin is right when he says today’s post is merely fishing with the process, which is true almost every day.

As a person I am quirky and filled with flaws, pearls of wisdom that result from clam-like dealing with flaws, strange metaphors that shine the pearls, and obsessions like the one I have with nudism that leaves me properly dressed for diving for pearls.

I have demonstrated throughout my life that I have an interest in and experience with nudism, though not the boldness to parade my naked self before the world outside of the writing that I do. I also spent most of my bachelorhood dating reading teachers and teachers’ aides, finally settling down and marrying another English teacher. I completed a thirty-one year career as an English teacher, which means I spent a lot of time teaching writing and reading to kids who were ages 12 to 18. Twenty-four of those years were spent in the middle school monkey house. And all of that led to being so mentally damaged that I wasn’t good for much beyond becoming a writer of YA novels or possibly subbing for other mentally-damaged teachers in middle schools around our house.

A real telling feature of what I have become is the fact that most of the characters I write about in my fiction are somehow a reflection of me. Milt Morgan, seen to the left, is illustrated here with a picture of me as a ten-year-old wearing a purple derby. Yes, I was that kind of geeky nerd.

And most of the plots are based around things that happened to me as a child, a youth, or a young teacher. Many of the events in the stories actually happened to me, though the telling and retelling of them are largely twisted around and reshaped. And I am aware of all the fairies, aliens, werewolves, and clowns that inhabit my stories. Though I would argue that they were real too in an imaginative and metaphorical way.

So, here now is a finished post of Mickey staring into the metaphorical mirror and trying in vain to define the real Michael, an impossible, but not unworthy task.

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April 28, 2022 · 8:02 pm

The Doll Collector’s Nightmare of Doll Revenge

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April 28, 2022 · 3:11 pm

Vonnegut

My experience of the works of Kurt Vonnegut is limited to the reading of three books; Cat’s Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, and Slaughterhouse Five. But it was enough to make me love him and use him as a shaper of my soul.

I deeply apologize for the fact that even though he only wrote 14 books and a bunch of short stories, I have not read everything I could get my hands on by Kurt. Three novels and one short story (Harrison Bergeron) is not really enough to compare to the many, many things that I have read by Mark Twain, Terry Pratchett, Louis L’Amour, and Michael Crichton. I can’t begin to count how many books of each of those four I have read and reread. But it is enough that I read those three novels and have a lifelong regret of never buying and reading Slapstick when I had the chance. Vonnegut writes black humor. The ideas are painful, and burn away flesh from your personal body of being. And at the same time, you cannot help but laugh at the pure, clean, horrifying truths his ridiculous stories reveal.

If, in the course of telling a story, you can put the sublime, the ridiculous, and the horrendous side by side, and make the reader see how they actually fit together, then you can write like Vonnegut.

Let me give you three quick and dirty book reports of the Vonnegut I have read in the order I have read them;

I read Cat’s Cradle in college. I was young and idealistic at the time, foolishly convinced I could be a great writer and cartoonist who could use my work to change mankind for the better.

In the book, Dr. Felix Hoenikker (a fictionalized co-creator of the atomic bomb) is obsessively re-stacking cannonballs in the town square in pursuit of a new way to align water molecules that will yield ice that does not melt at room temperature. Much as he did with the A-bomb, Hoenikker invents a world-ending science-thing without any thought for the possible consequences. The narrator of the novel is trying to write a humanizing biography of the scientist, and comes to observe the inevitable destruction of the whole world when the oceans freeze into Ice-9, the un-meltable ice crystal. Before the world ends, the narrator spends time on the fictional Carribean island of San Lorenzo where he learns the fictional religion known as Bokononism, and learns to make love to a beautiful woman by pressing bare feet together sole to sole. It is a nihilistic picture of what humans are really like more savagely bleak than any portrayal Monte Python’s Flying Circus ever did on TV.

Needless to say, my ideals were eventually shattered and my faith in the world shaken.

I read Breakfast of Champions after I had been teaching long enough to buy my own house, be newly married, and a father to one son. It was probably the worst time of life to be reading a book so cynical, yet true.

In this story, the author Kilgore Trout, much published but mostly unknown, is headed to Midland City to deliver a keynote address at an arts festival. Dwayne Hoover is a wealthy business man who owns a lot of Midland City real-estate. Trout gives Hoover a book (supposedly a message from the creator of the universe) to read that suggests that all people (except for the reader of the book… meaning Hoover) are machines with no free will. Hoover takes the message to heart and tries to set the machines free by breaking them, beating up his son, his lover, and nine other people before being taken into custody.

The book contains devastating themes of suicide, free will, and social and economic cruelty. It makes you sincerely reflect on your own cog-in-the-machine reality.

Slaughterhouse Five is a book I bought and read when I missed my chance to buy Slapstick and needed something to take home from HalfPrice Books to make me feel better about what I missed. (Of the five books I had intended to buy that day, none were still on the shelves in spite of the fact that they had been there the week before.) It was fortuitous. This proved to be the best novel I had ever read by Vonnegut.

Like most of his work, the story of Billy Pilgrim is a fractured mosaic of small story pieces not presented in chronological order. It details Billy’s safe, ordinary marriage to a wife who gives him two children, but it is ironically cluttered with death, accidents, being stalked by an assassin, and being kidnapped by aliens. It also details his experiences in World War II where he is captured by the Germans, held prisoner in Dresden, kept in an underground slaughterhouse, and ironically survives the fire-bombing of Dresden by the Allies. Further, it details his time as a zoo exhibit on the alien planet of Tralfamadore.

It explores the themes of depression, post-traumatic-stress disorder, and anti-war sentiment. Vonnegut himself was a prisoner of war in Dresden during the fire-bombing, so real-life experiences fill the book with gravitas that it might not otherwise possess. Whether the author was ever kidnapped by aliens or not, I cannot say.

But Kurt Vonnegut’s desire to be a writer and portray himself as a writer in the character of Kilgore Trout, and even as himself in his work, has an awful lot to do with my desire to be a writer myself. Dark, pithy wisdom is his thing. But that wisdom, having been wrung from the darkness is all the more brightly lit because of that wringing. It is hard to read, but not hard to love.

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April 27, 2022 · 8:57 pm

Complaining by the Irritable Complainer

Today is nothing but a crotchety old man complaining. Not the clown in the picture. He’s one of the complaints I have to get out of my system. I just need to vent and take out my bilious spleen on the world (not by surgery, but by complaining.) So, I will make a list of the things that chaps the skin on my donkey (that’s the word, isn’t it? Not the Biblical word for a donkey, but you get the idea. Teachers train themselves to never directly use the word “ass” in a way that makes middle school kids hoot and laugh.)

…..

  1. Why is the pumpkin-headed orange clown NOT in prison? I could make a list of countries that would’ve executed him directly after the coup attempt on far less evidence than we get daily in the news. How can he still be in contention for the nomination of the Republican Presidential candidate who will probably win the next election because Republicans cheat?
  2. Why do Republicans who committed crimes that they describe in detail in their books about the insurrection and Trump’s coup attempt get to make money on their books hand over fist and never get investigated by the FBI and put on trial? I didn’t commit crimes and my books get ignored. (I only gave away one book on my last free-book promotion.)

3. Why do we have to pay so much for health insurance, doctor’s bills not covered by the insurance because of a technicality, Medicare fees every three months, and still have to cover eye-doctor bills and dental bills completely out of pocket with no help from insurance?

4. Each of the last two Republican administrations gave tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires and left office with the economy in free-fall crashes, making a mess for the next administrations to clean up. Why then do the Democrats not only get none of the credit for fixing the problems, but also get blamed for the painful things like inflation that come with the efforts to recover?

5. Why is it an insult to be called a Liberal (since they favor labor unions, have empathy for the poor, are slightly kinder to immigrants,, and want to do sensible things like build solar-energy infrastructure to save the planet from global extinction of life on Earth?) And why is it a complement to call somebody a Conservative (when they make laws that the majority of people don’t want, to make teachers unable to say certain words they don’t like in school like gay, straight, slavery, discrimination, and activism, and to make it harder for people to vote if they are not rich, white, and Republican, and to crack down on crimes that poor people might commit while giving a free pass on bigger crimes to corporate overlords, CEOs, and Congressmen who are Republican?)

6. Five things to complain about are not enough, but I have to stop before sour stomachs become ulcers. Okay, so that makes six… technically.

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April 27, 2022 · 4:17 pm

The World is a B-Movie

Yes, I am saying the world I live in is a low-budget commercial movie made without literary or artistic pretensions. You know, the kind where movie makers learn their craft, taking big risks with smaller consequences, and making the world of their picture reflect their heart rather than the producer’s lust for money.

Mostly what I am talking about are the movies I remember from late-night Saturday TV in black and white (regardless of whether or not the movie was made in Technicolor) and the less-risky as well as more-likely-good Saturday matinees on Channel 3. Movies made in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. They were perfect, of course, for the forbidden Midnight Movie on the show called Gravesend Manor. I had to sneak downstairs to watch it on Saturday nights with the volume turned way down low. (Not that Mom and Dad didn’t know. Well, maybe they didn’t know how many of those I watched completely naked… maybe.)

I watched this one when I was twelve, late night on an October Saturday. I had a bed-sheet with me to pull over my head at the scariest parts. Frankenstein was a crashed astronaut brought back to life by the magic of space radiation. He was uglier than sin, but still the hero of the movie, saving the Earth from invading guys in gorilla suits and scary masks (none of which looked like the movie poster.)

This one, starring James Whitmore, a really good B-Movie actor, was about giant ants coming up from the sewers and the underground to eat the city.

I would end up watching it again twenty years later when I was wearing clothes and not alone in the dark house lit only by a black-and-white TV screen.

I realized on the second viewing that it was actually a pretty good movie in spite of cheesy special effects. And I realized too that I had learned from James Whitmore’s hero character that, in times of crisis, you have to run towards the trouble rather than away from it, a thing that I used several times in my teaching career with fights and tornadoes and even rattlesnakes visiting the school campus looking to eat a seventh-grader or something (though it was a bad idea for the snake even if it had been successful.)

This one, of course, taught me that monsters liked to carry off pretty girls in bikinis. And not just on the poster, either. But it was the hero that got the girl, not the monster. This movie taught me that it sucks to be the monster. Though it also taught me that it was a good movie to take your pajamas off for and watch naked when you are thirteen.

But not all B-movies had to be watched late night on Saturdays. This movie was one of the first ones that I got to go to the movie theater to see by myself. (My sisters and little brother were still too young and got nightmares too easily to see such a movie.) It came out when I was in my teens and Mom and Dad began thinking of me as an adult once… or even possibly twice in a month.

And not all B-movies were monster movies, gangster movies, and westerns. Some, like a lot of Danny Kaye’s movies, were movies my Dad and my grandparents were more than happy to watch with me. I saw this one in both black-and-white and color. And I learned from this that it was okay to take advantage of happy accidents, like a case of mistaken identity, and using your wits, your creative singing ability, and your inexplicable good luck to win the day for everybody but the bad guys armed only with your good sense of humor.

And some of the best movies I have ever seen, judging by what I learned about movies as literature from Professor Loring Silet in his Modern Film Class at Iowa State University, are by their nature B-movies.

I am using movie posters in this blog post only from movies I have personally seen. (And I admit that not all of them are strictly “good” movies according to Professor Silet, but I like them all.)

Feel free to tell me in the comments if you have seen any of these movies yourself. I am open to all opinions, comments, and confessions.

This one is based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
I saw this one in college. You had to be 18 at the time to even buy a ticket.
I actually think that this is one of the best movies ever made. It will always make my own personal top-ten list.

I live in a B-movie world. The production values around me are not the top-dollar ones. But the stories are entertaining. The real-life heroes still run towards the problem. And it still sucks to be the monster. But it has always been worth the price of the ticket. And during my time on Earth here, even in 2020, I plan on staying till the end of the picture. I go nowhere until I see the Best Boy’s name in the end credits. And maybe not even then.

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April 26, 2022 · 2:31 pm

The Education of Poppensparkle… Canto 2

Canto 2 – Aargh!  Teachers!

The sunroom was built into the hollow in the heights of the willow tree, almost at the level of the tallest tower.  A Fairy-glass ceiling let the yellow-green sunlight in and kept the snow and rain out.  The walls were covered in elaborate cross-stitch tapestries depicting famous moments in Tellosian history like the death of the former Erlking, Wotan, the killing of the evil dragon Darvon Redsoul by the Mouse from Cornucopia, and the final battle of the Gingerbread War.

“So, this is the new student I am saddled with.  The last time we crossed paths, she tried to take over my body using the soul of that horrid Necromancer.  The first mistake she makes, she gets executed.  I’ll add her head to the collection of my worst enemies.”  The booming voice, of course, was her new master, Pippen, the High Wizard of Tellosia.

“Master, you must be patient with her.  The White Stag will be mad if you cut her head off for a flimsy excuse.  Besides, she was given to you as an apprentice because she possesses great potential power, and the Stag will remind you of the lesson Eli Tragedy taught you the hard way; No student ever learned anything after their head was chopped off.”  Tod was on her side, at least.  But it didn’t escape her notice that in Zauberin, his name literally meant “Death.”

“She’s a pretty little one.  I promise to keep her in line and make her behave,” said the beautiful adult Butterfly Child, obviously the one named Glittershine.

“I don’t understand why I have to put up with such nonsense.  Before the White Stag filled in as interim Erlking, I was doing fine administering this kingdom for him.”

“Yes, but taking too much responsibility into your own hands is the reason he wants to relieve you of some of your burdens.”  Tod was very diplomatic.  That was a particularly oily way to tell the burly, golden-haired wizard that he was becoming too much of a hated tyrant.  But he did it with such practiced mastery.

The fifth person in the room was Prinz Flute.  He was Pippen’s own half-faun son and  really quite handsome.  He was, however, much older than he looked.  

He was the size and shape of an eleven-year-old Fairy boy, even though Poppy knew he had to be at least twice her age, and she was sixteen-Fairy-years old.

Flute had been silent for the initial round of complaints and soothing, placating lies to answer those complaints.  He had merely been watching Poppy intently.

“Are you going to undertake actually teaching this girl magic?” Flute now asked.

“What?  Well… I guess I must.  At least long enough to accuse her of something worth executing her for.”

“Have you tested the girl with the Magical Drassylic Script Test?”

“Oh, right.  Magic reading.  That will prove if she’s worthy to continue to live or not.”

Flute moved to a desk piled high with magical scrolls.  He plucked one out of the pile and handed it to Poppy.

“Please read that aloud, what it actually says, not whatever might be whispered to you from the background.”

Poppy unrolled the scroll, looked at the squiggly-lined gibberish it contained, and almost instantly began to read and understand.

“The fool transcribing this document is using a magical cheat to understand it, and so he is writing down what he thinks it means, The beginnings of the deep language begin with the elvish, Quenyan, but the truly deepest of the deep comes from the Draconic Drassyl…“

“Enough!  That is not what it says!  I transcribed that myself.  I…”

Flute interrupted Pippen before the anger caused his blond hair to turn to flames.  He took the scroll from Poppy and handed it to Glimmershine.

“Did she not read it correctly?” Flute asked.

“Oh, my.  She did indeed read the correct Drassylic, not the Quenyan cheat text.”  Glimmershine blanched as she looked at Pippen after testifying to the reveal.

“Father, this magic student is beyond the capabilities of most to teach.  I am personally impressed by the depth of her understanding.  And to thoroughly teach her, I believe it will take a group effort.”

“A group effort?”  Pippen seemed stunned.

“Yes.  Tod can teach her the ways of the royal court.  Glittershine and I can take care of the routine teaching of magic skills, and we will come to you with matters that require such great skill that only you can handle the teaching of it.”

“Yes, that plan makes sense… Are you sure we shouldn’t just cut off her head?  You know, to be on the safe side…?”

“Oh, no… this one is a rare talent.  You cannot imagine how upset the White Stag will be if we don’t develop her skills to our maximum benefit.”

“Well, okay… But you and Glittershine will be doing the most work.  And you will hardly need me at all for the first year…”

“And that’s just how the White Stag wants it.  You remember… you have too many responsibilities and you must concentrate on where your skills are needed most.  Not… you know… wasting them.”

“Yes, I see that now.”  Apparently satisfied at last, he took the Drassylic Test Scroll from Glittershine and walked out of the sunroom looking at it and muttering to himself.

Tod was immediately kneeling before Prinz Flute.  “Oh, my Prinz, you have saved both Poppy and me.  How can I repay you?”

“By doing exactly the education plan I outlined to my father.”

“But that means you will be teaching Poppensparkle when you should be doing magical research for the White Stag.  Won’t that cause you problems of your own?”

“You don’t know what my research is all about, do you?”

“No, I guess not.”

“And believe me, I have not failed to notice how attractive this young Fairy is.  My interest in the education of this one is not only about the good of the people.”

Poppy began blushing at that.  Flute looked to be several years younger than her, and yet, she knew he was actually several years older than she was.  He was definitely not unattractive himself.  But it would be weird. Interesting… but weird.

Prinz Flute

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