Eli Tragedy, the old Wizard of the Lower Caverns, returned from Dunsanytowne with his apprentice, Bob, carrying their weekly groceries in Bob’s bag of holding.
“Do you think Mickey finished washing the curtains while we were gone?” Bob innocently asked.
Poor Bob. He was not particularly smart. Sometimes he forgot to wear pants.
But the grumbling old wizard, half-elf, half-human, and half -fermented gingleyberry juice, had to admit, at least to himself, that Poor Bob was far more likeable than that smelly, uppity, idiotic were-rat that was his second apprentice. That lazy, stupid half-rodent was no end of trouble. Maybe Eli needed to give Mickey one of his three halves to try and complete the boy. But not the half-fermented half.
“So, when’s the next full moon, Bob? When does that rat-thing turn back into a real boy so I can smack his behind with the rod of discipline and have him actually feel it?”
“Master, Mickey’s curse specifies that he can only be a real boy for a week on the next blue moon… and that’s not for a long time in the future.”
“Real shame, that is.”
Of course, when they went inside the wizard’s sandstone tower. Mickey was trying to use Eli’s magic hat to clean the flying-monkey poop off of the curtains, and was casting the scrubbing spell backwards, thus increasing the foul dirt that wouldn’t even be there if he hadn’t had the flying-monkey party without getting permission from Eli first.
“Mickey! Stop that! You are supposed to say, ‘Removere simia faecibus exturbandis opitulatur’ not ‘Addere simia faecibus exturbandis opitulatur!”
“Oops!” said Mickey.
“Oh, no! Not you!” said the mysteriously grim stranger sitting at the kitchen table.
The stranger didn’t so much stand up with his ax from his chair at the table as UNCOIL with his ax from the chair at the table.
“Mickey, who is this stranger you didn’t have permission to invite into our tower?”
“He says he is the Booger-Man, Master.”
“That’s Boogeyman, rat-boy.”
Mickey shrugged. “I thought Booger-Man sounded more correct.”
“Ah, so you are here to rob a poor old man’s sandstone hovel?”
“No! Not now that I know it’s YOUR tower!” the Boogerman said vehemently. “You don’t recognize me?”
“No. Should I?”
“It’s me, Pollox the Highwayman. Although, you had probably better call me Paw-Lucks now.”
“Ah, yes! You tried to steal from me on the road to the Cillyburg Cathedral.”
“Yes, and all you had was this magic ax You told me it would make me into an entirely new man.”
“The Wildman’s Ax of Magical Tax Avoidance and Soldier Slaying. I remember it well. It seems to have worked quite like it was supposed to.”
“Every time I fought I soldier, he slew me. And when I returned to life I had a new patch of shaggy white fur, or a new fang, or a bad case of mange.”
“And nobody ever asked you to pay taxes again, did they?”
“I won’t rob you this time, wizard. Just take back the ax and make me human again.”
“Can’t do it. I believe in paying my taxes. But, you can have Mickey. The boy can carry the ax for you.”
The Booger-man took one look at the young were-rat, turned even more pale than the white he already was, and ran out of the tower roaring in fear.
“Addere simia…”
“Stop it, Mickey! That’s the wrong one again!”
Can We Be Clear?
I suppose that if I were to be insightfully honest for a moment, I would have to admit that I am a failed novelist. If you take “success” as meaning “financial success”, the fact that I only make less than five dollars a month for my writing means I am a failure at it. If you specify that success means my books find readers, then evidence would suggest that my books are mostly ignored. A majority of those who have responded favorably to my work are actually members of the nudist community on Twitter. I admit that I have cultivated that a bit with nudist characters in about a fourth of my books. But that is a result of having experienced fascinating people and situations that I felt I had to write about because I happened to meet, totally by chance, interesting nudists in real life.
I have lost a lot of writing-community followers on Twitter because of my interactions with Twitter nudists. My work gets dismissed on occasion because your standard teacher-turned-writer on Twitter, usually female and usually fundamentalist Christian, doesn’t want to be contaminated by sinful nudist associations. Ah, such a life. But I don’t wish to destroy anyone’s faith in a God who will apparently burn them for an eternity in Hell if they are tempted to frolic with no clothes on. I would rather be blocked by them on Twitter than have them give up on whatever paradise they are pursuing.
But I am basically on the Brad Bird side of the argument about whether or not you can choose to be a hero even if others will see you as a monster. My fiction does not cause demonic possession and probably does not cause spontaneous bouts of joyful nudism either. Even my werewolf story, which was too much for one potential reviewer, does not have actual werewolves in it. Although it does describe some things that really happened to me as a child in a fictionalized, sort-of-truthful way.
So, by those criteria, I judge myself to be a failed writer.
I write because I have something to say to the world and stories to tell. And I mean to have my say, even if the world is too stone-deaf and stupefied to listen.
I have things to say about living and learning.
I have things to say about finding love, and losing love, and finding it again.
I have things to say about how I think the world works, and why I’m pretty sure I’m completely wrong about all of that. And what I intend to do about it.
To that end, I have started writing a book full of essays like the stuff and garbage and lovely wisdom I write in this goofy little blog. And I shall call it Laughing Blue. Because, you know, nobody is going to read it anyway, and I can call it whatever the heck I want to call it.
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Filed under autobiography, blog posting, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, irony, philosophy