Important parts of the book that I am currently promoting by offering Kindle e-books for free are based on dreams that I had years ago. The clowns who are dream denizens of Zoomboogadoo and the white city of Celephais, were first encountered in a dream I had in college. Boz is also named Mr. Dickens. The Bard is known as Mr. Shakespeare. Diz is Mr. Disney. And Poe, of course, is Mr. Poe. The literary references should be as clear to you as they were to me in 1978.
This painting was also from a dream in the 1980’s. I’m not sure exactly when. But in the dream, I was the stag and I believed in my dream that the other deer there were my family. It is also, of course, influenced by the Disney Movie Bambi. Particularly the scene of the forest fire. But, oddly, the dream predicted my future family. I met my wife in 1994. My eldest son was born in 1995. My second son was born in 1999. My daughter was born in 2002. You see their deer selves in the picture.
Canto 67 – Scaling the Dragon (This Canto has been re-ordered in the re-write.)
The Dragon Gate of the city of Kiro, Gaijin, was a huge carving of an oriental dragon’s head which allowed a fairly good sized caravan to pass through its open mouth and into the city all at once. The shoulders of the dragon were carved from the south side of the gate in the immense city wall that, like a coiled serpent, circled the city and ended in a gigantic tail that rose up like a tower on the northern side of the gate. The carved dragon itself snarled in that crazed oriental manner and was colored red with gold trim edging each and every individual scale.
Ged and his students walked there and stood looking up at the edifice.
“Is it hollow?” blond Rocket Rogers asked from under the brim of his white cowboy hat.
“No, stupid, it’s obviously one solid piece,” sneered Alec Songh.
“Shut up, Alec!” shouted Friashqazatla. Freddy had become Rocket’s shadow, following him everywhere and imitating everything about him. His worshipful friendship had become indispensable to Rocket.
“How will we get inside?” asked Shu Kwai, ignoring the bickering and concentrating on the problem at hand.
“Can Jadalaqstbr do it for us?” asked Hassan Parker innocently. Hassan was still nude in protest for the group’s rejection of his Classical Worlds’ notions. He wore only the blue felt fez he always had on his head.
“She might teleport inside a solid part, not being able to see inside,” said Sensei Aero. “We don’t want to lose her.”
Jackie stood close beside Alec Songh, blushing as they talked about her, in spite of her dark brown skin.
“Can a clairvoyant look inside?” asked Billy Iowa, pushing up the front of the brim of his own cowboy hat.
“Maybe…” murmured Phoenix. His green snake eyes glazed over for a moment, and then he awoke from his brief trance. “No. I can’t see through some sort of fog inside this dragon.”
“What is it that we think is here?” asked Sarah Smith. The Gaijinese sunshine made her blond hair and snow-white body suit glow with reflected light.
“An alien artifact from the time of the Ancients,” said Ged distractedly, studying the eyes of the great beast.
“Possibly a space ship,” offered Phoenix.
“Some of the other artifacts we’ve encountered had a sort of mind of their own,” stated Ged, more to himself than to his students.
“Should I try to detect a mind?” asked Sarah sweetly.
“She’s a powerful telepath,” added Junior Aero.
While Ged was thinking, Alec Songh put his hands on Jadalaqstbr once again. She melted up against him and began to softly coo with pleasure.
“Alec!” said Shu Kwai sternly. Alec let go of her, both body and mind. He and Shu had talked at length about what was acceptable White Spider behavior in a public place. Seducing someone was not one of things that Shu was willing to allow.
“All right, Sarah. Perhaps that is a good idea,” said Ged at last. He remembered how telepathic Tara had been able to use the Hammer to create an entire downport on Don’t Go Here.
Sarah put her forefingers to her temples and began to concentrate. “Oh!” she said, almost immediately. “It is a dark and powerful mind! I can’t even get close to it!”
Junior took hold of her shoulders, concerned that she might somehow be hurt. His intentions, however, were turned inside out by the dark red mind that came flooding into his inner eye. Swirling patterns of circuitry and resistors flooded into his brain. A series of controls formed in his mind. Stunned, Junior blinked at the others and said, “I have it.”
“What do you mean?” asked Ged.
“It is a machine,” said Junior. “I can make it work by telepathy.” He concentrated for a moment on the controls arrayed before him in his inner eye. Red-gold-green-red. The mechanisms awoke for the first time in a million years.
With a rumble, the carven upper jaw of the dragon splintered and the roof of the huge mouth fell out, shattering on the pavement below. A long, thin lower jaw dropped down from the great carven head. The tongue rippled itself into a sort of stairway leading up into the dark throat. The dragon had come to life and now was offering to swallow them if they only decided to take the stairway.
Cautiously, Ged led the way. Rocket Rogers, then Shu Kwai followed him. Looking slightly panicked, Taffy King scanned the others and then followed Rocket up the tongue-stair. Friashqazatla went next. Then Billy Iowa and timid Gyro. Holding hands, Alec Songh and Jadalaqstbr went up. Phoenix, Hassan Parker, and little Mai Ling followed. Finally, Sarah looked at Junior Aero, who had opened this hatch, smiled, and led him, too, up the stair.
Some of the pictures I draw, especially in colored pencil, take hours of time to complete. But they are generally only done because the ideas being pictured are totally worth the effort.
As I get older and older, the deeper meaning of this picture becomes clear.Magic, mystery, and family are a part of my way forward as a warrior for the light.Of course, as a retired teacher, I have to believe that class pictures will still be a thing with schools even in the distant future.And I like to draw what makes me happy.
But sometimes I draw what I fear. And sometimes it’s a jumble of thoughts and feelings.And sometimes the meaning isn’t clear.But I think in pictures constantly. I think about it all…
You know that old saying, “There are no bad students, only bad teachers?” Yeah, that one that Betsy DeVos keeps pinging off of Trump’s brain?
Well, only idiots and educational administrators actually believe that. And I had three full classrooms of proof of this Tuesday while subbing sixth-grade Science classes.
Yes, they were bad kids. And apparently, the last time they had a sub before me, they killed and ate her, after eating her lunch in front of her. They were not merely bad kids. They were vile and noxious, unrepentant Spawn of Hell.
They were, in fact, laying in wait for me, testing every way a vile and noxious sixth grader knows to get the sub off track, dazed and confused, and turned from teacher into a helpless prey animal.
The very first class in the door immediately chased each other around the room instead of having a seat. Jamika stole a package of pencils off the teacher’s desk, ate one, and threw the plastic package in the trash. Seferino chased her around three of the tables and pinched her on the butt. And Jaden threw three different pieces of a pink eraser in three different directions at once at about three different girls, hitting two, in about three seconds of time. These aren’t their real names. But I know their real names because I had them sign my sin-sheet with first and last names before I even went through roll call. I tell them, “Sign your name so I can report what you did and, hopefully, also leave a note for the teacher that you were much better behaved for the rest of the period.” Two of the three were actually better for a majority of the period. Jaden got the Golden Turkey award at the end of the fifty minutes.
The next class had four names on my list before roll call ended, and they never did completely settle down. In fact, the teacher across the hall came in at the end of the period and jumped all over them about “Unacceptable behavior!” and vent a little heat and hatred on a few of the star players whom she knew by name and had for Math class. It wasn’t just that she thought I was an incompetent sub, but she deeply disliked some of the bad behavior that was a part of both the varnish on the surface of these kids, and the taint in the marrow of their bones. Ah, sixth graders! Thy teachers do not love thee, and yet thou keepest on screwing aroundeth! And I know the teacher I was subbing for. She taught number two son and the Princess both. She is no slouch as a teacher and is not to blame for the condition of the class.
And then the last class sauntered in behind Mr. Evil-in-a-small-package. Yes, the last class of 28 kids was under the complete control of one self-centered, manipulative, emotionally-disturbed little man. The teacher I was subbing for had warned me about him and had arranged for the Special Teacher of Special Edwards to come and take him to his special quiet place because they knew he was so special and the special things he would do if they left me at his mercy. And, of course, something went awry with the arrangement. I was left at his mercy (of which he had none.)
He would not sign his name to the paper. Or sit in his assigned seat. Or stop talking. Or stop saying inappropriately sexual things to the girls. I tried to phone the office, but the number of the assistant principal’s secretary would not ring through. I asked the teacher across the hall, also a sub, to call for me. The science teacher next door came in just in time to see Mr. Evil give me the one-finger salute. He immediately began arguing that he would not be removed from “his” class. He wanted me removed instead. Then an assistant principal showed up. He began hollering and screaming about being touched as the AP shoved him out of the classroom through the lab door. It was a total meltdown. And the fumes and melted wax of it affected the behavior of the rest of the class for the rest of the period. I yelled at them (a pointless thing to do, but it made me feel better). The science teacher next door came back in and yelled at them for making me yell at them. And everybody ended the day feeling terrible. A couple of well-behaved girls apologized to me for the behavior of the class, saying that that kind of thing happened almost every day. A cute little black kid who got in trouble too that period ended the day by almost crying and telling me that he was basically a bad kid. I told him I knew him just well enough to tell him he was not, that he only needed a little more self-discipline and he could be among the best kids in that classroom. (And I don’t believe that was completely a teacher-lie either.)
So, I had a bad day at being a sub. Not merely a bad day, but the kind of bad day that makes a teacher want to give up and never sub again. The sub that got eaten before me probably did that very thing. But, me… I’ve had bad days like that before. Worse ones, in fact. So, I will not give up.
I had an excellent day teaching yesterday at a different school. I can still teach, no matter what lasting scars Mr. Evil gave me. And there really are bad kids in the world. Somebody needs to actually feed them to alligators, not just threaten them with being fed to alligators. Then they will finally know how their substitute-teacher victims feel.
The planet Hyde
Park was different than most planets in the Thousand Worlds of the Galtorr
Imperium. Where most life in the Orion
Spur was made up of carbon-based life-forms, Hyde Park was rife with
silicon-based life-forms.
Instead of
forests of trees or plants, the countryside was overgrown with gardens of
living crystal, quartz, and harmonic stone.
The wildlife was made up of electro-energy creatures with crystallized
bodies, or even no bodies at all. The
amorphous stone men of Hyde Park communicated with no one but each
other, taking whatever shape struck their weird fancy. They could constitute and dissolve themselves
with the speed of thought.
Nert Cooblegooble
felt ridiculous in his red-and-white-striped pajamas. His blond hair was tied up in random pony
tails, and red freckles had been added to his face with a paintbrush. He stood next to a table advertising
fish-skin socks for sale.
“Stop fidgeting,
Nert!” said Mr. Crushcracker, waving his fat, smelly cigar. “You have to look business-like to sell these
things to tourists.”
“Why do we have
to play these silly pretend games?” complained Nert Cooblegooble, secretly
Arkin Cloudstalker. He looked dubiously
over at Madame Prong, who was obviously an ugly man in drag wearing a tight
blue dress over an overstuffed body and wearing gobs of makeup on his… er,
her eyes and cheeks.
“We calls ‘em as
we sees ‘em,” said Phineas Crushcracker, secretly Scarpigo Snarcs. “These rubes and yokels are used to seein’ us
like this. These secret identities are
critical to our roles as agents of the Thin White Duke. Now be quiet, or I’ll buy a supper club and
beat you over the head with it.”
Madame Prong,
secretly Zero Snarcs, put a swollen white finger to her badly painted red lips
and pantomimed shushing Mr. Crushcracker for saying the TWD-word out loud where
any stone could hear.
“There are no
humans about anywhere!” moaned Nert.
“Why the need for secrecy?”
“The rocks have
ears,” said Mr. Crushcracker.
“What is that
supposed to mean?”
In answer to Arkin’s
question, a man walked up to the fish-sock table. He was not like any other man either Arkin
Cloudstalker or Nert Cooblegooble had ever seen. He was made entirely of stone, a living
statue looking out apparently through carved stone eyes. He was an eerie, zombie-like figure that
moved and talked without expression, always a degree or two off of what would
be natural for a human man.
“Well, well!”
gushed Mr. Crushcracker. “So nice to see
you again, Mr. Lazerstone! How have you
been? How’s the missus and all the
little pebbles?”
The cold stone
voice that came from the hollows inside Lazerstone chilled Arkin to the bone
with dread.
“I don’t pretend
to understand your need for charades, Snarcs.
I do understand the position of the White Duke. I am ready to render aid. I can do far more than even Duke Keyser
himself realizes. Don’t mock me. I get tired of the human need to maintain personal
fictions.”
“Have you met
Nert Cooblegooble?”
“You know that
this man is different from the last human who you introduced as Mr.
Cooblegooble. Don’t play games with me
again.”
“Oh, you take all
the fun out the whole spy thing! This is
the Pirate King, Arkin Cloudstalker.”
“Yes. A noble reputation among those who travel
through the Hyde Park starport. I
believe you use the Knights as a privateer band working to liberate the people
of the Galtorr Imperium, do you not?”
“I do. I like your directness.”
“We are many, Mr.
Cloudstalker, but we are one.”
“Wait, I don’t
understand again. Is this a riddle?”
“No. It is merely a factor in the differences
between your kind and mine.”
“I don’t
understand.”
“Of course, you
don’t. You are like these
ephemerals. You do not have the Wisdom
of the Stones.”
“Oh!” interjected
Mr. Crushcracker, “You mean like, I can’t get no… satisfaction!?”
“Shut up,
Snarcs.” Lazerstone turned cold,
sightless eyes on Phineas Crushcracker.
“This meeting is important.”
“Help me
understand,” pleaded Arkin.
“Very well. The crystals of this planet are all
alive. They are all capable of
thought. In fact, they all share one
vast consciousness. We, the Lazerstone,
are capable of understanding everything about your kind and what they are doing
in our shared galaxy. We have seen the
unnatural evil and crimes of your Galtorr Imperium. We understand the need to put an end to
that. We also realize that only men like
you, Ged Aero, and the White Duke are capable of making your kind turn away
from violent animal ignorance and start harmonizing with the galactic symphony
of life.”
“That is all very
poetic,” said Arkin, still not fully comprehending, “but how are you going to
help us?”
“I will fight for
you. Soon you will see how important
that is for your future Empire.”
“My Empire?”
“Your Democracy
if you prefer.”
“Yes, that would
be better.” Arkin tried to use mental
x-rays to pierce the colorful stone of that impassive face. “Can you see me through those stone eyes of
yours?”
“He can see
through you, Nert,” said Scarpigo Snarcs.
“He’s an all-powerful monster from outer space. Booga-booga!
He can even tell what color underwear you have on.”
The humorless
stone face turned towards Snarcs.
“At least I have
enough respect for his underwear that I don’t feel the need to reveal what it
looks like. Not like the silk shorts with
printed pink bunnies on them that you have on.”
Snarcs turned
stone white. “How did you know about
those?”
“Lazer-vision,
funny boy. I see by using my perceptions
of relative density and wave-lengths of gravitons. Don’t cross me, or I might eat you in the
night!”
Phineas Crushcracker and Scarpigo Snarcs both cringed. Madame Prong held a rubber chicken in her hand with less than the usual gusto.
“By the way,” added Lazerstone, “Booga-booga! Scarpigo Snarcs!”
Friday, October 25th was my first full-day substitute teacher job. I was supposed to cover for the assistant band director at Barbara Bush Middle School in Irving, Texas. It was a long day of work, but it was supposed to be an easy day, watching the band director conduct his classes and doing whatever little helpful thing the band director asked me to do.
Easy is not a word that is normally associated with teaching. So, naturally, everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, and a few things that couldn’t go wrong went wrong just for good measure.
The day started with rain. It was a slogging jog from home to my daughter’s high school, dropping her off early to get some extra project work time in before school. Then I had to drive all the way through Coppell to the eastern edge of Irving which somehow gets to be in our school district even though it is two cities to the west away. Dallas drivers in the rain… eeeyaaah! I almost died on the road twice, missing only by inches.
And, of course, when I got there, the secretary in charge of subs was not there. I was given the wrong sub folder by the other secretary. It turned was out that the band director himself was out too. So, there were two non-musical subs for six classes of music and a homeroom. And band directors have no idea how to provide work for kids when they can’t use their instruments. We were given an assignment online for kids to do on their Chromebooks. It was an assignment that, at best, would last for five minutes out of the fifty-minute class periods. Well, they did tell us to let them amuse themselves with games on the Chromebooks when they were finished (because, of course, 6th, 7th, and 8th graders never misuse the internet, meaning lots of walking around looking at screens to identify those things that SHOULD NOT BE THERE).
My co-sub was a very polite Indian lady who was working her first sub job and had no teaching experience.
So, with the potential for total chaos and disaster set, I had to basically take over and manage the baby-sitting festival for the day. We did get one significant break. The high school band director from the high school associated with Bush came in to direct the two concert band classes, and they worked on their music. Band directors of high schools are all masters of the art of teaching. We watched him work for two hours, 3rd and 4th periods. It was fantastic. He could stop off-task behavior with a mere look. He only had one horsey bunny give him any trouble, and he basically stapled that kid to his tuba with mere words and threats of that special band-director-kind that only band students can truly imagine to the full extent of its potential horror. Both of us subs congratulated him on his impressive teaching skills and thanked him for the pain and sweat he saved us from.
In the meantime… that mean time when we had to keep sixth graders full of bouncy-bunny Friday energy in their seats and unable to damage anything, kill anybody, argue with pocket knives and stabby pencils, or any other nightmarish thing that fevered little bunny brains could potentially conceive, we kept them in their seats (mostly), settled disputes (without yelling at them or hitting anybody), dealt with uncharged and non-working Chromebooks (mostly thanks to band hall outlets and the chairs near them), and kept them busy (at one point challenging kids to drawing contests in which I gave them paper and shut them up with my cartooning skills).
It was an exhausting day. But also wonderful, in its own way. One girl thought I looked like Santa Claus on the old Coca-Cola Christmas ads. Two or possibly three kids were smart enough to laugh at my jokes. And the day was completed with no casualties. I look forward to doing it again next week.
I have now re-written about sixty percent of the old novel AeroQuest. I published AeroQuest 1 : Stars and Stones in September. AeroQuest 2 : Planet of the White Spider was published yesterday in October. AeroQuest 3 : Juggling Planets will probably take longer than either of the other two. The story has to be elongated. The growing rebellion of the pirates and smugglers trying to establish the New Star League need time to grow their rebellion. In the previous edition of this book the flower blossoms almost before the shoots are out of the ground. I need to develop the rebellion with more planets and systems with reasons why they want to leave the icky old emperor and establish a space-born democracy. And this novel series isn’t merely a parody of Star Wars or an imitation of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It is also its own version of a space opera with unique characters and plot-lines that are entirely Mickian in their non-sensibility.
Ged Aero, the main character and most important protagonist, is revealed in AeroQuest 2 to be the new White Spider, a prophet-like teacher fulfilling a century-old prophecy by leading twelve young disciples into the state of near-perfection of their psionic mind powers. Adventures where these twelve student-disciples learn stuff they need to know need to be added to the original story.
Each of the first two re-written books is about 35,000 words. The original novel is about 120,000 words. I will need to add a lot more than just the re-write of 50,000 more words. And I want to keep the books approximately equal, so I will be aiming to increase the total to at least 140,000 words by writing two more 35,000-word stories. And it may be enough more than that to fill five total books.
If my run-away cancerous imagination is not reigned in, I have at least three more book-length story-tumors to add in beyond that.
So, I have enough to do. My Tuesday blog plan will still be going for a while.
When the space
ship called Megadeath, the Rock and Roll Starship, docked at the now
prosperous spaceport of the planet Don’t Go Here, they interrupted a solemn
ceremony. Administrator Bam-Bam Salongi
was about to be buried in space. His
body, encased in a glass torpedo pod, was on display in Frieda’s central
administration hub. The relatively new
crew of the space port was gathered around for testimonials and remembrances.
Frieda’s
Metalloid form stood guard over the office.
The Dion girl named Taquira was kneeling by the foot of the makeshift
coffin and Tabitha Blue Arrow, in Lady Knight armor, stood over the head of
Bam-Bam’s final resting place.
Xavier Tkriashav
entered the office first, shock registering on his dark, inscrutable face. Behind him stood Captain Tommy Lee, Pilot Vince
Niell, Nikki Sixx, and slack-jawed Cold Death.
All removed hats and became silent mourners.
“What has
happened here?” asked Tkriashav.
“Fez Amin and the
Monopoly Brigade,” said Frieda. “He came
here and killed Mr. Salongi and kidnapped Tara.
We killed one of his Lieutenants, but he used Tara as a shield to make
his escape. I’ve tried to organize
pursuit, but we lost him completely in the Imperium.”
“We should not
have left you vulnerable to attack,” said Tkriashav, shaking his head.
“We were
unprepared for treachery,” said Tabitha, the Lady Knight. “It will not happen again.”
“We have ships
now to defend our home,” said the Dion, Taquira. “We just don’t have any pilots to fly them.”
“We are outward
bound now, to places where I know we will find a large number of willing spacers
ready to come here and help get that problem solved, at least,” said Tkriashav.
“I have places to go where I know all
kinds of Psions. We might even see if we
can strike an accord with the Nebulons we believe are migrating in mass towards
this part of the Orion Spur.”
“You know,” said
Tabitha, “you are opening your arms to all the peoples the Imperium loathes?”
“Yes,” said
Tkriashav. “That was the idea. All us rejects will band together to make
something far better than what Imperial Space has to offer.”
“You are a
hopeless idealist, Psion Master,” said Tabitha Blue Arrow.
“Does that mean
you will leave us and go back to the Imperium?” he responded.
“Of course not,”
replied the Lady Knight. “We need
idealists as leaders. It’s the reason I
joined Cloudstalker’s Corsairs to start with.”
“You are good
man, Psion Master,” hissed Taquira the Dion. She switched her brown lizard’s tail. “We like you a lot!”
“Tara wanted us
to tell Ged Aero that she loves him,” said Frieda. “I fear those may have been the last words
we’ll ever have from her.”
“I will have some
students I have to deliver to Ged on Gaijin,” said Tkriashav. “I will tell him the grave news.”
An emerald-green female
Galtorrian walked into the main office at that moment. “Ged Aero, you sssay?” she hissed. She was beautiful in a serpentine way,
snake-eyed and tressed with flowing green hair.
She wore the uniform of the Imperial Scout Service. “I must find Ged Aero.”
All eyes turned
suspiciously to her.
“Why do you seek
Ged?” asked Tkriashav.
“I must find the
fulfiller of the Prophecy of Zhan! I
have sssearched for him for yearsss. I mussst
find him if it costssss me my life!”
“We shall
see. You will surrender all weapons and
travel with me under guard,” said Tkriashav.
“Yesss, whatever
I mussst do. But, I mussst find him
before hisss enemiesss do.”
The pheromones she gave off at that moment made every male present feel as if he must fall in love with her. Xavier couldn’t help himself from feeling it too. He tried to probe her, but she was apparently a Psion too, though not a type he recognized.
I am nearing the completion of the rewrite of part two of AeroQuest. Part of that is getting all the illustrations I want to include done. So, here are a few more that I have been working on.
For those who might be wondering, AeroQuest 1 and AeroQuest 2 are comic science fiction, and I have chosen to rewrite them with lots of illustrations since it is a work of fiction that I might’ve done as a graphic novel if only I didn’t have arthritis in my hands.
