Canto Thirty-One – Moonbase Gundahl
Commander Biznap was a capable pilot and Farbick admired the way he simply turned the Golden Wing in the air and took off towards the mother ship. Simple and elegant was always the mark of skill.
“Now that your commander has gone and left you to die…” said Stabharh, the scrawny little Galtorrian lizard-man enforcer, “you need to show us how to work the space tech devices. And hurry because I know some Galtorrians that are dying to eat you.”
“Have you ever eaten a Telleron before, Stabbie?” asked the cruel and obese Lord Bahbahr.
“Of course not. But we haven’t had food in so long, I was beginning to consider eating you, my lord. And don’t call me Stabbie.”
“Ah, we will have none of that! You are required to lay down your life to serve me. It is the law, and I own you body and soul.”
“Who besides me is left to enforce the law?” asked the skinny lizard with an evil grin.
The smile vanished from the face of the corpulent Galtorrian ruler. Farbick carefully noted the malevolent glares passing between the two lizard-men and vowed secretly to himself to take maximum advantage of such a situation.
“What device would you like to learn about first, my lord?” asked Farbick with a timely interruption. Then he strategically added, “the skortch pistols perhaps?”
“I am much more interested in the force-field thingy that kept the cannonballs from destroying that spaceship. You have no idea how useful that could be if Senator Tedhkruhz learns that we have returned here.”
The little enforcer seemed to whole-heartedly agree with Bahbahr. So Farbick moved near to the force-field control and activator box lying at the foot of the pile of Telleron tech.
“That is a very wise choice,” said Farbick as Starbright looked on encouragingly. “May I turn it on and demonstrate?”
“Please do,” said Bahbahr.
Farbick ignited the control box with the click of a button and a sudden electrical humming noise that sounded reassuring and powerful.
“By adjusting the three-dimensional coordinates like this,” said Farbick, “I can place an invisible shield around you and Stabharh. You can’t see it, but it is impervious to kinetic attacks and weak energy attacks. Gunpowder will never pierce it. Show them, please, Starbright.”
“How?”
“Pick up that chair there and hit Stabharh over the head with it.”
“Now, hold on there, frog-boy!” growled the lizard man.
Before Stabharh could even flinch, Starbright picked up the chair and threw it at him. It shattered in the air as it encountered the generated field.
“Impressive!” said Bahbahr.
“Do you want to know what I find most impressive?” said Farbick, laughing. “It can be shaped in the form of a box. Just as the chair can’t penetrate the walls of the force field, neither can the two of you. You are our prisoners now.”
The two lizard-men seemed stunned. It was entirely possible that Farbick had won the day already. He could now pick up a skortch pistol and finish these two threats in a blink. Yet, somehow, that didn’t feel right. He could not do a deed that was just as bad, if not worse, than what the lizard-men themselves were capable of.
From the courtyard above in the ruined fortress, Farbick and Starbright suddenly heard voices and the sound of someone scrambling hastily through rubble.
“I thought we were alone on this moon,” said Starbright, horrified.
“We were…” said Stabharh with a sneer, “at least we were not burdened with anyone who counts. But the remaining inhabitants of Gundahl are coming now, because of my silent alarm. And hopefully they have weapons to kill you two with. Who is the clever fellow now, hmm?”
*****
Catch a Falling Star 
How To Write A Mickian Essay
I know the last thing you would ever consider doing is to take up writing essays like these. What kind of a moronic bingo-boingo clown wants to take everything he or she knows, put it in a high-speed blender and turn it all into idea milkshakes?
But I was a writing teacher for many years. And now, being retired and having no students to yell at when my blood pressure gets high, the urge to teach it again is overwhelming.
So, here goes…
Once you have picked the silly, pointless, or semi-obnoxious idea you want to shape the essay around, you have to write a lead. A lead is the attention-grabbing device or booby-trap for readers that will draw them into your essay. In a Mickian essay, whose purpose is to entertain, or possibly bore you in a mildly amusing manner, or cause you enough brain damage to make you want to send me money (this last possibility never seems to work, but I thought I’d throw it in there just in case), the lead is usually a “surpriser”, something so amazingly dumb or off-the-wall crazy that you just have to read, at least a little bit, to find out if this writer is really that insane or what. The rest of the intro paragraph that is not part of the lead may be used to draw things together to suggest the essay is not simply a chaotic mass of silly words in random order. It can point the reader down the jungle path that he or she can take to come out of the other end of the essay alive.
Once started on this insane quest to build an essay that will strangle the senses and mix up the mind of the reader, you have to carry out the plan in three or four body paragraphs. This is where you have to use those bricks of brainiac bull-puckie that you have saved up to be the concrete details in the framework of the main rooms of the little idea-house you are constructing. If you were to number or label these main rooms, this one you are reading now would, for example, be Room #2, or B, or “the second body paragraph”. And as you read this paragraph, you should be thinking in the voice of your favorite English teacher of all time. The three main rooms in this example idea house are beginning, middle, and end. You could also call them introduction, body, and conclusion. These are the rooms of your idea house that the reader will live in during his or her brief stay (assuming they don’t run out of the house screaming after seeing the clutter in the entryway).
The last thing you have to do is the concluding paragraph. (Of course, you have to realize that we are not actually there yet in this essay. This is Room C in the smelly chickenhouse of this essay, the third body paragraph.) The escape hatch on the essay that may potentially explode into fireworks of thoughts, daydreams, or plans for something better to do with your life than a read an essay written by an insane former middle school English teacher at any moment, is a necessary part of the whole process. This is where you have to remind them of what the essay is basically about, and leave them with the thought that you want to haunt them in their nightmares later. The last thing that you say in the essay is the thing they are the most likely to remember. So you need to save the best for last.
So, here, finally, is the exit door to this masterfully mixed-up Mickian Essay. It is a simple, and straightforward structure. The introduction containing the lead is followed by three or four body paragraphs that develop the idea and end in a conclusion that summarizes or simply restates the overall main idea. And now you know why all of my former students either know how to construct an essay, or have several years left in therapy sessions with a psychiatrist.
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