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So, since I have established Tuesday as a day to publish novel writing, I am going to put up a chapter of Aeroquest every Tuesday as I rewrite the novel in a third draft, post-publishing as a major tactical error with the criminals at Publish America.  My 7-year contract with them was up in 2014.  Don’t buy their version of my book as it is overpriced nonsense with serious errors in it.  Read it here.  Or don’t.  But this is going to be my next blog novel until I finish it, or alien invaders turn me into dog food for their pet flooporaptors… uh, maybe I meant to say flooporaptor food?

Canto 1 – Escapade

When you look out the portal of a space craft, especially a large portal like the main view port of the Leaping Shadowcat, you get a glimpse of the great orchestra of light and silence that has been playing its music in space since the dawn of time.  The diamond-bright stars glow with an electric significance in a great sea of black, littered with the silent notes of the Galactic Symphony being conducted by God himself.

Ged Aero stared at this silent music as he contemplated his brother’s plan.  Ham Aero had proposed the impossible.  How could it be the only solution?

“You can’t deny it any more, Ged.  The Galtorr Imperium is no place for a man like you.”

“…but the unknown, Hamfast?  How can you expect to get by beyond the edges of known space?”

“Others have done it in the past.  You know that civilization still has not absorbed even half the worlds that Martin Faulkner visited five hundred years ago.”

“Yes,” said Ged, pulling at the front brim of his dirty brown fedora as if to hide his eyes and the doubt that was in them, “but he was an explorer.  He knew how to live in space without any human contact for years on end.”

“What he can do, we can do.”  Ham pushed a fall of thick yellow hair out of his eyes.  It had been far too long since he had had a haircut, but only their mother had been allowed to do it, and she was now gone.  “We have to.  Prejudice against you has reached the point that it will be fatal.”

“Okay, I know that.  But I’m learning to control it.  I don’t have to change all the time.  I can stop it when I need to, and maybe even start it myself.  I don’t know why it happens, but I think I can make it work for me instead of against me.”

“Yes, well, mutations like yours are almost always fatal in the end.  You’ll slip at the wrong moment, and the Imperials will have your head on a platter.  What did they call your disease?”

“Lycanthropy.  Werewolf disease.”

“That’s my point exactly.  We both know it’s really something else, but the torches will come out to burn you the next time they see you change even a little bit.”

“Unknown space, Ham?  Does it have to be unknown space?”

“Yes, Ged.  Unknown space.  It’s my spaceship.  The decision is ultimately mine.”

It was a beautiful space ship.  It was a safari cruiser of the Xenomorph Class, a smooth airfoil shape with silver skin and a photon drive that could leap across parsecs of space in practically no time.  It could land on planets with atmosphere as easily as it could glide through the electric sparkle of space.  It had a good, sturdy ground ATV and accommodations for as many as twenty five people.

“So how do you plan to navigate the unknown?”  Ged knew Ham was a capable starship captain, but they had no reliable navigator.  And the third member of their minimum crew of three, the engineer, was not even aboard.

“Goofy can do it.  He’s more gifted than you believe.”

“Don’t tell me your friend Trav Dalgoda is the engineer we’re waiting for!”

“Okay.  I won’t tell you.”

“Are you insane?  You’re going to jump out into unknown space with that Lunar Tick as our only means to fix the ship and set our course?”

“Yeah,” said Ham, grinning.  “It doesn’t sound too smart when you put it that way.  But he is an original thinker and a good problem-solver.”

“He’s also wanted on four planets and owes ten million Galtorrian credits to the biggest Vice Lord in the Thousand Planets.”

“Yeah.  It was easy to talk him into jumping out with us.”

“Oh, I’m so glad it was easy.”

The two brothers had started calling their boyhood friend, Travis R. Dalgoda, “Goofy” when, as an academy graduate, he started wearing an eye patch over his left eye even though he could see through it perfectly.  It didn’t hurt that he always wore that silly Donald Duck sailor’s hat that he got on his one and only leave on the Disney planet.  He also had a thing for ties with weird pictures or sayings on them.  Trav was one of a kind.

“I guess I understand your plan finally,” Ged said morosely to Ham.  “You’re going to bring an end to my suffering by committing suicide in deep unknown space.”

“Yeah,” said Ham staring out the view port at the silent music of the stars, “Something like that…”

At that moment, a blazing piece of space junk trailing sparking debris came fluttering toward them like a wounded sparrow.

“Oh, gawd!  Get to the co-pilot console, Ged!”

Whatever it was, it was maneuvering, using powered flight.  It was apparently seeking them out.

“Any bets that this burning space-ball is Goofy?” Ham asked as he strapped himself into the pilot chair.

As if in answer, Trav’s voice came over the ship-to-ship commo.  “Ham-boy!  You gotta help me.  I picked up a band of followers on my way out of system!”

“Yep.  That’s Goofy,” moaned Ged.

“I’m pickin’ up bad guys!” shouted Ham.  He flipped on the commo.  “Goof?  You got six of them on your tail?”

“Oh, is that all?  My sensors are out.  I figured it was more like fifty.  Pinwheel Corsairs, ain’t they?”

“Yes.  I make them to be Tron Blastarr and Maggie the Knife.  What’s your beef with them?”

“Oh, they’re friends of mine.  I helped them loot a cargo out of Mingo Downport.  They just didn’t like the ninety-ten split I left them with.”

“Typical,” muttered Ged.

Ham launched the Leaping Shadowcat into an arching intercept course.  Ham had never done a high-speed docking maneuver before, that Ged knew of, but the young pilot was about to learn fast.

Recently, in a Dallas area restaurant which will remain nameless in this post because Bugsy Bugswatter doesn’t deserve free advertising for his dead cockroach parfaits after the recent food poisoning of several teachers who couldn’t afford to go to McDonald’s instead on Texas’ overly-generous teachers’ salaries, Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor met for coffee and a chance to reminisce about the good old days at Fleischer Studios in the 1930’s.  I happened to overhear their conversation because I was in the next booth trying to choke down a semi-nutritious garden-weed salad with dung-beetle protein wafers.

 Betty; “Oh, Popeye, it is so nice to see you again.  You look so Boop-boop-i-doop after all these years.”

Popeye; “Aw, yer jest sayin’ that cuz it’s true.  ‘Course we is cartoon carickachurs, and being in movie cartoons makes ya immortalized sorta.”

Betty; “That’s true. I still have my girlish figure even though technically I’m 87 years old.”

Popeye; “Can I gets ya a Spinach souffle with grasshopper meat to go wit yer coffee?”

Betty; “Yes, but I wish Bugsy didn’t have to put bugs in everything he serves.  And why do you have to take the order?” 

“Cost cuttin’ measures by Bugsy to qualicafy fer Presidink Trump’s newest tax cuts.  He fires all his employees so’s the cuskomers kin wait their own tables.  He saves money on salaries and he gits a 100% tax cut for makin’ lots o’ money offen poor folks.”

“I often wonder if I couldn’t run successfully for President too.  If Trump could win, any celebrity with name recognition stands a decent chance.  I wonder what kind of political tactics I would have to employ?”

“Well, the way I sees it, the foist thing ya has to do is lie bigly about the things you is gonna do for people who is suffering unner politickshians who has disappointemented peoples fer years.”

“Like saying you are going to make America great again, and you are going to start winning so much that everybody will get sick of winning?”

“Yep!  Lots o’ braggin’ like Bluto so’s ya kin make people think yer a much better persing than you really are.”

“Like how Trump made everyone believe he wasn’t a money-laundering criminal tax cheat?”

“Yep.  Like that.  And ya has ta makes yer emenies all shut up about yer past doin’s.  Like how Trump goes on Twitter and tweets horrible junk about ennybody whats criticizes him, and shouts “FAKE NEWS!” so much that nobody believes journalisks no more.”

“But my past deeds aren’t so bad.  I don’t think I would have to shut up anybody who wanted to talk about my cartoons or my singing voice.  I proved in court once that I didn’t steal my singing style.”

  “Well, there was that one cartoon in witch you appeared topless, wit jest a flower neckless to cover up yer booblies.”

“Well, but that was tastefully done.  And people aren’t hung up about scandals like that any more, are they?  I mean, Trump got away with that “pussy grabbing” comment, didn’t he?”

“Yep, but remembers, he is a growed-up white man with a reputation fer ownin’ beauty paginks.  And you is a womming wit a reputation for bein’ all sexy.  That’s why they won’t take ya seriously.  But wit me as yer campaign manager, we could do it.  Betty Boop in 2020!”

“No, Popeye, I think I won’t try it.  The next president will have such an awful mess to fix.  We have to get somebody who will work hard and do the right thing.”

“Well, I’m jest sayin’…  I’d vote fer ya.  We were a great team back in the 1930’s.”

“Yes.  Our discussion today has made me long for the good old days… The Great Depression, bread lines, FDR, and movies only costing a dime, and every movie came with at least one cartoon.”

“Don’t worry yer purty head, Betty.  We’ll be back there soon enough… the way the currink Presidenk is going… the Depression and the bread lines at least!”

This is an old 1980 picture of Radasha and a girl I once knew.  It is called “Deep Red Eyes” and when I had it hanging on my wall, the eyes of both follow you wherever you go in the room.  It’s not haunted or anything.  The subjects are just looking straight at the viewer.  That doesn’t keep it from being creepy though.

I was not able to resolve my Tweedle battles without blood loss.  Today I needed to post something that didn’t take too long to do.  So here are pictures from favorite cartoon shows that I watched on Saturday mornings when I was twelve.

I am caught in an endless loop of waiting for other people to fulfill their promises.  Page Publishing hasn’t done anything with my novel even though I finished paying for it months ago.  They made me undo all the mistakes their proofreader made on my novel, mostly changing “Ms.” back to “Miss”, and after five editing exchanges, they still don’t have my final draft ready.

I am still waiting on my lawyer for the next step in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy.  That has been a month.  I know that has been my own fault because I got sick while doing endless financial paperwork and got delayed myself.

Even the pool demolition guy keeps putting off the work the city is insisting needs to be done already.  He said he would be here first thing this morning.  It is 10:30 now, and no pool demolition guy, or phone call to explain the delay.  I have only talked to an answering machine.  At least I haven’t paid him any money yet.

So today’s post is a quickly done complaint.  Not particularly funny or well-written.  Just exhausted and tired of waiting on people.