Empty Theater Poem #1

The clown stumbled to the center of the stage,

Into the spotlight for a tinker’s age,

“I’m guessing that I now must talk,

Since I am no longer allowed to walk,

And I cannot claim I am a mime,

So, now I have to deal in rhyme.”

The seats were empty, so no one cheered,

But that also meant that no one jeered.

The Silent Orchestra of the Universe

“Poetry is Music,” the clown said, “And there is music in the stars,

Silent music, of course, made of light and novas, asteroids. and comets,

Dancing through the cosmos, and not stopping in at bars.”

Then he burped the alcohol inside him with a face portending vomits.

“Words are music, rhythm, rhyme, and melody.

We make our way from day to day upon the primrose path they lay.

I speak now, fulfill my part, and so, I speak my soliloquy…

As my very instrument, in the universal orchestra, I play.”

A ghostly moan in the empty seats was nearly really heard

And the clown, he gawked and stared about in every spin-necked way.

“I do not believe I find relief in this absent throng… with words

That come from no one nowhere… so, I’ll be on my way.”

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

71000

Some books come along telling a story that has to be taken seriously in ways that don’t make sense in any normal way.  The Alchemist is one of those books.

What is an alchemist, after all?

An alchemist uses the medieval forms of the art of chemistry to transmute things, one thing becoming another thing.

Coelho in this book is himself an alchemist of ideas.  He uses this book to transmute one idea into another until he digs deep enough into the pile of ideas to finally transmute words into wisdom.

There is a great deal of wisdom in this book, and I can actually share some of it here without spoiling the story.

Here are a few gemstones of wisdom from the Alchemist’s treasure chest;

“It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting…” (p.13)

“It’s the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them.” (p.17)

“All things are one.  And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”  (p.24)

“And when he had gone only a short distance, he realized that, while they were erecting the stall, one of them had spoken Arabic and the other Spanish.    And they had understood each other perfectly well.  There must be a language that doesn’t depend on words, the boy thought.” (p.45)

All of these quotes from the book, as you can see, come from the first third of the book.  There are many more treasures to be found in this book.  I should not share them with you here.  Just as the main character of the story learns, you have to do the work for yourself.  But this book is not only an enjoyable read, but a map for how you can execute your own journey towards your “Personal Legend”.  In fact, you may find that the book tells you not only how to go about making a dream come true, but, if you are already on that journey successfully, it tells you what things you are already doing right.

Leave a comment

Filed under book reports, book review, commentary, good books, magic, strange and wonderful ideas about life, wisdom, wizards

To Be Proud Of…

I am a writer. Even if I never sell another book, I am that. But the last three months have been really kind to me. I have sold multiple Kindle books in three straight months now. I have had multiple readers reading numerous pages from Kindle Unlimited. The Naked Thinking book’s publication seemed to be the start of the cascade. I am guessing that it is unique enough to be the book everyone was hungry for. It does have full-color illustrated nudes in it. But it has good content too.

I have been able to draw more than I have in years of late due to the ease of using digital art tools for drawing, so much easier than struggling with pencils and pens and arthritis.

So, I am happy now.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Representing Star Wars RPG People

20180113_084825

Traditionally, D&D-type role playing games are played with miniature figures to represent characters and npc’s on the battlefield.  But when the kids were small and we started playing Star Wars RPG I didn’t have the proper figures.  So. to visualize characters, we used what I did have plenty of, dolls… err, action figures.

I told you who the player characters were a couple of Saturdays ago, but let me remind you.

20180113_085022

Princess Moreno, represented by the Barbie dressed in Emperor Palpatine’s robe was the leader of the adventuring group, and the player character of my niece, who was available back then because they lived in the Dallas area too.

Juba Jubajai, Jedi Guardian, was the muscle-brained power of the group.  He was my oldest son’s player character.

 

 

20180113_084936

The sidekicks and NPC’s that rounded out the group were Hrowwuhrr, the Princess’s loyal Wookie companion, and Keebo Kloohorn, the Rodian minstrel, quick of wit and poor at shooting.

 

 

 

20180113_085219

Of course, there were numerous other people you run into in an adventure, like Jedi-trainer Master Link Conn (played by an Abraham Lincoln Presidential action figure) and Barrabas the space pirate.  I customized some.  Luke Skywalker and Han Solo played a lot of them.  And others were only present in our imaginations.  For a brief little while, it was a quaint and happy gaming experience to play Star Wars with dolls and dice.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under doll collecting, Dungeons and Dragons, heroes, Star Wars, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Leftovers in January

C360_2017-01-28-22-33-42-329

You reach a point after a hard month has lingered long where you have to eat the leftovers and accept what is.  I face challenges in the new year at least as large as the challenges of 2017.  When faced with such a situation, I need pie.

So here are some of the things left in my January file for use in this blog.  The only reason they are here is because I haven’t used them yet and the ideas have not been knitted together for any rational purpose.

This will be a crazy quilt blog post.  But crazy quilts keep you just as warm in winter as any other kind.

14910293_901982843236292_6953409865083442966_n

My newest Facebook friend is the daughter of my wife’s cousin.   I have only known her as the sweet-faced little smiler at Filipino-American family gatherings who sometimes gets my attention by squirting me in the ear with a water gun.  Her father is from Greece and teaches Math in San Antonio.  Her mother, like my wife, is from the Philippines.  I won’t tell you her real name, but we used to call her “Sweetie” because she resembled the little pink Tweety-bird character from Tiny Toons Adventures.

I have also spent considerable time writing to and for nudists I have connected with through their various websites and on Twitter.  These two lovely works of nude art were shared with me on Twitter.  I have collected a number of nude pictures from Twitter nudists that I can’t use on WordPress because I am still entirely too modest to be the unrestrained naked person that some nudists are.  I can’t really claim to be a complete nudist myself.  But I do have stories to tell about naked people, and I have been working on them diligently.

16649142_1864167603721788_3211512039799101536_n

Of course, I still miss being a teacher.  I was a teacher of English for 31 years.  I taught reading and writing in English to over 2,000 kids.  I also learned how to stare in Klingon.  It is a useful skill for keeping students in line and keeping them from becoming a disappointment to the empire.  I miss teaching kids, especially talkative kids.  Far fewer people talk to me during a day of retirement than used to talk to me in a single class at school.  Those interactions were precious.

26113934_927336804084977_1381982239916522375_n

And several things are just too confusing for my old brain to explain.

DShkoXzXkAEATc0

But I do like this picture I found on Facebook of Tom Baker, the 4th Doctor, playing with multiple kittens.  I don’t know why, but it makes me happier.

26814863_10211297658858264_6204091230741070713_n

Leave a comment

Filed under artwork, blog posting, Dr. Who, feeling sorry for myself, foolishness, goofy thoughts, humor, nudes

New Pictures Finished Today

Yes, I used the AI Mirror program as a digital art editor to put my original drawing over a photo background. I still have to put black on the birch trees, but otherwise, I finished this today in half an hour.

I finished the finger-crossing picture from yesterday, finally getting the hand right despite the complications of the white halo effect (needed to separate the white highlights and dark lines from the background house of brown and mostly white. It’s a comic book thing.

My favorite thirty-minute drawing of the day, “The Haunting Stare of Jenna Ortega.” Yes, I know it doesn’t look like her. No dimples and blue eyes instead of brown. But honestly, I did it from a photo of her.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Where Do We Go From Here, My Dear?

Where do we go from here, my dear?

Where do we go from here?

Whisper it now in my queer little ear,

Is it someplace near?

My fingers are crossed in the rear, my dear.

I’m hoping the world has beer,

And Ideas are all quite clear, my dear,

Cause the future may cause great fear.

This is what you must hear, my dear,

My plan is to be more of a man this year,

I’ll play the game better than all of my peers,

And that’s where we’re going from here.

***Note*** There is lots of repetition here in this poem, internal rhyme, and echoing phrases, I even used the same basic picture, and changed it with digital art tools into three slightly different pictures. Economy of words, spare use of actual ideas, and extreme economy of actual effort… It is truly terrible poetry.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

The Philosophy of Bad Poetry

I do write poetry. But I must admit, I am not a serious poet.  I am a humorist at heart, so I tend to write only goofy non-serious poems like this one;

rBVaI1l96JSATTHgAB44A7RQi8s488

So here is a poem that rhymes but has too much “but-but-but” in it.  A poem about pants should not have too many “buts” in it.  One butt per pair, please.  So this is an example of spectacularly bad poetry.  Why do we need bad poetry?  Because it’s funny.  And it serves as a contrast to the best that poetry has to offer.

As a teacher I remember requiring students to memorize and recite Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken”.  Now this sort of assignment is a rich source of humorous stories for another day.  Kids struggle to memorize things.  Kids hate to get up in front of the class and speak with everybody looking at them.  You get a sort of ant-under-a- magnifying-glass-in-the-sun sort of effect.  But in order to truly get the assignment right and get the A+,  you have to make that poem your own.  You have to live it, understand it, and when you reach that fork in the road in your own personal yellow wood, you have to understand what Frost was saying in that moment.  That is the life experience poetry has a responsibility to give you.

roads-diverging

Hopefully I gave that experience to at least a few of my students.

Bad poetry makes you more willing to twirl your fingers of understanding in the fine strands of good poetry’s hair.  (Please excuse that horrible metaphor.  I do write bad poetry, after all.)

But all poetry is the same thing.  Poetry is “the shortest, clearest, best way to see and touch the honest bones of the universe through the use of words.”  And I know that definition is really bad.  But it wasn’t written on this planet.  (Danged old Space Goons!)  Still, knowing that poetry comes from such a fundamental place in your heart, you realize that even bad poetry has value.  So, I will continue writing seriously bad poetry in the funniest way possible.  And all of you real poets who happen to read this, take heart, I am making your poetry look better by comparison.

Leave a comment

Filed under humor, insight, irony, philosophy, poem, poetry, Uncategorized

A Pensive Portrait for Today

Time for something thoughtful… and quiet.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Scientifical Dog-Poop Theories

c360_2017-01-03-21-40-18-852

I have been taking note of the Republican approach to science as displayed repeatedly in Congress.  I decided that this is the kind of science that can best explain the dog-poop phenomena, since it is, ultimately, about how the data feels more than measuring and quantifying and dealing with, you know, those fact thingies.

20150603_1122

You see, the problem comes in with the fact that my dog, Jade, is producing dog poop at record levels, and it is all becoming rather a burden.   Now the dog-poop literature, (yes it does exist, since dog lovers write about anything and everything to do with dogs), says that it is not uncommon for a healthy young dog to poop as much as 5 times a day.  But my dog seems to poop exactly one time more per day than the number of times you take her for a walk.  If we go out five times, she poops six.  If I take her out in the middle of the night for a sixth time, she poops seven.  What the heck?

My wife really hates the dog because she poops on the carpet so much.  (The dog, not my wife.  My wife is satisfactorily house-broken.)  There are places on the living room carpet she marked as a puppy five years ago where she insists on re-pooping practically every night.  No matter how often we scrub the carpet and box her ears, still, brown spots and poop lumps to greet us almost every morning.  Maybe she does it because my wife tells her how much she hates her and the dog wants to get even.  But that is the opposite of what the dog says.  She loves Mommy because Mommy gives the dog soup bones.  Somehow, it seems the dog believes she is giving us all a gift by pooping on the carpet and filling the house with her personal scent.  She poops for us because she loves us.

1836798_529426233843470_766473335_o

Here Jade Beyer is busy using Henry’s computer. She has her own Facebook page and everything.

I drew the diagram at the start of this article to better explain my Republicanized theories of dog poop and dog love.  You will notice that, based on observations of total output, I have theorized that dogs must be almost completely hollow.  They don’t apparently store poop in their legs, but the rest of their dog bodies appear to be hollow poop-tubes that store nearly infinite amounts of poo.  Dogs also apparently have some kind of instant-poop-maker at the base of the throat so that anything they eat, dog food, my missing left socks, my son’s retainer, dead rats, whatever was growing behind the rice bag in the pantry, and whatever people food they can steal, is instantly transformed into poop.  Need to poop on the floor because dad didn’t give you any of the bacon at breakfast?  Eat a sock.  Fill up with instant poop ammo.  The poop on the floor will prove how much you love dad and why he should give you bacon more.

So, now that I have studied the poop problem, what solutions could there be?

Well, I have threatened the dog to use corks and other sorts of plugs, but that wouldn’t solve the problem so much as merely delay it.  And I dread the impending explosion in the living room that such a plan suggests to a vivid imagination like mine.  I have thought about feeding her less, but it seems she can still use the puppy beg-eye to such good effect that she could subsist entirely on people food conned out of my son and daughter.  So, I will use a Republican congressional solution.  Since their response to poverty is to give more money to rich people, and the solution to climate change is to cut pollution restrictions, then obviously I need to feed my dog MORE!  I need to cram it down her greedy little throat if necessary.  That will fix it.  Or bring about fat, exploding dogs all the sooner.

Leave a comment

Filed under family dog, feeling sorry for myself, goofiness, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney