Gone Idle

Have you ever paused by a sunny window and gone idle?

Thought of a long-dead dog and warm, dirty days?
Of fun so hard there was black sand on the back of your neck?
Of snapping, playful jaws?
Of running and falling and laughing?

Have you ever blinked awake after five minutes and realized with sadness and joy that you had a happy childhood?

One More Reason I'd Like a Time Machine

Fiction's been a comfort lately, probably because after the aliens have blasted Mount Rushmore or the zombies have begun their own movement (Occupy Everything), the politicians set aside their petty differences and actually do what they're supposed to. The country right now makes me think of Nietzsche: "Under peaceful conditions, a war-like man sets upon himself."

I had this professor in college that loved Nietzsche. She even handed out these three stapled pages of sayings, which has been why for the last ten years I have had a Nietzsche quote for everything.

Speaking of Nietzsche quotes, I happened to purchase a game this weekend, which I already own, except now it's an "enhanced edition." If you haven't already guessed from my mention of Nietzsche and enhanced edition, I refer to Baldur's Gate. I don't have a lot of time for games right now, but my better half is a huge Bioware fanatic and like all Bioware fans, she views Baldur's Gate as the Citizen Kane of video games, the platonic ideal of digital storytelling. Of course, maybe the real reason we bought it was because Steam was selling it for $5. You can't even go to a movie for $5 anymore.

Anyway, the shocking part of this tale is how much fun I had playing a game from last century.

Nostalgia is probably a big part of it. I have many fond memories of playing this game a decade ago with my brothers. When my wife and I got married, someone got us a laptop. Right after the operating system came Baldur's Gate, as if the machine would be a naked, empty husk without it.

I'm left wondering how much is nostalgia and how much is just plain quality. Graphics, while important, are still trumped by gameplay, storyline, and dialogue. It's a lot like black and white movies, actually. If a later viewer can get over their biases involving special effects and color, all kinds of stories open up to them.

So will colleges one day have courses with titles like "20th CENTURY COMPUTER GAME CLASSICS"? Will pretentious coeds in black turtlenecks argue about the symbolism of Bhaal over cups of bitter espresso?

All I can say is: God, I hope so.



EDITED 10-15:  Corrected "Baal" to "Bhaal." I guess the writers at Forgotten Realms didn't want the ancient Phoenicians to sue them for copyright infringement or something.

Mythical...Beavers?

As you can probably guess, I'm really into folklore, legends, and fantasy. I've always been a big fan of imagination, particularly mythic-level imagination. My bookshelf reflects this. I have a few books about animals and a lot of books about history, but there is an enormous section devoted to stuff that never really existed.

With the arrival of children, I looked at all my fantasy and folklore books with a new eye. I mean, if an alien visitor popped down and perused my library, he could be forgiven for thinking that dragons and manticores were real. It's not like this stuff comes with a disclaimer or something.

So I was naturally curious about how this would fit into raising a child. Being a parent means spending an inordinate amount of time worrying about things which you probably don't need to worry about. One of these things for me has been what will happen when a child who needs to be schooled in the Real World encounters the make-believe at such a young age. We had a few story books when I was little, but they were colorful, childish things that sat on the kids' shelf. My parent's bookshelf, meanwhile, was stocked with professional-looking natural history books and a row of staid encyclopedias. The was an inherent difference between childish imaginative stuff and adult reality.

Not so with my bookshelf, which has caused me to wonder if my kids will have trouble differentiating truth from fantasy. I suppose I could go out of my way to say "this is made-up" when we encounter this stuff in a story, but that gets kind of exhausting and, as a storyteller myself, I feel like it's a betrayal to interrupt the sacredness of a narrative to say the narrative is a lie. A preface or afterward to that effect is fine, mind you, but footnotes are for academic works, not stories.

At any rate, as it would happen, the eldest had already begun to pick up on real/make-believe divide without any comments from me. Unfortunately, he came to the wrong conclusion altogether.

We were walking around a lake the other day and came across a fallen tree. This initiated a discussion about beavers, an animal that appears in one of his favorite cartoons. To my complete surprise, the child interrupted the discussion by saying "But beavers aren't real."

Yankee readers may be a little perplexed by this statement, so I should clarify: this park was in Florida. I don't know if it's the weather or the alligators, but beavers don't like it here. Since the child had only seen beavers in a cartoon, he jumped to the weird but understandable conclusion that beavers were make-believe, same as dragons. Though his thesis was wrong, this was a really good moment for me because it reminded me that even young children have a pretty good B.S. sensor and cartoons, thankfully, push that sensor into red.

I tried of course to explain to him that beavers are real and that his father had, in fact, seen beavers before. He didn't seem convinced, though, so my wife has suggested we find a zoo and settle it that way (frankly people like us always look for a reason to go to the zoo).

My own encounter with beavers is an interesting story. I was in Alaska when I was 19 or so with my folks. The first time I saw a beaver lodge out the window of our rental, I demanded we pull over so I could see if there was a beaver around. My parents were floored. To them, beavers were nuisance critters. Why would anyone want to see them?

To a Florida boy, though, beavers are pretty strange. They may be rodents, but they're giant rodents. Giant aquatic rodents. Plus they build things. Giant aquatic rodents that build things! How could anyone not be excited by them?

My parents didn't pull over, but eventually we went hiking near a beaver lodge. I tiptoed off the path, got my camera out (these being the days when one's camera was not also a phone) and made my approach. I saw a widening wake in the water and....

PAT! PAT! PAT!

Nothing.

I looked around for a minute then went back to my mom on the trail and told her about the noise.

"They slap their tail on the water when there's a predator around," she said. "It's a signal to hide."

"There's a predator around?" I looked around excitedly.

"Yeah." She gave me a significant stare.

I must admit that it took me a minute to comprehend her.

This Morning

This morning, shortly after waking up, I went outside. The sky was wispy with gray clouds and I felt a cool easterly. Something about the angle of the sun, the color of the sky, and the flavor of the breeze combined to say "Autumn is finally here."

I say "finally" because I live in Florida. Every summer as the thermometer rises, I go outside in my shorts and say "This ain't so bad," determined to not let it get to me. I power on through those sluggish, moist weeks, convinced that if I can just be optimistic enough, the temperature won't matter.

But it does matter. Optimism is fine in June, but by August I am sick of the heat. I hide in my domicile, ceiling fan whirring overhead, staring out at the bleached, foreboding terrain, worried I may be called outside to do something or that the unthinkable will happen and the A/C will break down. You see, Floridians aren't afraid of hurricanes because they may hurt us. No, we're terrified of losing power for two weeks in August, a common occurrence after a bad blow. So many power lines will get knocked down, so many transformers blown up in green technicolor fury, that we must employ outsiders to fix it all. You can always tell when a big one's hit because the interstates are suddenly clogged by caravans of out-of-state electrical trucks. I don't care if they are collecting overtime; those men are saints.

This year, the weather has had the opposite effect. We've had a number of near-misses, which aside from refilling the aquifer, has also given us the boon of overcast, almost-cool days at the end of summer. And Florida is perpetually worried about drought, so it's nice to complain about flooding for a change. It's funny how hurricanes, so terrible when they strike directly, can be so beneficial when they graze you.

Looking up now, I see very little to worry about in the months ahead. The sun will ease down into the southern sky, becoming more laid back, less harsh. Most of our clouds will blow away and leave a pale blue sky, clear and clean-looking, a contemplation of the infinite.

'Cause how you get there's the worthier part

I watched the Madrid Express pull out of port the other day. I've always found freighters exciting. Any kind of ship, really. Some might not see adventure in cargo-hauling, but I sure do. Besides the fact we badly need men and ships like this, there is a sheer awesomeness to powerful machines carrying stuff around.

I love semi-trucks, too. Maybe it was from watching too much Transformers as a kid (Optimus Prime was a favorite), but I suspect my love of big rigs is a parallel to my fascination with huge merchantmen. I especially love to see trucks blasting down a dark highway when they're streamlined with lights.

Part of it, I'm sure, is the romance of  nomads going hither and yon and all that. Or it could be because I'm named for the patron saint of travelers. I've traveled a bit myself of course: lived on Oahu, been to Europe, Alaska, both coasts of America but deep down I'm a sedentary kinda guy. And we sedentary folk look to the travelers with interest...and more than a little envy.

Authors even more than regular folks. I mean, writers know that the mere notion of travel is enough to make a story interesting. People don't need to save the world or defeat monsters, they just need to go places. Smokey and the Bandit and Firefly aren't about heroes, but they sure are fun to watch.

This puts me in mind of a documentary I was watching from the BBC. The host encountered some camel drovers as they made camp for the night. These men trekked up and down war-torn Sudan through searing deserts without air-conditioning, iced frappaccinos or even a roof over their heads at night. When the TV host asked them how they put up with it, they responded with something to the effect of "Put up with what? This is the best life there is."

I suspect they know something we don't.

I'll full-circle this post and end with a quote from Lao Tzu, courtesy of Loreena McKennitt: "A good traveler has no fixed plan, and is not intent on arriving."



(Full-circle because the post heading is a quote from Firefly.) 

Things I Think About When I Can't Sleep

I've had fairies on the mind lately. I was thinking maybe I could stay up late at the next full moon and catch a few. Then I could take them home and put them in a terrarium (or, more appropriately, a feyrrarium).

I have to admit, there will be hurtles. What do pixies eat, anyway? Mushrooms probably. I already know what they drink: dewdrops and moon-wine. I hope they're teetotaling fairies, though. This is Florida. We have a lot of dew but not much lunar alcohol.

They'll probably bring clothes with them but I'll make sure to collect gossamers in case they want to make more. Will they make their own or will I be expected to tailor for them? Where can I buy a millimeter-long needle?

Exercise may be a problem. I doubt they'll use a hamster wheel. Maybe I could buy a leafblower and rig up some kind of wind-tunnel for them to fly in. Tiny earplugs will be necessary if I do that.

Frankly, I'm more of a free range guy anyway. I trained rabbits to use a litter box, so maybe I can figure something out for fairies. Will they use chamber pots or should I have to rig up plumbing for them?

The free range solution presents other problems. I was able to thwart rabbits (and small children) by putting troublesome objects up high, on shelves. Since fairies fly, where will I put items they can't have?

There's also my cats. Free range fairies would hypothetically share a house with two highly-evolved hunter-killer units. Now the Kitten (what I call her--even though she's grown up) is quick and tenacious, but she's small. They could probably give her a few shilelagh-whacks to let her know they mean business and everything will be fine. The ol' fat tom is another story. At first one might think he wouldn't be a problem, since he's blind. But if the fairies are the invisible kind, he may be the only one of us who can catch them. I mean, he's spent the last year developing his non-visual sense organs, becoming like one of those blind Kung Fu master-hermits you see in the movies, only smaller and fuzzier. He might go after the fairies just to show them that invisibility is a shit power when your pursuer is blind. He's like that, the jerk.

There are moral questions to consider as well. I'm not usually one to catch animals for domestication. I'm more of the visit-the-pound kinda guy. Plus, unlike a lot of pets, fairies look a lot like people. It'll be harder to convince myself they're undeserving of constitutional protection. I'd have to call them 'wards' instead of pets, like I was from San Francisco or something.

Finally, there's the fact I'd have six-inch hedonists in my house. Would they keep me up at night, dancing and playing little instruments? How loud are pixie instruments, anyway? I suppose I could soundproof a room for them. Or institute a curfew. And what about the delicate subject of fairy fornication? I mean, if the legends are any indicator, fairies like to copulate. A lot. They have to be, given the fact they're always trying to pawn their kids off on us. Anyway, when my offspring and I saw two grasshoppers at the park last week it was pretty easy to say "that one's getting a ride from his friend," which was technically true. But I don't think that explanation will work if the child walks in on a live-action diorama of a Roman orgy.

Well, the Con column is pretty robust so far, while the Pro column consists mainly of "They have pretty wings" and "I already have a cage" with a few slight variations.

Not every idea is a keeper, right? I'll get over it.


I do have a nice yard, though. Maybe I could lure in a troll....




*Besides the obvious influence of too much children's television, I was partially inspired by this book I read as a kid. It had advice on how to find, trap, and then domesticate supernatural critters like werewolves and vampires.

Circles or Something

"This show is a lie, son. Don't believe it. Tinkerbell is really a bitch."

I'm not usually that guy, but this was one of those rare moments I couldn't help myself.

Needless to say, my wife was not pleased.

But it was the truth, goddammit. The Tinkerbell I remember was a bitch. She pulled people's hair and colluded with the enemy. Yet now Disney started this complete whitewash  that depicts her as--gasp!--a nice fairy.

It raises a bunch of interesting questions for me. On the in-universe, ridiculous side: why doesn't Tinkerbell appear on Jake and the Neverland Pirates, especially during "The Return of Peter Pan" episode? Maybe it's because she ditched Peter Pan and, in going on her own, has turned over a new leaf and become a nice fairy. Maybe Peter Pan was making Tinkerbell mean.

Alright, no more in-universe speculation, I promise.

As a case study in changing archetypes, Tinkerbell is fascinating. In many ways, her resume at Disney has paralleled the earlier trajectory of fairies in popular folklore.

Just like the Tinkerbell in 1953's Peter Pan (and the play before it), fairies in premodern literature weren't very nice. They were, in fact, downright mean. Remember Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream? He was actually kind of scary. A character tells us that Puck "frights the maidens of the villagery" and will often "mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm."

He wasn't a pixie-dust throwing, lovable little cherub. He was a shape-shifting lunatic. The only thing that protected all of us from this pint-sized psychopath was Oberon and let's face it, the Fairy King wasn't a philanthropist either.

At some point (scholars usually say the Victorian Era) fairies were transformed from sociopathic pygmies to cuddly children with wings. Ironically enough, Tinkerbell was, despite her bad attitude, one of the "new" fairies. Her own career, meanwhile, was the process in miniature: she went from a bipolar ball of hate to this CGI'd blond who just wants to do the right thing.

Some folks in Internetland write about the change to fairies in a smug manner, as if the original scary fairies were "real" and modern people are dupes for imagining fairies could be nice. It's that same sort of smugness people use when they complain about "sparkly vampires."

But art doesn't exist separate from its audience. There is an undeniable sort of Heisenberg relationship between consumer preference and artistic creation. If readers enjoy the new archetype, at what point do we acknowledge it has changed? Let's be frank: I don't really like my vampires to be reflective. But if every new book adopts that trope, if the bulk of readers decide they want to be able to find vampires in the dark with a strong flashlight, who's to say they're wrong?

The new Tinkerbell movies are up to number four, so someone's buying them. There are four nice movies about Tinkerbell and a mean one. At what point does the nice Tinkerbell become the real one? Does the Mean Tinkerbell character get extra consideration because she's older or does the 4-1 ratio matter?

Of course, there's other Tinkerbells out there. Disney is only one permutation of the Peter Pan story. But the point remains: archetypes change, same as everything else. We can't expect ideas to be stagnant any more than we can expect mountains to resist erosion.

For those who dislike this simple reality, look at this way: when the archetype goes in a direction you don't like, now you have the chance to be unique. When all vampires are disco-balls, you have the chance to introduce scary ass opaque leeches and shake things up.

But then, of course, Team Glitter will have the right to complain when the bloodsuckers go dark again. And the cycle will repeat.

Anyway...I am, to an extent, a fan of the post-Victorian pretty fairies with insect wings and a sweet disposition. But deep down, I like the scary ones too. So rather than choose my poison, I figure I'll dodge the cycle and just use them both when I get the chance.

I'll let you know when that time comes and you, in turn, can let me know if it works.

Graffito

It's singular for graffiti, in case you didn't know. Graffiti is an interesting topic. I am annoyed by graffiti, except the odd case where it's art, and yet I love to read ancient graffiti because it crystallizes how the common folks felt when the sources otherwise leave them mute.

Maybe I dislike graffiti now since people don't have to spray paint signs to get their point across, they can instead find a computer and use this fancy new invention called the internet.

Or maybe I'm just a hypocrite.

Anyway, I was at a hospital much of this week (hence the late post) and, given the amount of coffee I imbibed, the restroom was a frequent scene for me. This hospital had peculiar locks. They swung the opposite direction of how locks usually swing. I couldn't tell you now what direction locks should swing because it's such an intuitive thing that you never think about it until faced with an oddball lock. Now I know I wasn't the only one who noticed this problem because the first bathroom I used (2nd floor surgical prep) had a black marker notation (including a helpful arrow) scrawled on the wood around the lock. I chuckled and felt vindicated that someone else noticed this irritating reversal of the norm. Later, I was visiting someone in a recovery room (3rd floor) and THAT restroom also had helpful graffiti on the door. This notation, however, was in a different hand and a different color marker. Apparently there's no shortage of markers in hospitals, so administrators should get their locks right if they don't want helpful graffiti all over their bathroom doors.

All of this puts me in mind of college. I stopped once to use the bathroom in Engineering and was pleasantly surprised to find equations and a Tolkien quote scrawled inside the stall, showing that although engineering students had different taste, they were no more mindful of college property.

My favorite college incident, however, was to be found on the 2nd floor of the UCF library. Some joker decided to attack fraternities with his pen, instigating a graffiti-war between Greeks and non-Greeks (seriously, we should call the latter 'Trojans').

I've never quite understood the need to divide and subdivide into tribes and clans, but I read with fascination as these two groups rattled their spears at each other with vulgarity and witticism. The conversation was so delicious that I went to the next stall and read it's interior as well. The vicious battle had, to my delight, spilled over into this stall as well, though there was a significant neutral addition: a helpful chart someone created giving people the opportunity to rate their bathroom experience. Later writers added categories to the chart when they felt their particular type of bowel movement wasn't represented.

I guess some contemporary graffiti has delighted me as much as ancient, so it's fair to say that I'm not as anti-graffiti as I thought. Graffiti tends to be either troublesome and distracting or interesting and witty, in other words, it's art.

Would truly accurate cosplay include the scent?

I've been rereading Dune. I do that every few years, usually when I feel like there's something about Dune I might have forgotten. I realize there are people out there who haven't memorized Frank Herbert's masterpiece, including some who haven't even read it.

All I can say is: I don't understand those people. Like, at all.

The last time I read it a couple years back, it was just after hearing that Star Wars was a rip off of Dune. At first, I kind of agreed with that statement, but after exhaustive conversation with various Star Wars fanatics, I moderated my opinion and decided that Dune was just very influential.

This led to an interesting exchange while I was arguing with one of my brothers (a favorite pastime, if frequency were any indicator).

"How come nobody ever dresses up like Dune characters at conventions?" I asked. "I always see Jedi and Halo characters, even the most obscure anime, but never Mentats or Fremen."

As always, my brother had the answer: "Yeah, I can see it now: 'That lightsaber is nothing, man. Check this out: I can drink recycled pee.' "*





*As always, a simple Google search turned up websites discussing the precise scenario I was talking about.

Another Trip to the Metaphysical Zoo (Mature Version)

So I get up this morning, go onto the internet and brace myself for the usual flood of partisan vitriol and sniping. Imagine my surprise when I find the discussion topic of the day (at least for some people) is whether or not a prisoner in California should be allowed to read werewolf porn.

The article--and people I know--express surprise that some folks are interested in werewolf porn. Um, I mean erotica. Werewolf erotica.


What's interesting to me is that people seemed surprised by the book itself, not the actual legal controversy.

To put it simply: Human beings are strange. We're also creative. And we bore easily. Those three things make for a beautiful, confusing, and at times terrible, world.

Fantasizing (especially sexual fantasizing) is largely about visiting places you won't go in real life. This isn't new this decade; it isn't even new this century. Most anime fans love to giggle about tentacle porn (really--it's a thing). Well I've got news: it's been around a lot longer than La Blue Girl, my friends. Don't believe me? Check out this article on Wikipedia (be warned: it may be 19th century art but it's also pretty graphic).

The whole werewolf-on-human action discussed in the California case is just a modern permutation of a very old fantasy. In Brazil, they have long told stories of weredolphins that come ashore to crash human parties and get laid.

Brazil isn't alone in the horny-aquatic-mammal genre, either. Ever heard of a Selkie? They're seals in Scottish folklore that take off their skins to resemble humans so they can have babies with us. Tragically, the stories all seem to end with the Selkie getting blasted by hunters (making me wonder if the myth represents some kind of cultural guilt over killing such an adorable animal).

No foray into weird supernatural sex would be complete without mentioning Greek mythology because, as Freud noticed, those guys had a story for every kink imaginable. Did you know where the minotaur came from? And then there's the original power-goes-bad CEO himself, Zeus. In an era before Rohypnol, shapeshifting was the next best thing. Just off the top of my head, I can remember Zeus becoming a bull, a swan, even a ray of sunshine. It's almost as if half the Greek myths were actually written by a sleazy private detective hired by Hera as he gathered dirt on the celestial rapist for a pending divorce case.

I think I just got a book idea...


*And somehow I didn't get to Furries, which I know isn't necessarily a sexual thing but always seems to come up in these conversations anyway.

Misty Marsh Hop

So we were lost. Not the scared-out-of-your-mind, panicky lost but that kind of lost you get when you veer off the path in a familiar area.

My buddy Angel* and I had decided one afternoon to drive into Seminole County and kick around near Geneva. For those that don't know, Geneva is a wooded area broken only by horse ranch and pastureland, where the Econlackhatchee snakes drunkenly through thick palmettos and brooding cypress. When the rains come it can be hopelessly mired and flooded. When the sky's been clear for a while, though, it makes for nice hiking.


The trail we used didn't have a lot of amenities. You might say it had none, unless you count a parking lot as an amenity. Anyway, it wasn't long before we were thirsty. As was often the case, we didn't plan very well. Neither of us had brought water.

We trudged through the scrublands, encountering filmy pools and sluggish tributaries of the Econ. We were so thirsty that even that water started to look good, which, if you've ever seen the Econ, will tell you how incredibly thirsty we were.

The Econlockhatchee River isn't spring fed. It is a river of runoff, a stretch of water so steeped in cypress knees and pine needles that it has turned a black or brown color, almost like tea. And I won't mention the things I've seen floating down it, in case you've eaten recently.

So we were semi-lost and very thirsty, off the trail and beginning to feel that our afternoon was a waste. We trudged in the general direction of the car and wished it were over.

Then something happened. We broke out of the woodlands and crossed a pasture. As we paused to rip the stickers from our socks, a dog came bounding out of the grass. It was a pitbull mix, a friendly guy with a short white-brown coat and a perpetual smile.

Angel liked dogs but wasn't very confident around them. I was used to large dogs but had that uneasiness around pitbulls that many people have. This dog, however, was quite friendly and within minutes we realized he wasn't a threat.

Shortly after we met the dog, two people emerged from the treeline. The dog ran to them happily and then back to us. The pair followed their dog over and fell into step beside us.

"Hi," they said. "Do want some oranges?"

It was a guy and a girl about our age (early college). The guy had his shirt slung over his shoulder, displaying a lank, pale torso. He had wild black hair and a scraggly beard. The girl, meanwhile, was an attractive brunette wearing a long, beautiful skirt that she bunched apron-like before her to carry the citrus.

"Absolutely!" we said, taking the fruit.

Without any introduction or explanation, they told us about their walk, how they found this dog wandering around and an abandoned grove where the fruit was just falling off the trees uneaten. So the girl filled her skirt with citrus and they ambled along, glad to find someone to share it with.

As it happened, the pair normally came to this area for the drum circle. It was early for a circle, though, so they'd decided to wander a bit. Angel and I were familiar with the drum circle--a couple of our friends were into that stuff--so we chatted with them about music and how great the park was. They talked a lot about the "energy" of the drum circle, of the naked power that comes from beating dry animal skins beneath a full moon.


More than a decade later, I stand in my kitchen and I bite into a California orange and I'm sad because Florida citrus is vanishing fast. A California orange is good. And it's clean: you can eat it with your fingers and hardly get a drop on you.

But the Florida orange is a glorious mess, a fragrant water balloon which explodes when you open it. That decade ago in Geneva, I was covered in juice. My fingers were sticky, my chin glistened with it. But I wasn't uncomfortable, in part because I was so damn thirsty. But also because it was hard to be self-conscious with these amiable strangers, with this smiling shirtless guy and this absolutely beautiful girl in a long skirt. They didn't care how we looked, all that mattered was that they got to share the fruit they found.



It was without a doubt the best orange I have ever eaten.





*A pseudonym. As you will one day see, not all of my "Angel" stories will be flattering.

Things You Don't Hear

Living near a busy street can be odd. You get used to the drone of cars. When that drone isn't there, it's absence is palpable, as if the world is holding its breath.

You go out onto your porch and see the cars aren't there. If your neighbors aren't around, the situation starts to get even weirder.

"Where are the cars?" you ask. "This isn't Sunday morning. This is Friday afternoon. There should be cars."

No cars come and the dark voice in your head starts whispering.

This is it. The zombie apocalypse has arrived.

Still no cars come.

Just as you begin straining your ears to hear the pitter-patter of a barefoot madman, the neighbors come out and start grilling. Friendly chatter wafts over the fence with the smoke and you spot the shine of chrome on the street again.

You realize that the apocalypse isn't coming today.


Maybe with a little regret.

Johnny Rode Shotgun

I had to do a bit of driving this weekend, some it through areas with less-than-ideal radio stations to listen to. I won't call out any counties by name--I'm sure they're lovely places off the interstate--but let's just say the sermons were heavier than the metal.

This time, though, I came prepared. With a CD. A Johnny Cash CD. I grew up hearing 'Ring of Fire.' And my older brother made me sit through a few of his ballads, like a 'Boy Named Sue' (which, if you didn't know, was written by Shel Silverstein). I liked everything I'd from him so far and it was time to expand my musical repertoire a little.

Turns out, Johnny Cash is great road trip material. As I drove alone down that dark highway, the trip came alive with ballads about miners, auto workers, murderers and yes, unfortunate men named Sue. It was less like listening to a CD and more like getting tall tales from a friendly passenger trying hard to keep me from falling asleep.

It worked. It's easy to stay awake when you're laughing or cringing or wondering what on Earth is going to happen next. That's the beauty of a good ballad--it's more than just a catchy tune, it tells a story. And as you can imagine, I love stories.

The only problem now, of course, is that I know all the endings. I guess I may just have to go out and find other albums I haven't heard yet...

Perchance to Dream

~Another True Dialogue~

Enter ME and THREE YEAR OLD. We look up at the morning sky.

3 YR OLD: Look! The moon!

ME: Yes. Isn't it pretty?

3 YR OLD: Yeaaaah! We went there last night.

ME: You did? What was it like?

3 YR OLD: Blue.

A Sentimental Journey, Part II

When last we left our hero, he'd succumbed to the siren's call of Madison Avenue, finding himself obsessed with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Rather than wait for the Michael Bay movie, though, he decided to plunge into the past and look at where this franchise started...

The Palladium role playing game was good. Despite the fact I had no intention of playing it, the book was fun to read and had neat illustrations (no surprise, since Laird and Eastman did most of them).

But I wanted more. This was an early version of the Turtles, a version that wasn't sanitized for young eyes. But it still wasn't the original vision.

While I was probing the internet for a copy of the RPG (out of print, so I had to get it used), I stumbled on Volume I of the comic. Apparently, they'd put all the original run into a hardcover. Rather than hunt down individual out of print comics, I could just grab this.

I hesitated. It was thirty bucks. I hadn't purchased a comic in twelve years, not since my brief fling with Moon Knight. (Well, except for Serenity. As a dedicated browncoat, I bought those comics to try and assuage the pain of its untimely demise.)

Suffice to say I'm not a hardcore comic book guy. It's not that I have anything against them--I think they're a perfectly legitimate form of expression. But the problem is that their cost-to-entertainment is a bit high. I'd buy a Serenity comic for over ten bucks and then burn through it in twenty minutes. Novels, by contrast, cost slightly less and entertain me for days.

I realize I should've stopped with each page and taken in the beauty, read those comics with Zen-like attention. But I'm impatient, like an old time photographer, I stand breathless over the chemical bath, waiting for the plot to develop before my eyes. I want to know what the character is going to say next. I want it now, now now. I am the guy who spent an entire Christmas with my nose stuck in a book. Because I just had to read Eyes of the Dragon in a single day.

Enough about my hang-ups. Long story short: I bought it.

It came promptly, though I didn't even order express delivery (it's unpopular to say so, but the United States Postal Service kicks ass, doesn't it?). When I opened the parcel something magical happened. The past wafted out of the package and blew me back through the corridors of time, to the game stores where I frittered away my youth.

The hardcover edition positively reeked of glue and ink and wood pulp. It smelled like more than just a comic book--it smelled like those luxurious RPG books I'd devoured as a child. It smelled like afternoons spent ambling through strange stores with even stranger books on their shelves.

After that little introduction, I could not help but love this book.

And it didn't let me down. The straight forward black and white art is perfect. It's gritty and imaginative and makes me feel less guilty about reading quickly. I was told there were some major differences between the cartoon and the comics but they weren't as big as I expected. The comic is definitely more violent. But the comic book Turtles aren't psychopaths--they still capture muggers alive. The hacking and dismembering is reserved for life-and-death struggles with their assassin-enemies, the Foot.

The most interesting difference, I thought, was in April O'Neil. In the cartoon I saw she's a journalist. In the comic she's a computer technician, which explains a lot. Really, why would a television reporter wear coveralls?

Overall, the main characters are actually pretty similar. I may get pilloried for saying that, but I can see what I liked about the show paralleled in the comics. That said, I haven't seen any of the later TV shows and, for that matter, have only a spotty memory of the 1987 series.

Splinter, by the way, is absolutely awesome in the comics. He's got a good sense of humor and is drawn in an almost creepy way, which I appreciate, since he's an enormous rat that skulks in a sewer. I've always had a fondness for Splinter. I remember his toy quite vividly: he was bent over and had a cane-sword. That little surprise was magical--I honestly thought the TMNT creators had invented it.

I have a favorite Turtle but truthfully, Splinter is my favorite character in the series. That insight was interesting when combined with my reaction to Star Wars: Yoda was my favorite character in that franchise. I've even been known to argue about who Yoda could beat in a fight, which was a lot easier before those new movies came out and settled the question (without my input, I might add).

If I'm allowed a bit of groundless psychoanalytic narcissism, I'd say that even as a child I was drawn to the mentor archetypes, that I've been interested in teaching and learning from the get-go. One time when I was at a college campus with my mother she told me that out of all her children, she knew I'd end up there.

So the next time I teach Freshman World Civ, I'll know I'm channeling my inner Splinter.

A Sentimental Journey, Part I

First I have to say: sorry about the missed posts. A cold laid me low, which was upsetting because I thought I'd already filled my quota of sick days earlier this year.


Without giving away enough information to make me blush, I'll say that I not only lived through the Eighties but have conscious memories of that period. With that in mind, you can probably guess which stories and toys shaped my young mind.


Everybody talks about Star Wars. No denying those movies and toys were a major impact. Everybody talks about their Star Wars toys. There's another franchise, though, that we hardly talked about. Until now, that is.

Maybe I should start at the beginning.

My kid got a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle in a Happy Meal last month. It was Leonardo, only with wooden swords instead of metal ones. At first I was mad at this desecration. Leonardo, after all, was my favorite. After a bit of thought, though, I figured this was a good thing. With wooden swords maybe he'd be able to actually use his swords against something other than a robot. Maybe the writers wouldn't be as shy about him thwacking somebody if it wouldn't cause dismemberment. Musashi used a wooden sword, right? Anything Musashi did is by default awesome, so this time I will not play the curmudgeon.

The toy itself seemed innocuous. Father and son now shared a story (sort of). Everything was fine.

Only it wasn't. That little piece of plastic was actually a harbinger, a green idol sent by the capitalist cabal into my home in order to shape my dreams.

I started thinking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. A lot. I joined a crowd of internet zombies, shuffling and stumbling towards the latest manufactured bit of zeitgeist.

I noticed art on Facebook. A friend posted a link to an awesome tribute website. It might have been eerie, these synchronicities, but I knew better. A movie was coming. The promotional wizards were hard at work, weaving digital incantations atop their glass towers, binding our collective will to the latest moneymaker.

Sometimes, you fight the wizards. They can lead you astray. Remember Jurassic Park? The promotion sorcerers, like drug dealers, just want your money. They don't care if you're satisfied afterwards. They don't care if the product leaves you wanting.

Well, this time I had a way to give in without seeing a Michael Bay movie. This time I could act on the compulsion in my own way, without going to the cinema. (Of course, my willpower really didn't matter anyway. I don't have anyone to watch the kids, so movies are out...)

I remembered that the Ninja Turtles were the product of a comic book, not just the cartoon. So I scoured the internet and found that intersection between my childhood interests and my adult interests--an RPG about the TMNT.

It was put out by Palladium. I have a lot of friends who like Palladium, so I don't want to diss it. But the system never really hooked me. There are aspects I like but whenever I imagined using it I realized that I would have more fun using my old standby.

It was a simple production, slim and battered, with the grainy black and white illustrations that were so common in the early days of role playing. Truth is, I miss them. All the game books today compete with video games and free digital content, so they have glossy pages full of color.

Color illustrations have always been problematic for me. Executed correctly, they are beautiful. But fall short and they look tacky. In my opinion, the last decade of gaming has produced more tacky than beauty.

There was a simplicity to the early RPG art. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles exemplified this. Given the vaguely goofy subject matter, the stark black and whites gave it a bit of class. This is a story, after all, about bipedal turtles using martial arts. One of the villain-groups in the book are psychotic teddy bears with telepathic powers. If they'd been rendered in color, I probably would've laughed at them. But draw them darkly, without color, and they are the stuff of nightmares.

The psychotic teddies were also a playful reminder of the Eighties zeitgeist. In case you were wondering, their name was the Terror Bears. I'll let you make the connection.

As I flipped through the Turtles role playing game, I saw grisly battle scenes, horrific mutants, and, of course, insane scientists. I was reminded strongly of another franchise I loved: Werewolf: The Apocalypse. The TMNT had to have an impact on this game, both in style and content. Even if TMNT wasn't a direct ancestor of Werewolf, at the very least it primed kids like me to play the game. Like TMNT, the original Werewolf had anthropomorphic animals, evil scientists, giant robots, monstrous freaks...a hodgepodge of different genres and stories set in a gritty urban dystopia.

But the potent incantations of the promotional sorcerers cannot be bought off so easily. A battered old copy of a twenty-year old RPG wouldn't dispel them. Besides, this wasn't the original TMNT. It was fun to see how different the RPG was from the cartoons, but it still wasn't the original. This was Palladium's interpretation.

Like Livingstone, I had to find the source of it all.

So I set off to the internet again, card in hand, searching, ever-searching...

(To be continued...)

A Scene

[A dark bedroom. 3am. Enter THE CAT].

HUMAN: What? What's going on? Is the house on fire? Why are you on my chest?
CAT: Remember that affection you tried to give me yesterday when I pretended to be asleep?
HUMAN: You were pretending?
CAT: I'll take it now.
HUMAN: What?
CAT: The affection. I'll take all of it. Right now. With interest.
HUMAN: But--
CAT: Tomorrow's too, if you don't mind.

Not all is Shadow, Plato.

What a paradoxical culture we have. We pride ourselves on a consumer engine where you can buy almost anything you need or want. And yet we go through this ritual every year where we try to buy each other stuff when we could just go out and get it for ourselves.

Strange, isn't it?

There are still a few items that you can't pick up  at Wal-Mart, though. They're rare and wonderful and infinitely more special than the latest machine with i in front of it.

The first of these treasures came to me earlier this month and was unrelated to Christmas. Many of my northern relatives are accomplished deer-slayers and love to share their bounty every fall. This year it was venison summer sausage, shot by an uncle and packaged by a professional butcher (though "meat-artist" might be a more appropriate title for the man who created this). Pardon the expression, but it blew away the store-bought stuff.

The second treasure was not quite as exotic but was tasty nonetheless: homemade date bread. I loved it so much that I was sent home with a loaf.

I suppose there is some kind of deep truth here, a connection between me, the deer, and the people who fixed the food for me, a beautiful universal axiom about life and death and love, but I'll leave it unwritten because the deepest truths are beyond the reach of words, like trying to describe the taste of homemade date bread.

Your First Serving of Word-Mousse

Have you seen Lindsey Stirling? If you answered in the negative, you should. Now.

Or maybe you shouldn’t. I have a strong suspicion she’s not human. She’s probably some kind of changling-pixie that slipped over to our world so we foolish mortals could amuse her. Don’t believe me? Look at her in elf ears.

Case closed.

For those of you who aren’t familiar, she dances around exotic places on YouTube while sawing away on a violin. She works out harder playing music than I do when I’m actually working out.

There’s something wonderful about fiddling and dancing. I felt the same way when I first saw Vanessa Mae. You’d think I’d be inured by now. But I’m not. It’s bizarre because when pop divas dance around, it irritates me. I guess that’s because anyone can run around and yell something—toddlers do it all the time. But run around and play a violin? That takes skill. The only way Stirling could top herself is if she juggled citrus with her feet while playing “Flight of the Bumblebee.” (For those of you that didn’t know, “Flight of the Bumblebee” is capital H, capital C, Hard Core.)

Her violin does more than just impress musically, though. It somehow makes the videos more sensuous. When I watch them I feel like I should keep one eye on the door and my mouse-icon over the Close Window option. Her movies are one of the most sensuous things on the internet, in spite of or perhaps because she keeps her clothes on.

Yes, we’re talking about the same internet.

I know a tiny bit about instruments. I give my saxophone mouth-to-mouth from time to time and I’m even able, on occasion, to revive it. I've always felt there’s something intimate about them. It’s easy to forget this with concert music, but it’s glaringly obvious when you see the blues. Those guys aren’t just sweating because of the stage-lights, my friend.

The reason I said you probably shouldn’t see her is because these fairy-musician incidents never end well. We mortals inevitably come out looking like idiots. I keep expecting to wake up one morning and discover that the pixie-fiddler has absconded with our nation’s children—all forty million of them—à la the Pied Piper. Let’s be honest: if that woman played the Come Hither, could you say no?

I sure as hell wouldn’t. I mean couldn’t. I meant to say couldn’t.

It’s the pixie-glamour talking, I swear.

Jesus, I hope my wife doesn’t read this one.

Next Week: I may go back to musings on dark stuff, which seems to happen anyway. I realize now that my "pixie-child-abduction-conspiracy" piece may not be so light after all.