The Diamond Island

Every now and then, you have to mount a major expedition against the destructoids of your life and raid them back. I get pretty worn out dodging the null-skull bursts and sphincter-clencher teeth-chatterers all the time. The time comes when you pack your ship full of biscuit barrels and set them to ka-pow!

So K and I, along with the folks, pile into the Ready-cart and load up with all the refusoids we can carry on our laps. This is a mission of utmost craziness to the maxx, and we are going to show those cling-on mutants we mean business. The old man has been accumulating some navigation readings for possible doom plunder, and they all sound good. Dunderheads are go!

I won’t go into detail as to what everyone acquired on this mission of mystery, but suffice it to say we all came up videos, very nearly for free. Alas, retroactive cling-on damages have a way of sneaking up on you even when all guns are blazing on the Judas Priest interocitor.

Doom plunder 4: The nefarious commie co-op disguised as yuppie food store

Located unknown draft cider samples from ancient crate, probably from dromon time travelers. Powerup was minimal, but my science officer was happy to have a new species to identify and enter into the gene banks. The major find was a cache of long buried raw honey from the olden days, sealed with a rough cap of pollen and other castings. Combined with the no tea that has become tea, healing was +1!

However, the cling-ons spotted us immediately and fired away with total dumbty-doofus cloggery. We made the jump to hypersteak, but a cooling bottle came loose and began to leak on my trough.

Doom plunder 3: Unsettling educational toy depot pretending to be chain toy store

Major sticker stasher find. Located and beamed aboard spaceship and construction equipment stickers sufficient to fill gaps in collection. Bonus round included googly-eyed dinosaurs and wizardly paraphernalia stickers to boot. Bonus-bonus round when I locate enough Xmas stickers to fortify my Xmas sticker arsenal. I’ll be ready for the holiday season all the way to the crypt! I put these finds into my shoebox collection of sticker goodies for use in the future. My artistic crafty side has been bumped up +1.

Something doesn’t feel right, but sensors are unable to clarify, and the group fails its Perception check. We warp out of the sector, further confusing the cling-ons, and they give up. They’ll just have to trust to the ambient stupidity of the drones to flush us out.

Doom plunder 2: Mature nerd store masquerading as one of those dumb comic shops

Old pal of my pa regales us with tales of what’s been up lately. I take advantage of the noticeably higher selection than normal of educational resources with half a brain stem or more. Crumbs, have I really been going to this out of the way locale for twenty years for sequential art infusions? I decide to pass up Book 3 of Omaha the Cat Dancer (I’m leery of the last volume’s revelations about Omaha’s boyfriend and where that might lead), and instead tractor alongside my hull some Polly and the Pirates by Ted Naifeh (he did Courtney Crumrin, which I thought was bloody excellent, so it’s a reasonable risk to take), and the complete Persepolis, which has been getting some buzz in the comics tendril farm. My graphic novel study gets a free roll at +1!

I notice the cooling bottle is leaking, as that’s why my trough feels damp. The mess is cleaned up and put away, and normal functioning resumes.

Doom Plunder 1: Advanced pizza technology factory overlooked in an alleyway

Time to fuel up and get some grub for the stomach people. Vace is one of those things you put on the friendly star system list and never lose touch. Mmm-mmm. Thing is, they keep changing location to reconfigure their shields and cloaking device, so they never get assimilated by the Dork. Healing is +1 to the maximum overdrive way up in your soul. It’s heartening to know there are people out there who make food and that’s all. I support them with my ducats!

I keep getting the feeling people are looking at me funny.

Doom plunder 0: Estate sale in the nice part of town with opening for commoners in the floorplans.

A nice dwelling, in the old school upper cruster sensibility, including eccentric use of hallways and space. Wonderful foliage for relaxing view after a hard days work of ripping people off. Mostly poor taste in furnishings and wares.  Sheesh, all the capital must have gone into the coordinates. But I locate a die cast metal car circa 1940 and get it for a song. The toy altar can always use more fetishes, so who knows? +1 something for sure.  But I’m getting the feeling our raid is at an end. We plot for home.

The group finally make their Perception check, and begin to laugh at me. They point out that my shorts look like I went to the bathroom in them, and not in a good way. That coolant bottle was listed as “green tea with honey”, but it turns out it was more like “artificial dye mixed with plastic globule sugar substitute.” My pants have been dyed a nice light tea brown in the seat, which explains all the looks I was getting.

I may have gotten the loot and dodged the cling-ons, but the joke is still on my backside!

I’ve got a dream for a clue, a hall pass that’s feeling close to the due date, and a whole lot of personal drama driving me crazy. Ordinary life and its chores are hard enough without battle cruisers patrolling the streets for human heads.

Spontaneously, I get out some of my illustration materials and tools. I continue work on one of my personal enrichment projects. I have four blank certificates of accomplishment on ditto paper from the fourth grade that I’ve been copying and adapting onto poster board. So far I’ve only done the first one.

I like giving artistic creations to people, where time and energy allow. These modified certificates are something different and neat I can give people to pump them up. It’s nice to get a bonus round every now and then.

In no time at all, I’ve got my second certificate done, and I’m satisfied to have a new goodie at my disposal. I wonder where the motivation to do this came from, since I haven’t been at full power for a few months now. I imagine it must have come as a token of kindness, as after all that’s what it’s supposed to be used for. What might I have done that was noteworthy, I wonder?

I recall my dream, and how I saved Important Woman from the snipers. Maybe the motivation comes from her as a form of recognition. Perhaps that’s where a lot of artistic inspiration comes from. It’s granted us through our dreams, and the figures of our dreams are the messengers. Sometimes we remember the dream where that inspiration springs, and sometimes we don’t. I think this sort of thing must be going on all the time, asleep or not.

K makes me a nice, delicious, hot cup of tea from her special recipe. She can tell I need a boost. A rooibus peach/blueberry bliss combo with fresh crushed blackberries and a big spoonful of honey in the raw (that unprocessed stuff with the pollen on top). It must work, because not only do I recover health points, but I have a Mr. Spock moment.

If I assume this inner dialogue is always going on, then I have to admit I’m not always participating overtly and that it’s not always about me. Things could be going on that are moving this search forward that I’m not aware of, and perhaps all I need to do is wait for my turn to do something. That, to me, seems to be the crux of the matter – the need for patience and for the various other storylines to catch up – whatever they may be. My brain is a secondary organ after all!

Nobody wants to discover they are a supporting character. Such an admission wounds one’s pride. I’ve put out the message, and I’m just being egotistic in thinking there’s more to it than that.

Suddenly, a light bulb in the chandelier above burns out with a flash and a snap. I take that as an agreement.

Every ghost has a secret wish they need fulfilled in order to be laid to rest. And I think every one of us is followed by ghosts that need laying to rest. The quest is always to uncover the secret and satisfy the need in a meaningful way.

Oh yeah, did I mention I’m living in a haunted house? I know ghosts got to have their own living quarters while they poke and moulder about. But sheesh, I never get used to the chill blasts of air while I’m looking through my still-packed boxes for that wildebeast map I thought I knew the location of.

I notice the apparitions grow calm and content as I come across my “naughty bits” coloring book. Lands sakes, the things I collected when I was living on the west coast. But since I’m listening to the dialogue of this spooky, terrifying haunted house experience, I’m not putting it up to coincidence. Zoinks, Scoob, we have a clue.

I start to imagine that what the UFOs, Bigfoot, and the Amityville Horror really want are hot babes. Mars needs women. Bigfoot needs a heroine to carry off like in Donkey Kong. The Amityville Horror needs some love backstory to make the drama more urgent. Crumbs, is this really what it all comes down to, the unknown forces of doom want me to be their dating service?

Oh, for crying out loud.

I have to remind myself of both the seriousness and the humor in this situation. What would Gomez Addams be without Morticia? What would the monster be without their victim? The monster has always been a symbol of lustful desire embodied in a form and a story we can relate to. Love is both a blessing and a torment, a uniting force and a destructive one – what is Romeo and Juliet but the story of two enemies falling for one another? The divine force of love overrides all human requirements and tosses aside whatever towers of Babel we have built for ourselves.

Being the living being in this arrangement, of course it falls to me for the physical accommodation of this dialogue. I have to hire the musicians who will play the Monster Mash, and I have to set up the monsters with their willing victims or lost love compatriots. While I might be the living facilitator, I’m going to need a host for this haunted house party.

That’s where I have to own up to my terror and explore what lies beyond that. The source of the psychic disturbance which apparently needs me to lay something to rest, by getting it a date.

Out of nowhere, I remember my first crush. A native American dancer who stunned me with her looks and her moves. I’ve never forgotten her, and it appears that neither has the unknown. For some reason, I think of a Count Dracula like figure, watching events unfold from his musty castle. While I may have seen this dancer from my perspective, so too might have the vampire. I put this thought away for now.  It’s time to change the cat box.

I firmly believe that even a creature of unrepentant evil is fair game for Cupid’s bow, at least in principle. In reality, what do I know? I don’t make monkeys, I just train them. Who knows the depths of darkness in the breast of a heart of stone that has been overridden by providence?

Time to go into the basement, and find out what’s really there in the seemingly empty “mysterious room”.

Okay, so I’ve been digested and electrocuted. Now what? Time to get slimed, that’s what! This creative exercise isn’t through yet. Moving on from The Green Slime, the next thing that came to the front of my ape’s brain was an old board game I used to have. In terms of timelines, it does seem like I’m moving forward. I saw Beware! The Blob first, then I was exposed to The Green Slime. Now comes the moment when I had the Slime Monster boardgame!

This is getting into the late seventies. Around that time you could buy these small plastic trashcans of greenish slime. There was also a purple slime version with plastic worms inside of it. Don’t ask me what you were supposed go do with the stuff. If it got on the carpet it was very hard to get out. It tended to dry out over time and lose its “slimeness”. If you didn’t get it out of the carpet before it dried up, it turned into something resembling cement. And the slime always smelled gross.

Along comes this game complete with four plastic victims looking up and screaming in agony, four land mines with counter lever action, a spinner for movement, and best of all a plastic slime monster with tub of slime. The monster came in four pieces. There were the two legs, a body cavity with two drool funnels, and a top with the creature’s tiny forelegs and yellowy eyes. The creature was, of course, quite green.

The object of the game was to get from one part of the board to the armory at the end without getting “slimed”. At the start of the game you plopped the slime from the tub into the body cavity part of the monster and put the “top” on. The slime slowly began to ooze out the fangs and onto the game board. The monster moved around randomly, leaving a growing trail of goop. I’m not sure what happened to your game piece if it found itself under the slime monster by some twist of ill luck, but I’m sure it wasn’t good.

If you reached the armory, you would get a mine and start moving it around in anticipation of where the monster would move next. The monster’s feet were curled, with a space under them for the mine to be slid under. If it landed on a space that was mined, you slammed your fist down on the lever and ker-splat! The monster would flip over and fall apart, spewing slime everywhere. Hooray, the slime monster is defeated! Talk about an incentive to be first to blast the slime monster to kingdom come. Oh, yeah, usually this meant slime got on the carpet.

What might this have to do with the current round of psychological inquiry? This time we have the entire process put down to a friendly boardgame, rather than a cinematic re-enactment. The point, as before, is to survive long enough to reach the “solution”, or the “goal”, whereupon one receives the ability to deal with the “monster”. In this case, the “monster” has evolved from a formless jelly, to a charged physical entity, and now to a toy that incorporates both solid and semi-liquid characteristics. The monster’s hostility has been overcome and assimilated into a simple, but instructive play device for children.

Or is it perhaps that the game embodies a ritual experience of the actual re-enactments? The risk is that the carpet will be stained (or a mess made), so the actual “danger” of the original experience is still present to a degree. Unlike the stalemate of the movies, this suggests an actual beginning (slime monster comes to town) and an end (slime monster goes ker-blooey). Is this what the manifestation of the unconscious, this ultra feminine force ultimately wanted to arrive at? A figure in a kid’s game? The blob, the green slime, the slime monster, they just wanted to play and have fun (and devour, electrocute and stain the carpet) since they were in the neighborhood?

Don’t get caught by the yucky scary monster until someone turns the tables. Good real life survival advice. And learning to play with the unconscious and understand its contents is also good real life mental health advice. But the deeper message, I think, is that these movies and the boardgame not only reveal a process and a lesson, they also speak of the fear people have of female power. There’s a need to throw up taboos and superstitions in order to protect one’s identity from the invasion of this powerful force. A lot of the activity by the protagonists consists of running away, putting up barriers, and searching for ways to contain the threat. But the contamination of cooties is never defeated for long, just until the next outbreak. The next eruption into consciousness finds the problem needing to be dealt with again and again.

A certain amount of active participation is needed to move forward (even if the activity is still primarily reactionary and hostile), or else everyone would be gobbled up into unconsciousness. A relationship of any kind requires an interaction of back and forth to arrive at a conclusion of any consequence. The solution in this case seems clear to me. Female power wants to play and have fun! Okay, so that complicates things and makes for unpredictability. It’s a real problem though. A lot of the world is still stuck in the Blob mentality.

Where are you on the scale? Do you have a boardgame for your encounter with female power yet? Me, I’m going to need a break from all this playtime. Running away from the yucky scary monster until I can turn the tables is exhausting work, even for a dedicated weirdo like me. As the credits start to roll, I wonder what might be the next stage of development in this imagination.

The end?

Being an artistic sort of fellow, I find great pleasure in discovering my inner adaptations of creativity. One tool I am most pleased to have discovered is the sticker. Part of me enjoys combining them in unusual ways to create interesting scenes. Very often I use stickers in my cards for occasions of various sorts, to kick my message up a notch.

I don’t go into rub-on transfers, even though they are superior in appearance to stickers. I’m not much of a fan of the “raised” stickers that seem to have come forth in recent years. Puffy stickers can be good, and interesting textures can make a sticker extra special. But the stickers that amount to paper constructions of animals or accessories with an adhesive backing don’t do it for me.

I’ve been serious about my acquisition of stickers since 1993. That’s when I was playing a lot with stamps, markers and stickers to enhance my letters to friends. I started going into craft stores and picking up stickers that helped me express my metaphysical explorations. Pretty soon I found myself keeping a regular eye out for interesting stickers and they started to arrive. While I wouldn’t consider myself possessed of a rare collection in the least, I like to think I have a wide variety of common stickers that serve my purposes.

The memory-album phenomenon, where you create a photo album and trick it up with stickers, paints and ribbons, never caught a hold of me. I find the concept cool; it just doesn’t float my boat artistically. I like looking at my pictures or my keepsakes individually and then putting them back away in their containers. It’s my particular way of meditating on my past.

So, what do I have? Well, I try to keep a bunch of stickers indicative of holidays like Easter, Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, and Saint Patrick’s Day. I keep a lot of dinosaurs, animals and sea creatures. Gemstones, stars, suns and moons. The current popularity of pirates has caused me to develop a large assortment of ships, chests, and treasure maps. Vegetables, fruits, and junk food are in the mix. Flowers, trees and grasses. I’d better not forget the miscellaneous crowd, made up of various strange acquisitions. For example, I have a collection of Botan Rice Candy stickers from my days of raiding the local Japanese food store.

There are sticker books in the mix as well. Usually these are on the higher end of quality. Celtic monograms, Pennsylvania Dutch symbols, Whales, Monsters, and Paintings of famous artists. I usually use these to seal envelopes with, since they are so large and make a nifty centerpiece.

I have gaps in my collection, primarily because stickers are considered a “feminine” activity and therefore most subjects are presented from a nurturing or non-threatening point of view. Sports and military stickers are often just not very “cool”. It’s as if the mainstream sticker manufacturers don’t want the “feminine” audience to get too excited by getting a hold of active or exciting subject matter.

There’s been some change. For example, stickers depicting glasses or containers of alcohol have been showing up, and that’s a plus. Sticker sets with a theme (like the wild west) have allowed certain types of symbols to leak into the mainstream. But for the most part it’s very hard to get stickers of, say, spaceships, construction equipment, or race cars.

I imagine there’s this character walking around town dropping off sticker packs at various random locations. This character is able, by means of advanced magical technology, to keep tabs on what people are buying where and when, and who they are. I like to call this character the “Sticker Stasher”. Now if I could only find out where this elusive being is hiding all the good stuff!

Every now and then I come across a new store with a forgotten stand of stickers at the back, and then “everything’s coming up videos”. Or a fresh batch of stickers with a new take on Xmas trees or presents will come in, and I can use them to replenish my stock. There are the bargain bin collections for a buck where you pick up several hundred awesome first-rate farm stickers. And of course the odd sticker collection that comes as a bonus with some other craft set you buy. Pick up a box of cards, get some stupendous frog stickers while you’re at it!

I wonder how certain stickers come into my possession. Is the Sticker Stasher teasing me with small crumbs, testing my devotion to this lost art of accumulating instant symbols for accentuation? Oh, will I ever level up and see some new trick or glorious collection? In the meantime, I’ll have to content myself with such odds and ends as I can find, and making things of interest to delight my friends and those fortunate few who find themselves receiving a surprise.

Whew!  Another Xmas survived.  Now that the wretched holiday of good cheer is finally past, I feel restored to my good-natured self.  With the solstice behind me, I can already feel the sunlight returning to the power-meter.  Woo and hoo!  K, as usual, made out like a bandit (as well she should).  Her swag bag was overflowing with goodies from the tribute wagon, and it’ll be some days until she has everything all sorted out.  I sense some material for the Menagerie soon to come!  Including the final tally on the advent calendar that refused to make any sense.  Chaos?  No Chaos here.

I got some more work in on the book over the holidaze, working on what is probably the most important revision.  Had to break in a new ceramic cup (thanks boss!) for the meditations.  I find that a little muscle relaxant, aka grog in a cup, helps the creative juices flow as I mold the text into new shapes and forms.  Hard to believe I’m just a week or two from the one year mark of when I started this work.  Still plenty of work to do, and its got me psyched up to the max.

One of the presents I got was the Secrets of Isis DVD I mentioned a while back.  Wow, totally corny, but I love it.  UFOs (that turn out to be faked Scooby Doo style), Bigfoot (who turns out to be just a really scary tall mountain man), and (my favorite so far) car thieves who steal the Trans-am of Isis’s mundane alter-ego.  The thieves repaint her car from red to yellow, and it remains that color for the rest of the show.  Hilarious!  Disturbing that the “morals” segment of the show was cut from the masters in the early nineties – but they show up in the special features thanks to diligent taping by considerate fans!  Awesome.  I always thought shows with morals at the end were eating with both hands.

Here comes 2008.  A “Chaldean ten”, also known as an Isis/Osiris beginning of great power and danger, where new transformations come forward.  I’ll be keeping those Isis morals in mind when the whip comes down, and that wheel of fortune gets a-spinnin’.  No telling what may come up.

The folks have been going through piles of old photos for organization, and I spotted one that reminded me of my attempts to raise a genuine, honest-to-goodness “dinosaur”.  My folks took a picture that is better left to the imagination.  But first, we must travel into the Wayback Machine.

I’m nine years old, hanging out with Pa at the local Seven-Eleven to pick up a newspaper.  I spot a clear plastic container with a nest and a large candy jawbreaker “egg” labeled as a “Pterodactyl Egg”.  I recall a small folded instructions sheet on how to raise your very own Pterodactyl, but I may be mis-remembering.  I convince Pa to buy me the thing, and back at home I read the instructions and get excited about raising my very own live Pterodactyl.  This is many, many years before the arrival of Jurassic Park on the mainstream.  But I’m nine years old, I don’t have to understand how on earth someone managed to mass produce real Pterodactyl eggs for home use.  I have to get busy raising my new pet!

My folks know better than to get in the way of my creative projects when I’m on a roll, so they let me make a nest of pillows and blankets in front of the televsion set.  Yup, I have to sit on that egg to warm it up and get that little Pterodactyl going.  Unfortunately, the instructions don’t say how long you have to sit on the egg for it to hatch.  But it shouldn’t take long, right?  In the meantime, I make myself a pair of Pterodactyl wings and a pointed headpiece so that my new pet will feel more at ease with his or her new family.  I can hardly wait!

The last of the late night programs finish up and the television programming goes off for the rest of the night.  For all you younger people out there, before the advent of “Borg Cable Boredom”, the half dozen local channels would go off the air around the late AMs to the National Anthem.  You would get static until they resumed operations several hours later.  If you’ve ever seen the movie Poltergeist, that’s where the scene with Carol Anne looking at a static television would come in.  Now it’s all shows all the time.  Anyway, it’s bedtime and I have to keep the egg warm, so I pile on the blankets and go to sleep right there, with my arms around the mound to keep the warmth coming.

Inevitably, I have to accompany the parental units on a grocery run or some other errand, so I worry about keeping the warmth up on the egg.  My folks assure me all will be well, so I leave the blanket pile on and when I come back I resume my “sitting” on the egg.  After a few days of this, I start to get impatient.  Where’s that darn dinosaur?*  What’s taking it so long.  I re-read the instructions and talk about it with my folks, who suggest it might not be a “real” egg, but a gag gift and just a hunk of candy.  Brain cells start to calculate, and I start questioning whether it’s actually possible for a candy egg to hatch a real live baby “dinosaur”.  Denial sets in, but my hopes are crumbling.

I decide I have to check the egg out.  While warm, the jawbreaker shell is still nice and tough.  I shake it and nothing rattles.  Okay, even though I might be killing my new pet, I’ve got to see if this thing is for real because I’m getting tired of sitting on the darn thing.  So I take Pa’s hammer and smash it open.  I figure if I come across the mangled remains of a “dinosaur” I can always go back to the store and get another.  Sure enough, hollow center, but no Pterodactyl.  I’m crushed.  All that time wasted trying to raise a unique pet for a crummy piece of candy.  And I hate jawbreakers too, so I’m not even going to get much in the way of sweets from the pieces.  What a rip-off!

Yup, that picture is of me sitting on my nest wearing my construction paper outfit.  Back to the present, I’m thinking about what the effect might have been on my brain stem, and I think about my fondness for Pterodactyls.  From the Japanese monster movie Rodan, to Pee Wee Herman’s puppet buddy, there’s an attraction there that runs very deep.  I’ve heard it said our failures motivate us, and in this case I believe the phrase applies.  When I think about that time, the memory of my matter-of-fact, childlike belief that I was really going to hatch a real live Pterodactyl from a piece of candy is still fresh.  It’s scary, because I have that feeling and the feeling of disappointment that came after to compare with.  Both feelings stare me in the face.  It’s like that time I saw the Batmobile in an earlier post.  There are moments in your life where reality as you know it threatens to take off into the fantastical and it’s only the disillusionment that brings you back to objective life.  We really are sometimes just a step away from other worlds where who knows what might happen.

I start thinking about that movie The Illusionist, where the young Eisenheim’s failure to disappear with his childhood love motivates him to master his gift and create a masterful trick.  The magician is the person who plays with those two worlds and brings forward magic.  Not necessarily magic in the sense of a power, such as the ability to fly or make a rainstorm, but a reminder of the vast mystery of life.  The kind of performance that kindles the imagination and makes you whole.  I’m thinking my misadventure with the Pterodactyl egg, while foolish, was also spontaneous and imaginative.  Coyote the trickster was sending a message to the future that day.

* I realize Pterodactyls are not considered true “dinosaurs” these days, but I’m not digging into that can of worms today.

Speaking of prize tables, I headed out with K and the folks to the Civitan Garage Sale this weekend. We were hunting for goods to bring back, as well as the thrill of finding hidden treasure. It’s the last garage sale of the 2007 season, and the chilly weather kept some of the vendors away, but the turnout was good. Lots of folks of all sorts hobnobbing and finagling over items of dubious value. Pretty keen! The usual food nexus was there, with hot dogs, pizza, doughnuts and soda for the famished and thirsty participants. Like a good little mule, I had my backpack and plenty of ones and fives for the hard-core bargain extravaganza.

Depending on how you look at it, I either bought the most junk or had the best luck. K found a nice soft sweatshirt and a wall hanging of “uses for herbs” to put in the kitchen. Pa came away with a measly lamp finial and a small metal bird. Ma managed to buy a nice crystal for the window, and learned some cool information about the origin of “indian beads” (sometimes information is a find in and of itself). Me, I got my hands on a number of cheap VHS tapes of Subway, The Speed Racer Movie, two episodes of Far Out Space Nuts (I said, “lunch”, not “launch!”), and Raiders of Wu-Tang. Picked up a cute Little Golden book about a firehouse cat named Sam who saves the day, and a number of Big Little books of Popeye, Bugs Bunny, Sylvester and Tweety, and The Invaders (of all things!). Oh yeah, my Christmas holster is gettin’ loaded with plenty of six shooters this season!

I picked up a birthday gift for my boss to get bonus points on. And finally I picked up a battered 1974 Fischer Price Castle to revisit a little childhood nostalgia before giving it away to Goodwill, so I’m covered from multiple angles. See the power of the prize table? Everyone else was grumbling, even though they found something, and it could be argued that I didn’t so much as score as wiped out on junk. Spirits went back up after we visited Mario’s Pizza for lunch. I still say you can’t beat that square pizza and those delicious steak and cheeses. It’s a total power up, to the max. Enabled us to get home and go over the loot. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to explore all the sellers. I got bogged down in the glasswares and VHS tapes. I even missed out on the hot dogs, which always taste excellent somehow – probably because of the atmosphere. That’s how it goes.

I watched Raiders of Wu-Tang, and unfortunately it was one of those Kung Fu movies that really stinks. That wasn’t enough punishment, so I watched The Return of Captain Invincible. I’d mentioned this earlier, and now I wish I’d not ventured too close to this one. Good, grief. This movie is a warning to all reckless fools in search of bad movies that are good. No one I know had ever heard of this movie and now I know why. It’s unredeemingly awful. The movie tries to be a superhero version of Rocky Horror and fails miserably. The only tolerable moments are when Christopher Lee is on screen, and even then it’s eye-gouging misery to watch grown men and women humiliate themselves for public consumption in this manner. I still don’t know what happened in the movie, and I watched it! I get jumbled images of the President singing to his staff, a battle with vacuum cleaners, a fire breathing Volkswagen Bug, and numerous scenes with magnetic powers causing women’s clothes to pop off. Words fail me.

Which means I was ready to strike out a third time, of course. I watched the 2006 remake of The Wicker Man starring Nicolas Cage and while it was no Captain Invincible, it was amazingly awful. I haven’t seen so many mainstream actors and actresses throw their careers into the gutter in a single movie like this since Dungeons and Dragons. Unlike Captain Invincible, there are numerous moments of unintentional humor, as this clip attests. My favorite is the “get off the bike now” scene, where Molly Parker’s fine work on Six feet Under and Deadwood evaporates in less than three lines, and Nicolas Cage goes from Moonstruck magic to Evil Dead minus the funny on a dime. Truly, there are moments of terrible movie making that defy all rules of logic and this movie is full of them. I’ll never look at a bear suit the same way again.

Luckily, K was there with a resuscitator kit to bring me out of shock and confusion. Third season of House and the tried and true formula of jerk doctor solves mystery illness with loads of wacky wit and irascible shenanigans! Okay, much better. I think somebody needs to pilot the Netflix Queue for a while. Watching the detritus to fertilize my brain and make it a happy medium for good ideas.

Happy Halloween and Celtic New Year. Since it’s hulla-boo-loo time, here’s a teaser page for you from my book.

Talk about doomsville city at the garden. We had a frost finally in late October, after having a record hot month. The majority of plants left all seem to have taken a major blow. Even the weeds are getting nervous. The bees are gone, and the general insect population seems to have cleared out. The birds are still around, but not to the degree they were a month ago. K and I were busy scavenging up what we could in the way of herbs, but hoo boy it was brutal out there in the trenches.

Tomatoes go bye-bye. The only thing left is the lettuce, which we harvested gratefully and had a small salad with our dinner, hooray! Pretty soon it’ll be time to dig up the horseradish, I can’t wait! Unfortunately, half my seeds haven’t dried out right, and have grown horrible molds. Still, not bad for my first try. I harvested the last of the basil, and some oregano for a Pizza of Doom I’m making for work. But it looks like the garden goodies have hit the bed and are passing out of time and space until next time folks.

Since it’s Halloweenie, I need my costume. I dug into my enormous bookshelf of tricks and pulled out a 1976 copy of Make-Up Monsters by Marcia Lynn Cox. Oh, I gots ideas galore thanks to this book. Hopefully, with the make-up stuff I have acquired, things will come out neat. Some of these, I haven’t tried out since I went trick or treating with my cousins or my elementary school friends. Oh yes, and I scored a pumpkin, though I’m guessing I’ll be my usual unskilled self and create a rather mundane jack-o-lantern. I don’t know. I just haven’t got the right touch for doing a pumpkin right. Maybe I need a kung fu master to show me what I’m missing. And of course the bowl is filled with candy for the screaming brats. Hopefully K won’t eat all the Mr. Goodbars.

My friend, Dr. C, called me up the other day and we rapped about what he’s been up to. I’m totally psyched for him to be doing what he’s doing. He’s been busting his buns through med school and his residency, and now he’s finally at the point where the powering up starts. Basically, he’s getting to write his own ticket for the hospital he’s going to be working at, and he’ll be living in a fabulous area for his family (and dog). I’m very happy for him, because there were some times where his life was pretty bleak and I was very worried for him.

That brings up another old friend from way back, someone whom I haven’t spoken with in a long time and only hear of through the astrosending, but I was thinking about a lot in the last week. Mainly in the terms of some spiritual connections we made back in the day, which still resonate with me now. Looks like she’ll be getting a website soon, which I’ll shamelessly plug here, but it’s not up yet. So get kraken, Xtine!

Going even further in the wayback machine on YouTube, I found someone posted a copy of The Frog Prince, with Kermit the Frog and Robin the Brave, plus Sweetums the Ogre before he was made safe for work consumption. Oh, wow, this takes me back a ways. I had this on vinyl, along with many other records, and played it often as a kid. But now it’s unavailable on DVD, and only rarely can you catch it on cable (when I was still mooching off my folks). That’s a shame, because the musical numbers are fantastic, and the story itself is both charming and wholesome. I still have the record, but it’s in rough shape. I’d love to get my paws on this one. Still, to see it on YouTube brings me to a deep place inside full of happy feelings and warm thoughts.

This weekend Lush came out with some new products, so K hinted that we ought to go to the nearest store and check them out. Since I was out of bath bombs and shampoo bars, I thought today is the day we replenish our ammunition or perish. Pricey luxury stuff, but its on my top list of bath goodies so we had to go. I stocked up on my usual array of nice things and she got herself some hair treatment prizes. K then proceeded to cut her hair, change it into a nice cerise color, and pamper it with wonderful hair-treatment goodness. Me, I’m set for the next alchemical treatment. I started using a new flavor of shampoo bar and so far its got good value. I was getting annoyed with the generic soup du jour of shampoo you can get at any supermarket, anywhere in crumbsville.

And I worked on my book. I finally decided on a teaser page to show you all. One that doesn’t reveal too much, but gives some good thoughts on what I’m about. I just have to turn it into a PDF and post it, which given the Halloweenie whackiness, might be a few days. I’m 70% through the revisions, so I’m getting closer to my current goal. I’ve accumulated a list of things that will have to be addressed in the polish stage, but I think most of it is minor work. It may be that my work will have only just begun after I finish my revisions, but it’s a major goal just the same. I’m still considering my cover. What color it will be, what the picture and text will consist of, and the spine. I’m not satisfied with my notes, so I predict I’ll have to spend more time on this when I’m not distracted.

I hung out with my gamer friends, and it was a blast. We watched the unimaginably horrible Universal Soldier: The Return and had a lot of fun mocking it. The game we played was a nice little gem called Arkham Horror, which is based on the H.P. Lovecraft Cthulhu mythos. In a nutshell, it’s the 1930s, and alien horrors are coming into the town of Arkham as precursors to the outright monster apocalypse of a randomly generated Elder God of Evil. Players take the part of archetypes from the era (Flapper, Gangster, Archaeologist, etc.) and try to gain the knowledge and power to kill the monsters and defeat the ultimate bad monster before the town is destroyed.

It’s one of those games with tokens for every single thing in the game, and it’s a long game, but the mechanics seemed solid and the setting was hard not to get into. Everyone cooperates to stop the monsters instead of competing against each other. And the artwork and production values are very high. It was a blast walking around with my researcher and checking out all the various spooky places for clues and fighting off ghouls and alien fungi with my pistols.

I’ve been trying to record my dreams this October, but something about them has not wanted to be put down on paper. The messages from the unconscious haven’t wanted any photographs taken at their press conference, I suppose. As the Celtic New Year draws to a close, I’ve got a lot to ruminate on from this last year. A lot has happened, both in the external world and the internal.