Stephen's Thoughts: February 2010

Wordzzle 101 - Dr. John

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is my entry number 45, for Wordzzle week 101.

Dr. John Linna, a mostly retired minister I believe, was a major Wordzzle player. He recently passed away, and the words in the Mini Challenge word list refer to him and his creations. He maintained several blogs, including Dr. John's Fortress, Dr. John's Word Play, Pigeon Falls, the Dragon's Lair (Fandango), and others. When I started playing he had a picture of an odd looking superhero, with a mohawk haircut, as his icon. He later changed it for a while to a dim picture of his face, and then changed it to a colorful ink drawing of a knight on horseback, heading at an angle toward the viewer. The superhero and knight references in the poems refer to those icons.

Ten Word Challenge:

smoothness,
crafty,
purchase,
brief,
chirping,
forever,
shift,
moonrise,
lampshade,
stereotype

Caught within the moonlight
The crafty creeping thing
Stepped into a lampshade
And could not step out again

Chirping in frustration
It struggled all in vain
The lampshade would not let it go
To be as it had been

It had to purchase the lampshade
That would not let it be
And they walked out together
Unstereotypically

Though not the normal couple
No brief affair had they
Locked in an allegiance
They continued on their way

They went that way forever
Or so it sometimes seems
With a shifty lack of smoothness
As a lampshade sometimes brings

After many a moonrise
They can still sometimes be seen
The lampshade and its partner
The crafty creeping thing

Mini Challenge:

remembrance,
Dr. John,
Agent 012,
dragons,
Fortress

The Fortress door hangs open
Its superhero knight has gone
The dragons circle sadly
Left now on their own

A town in a basement
Where the trains once ran on time
Has an interruption in its schedule
Over which it's hard to climb

To Agent 012's list of bad days
Add another one
One that will be especially
Hard to overcome

Words spoken in remembrance
Of the superhero knight now gone
The great Internet tale spinner
The mighty Dr. John

Mega challenge:

smoothness,
crafty,
purchase,
brief,
chirping,
forever,
shift,
moonrise,
lampshade,
stereotype

remembrance,
Dr. John,
Agent 012,
dragons,
Fortress

Stories of crafty smoothness
Or poems or anything
Long or brief or in between
Were things his thoughts did bring

He had a mighty Fortress
That overlooked everything
And from it his creations
From his mind did spring

A knight that laughs a lot
And a tiny town and train
And old and obscure words
Were written once again

Agent 012's adventures
And the Fandango dragon colony
And words that came from pictures
Created stories seamlessly

But a shift has somehow happened
Forever was cut in twain
Dr. John has left us
This is in remembrance of him

Perhaps somewhere a ticket
Is purchased for a tiny train
Perhaps somewhere Agent 012
Looks out from behind a lampshade

Perhaps somewhere dragons fly
Past a swift moonrise
Awakening the chirping birds
But unbothered by frog spies

Unstereotypical moments
Continue on with ease
With story after story
And it will never ever cease

Labels: fiction, poems, wordzzle, writing

Wordzzle 100 - Captured

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is my entry number 44, for Wordzzle week 100.

Ten Word Challenge:

transfixed,
treachery,
basics,
fragrance,
sampler,
pregnant,
cartoons,
lark,
spartan

He watched the Saturday morning cartoons, and the treachery therein. It had started as a lark, but he sat there now, transfixed. He felt his brain being driven back to basics, the overlays of civilization falling away, until there was just the fear, and the fascination, and the tension. He felt he was seeing a sampler of terror, infused with a fragrance of frustration and utter failure. He watched, trembling, as pregnant pause after pregnant pause brought forth yet more disasters. He tried once to gather his resolve and his strength, recalling perhaps how the Spartans of old had held out against all obstacles, and tried to turn it off. The remote fell from his limp paws, however, as the Road Runner prevailed yet again and his adversary met a particularly ugly fate. The coyote sat there, watching, a whine escaping from between bared teeth, a whine that slowly grew into a howl, a howl that seemed as if it might never end.

Mini Challenge:

rapid,
camping,
blandishments,
transitory,
plug-ins

Should he be a he-man, an outdoorsman, go camping, wrestle bears, save people, be a hero, and enjoy the blandishments of others? Such things were transitory, though, and rapidly faded away. He looked among the other plug-ins. Ah, here was one for President. That looked more promising...

Mega challenge:

transfixed,
treachery,
basics,
fragrance,
sampler,
pregnant,
cartoons,
lark,
spartan

rapid,
camping,
blandishments,
transitory,
plug-ins

It's amazing how rapidly things can change. He had been out in the wilderness, hiking along remote streams and forested slopes, camping each night in a new place. Everything had been going well, until one night a horrible fragrance had gradually spread throughout the area, increasing until it was stifling in intensity. Then something had come and taken him, and he didn't remember what happened after that.

When he had woken up, it was daytime, and he was alone. He was laying on branches that had been formed into a bed, or perhaps nest. He was in an open area the size of a small house, surrounded on three sides by the mountain. A partial cave formed at the back where the inward slanting slope provided a partial overhang.

He walked to the front and looked down. The slope was very steep, but should be passable, at least for those who came prepared. He wasn't prepared now, though, and lacked even the basics. Everything was back in camp, wherever that was, even his shoes. It looked like he might be here for a while. He wasn't sure how to get out in stockinged feet.

He spent the rest of the day alone there, and examined the place thoroughly. There didn't seem to be any easy way out. Some plants grew there, but he didn't see anything that looked much like food. There wasn't any water either, though he supposed there would be quite a bit when it rained.

Late in the day he crouched by the edge and looked over again. There just didn't seem to be any way he could keep his grip for very long. He would start sliding, and the slide would turn into a tumble, and a series of falls, toward the trees below. If nothing else happened he would eventually have to try it, though. It was that or stay here and die.

He meditated for a while on the treachery that had put him here, and on how transitory life could be. If this was something from the cartoons, a fix would appear, even if the fix was something impossible. If this was something bad happening on a computer, downloads or plug-ins might be available to fix the problem. Life wasn't that easy, though, and sometimes fixes just weren't there.

That night the creature came back. He had been sleeping, but became aware of the smell, and forced himself awake. He saw a huge figure, indistinct, coming towards him. It was carrying something, and thrust it at him, making strange hooting sounds. He tried to push the material away from his face, feeling branches and maybe roots, and what seemed to be huge hairy fingers. The creature was persistent, though. He rolled, trying to get away, and the creature grabbed him. He pushed out at it, and felt a huge belly. He was puzzled for a moment, and then realized the creature must be female, and pregnant. He paused, momentarily transfixed by the thought, and then the creature was pushing his head down, into the mass of sticks and roots. He struggled violently, swinging his arms and kicking, hitting whatever he could. The creature grunted and threw him through the air what seemed to be a considerable distance. He landed awkwardly and painfully on his shoulder, and lay there moaning. The creature came to him and began to roll him back and forth, slapping at him and screeching. It went on and on, and eventually he lost awareness of it.

When he awoke it was morning again, and again he was alone. He went to look at what the creature had brought him, and he found that it was indeed some branches and roots. He guessed it was supposed to be food, but he wasn't sure it was something humans were meant to eat. He gingerly gnawed at the roots for a while. They tasted strange but not overly bad, but he couldn't bring himself to eat much of them. He wondered if he was going to be reduced to eating wrens and larks and mice and bugs, and a whole sampler of forest life. There didn't seem to be much of it where he was, though, and he wasn't sure how he would catch any of it anyway.

The creature didn't come back that night, nor the following night. The next day he dug in the dirt with a rock, hoping to find something, anything. He found some worms, and to his surprise, he ate them. He could really use some water now, but none was available. He worried about the creature coming back, but almost hoped it would. He hoped it would bring him something to eat, something that looked more like real food. He had given up on trying to fight it. It was simply too big. Even the ancient Spartans would have trouble fighting such a thing. And if he somehow managed to really hurt it, it would likely strike back much harder, and he might not survive. He thought of trying to talk to it, but there seemed to be a significant language barrier, and he wasn't sure anyway what niceties he could say or blandishments he could make that would convince it to let him go.

The next day it rained, and he spent a long time trying to catch drops from the air, but finally abandoned it and began drinking from the dirty puddles. He found himself eventually crawling along the edge, drinking from little streams of water shooting out over it. He moved along it, searching for better and cleaner streams, when suddenly he slipped, and slid over the edge. He grabbed and clawed desperately at the slope, as he slid down it, water rushing around and over him. Finally he came to a slightly depressed area and managed to stop. He clung there, unable to move, almost drowning in the water, as the hours wore on. Finally the rain eased up, and then stopped. but he found he still couldn't move, as there was no place he could go without sliding again. As the day darkened into night, he began to shiver uncontrollably, and he was afraid he would lose his grip anyway, and be lost.

Then a giant hand grabbed him, and he was thrown over a hairy shoulder and carried back up the slope. It brought him back to the nest of branches again, somewhat scattered now by the water, and laid him down. In a minute it threw something down by his face, something that smelled like a fish. At least it wasn't branches and roots this time. He was too tired to do anything right now, though, too tired to do anything at all.

In the morning, he found a sharp rock and scraped the scales off and began to eat it. He wasn't used to eating raw fish, particularly like this, but he got quite a bit of it down before he began to feel sick. He stopped eating and went off a ways and sat down, waiting for the feeling to pass, hoping that it would. By midday he was feeling a bit better, but still not ready to eat any more of the fish yet. He saw some more worms in the mud, but wasn't quite ready for them either. He found some puddles to drink from, and toward the end of the day nibbled some more at the fish.

The next night the creature brought some fungi, and he really wasn't sure if he could eat that, but he tried it and it didn't seem to cause him any harm.

Over the next few weeks the creature brought him various things to eat, usually some form of plant life, but sometimes other things. He had difficulty in eating a lot of it, though, and found himself growing thinner and thinner. He began to talk to the creature, and while the creature seemed interested, he wasn't sure it understood anything he had to say. Nevertheless, he talked to it about his life, and about why he had been in the mountains, and about how it wasn't going to work out keeping him here, that he was slowly starving to death. The creature occasionally made comments in its own language, and seemed sympathetic, but still kept him trapped there, on the mountain. He showed it his skinny arms and legs, and his ribs, and his stomach, and pleaded with it in a voice that was increasingly faint, and increasingly sounded strange in his own ears.

One night as he slept the creature came and picked him up and carried him away. He swatted at its back ineffectually for a while, and then gave up and just mumbled complaints in an odd, old-man's voice, before growing too tired even for that. After a long time the creature set him down, and then he was alone.

In the morning he found that he was back in camp. The tent was still there, leaning to one side and partially collapsed, and the pack of supplies was still hanging from the tree where he left it. He got a can of Spam from it and found he barely had the strength to open it. He did manage to open it, though, and ate the whole thing. He drank the water in his canteen, and then got some more from the nearby stream. He ate and rested for a few days before he felt well enough to pack things up and start the long walk out of the wilderness.

He wasn't sure why the creature had captured him. Perhaps it just wanted companionship. It had realized in the end, though, that it wasn't going to work out, and had brought him back. Perhaps it had understood something of what he had said, but more likely it had seen that he was getting skinnier, and in the end wasn't going to survive. It was nice of the creature to bring him back, and not just continue to keep him until he died.

He could never say anything about it, though. Few people would believe it, and those that did would fill the woods, looking for it, most of them trying to shoot it. He didn't want that. He would just say that he was lost for a while. That was easy to believe. He had been gone a long time and looked it. They probably even had people out searching for him now. In fact, he saw a helicopter in the air, coming this way.

Labels: fiction, wordzzle, writing

Some favorite posts

These are some of my favorite posts, from the first hundred posts.

46. The Journey to 479

88. Howdy Week
84. Where's my shoe?
80. Where's my sock? or Sock on, sock off
73. The Idea of a Circle
67. What lay around the bend
64. A nail, or something like it
56. My first cars
54. The cactus came through
45. The broken baby brush
44. A record at school
43. The cat that wasn't fooled
32. Streaks in the air
28. Fears
26. The Clarabell Clown doll
24. Is this really necessary?
22. Murmuring voices
21. Half paralyzed, and something tried to take me away
18. Is someone calling my name?
17. UFO - A silver grain of rice against the sky
15. The noisemaker
14. Pouring water, hot and cold
11. The hidden spider
9. Blood poisoning
8. My father and the Air Force
7. Paper airplanes
6. My mother tries to teach me about God
5. Crackers and butter
4. Perfume
3. Snakes

99. Dream - Contacted by space aliens, a father prepares to leave
97. Dream - The bird-boy, the Christmas pageant, mall shopping, stolen presents, and the award
91. Dream - On the run
87. Dream - The descent: Witches, flying reptiles and the tall tree-like man
83. Dream - Young self one and two, dreams of different lives
79. Dream - The superimposed cat
74. Dream - Leaving Earth
72. Dream - The figure with the hat and coat
70. Dream - The watchers in the walls
69. Dream - The underlying structure of reality
66. Dream - The doomsday machine
63. Dream - The figure that came out of the wall
62. Dream - The long white hallway
59. Dream - A warning from a future self
57. Dream - The mall under the ground
55. Dream - Getting lost
53. Dream - Flying with the professor
48. Dream - Through the doorway
47. Dream - The elephant entity
41. Dream - Footsteps, mine and others
40. Dream - The pale spider-like thing
38. Dream - The girl with the disappearing face
37. Dream - The figure in the doorway
36. Dream - Composed of bright particles
35. Dream - Flying with a leprechaun
34. Dream - And fly away
33. Dream - My dead grandfather helps me look for the dogs
31. Dream - The drugstore outside the universe
30. Dream - The brilliant light
29. Dream - Acquired by China
25. Dream - The girl on the mountain
20. Dream - Destroyer of worlds
19. Dream - First contact
16. Dream - Captured and consumed
13. Dream - The contest
12. Dream - Possible futures and what came after
10. Dream - In the Matrix
2. Dream - The cloud came down

Labels: favorites, links

Wordzzle 99 - The tower

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is my entry number 43, for Wordzzle week 99.

Ten Word Challenge:

thermometer,
Pandora,
vivid,
langourous,
Saturday,
pancreas,
apple dumplings,
watch tower,
lichen,
sparrow

All along the watch tower
the apple dumplings watched.
Lichen covered sparrows
washed up upon the rocks.

Seven painful pancreases
waited to cross a road.
If they ever made it
still has not been told.

The thermometer was steady,
in an unsteady sort of way.
The sudden chills and heat spells
evened out they say.

Long languorous Saturdays
marched by everyday at noon.
Pandora opened up her box
and began to play a tune.

Vivid scenes aplenty,
remembered for a while.
Now it's time to go to sleep,
so good night my child.

Mini Challenge:

rigid,
spiritual,
ribbon,
web cam,
vitamins

The web cam saw the tree in the forest fall, but it had no microphone to record any sound that was made.

It wasn't lack of vitamins that had killed it.

Some vines had wrapped around the tree like ribbons, squeezing its rigid trunk, choking it.

It lay there now, dividing the forest floor into before and after.

To those near or on the tree as it fell, the results were physical and sometimes even traumatic.

To distant watchers on the Internet, it sometimes had a more spiritual component.

The web cam itself made no judgments, but merely watched.

Mega challenge:

thermometer,
Pandora,
vivid,
langourous,
Saturday,
pancreas,
apple dumplings,
watch tower,
lichen,
sparrow

rigid,
spiritual,
ribbon,
web cam,
vitamins

In the middle of a barren plain
a lonely watch tower stood.
From its heights a watcher watched
was he up to any good?

He had no web cam to help him out,
or assistants of any kind,
and his days were all spent watching,
usually well into the night.

Occasionally he'd see travelers
passing through from there to there.
Often they'd be merchants
on the way to sell their wares.

Sometimes people would stop by
and he'd hear tales of other places.
And sometimes he would buy some things
but not in all cases.

He also had a garden,
and a well that was drilled deep,
and a small grove of trees
with fruits and nuts to eat.

There was also a stand of windmills
to supply electricity,
and a small pond nearby
to attract ducks and geese.

The winds tended to blow briskly
whether it was dark or light.
The thermometer changed swiftly, though,
as day went into night.

In times of plenty he ate well,
with roast duck and vegetables and fruit,
and gravy and biscuits and homemade bread,
and apple dumplings too.

But when food was scarce it might be
sparrow and pancreas pie,
or leaves and bark and insects,
as the days and nights went by.

He watched from his tower
high above the barren plain.
As the days and decades passed
he watched and watched again.

The view was usually vivid,
with little chance of rain,
and usually changed little,
remaining much the same.

Sometimes he felt he was caught in
one of the ills Pandora released,
listless and languorous,
trapped there in defeat.

One day he took a piece of stone
off the tower by a crack,
and threw it out as far as he could,
and the next day it was back.

Most days he felt better,
and was satisfied with life,
and felt full of vitamins,
and his mood was light.

The choice he made so long ago,
almost like a spiritual thing,
he still felt was for the best,
and still made his heart sing.

One day some merchants stopped by,
but were not met at the door.
They found his body in a hallway,
laying on the floor.

They held a small service,
and spoke the words that came,
and fashioned a marker for him,
and buried him in the plain.

As travelers went by the tower,
sometimes stopping to pick fruit,
they swore they felt a presence
and sometimes saw one too.

And sometimes a dark figure
was on the tower high,
watching all the scene below
as in the days gone by.

Some people stayed away,
though others came to see,
but as the years went past
it faded to history.

One Saturday a traveler stopped
and saw the garden overgrown.
The trees were hanging low with fruit,
and the wind blew a mournful tone.

He saw the marker in the plain
and the grave where the body lay,
and he found other markers
marking other graves.

He went over to the tower,
as if he'd heard a call,
and put his hand on the lichen-colored stone
that made up the wall.

His schedule was not so rigid
that he could not stay a while.
There was so much here that he should do
he thought with a smile.

He would clean up the garden,
and eat some fruit from the trees,
and go all through the tower,
and see what he could see.

The days passed as he worked
and ate the vegetables and fruit,
and he often went to the tower top
to take in the view.

He decided to clean the tower too,
and read some journals he had found,
left behind by those who'd come before,
now bodies in the ground.

The days turned into weeks and months
and there was always more to do,
and more and more he was on the tower top
as the wind about him blew.

The dreams of travel faded
as into a routine he grew,
as he became part of just one place
instead of a salesman on his route.

One day he realized a year had passed
and that he was here to stay.
He put some long ribbons on a pole
to celebrate the day.

He put the pole upon the roof
so everyone could see,
and the ribbons flapped along their length
in the constant breeze.

Distant travelers saw the sight
and knew what it meant.
The empty and haunted tower
had a new resident.

In the middle of a barren plain,
a lonely watch tower stands,
and from its lonely windy heights,
a watcher watched again.

Labels: fiction, poems, wordzzle, writing

Dream - Tiny crystal skulls

On Sunday evening, May 18, 2008, I fell asleep while a TV show about crystal skulls was on, and dreamed I was watching a show on TV. The dream TV show had a couple of simple cartoonish cars, like paper cutouts, on a road, and then I was part of the story.

I parked the car at the edge of the road, on the pavement. There was some kind of car trouble. The road wasn't too wide and was unlaned. It had room on it for two or three cars. My mother was with me. We went somewhere, to a big building.

Someone met me on the way and talked to me. He had an invitation or ticket to the conference. He had a small crystal skull, a little smaller than a baseball, and people who had been sent them or received them somehow were people who were invited, like the crystal skulls acted as invitations or tickets in. He thought I had gotten one too and was surprised that I didn't. He went on, then.

It was dark now, and had been for a while. I looked through the iron fence at the building, and somehow got past the fence and then went on in myself. My mother had gotten separated from me, and I'm not sure now whether she made it into the building before me or not. Evidently people could get in without a skull, though it was worrisome at first and the people with the skulls, apparently one or two thousand, tended to act elitist.

There were exhibits of lifesize or larger crystal skulls, many or all of them homemade by the participants, though some may have come from other cultures and earlier times. A lot the skulls were quite bizarre, and some of them had the top of the skull cut off. I reunited with my mother as I was looking at the skulls, and tried to show them to her. It seems we had to leave now, though, and I went down the row of them at the back of the building, partially a double row because sometimes they were on both sides. A raised counter with a slanted glass display ran along behind them, with an occasional person behind it.

Labels: dreams, mother

Wordzzle 98 - Inside the box

This is my contribution to this week's Wordzzle. Wordzzle is a game in which each week word lists, used to create stories, are given on the blog Views from Raven's Nest. Participating users post their stories on their own blogs.

This is my entry number 42, for Wordzzle week 98.

Ten Word Challenge:

treasure chest,
idiom,
pantry,
crippled,
baying wolf,
wind chill,
time,
angel,
salamander,
laundry list

The crippled angel's laundry list
held many things to do
Things were added everyday
but some were checked off too

A wolf cried out in loneliness
and lack of things to do
And the baying wolf's idiom
across the landscape blew

A squirrel looked in its pantry
at the acorns grown more few
and thought of warmer weather
when food in abundance grew

A salamander sat upon a treasure chest
waiting for the dew
and hoped for better weather
as the wind about it grew

A cow out in a meadow
was disturbed by wind chill too
and dreamed of summer days
as the wind about it blew

As time passed the wind was less
and the earth warmed anew
The wolf rejoined its roving pack
whose members became less few

An owl sitting in a tree
watched and called out "Who"
and the angel crossed items off his list
of many things to do

Mini Challenge:

risque,
radish,
ring tone,
ravishing,
ruler

The ravishing ruler heard a risque ring tone while eating a ripe radish, and reigned down hard on the rogue.

Mega challenge:

treasure chest,
idiom,
pantry,
crippled,
baying wolf,
wind chill,
time,
angel,
salamander,
laundry list

risque,
radish,
ring tone,
ravishing,
ruler

If the treasure chest was opened
what treasures would we see?
Ravishing radishes and ringing ring tones
and radiant rulers three?

Or rash and risque rabble-rousers
talking for a fee?
Or a baying wolf without a mate
a sad sight for to see?

Or salamanders packed in like sardines
for some a special treat?
Or food for empty pantries
if such a thing could be?

Or perhaps a breeze to cause wind chill
when warmth is what you seek?
Or crippled cats without hats
or boots for their tootsies?

Or the missing laundry list
of goals you couldn't reach?
Or a list of obscure idioms
spoken on a beach?

Will good or bad be revealed
when the lid swings free?
Best have an angel by your side
when its time to see.

Labels: fiction, poems, wordzzle, writing

Posts about posts, Part V

In 2007, 2008 and 2009, I posted collections of posts I made to a message board I visit frequently. This is the fifth collection of these posts.

On that message board, new threads crowd out old ones, old in this case meaning oldest last update. Threads can persist for a long time, however, if they are posted to frequently enough so that they stay comfortably away from the bottom of the list.

I help to keep some of the threads going, by posting to them when it seems that a new post might be needed. On threads about writing or poems, I have sometimes posted poems. Most of these poems refer to posts or posting in some manner, and most of them are short, sometimes very short, though a few are fairly long.

As originally posted they did not have titles, but I have given them titles here. The times shown are in Arizona time (MST), not the time on the message board, which uses Eastern time.

TIME TO WRITE (2)
5:13 AM 12/4/2007

Time to write
If you might

UP WE GO
1:22 AM 1/13/2008

Up we go
Enjoy the show
And if you like it a lot
Post what you've got

HERE I GO
6:56 AM 1/31/2008

Here I go,
Once again,
If this thread is saved,
We all win.

IT MIGHT BE TIME
4:10 AM 4/8/2008

It might be time
To write a post
To prevent a thread
From becoming lost

So a post I write
And place it here
So that this thread
Is not a loss to bear

Threads go by
Some stay, some go
Will this one stay
In time we'll know

Threads go by
And disappear
This stays for now
Please keep it here

Labels: poems, posting, posts, posts about posts

Stephen's Thoughts

Friday, February 26, 2010

Wordzzle 101 - Dr. John

More favorite posts

Friday, February 19, 2010

Wordzzle 100 - Captured

Some favorite posts

Friday, February 12, 2010

Wordzzle 99 - The tower

Dream - Tiny crystal skulls

Friday, February 05, 2010

Wordzzle 98 - Inside the box

Posts about posts, Part V

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