Wordzzle - The eyes have it

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 the third time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

prefix,
art festival,
income tax,
chicken noodle soup,
jump rope,
Dutch Treat,
flowering plum tree,
bats in the belfry,
diamond earrings,
tigers

"I brought you a Dutch Treat," he said, and took some wooden shoes out of the shopping bag and set them on the table in front of her.

She paused, a spoonful of chicken noodle soup halfway to her mouth. She put the spoon back in the bowl and took them. "Are you sure they'll fit me? They look kind of small."

"Well, they're more in the nature of something to display on a shelf than actually wear. I imagine that they would be too stiff to be really comfortable, even if you could get your feet in them. Not that your feet are too big, of course."

"Of course. I understand now."

She looked at a picture on the table of tigers wearing diamond earrings, with flowering plum trees in the background. They'd had to get rid of all that, she thought sadly. The art festival hadn't brought in nearly enough money. With the economy as it was, people were reluctant to spend their money on paintings. Now the only animals they could afford were the bats in the belfry, and they had to share those with other people. On the bright side, they didn't have to file an income tax form this year, not enough money came in to require it. Who knew, though, who would have thought, that her whole life, that their whole lives, would have led to this point, like a word with an odd prefix or suffix suddenly attached to it, one that didn't relate to the word at all and totally changed it.

"I have something for you, too," she said, and took a jump rope out of her shopping bag.

"Oh, thank you," he said. I've been really needing some exercise." He took it in his hands and looked it over. "I used to do quite a bit of this when I was young. Hour after hour sometimes. It'll take a little while to get back into practice, of course."

"Of course," she said.

"We could take turns using it. And maybe sing songs with each other."

"That would be nice," she said.

And so they celebrated their anniversary, there in the dining hall of the Salvation Army. It was not as fancy as some past anniversaries, but it had more meaning than many of them.


Mini Challenge:

book club,
organic tea,
the cow jumped over the moon,
paragon of virtue,
wench

The reporter was looking over the art exhibit, occasionally taking notes, when he was approached by someone.

"The best ones are over here," the man said, making motions with his hand, arm, and most of his body. "I should know, because I did them."

"Sounds like I should take a look, then," the reporter said.

They walked over, talking, to where some statues were exhibited. The artist led him to one and said, "I did this. Can you guess what it is?"

The reporter looked it over. It was fairly large, and seemed to be some type of farm animal, though it was fairly shapeless, with things sticking out at odd angles. It had horns, so it couldn't be a horse, and it was too big for a goat. "Is it a cow?" asked the reporter.

"It is!" said the artist. "Do you remember the story where the cow jumped over the moon? Well, this is that cow."

The reporter stared at it. "Ummm... Why does it look like this?"

"Re-entry was difficult, and then there was the landing. I call it 'Babel,' because it tried to reach to Heaven and paid a terrible price for it."

"Very Biblical," said the reporter.

"Yes, I am a paragon of virtue," the artist said. His eyes twinkled. "No matter what people may say."

The artist led the way to the next statue, which turned out to be of a man holding a small monkey in one hand, about to toss it into a large, dangerous-looking machine, filled with rods and large, toothy gears. The monkey was wearing a little dress, and did not appear to like what was happening at all.

"This sculpture is a protest against the tyranny of technology," the artist said. "The man is fighting against it, and is about to, as they say, toss a monkey wench into the works."

The reporter turned and stared at him. "I think that's supposed to be monkey wrench, not wench."

"Oh, well, close enough, close enough," the artist said.

They looked at the sculpture for a while, silent. The reporter finally spoke. "What do you call it?"

"I call it 'Hilda.'"

The reporter turned and looked at him. "Hilda?"

"Yes. That was her name. The monkey. The one who posed for the sculpture." The artist looked a little uncomfortable. "It was the least I could do." He turned and looked again at the sculpture, somewhat sadly. "She never quite trusted me again after that."

He suddenly moved on, going to the next sculpture. "Now this one is my masterpiece, my greatest achievement. At least so far," he said, moving his hand in a slow arc in front of the sculpture.

The reporter moved forward and stood beside him. This statue showed a caveman menacing a man dressed in modern clothes, down on one knee, with a hand up trying to protect himself. The caveman had a thick stick with what looked like a large divided rectangular axe head bound to one end, and was holding it high in the air, about ready to strike. There was something odd about the axe head, though. It looked almost like a representation of an encyclopedia volume, one that had been opened up, laid across the end of the stick, and lashed to it. The reporter peered closer at it. He could faintly see "Encyclopedia" carved on it.

"This represents the tyranny of the information society," the artist said. "We are overwhelmed with information. It is burying us. It's too much for us to ever process or understand, and there is no escape from it."

"What do you call it?" asked the reporter.

"I named it after the weapon depicted in it. It is called 'The Book Club.'"

"I see," said the reporter. He made some more notes and said, "I think I've got enough now."

"Are you sure? I have some more. We could get some cups of organic tea from that vendor over there, and stroll along, visiting each of my works, taking our time to get to know them."

"No, I've really got to be writing this up. I've got a deadline to meet."

"You will make a good story for me?"

"Oh, I'll make a fantastic story," the reporter assured him.

"Very well, I will let you go then." He paused. "You don't have to go into detail about the monkey."

"Yes, I understand. The sculpture speaks for itself. No need to go into extra background detail."

"Okay, then. Go do a good job!"

"I will, I will." The reporter turned and left. He would do a good job, too. Strange art, and strange artists, were things the public never tired of hearing about.


Mega challenge:

prefix,
art festival,
income tax,
chicken noodle soup,
jump rope,
Dutch Treat,
flowering plum tree,
bats in the belfry,
diamond earrings,
tigers

book club,
organic tea,
the cow jumped over the moon,
paragon of virtue,
wench

He examined the drawings of tigers on his drinking glass. They seemed to be looking at him. Of course, he also felt that the knotholes on the fence boards were looking at him, and it was hard to tell how much importance to attach to these things. He finally propped his napkin up against the glass, hiding it. That would have to do for now. He lifted up another spoonful of chicken noodle soup, looked closely at it, and finally put it in his mouth. He was going to have to hurry up a bit, he thought. The soup was starting to cool down a little. He sighed.

Maybe he did have a few bats in the belfry. He sometimes heard people whisper things to that effect, though usually in less flattering terms. Sometimes it was even himself saying it. Or he supposed it was, since sometimes no one else was there. Unless the things that were looking at him could talk, too. He thought about it a bit and finally decided that if they did talk, they probably didn't sound like people. At least he hoped they didn't. If they did, that could be terribly confusing. He shuddered a bit, then lifted the bowl up and swirled it around. looking intently into it, then put the bowl to his mouth and drank the rest of it, chicken and noodles and all. He reached for his cup of organic tea and took a sip. At least it was still warm. Was it really organic, though? How could one really be sure about such things?

He finished the tea and picked up the bell to summon the servant girl to take the dishes away. She would uncover the tigers in the process, and they would look at him again, but maybe it wouldn't be for very long. She didn't come, though. No one did. He frowned. What could have happened? He was on the porch, not in the house, and that might make the bell a little harder to hear, but that had never been a problem before. Surely at least one of the servants had heard it. He rang it again and then again, louder and more insistent.

Finally a woman came up and started picking up things. "You're not going to call me a serving wench, are you, like you did the maid? You do remember that I'm your wife don't you?"

He didn't say anything, distracted for the moment by her diamond earrings, which were of complicated design. They had a moon and a cow, formed of diamonds, on different ends of a silver loop, and as she moved about her movements caused the loop to rotate, like a wheel on an axle, and the cow jumped over the moon and then the moon jumped over the cow, over and over again. He wondered if the cow was looking at him.

"None of the servants want to come near you anymore. You're just too strange, and they're afraid of you." Her mood softened, then. "Here, have a Dutch Treat," she said, offering him a chocolate bar. "It's imported from Holland and very expensive."

He took it and looked at the fancy wrapper. It did say imported, but how could one really know? He opened it up and looked at it, then sniffed it, and finally took a bite. It did taste good.

His wife said, "At least you could say thank you! I'm a paragon of virtue for putting up with this!" She turned and left, then, taking the dishes with her, including the glass with the tigers. He felt a little better now, more relaxed, knowing they were gone. He took another bite, and wondered what was in the chocolate. It did taste good, but you could hide an awful lot in a food colored dark brown, especially when it had a strong flavor, too.

He wondered what to do next. They'd hidden his jump rope from him, not wanting him to have ropes. He still belonged to a book club, but it was difficult to read the books now. He felt that the people on the covers were looking at him. Duct tape had been put over the faces, hiding them, but he still knew they were there, waiting, and it disturbed his concentration. At least not all the books had pictures of people, and that helped some, though he wondered sometimes if they should have had pictures, or once did have pictures, and if that information had been suppressed.

He wondered if it was getting around income tax time. It seemed like it might be. He remembered doing the tax forms himself, long ago. He'd had other people do them for him for years, though, even before he'd fallen into such a state. He wasn't even sure how much he made now, if anything. He was scheduled to direct an art festival later this year, but he knew he wasn't going to do it. All those paintings, all those sculptures. Too many things with eyes, or with things that might be eyes. They had probably already picked someone else to do it. He wasn't going to be doing any directing jobs for a while, and maybe not forever. He was an ex-director, pretty much ex-everything. What a terrible prefix ex was, he thought, when placed in front of everything.

He felt it should bother him more, but he was strangely serene about it. It was the eyes that really bothered him. The eyes. Looking around, his gaze fell on the flowering plum tree in the yard. The flowers looked like eyes. Lots of eyes. He finally turned his chair around, so that he couldn't see it. He could feel it back there, though, watching him. He finally turned the table on its side and crouched down in front of it, hiding himself from the tree and its flowers. When that wasn't enough, he went all the way down to the floor and lay there in front of the table, curled up into a ball. After a while a bird hopped up onto the porch and stared at him. He flinched and hid his face in his arms.

Inside, his wife watched him through the window, talking on her cellphone. "Yeah, he took the chocolate again. No, he still doesn't suspect anything, at least not enough to keep him from eating it. He looks pretty bad right now. I don't think it will be much longer before we can have him institutionalized, and then we can have everything."

Dream - The space alien with the missing ear

On the morning of August 22, 2002, I had a dream involving little people with packages, new consciousness, and an extraterrestrial alien with a missing ear. I wrote down the dream back then, probably within a few days or weeks of it happening, but much of the earliest part was already forgotten.

In the dream, at some point I was talking to my father, who was with his wife. They were in a building, apparently where he had a business, near downtown Scottsdale, on the south end of that section of town. He said that another business kept packages for him when they arrived, and that he then went to that business to pick up the packages. The other business was a bookstore. I asked if it was the one on Scottsdale Road (thinking of Hunter's Bookstore before it moved across the street). He said it was not and that he had to show me where the other business was, rather then explaining it, apparently because the explanation would be too complicated. He and some other men set out walking to the north in a square loop, going north, than east, then north, and finally west. The men did not walk together, but seemed to be heading in the same direction, just at different rates. In real life, the section of town involved does not exactly match the dream, though it was a closer match in the past than the current landscape. Other dreams have had a similar downtown area to this dream.

Before they got to Scottsdale Road they entered a business, apparently a garage with areas set off for other functions, such as bookkeeping. In such an area a wall came out with a door in it. The building interior continued past the wall, which turned to form a closed-off area and then the interior ended in a wall with a door which led to a deeper part of the building.

In the first wall I mentioned, the one that protruded and then turned a corner, I remembered that long ago a recessed button used to be in the wall. Pushing the button would cause the wall to open up and a bookstore would be revealed. The button did not appear to be there anymore. A couple of the men were looking at a formed wire hanging on a wall, the wall that followed the outside of the building and led to the interior wall. The wire was bent into a protruding shape, as if for hanging a coat or as part of a shelf support. The wire was bent flat at the top and slightly slanted downward as it returned. At the wall, the wire was bent up at the top and down at the bottom, to fit into holders that allowed the wire to swivel. The wire was initially laid flat against the wall.

One of the men was pulling the wire outward, looking uncertain and uneasy. He pulled the wire partway out from the wall and paused. Nothing happened. He then moved the wire the rest of the way, until it was straight out. The interior wall then opened up and the bookstore appeared. I wondered how the bookstore could make a living, hidden so well.

The bookstore had two little people who ran it. These people were approximately four feet high and I felt were of supernatural origin (elves or leprechauns). My father did not seem to be here at this point, though the other men were. The little people confirmed that they kept packages for my father, who picked them up eventually. I asked them if they added late charges if he waited too long. They said they did not, but that there was one time when they did. They said that they had no set time for a late charge, that the time varied. On the one time they added a late charge, they gave a long explanation of how they had offered various services, such as making up advertising, selling the product, etc., and at each step my father had refused the offer. At each refused offer, they had added a charge. The charges added were extremely high, in the neighborhood of tens and even hundreds of thousands, but the charges were not in dollars. Eventually, after adding up all the charges, reaching a total, and then converting the total to dollars, the final 'late' charge was eight dollars.

They had a phone number where the business could be reached. The number apparently produced something like an Internet connection to the business, complete with graphics. I suggested that using the phone number, the business could be reached from anywhere and the package could then be delivered, instead of having to physically return to the business to get the package. The two little people looked uncertainly at each other and agreed that this was possible. They reminded me of the cartoon chipmunk characters Chip 'n' Dale, being very earnest and helpful, talking in quick little bursts, though with much longer pauses between sentences than the cartoon characters.

After agreeing that it was possible, they then turned to me and said that they still wanted me to physically check in with them, to make the next order. (Apparently at the time the previous order was picked up. This struck me as a pretense to get me to return to the store anyway.) I said I needed a number to reach them directly, that the previous number was the number to reach the store. They again looked at each other uncertainly, and finally said that, yes, they would give me a number but they had to look it up. They did not know what it was.

They went back into their store and began to look through papers, some of which were bound together into massive volumes. The papers were somewhat tattered and were of different colors. At some point the wall re closed and the bookstore disappeared.

We were waiting for them to call and give us the number. Finally, they called. The answering machine took the call. The one that called talked very slowly and softly, not like he did in person. He initially started out giving direct numbers, but then switched to giving words that represented the numbers, like when phone numbers are represented with words. Except that the words in this case represented a single digit per word, with the words being in a foreign language, multi-syllabic, and spoken slowly and indistinctly.

I tried to write down the phone number on a note pad with a small calendar on each of its pages, that I found in a box containing several of them as well as other items. I was a little concerned about using it since it did not belong to me. In any case, I was only able to write down the first few numbers. The other men, one in particular, worked at deciphering the code. The message was recorded, and they kept replaying it, even analyzing the waveform, trying to determine what was said. The letter that began each word apparently stood for a digit in the phone
number. I moved off to other things for a time.

An alien from a UFO came and told me how they were trying to raise the consciousness of mankind. They had been working for hundreds of years, converting a few people at a time, slowly. They showed me a small classroom in the building. The classroom seemed reasonably full, but only a few in there were being raised to a different, higher level of consciousness. In this new state, which was reached slowly over a long period of time, the people became more tuned into the universe, and developed psychic powers. They achieved kind of universal awareness. Some were achieving this as I watched.

The alien went back outside and I followed. The alien told me it was very important to raise mankind to this new state, and not all alien types were as friendly as he was. He told of another alien who held a grudge against us because a person had cut off one of that alien's ears two hundred years ago.

I asked the alien if the higher consciousness process could be speeded up to cover more people at once, and named a way this could be done. The alien considered and agreed that this was possible. I then offered another suggestion, and asked if an interface, using a machine, could be made between the aliens and the people, to speed up transfer of the powers. The alien thought about it and agreed that this was possible, also.

The alien had always appeared somewhat elongated, dark and shadowy as if composed more of energy then of actual physical substance. The alien was now drawn into the UFO, as if he was being sucked backwards into it, and seemed to flow and merge into it. The UFO, itself a vague shape, almost a presence instead of an object, then took off rapidly, elongating into a dark curved streak in the night. I returned inside.

The phone number to the bookstore was finally decoded, and the number was called. When it was answered, energy poured through from the other end. People clustered around a wall phone, bathing in the invisible energy, oohing and ahhing. The phone was not the phone from which the call had been placed, but was one of the phones to which the tech people had routed the call. The people bathing in the energy seemed to be gaining some psychic powers and awareness. As time passed, some left the phone, having apparently gained all they wanted, and others replaced them.

I finally decided to join them at the phone and crowded in. At first I did not experience much gain, although I could feel the energy. I gradually felt a small elevation of my consciousness, and then all of a sudden I could feel the energy wash over me, like being in warm water and having cool water from a source wash over me. I felt like I was getting lighter, and eventually I did start to rise slowly in the air. I drifted upward a few inches, until I bumped into an ornamental painted beam that ran along the wall above the doorway. I then moved off into the room, raising my whole body up until I was roughly horizontal, and above head height. People were coming and going. There were a couple of people walking along, talking. At least one of them did not look quite human, being too thin and elongated. I talked to this person and tried to get the person to return to the phone, as the person seemed to be only halfway converted by the energy. The person listened to me but wasn't interested and even seemed slightly annoyed, and moved off talking to the other person. Rejected, I hung for time in the air, my arms, legs and head drooping.

Eventually, I perked up and went outside, not the side where the UFO had been, but the side toward the back, the side where I had originally come in. Out there I was informed somehow that the alien with the missing ear was at a conference at the airport. Perhaps the first alien told me.

I felt that it was extremely important that I go there immediately. A phone connection was established to the airport and I went to a phone that was on the outside of the building. I turned into energy and flowed into the phone. It was a dark, invisible energy that was not contained within the wires but extended to several inches to each side. I flowed along the pipes and conduits. I eventually made it to the airport, but parts of me seemed to extend out and visit other phone locations around the world.

At the airport, I re-formed and went searching for the conference room. I met one or more aliens or people who told me to hurry. The aliens were not like the first alien, appearing much more physical. None of them seemed like the classic Grays. I located the conference room and went inside. I may have simply floated through the closed door, or I may have opened it and then floated in.

The room was full of aliens of various kinds. They seemed surprised at the interruption. The alien with the missing ear had been giving a presentation. He was thin and elongated, though not abnormally tall. He was slightly dark in color, perhaps with a slight purplish hue. His head was oval and tilted back, and his remaining ear, on the right, was set very low and tilted back. The ear was a different color from the rest of his head, being roughly flesh colored.

He had kept the severed ear in a small, ornate box all these years. I understood, perhaps from when the original alien had explained the matter to me, that this was not the original ear. The original ear had been lost somehow over the years and had been replaced with a different ear. I don't know the source for the second ear, but the ear looked the same as the one on his head, except for being for the other, left, side.

The alien, in his presentation of the injury he had suffered, levitated the ear out of the box and let it float out into the room, so that everyone could see it. I floated down the aisle and grabbed it out of the air. It was old and dry and crumbly, like stale bread, and small pieces crumbled off as I took it. I believe there was some commotion from the crowd, but it didn't matter. I flew to the alien and jammed the ear against his head. He did not really resist, but softly protested to me, that he knew what I was trying to do but the ear was not even what I thought it was. I felt he was trying to tell me that the ear was not the original one, but it didn't feel to me that it was an important distinction. I said or projected desperately to him to accept it, to draw it into him, to make it a part of him. I poured my power into it.

And then, suddenly, I was somewhere else, though I could feel that my body was still back in the conference room. My awareness, though, was in a different place. I was floating in the air partway up the side of either the enormous interior of a tall building or an area between two separate buildings. I was in an area between stories. The walls were made of brick.

I saw something on the wall, between the stories. Something lighter colored and elongated to the sides, an irregular beige splotch, more even on the top and bottom. I heard voices, from back in the conference room, saying "He's doing it." I went toward the splotch, reaching out for it.

Then I was back in the conference room. Some people, some of whom may have been aliens, were gathered around the alien whose ear I had attempted to restore. Their hands were lifted toward the ear and the area around it, like they were gently touching it, testing it, making sure that everything was alright, while they peered at it, heads tilted back slightly. They seemed to be doctors, or perhaps scientists. A crowd of people was around them, watching. I sensed that the ear had been successfully restored to the alien's head, and had started to live again.

Wordzzle - The acrobat, the optometrist, and the bumble bee

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 the second time I've played the game.


Ten Word Challenge:

acrobat,
grocery store,
ceiling fan,
dandelion,
bumble bee,
alabaster,
scissors,
chartreuse,
strenuously,
cube

The acrobat took his scissors, which he had just purchased at the grocery store, and proceeded to carefully clip the dandelions in his yard. A bumble bee flew nearby, watching, not sure it liked this new development. Inside, a chartreuse cube talked to an alabaster-colored ceiling fan, making plans for the evening. Outside, the acrobat finished and took all the dandelions in and started putting them in vases. The bumble bee looked through the window, watching, sometimes strenuously bumping against it.

The cube said to the ceiling fan, "What do you think?"

The ceiling fan said, "Well, first let's hide the scissors. And next time, we need to write out a list. We told him we needed dust cloths, not dandelions."


Mini Challenge:

iPod,
poison ivy,
computer,
interpreter,
optometrist

The optometrist, listening to his iPod, walked mindlessly through the poison ivy. From high on a pole a camera watched, and a distant computer recorded the information. In a distant country, an interpreter translated the information for the use of people who keep track of such things. The optometrist knew none of this, not even about the poison ivy, and kept on listening to Bob Dylan singing "How does it feel?"


Mega challenge:

acrobat,
grocery store,
ceiling fan,
dandelion,
bumble bee,
alabaster,
scissors,
chartreuse,
strenuously,
cube

iPod,
poison ivy,
computer,
interpreter,
optometrist

Poison ivy grew among the dandelions, or perhaps vice versa. The optometrist, carrying a small bag of supplies, made his way carefully along the path, avoiding both of them. The optometrist was accompanied by a bumble bee, who rode on his shoulder, conserving his energies. The optometrist worried about the sanity of his friend, the acrobat, and sometimes spoke to the bumble bee about it. The bumble bee worried too, and not just about the acrobat, but didn't say anything.

As the optometrist came up to the house, he found the front porch covered with vines. Working strenuously, he pulled them aside, and finally reached the front door. He knocked on the door, while the bumble bee investigated some nearby flowers. The optometrist waited, but received no response. He knocked, and knocked again, and fearing something was wrong, was considering whether he should break in when the door began to open. Daylight poured in through the opening, illuminating an otherwise dark room. As the door opened further, he saw the face of the acrobat, blinking in the light. There was silence.

"You emailed me, saying you had a big problem and had to see me right away?" the optometrist finally said.

"Oh, oh, that's right," the acrobat said. "I was listening to my iPod, and got distracted." He peered outside the door. "Wow. I guess I should get out more often. Well, come on in." The acrobat led the way back into the house, the optometrist following. At the last minute the bumble bee zoomed in, just before the door closed.

"I hate to say this," the optometrist said, "but you seem to be getting kind of thin and out of shape."

"Yeah, well, acrobat work is hard to find these days. I guess I kind of let things go. I had to get into a different line of work. I act as kind of an interpreter, taking old translations of works of Greek and Roman literature and redoing them for a modern audience, simplifying them and putting in modern language, using lots of current slang and idioms and things like that."

"People pay you for this?" asked the optometrist.

"Yeah, but not as much as you might think. I have to make it up on volume." He paused before a picture of himself wearing an alabaster-colored costume, standing on an elephant that was wearing an ornate chartreuse and crimson head covering. "It's not like the old days," he said wistfully, "though it does keep me occupied."

He led the way to a room that had a computer in it, sitting on boards stretched across stacks of bricks. Beside the computer was a large, old fashioned monitor, and beside it was a printer. In front of the monitor was a keyboard and beside it, on a mouse pad, was a mouse. A large wooden box, cube-shaped, evidently used as a chair, sat on the floor in front of the setup. The floor of the room was covered in thousands of sheets of paper, some crumpled, some not. In one corner, several boxes of new paper were piled, with what appeared to be boxes of computer ink in a jumble on top of them. Overhead, a dusty ceiling fan slowly turned, only one of its three bulbs still working.

The optometrist stood there, taking in the situation, surprised and a little saddened. The bumble bee flew in and went to the computer, sometimes hovering in front of the screen, sometimes banging against the keyboard and mouse. A new window appeared on the screen for a while, and then went away. The acrobat stood a few feet inside the door, seemingly lost in thought. Time passed.

The optometrist finally said, "What seems to be the problem?"

"Eh? Oh. Oh. Well, I used to be sharp as a pair of scissors, just cutting through things, going really fast, but lately its gotten harder and harder and I've gotten slower and slower. I think the real problem is that I just can't see as well as I used to. The letters on the screen have gotten fuzzier and fuzzier and dimmer and dimmer. I know the light in here isn't bright, but the screen is lit from within, so lighting shouldn't be a problem."

The optometrist walked over to the monitor and stared at it. Then he bent down and blew on it, and took a bottle of eyeglass cleaner out of his bag and sprayed it. Then he took out a soft cloth and wiped it clean.

"How's that?" he asked, stepping back.

The acrobat stepped forward and peered at the screen. "Wow, I can see perfectly. Thank you, thank you, how can I ever repay you?"

"It's ... okay," the optometrist said. "Just let me know if you need help again."

"Sure, sure, I sure will, thanks again. Say, you want to stay for dinner? I don't get to the grocery store very often, but I've still got a lot of food I stockpiled when I thought the world was going to end."

The optometrist looked around at the dust and debris, and considered the prospect of dining on what was perhaps years-old food. "Thank you, but no, I really have to be going, I have a previous appointment. Someone else I have to help. I really can't break it."

"Sure, sure, I understand, someone as good as you must get a lot of calls for help. Maybe some other time then?" He fished around in some of the papers on the floor. "Here, at least take a granola bar," he said, somehow producing one from the mess.

"Yes, of course," the optometrist said, absently taking it and putting it in his coat pocket. "I'll, um, let you know."

He went quickly toward the door. As he reached it he paused, then turned around and waved. The acrobat waved happily back. The optometrist turned, then, and went out the door and closed it, then started carefully down the path. The bumble bee, who had flown out when the door was opened, settled on his shoulder once more.

"Well, that was different," the optometrist said. "At least I was able to help him."

The bumble bee still didn't say anything, but thought happily about the landscaping service that was going to come tomorrow, the one it had sent for with the computer, that was going to clean up the place and put in a lot more and better flowers. Next time, and the bumble bee knew there would be a next time, at least the bumble bee would eat well.

The Knight and his Knickers

This is a story that I did for a message board, on a thread normally concerned with comically constructing new words and definitions. They were at that time doing exercises where a user gave a short list of words and other users then wrote a story containing those words. The story is changed slightly here in that it is broken up into several paragraphs instead of being contained in just one, and has undergone some slight editing.

This is another of my stories from my post number 1000 for that message board, one of a group included in that post. The list of words for this story: kiwi, knight, key, kite, knickers.

This story is dated 9:23 PM, December 1, 2006, Arizona time (MST).


THE KNIGHT AND HIS KNICKERS

The knight had finally found the key to his knickers, when he got caught up in the string from a kite and carried high in the air.

He was carried into a storm cloud, where a bolt of lightning hit him, dislodging him from the string. His glowing form fell to Earth, leaving a trail of smoke in the air.

He landed on top of a cage containing a shipment of kiwi birds, bounced off, hit a haystack, and then rolled for several feet before finally stopping. He lay there for a while, his armor slowly losing its glow and cooling off.

Finally, he sat up and took the key, which he had saved through the lightning strike and everything, and prepared to use it but then stopped in frustration.

"Drat the luck," he said, "my knickers are welded shut."

The Damsel and the Dandelion

This is a story that I did for a message board, on a thread normally concerned with comically constructing new words and definitions. They were at that time doing exercises where a user gave a short list of words and other users then wrote a story containing those words.

This is another of my stories from my post number 1000 for that message board. The list of words for this story: dandelion, damsel, dart, delicious, deposit.

This story is dated 9:23 PM, December 1, 2006, Arizona time (MST).


THE DAMSEL AND THE DANDELION

A delicious damsel, rushing to the bank to make a deposit, was about to dart across the street when she stopped and picked a dandelion, and that made all the difference.

Wordzzle - The brigadier general, the hummingbird, and the gods

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.


Ten Word Challenge:

apoplexy,
doctor,
hummingbird,
shallow end of the pool,
brigadier general,
mustard,
greed,
parallelogram,
slumber party,
casual

The hummingbird said to the doctor, "Do you have any mustard?" The doctor seemed for a moment to be suffering from apoplexy, but finally said, "I need to save some for the slumber party. Don't be greedy." The hummingbird said, "Oh, I won't, I eat like a bird. Where is it, anyway?" "I keep it in the refrigerator," the doctor said. "You mean the parallelogram over there? Would you mind getting it for me? And opening the mustard, too? After all, I'm just a tiny bird." The doctor walked over to the refrigerator, grumbling, the bird following along. "It says General Electric, not refrigerator," the bird said. "Is it a brigadier general?" The doctor looked baffled for a moment, then silently put some mustard on a little plate. The bird pecked at the mustard. "He wasn't the bravest of generals," the bird casually said. "He wouldn't get out of the shallow end of the pool. He wouldn't let me have any mustard, either."


Mini Challenge:

Mount Olympus,
arsonist,
portraits,
birch trees,
"that car needs a new muffler"

The artist went up on the mountain to do a painting. He found found some nice birch trees by a meadow and decided to paint them. He normally did portraits, but that business was a little slow right now. He had been painting for a little over an hour when suddenly there was a flash of light and a figure stood about twenty feet in front of him, wearing a white garment that looked something like a small toga. The artist blinked, and bent down to pick up his brush, which he had dropped. Cleaning the dirt off the bristles, he considered the situation, and finally said, "Who are you?" The figure threw a lightning bolt at him, which caught his easel and painting on fire, and said, "I am Zeus. Who are you and why do you dare to come to Mount Olympus?" The man got back up off the ground, to which he had somehow fallen, and began desperately trying to put the fire out. "What are you, some kind of arsonist?" he said. "No, I am Zeus. Leader of the gods. We live on Mount Olympus. Surely you have heard of us?" The god looked at him quizzically. "You're not one of those slow witted, demented people the villages sometimes throw out, are you?" The artist looked up, having finally put out the fires. "I've heard of you, but you're not much in the news these days. People don't care about you, and don't even believe in you anymore. And in any case, this is Colorado, how did Mount Olympus end up here?" "Mount Olympus is wherever we wish it to be," Zeus said, and then looked thoughtful for a moment. He finally said, "These are strange developments. Perhaps we should start a war or simply lay waste to a few cities. Something that will remind them of us, and show them the dangers of having forgotten." The artist squeaked out a reply, "Couldn't you do something more positive?" The god looked at him. "These developments are not positive. Punishment must be given." "I'll just be going then," the man said, heading for his car. He opened the door and got in, while the god looked on in amazement. When the car started, the god jerked back and flung a lightning bolt at it. The car rocked violently and part of the exhaust system flew away, to land clattering and rolling in the meadow. The man sat in the car, bent over the steering wheel, trembling. After a time he raised his head, opened the door, and slowly got out. He walked a few paces toward the god, shoulders slumped, swaying a little, then stopped. He raised his head, and looked vaguely in the god's direction. "Begging your pardon and all, but you really, really ought to do something positive for a change. You could do some advertising, to remind people you're here, and then every now and then you could do something positive, some little act of kindness for someone that would have a major impact in their lives. It would be like winning the lottery. Lots of people would try to get on your good side then." The god paused, considering. "What acts of kindness would these be, do you think?" The artist said, "Oh, it would vary from person to person depending on the situation." He turned and pointed back toward his car. "If it was me, for instance, well, that car needs a new muffler."


Mega challenge:

apoplexy,
doctor,
hummingbird,
shallow end of the pool,
brigadier general,
mustard,
greed,
parallelogram,
slumber party,
casual

Mount Olympus,
arsonist,
portraits,
birch trees,
"that car needs a new muffler"

"We must capture Mount Olympus," the brigadier general said. "I shall put my forces around the gods while they have their slumber party. We shall form a parallelogram, with the walls closing in on them. They will never suspect a thing, until it is too late. Then we will not only have Mount Olympus, we will control the gods and all their power will be at our disposal." "You military types are so greedy," the doctor said. "In the end it just makes more work for me, patching up everybody. And by the way, you've got mustard on your face." "I do?" The general paused, wiping his face with a handkerchief and carefully looking over the results in a small mirror. "You're always sloppy when you eat," the doctor said. "It's legendary. All your portraits show food on your face." "I am simply enthusiastic when I eat," grumped the general, an eye twitching slightly. "I am enthusiastic in everything I do." "You're not trying to suffer from apoplexy again, are you?" the doctor said, peering at him. "No, no," the general said, waving him off. "It wasn't really apoplexy anyway, I just drank too.... enthusiastically." "Well, whatever," the doctor said, turning to look again at the mountain. "Those birch trees look kind of dry," he said, changing the subject. "I hope you don't start any fires. That last place looked like it was overrun by arsonists after you got done." "Oh, I'm sure everything will be alright," the general said casually. He paused then. "That hummingbird over there, watching us. Do you think he could be a spy for Zeus?" The doctor looked. "I thought Zeus used larger birds," he said slowly. "Perhaps, though, he is economizing these days, and using smaller things." The general turned and looked at him. "You're not going to bring up that thing about me using the shallow end of the pool again, are you?" The doctor looked momentarily puzzled. "Eh? No, no. At least not right now. Although I do have a complaint about what you drive. That car needs a new muffler." "It is just enthusiastic about being alive, as am I," the general muttered. The hummingbird flew over and hovered in front of the general's face, while he looked at it cross-eyed. It then pecked his nose a few times and flew away. "What was that all about," the general said, wide-eyed. The doctor peered at him. "I think it likes mustard," he said. "You've still got some on your nose."

Dream - The figure in the tree

Back in July of 2007, probably around the middle of the month, I had a long dream with a lot of things happening in it. Earlier in the dream, I tried to help my younger brother a couple of times in a minor way, but he coldly rejected it. One time I remember he had been eating a sandwich and had gotten a lot of crumbs on his arm and I tried to brush them off with a paper, but he looked at me coldly and said I was just making it worse. The dream also had a lot of separate incidents with what were apparently pirates and odd raft-like ships made out of big metal tubes and tall masts and triangular supports that were also made out of metal.

At one point I was looking in a big hollow tree that leaned or curved slightly to one side, trying to show someone the light that was visible in the sky past the dark leafless branches of another, thin tree that was inside the hollow trunk of the big tree. The light was strange and pale, roughly circular, with a border around it like twisted or woven purple cloud, with a dark but not black nighttime sky as the background. It shown down inside the hollow tree and made a round bright area on some dark water, a lake or maybe a river, that was perhaps 10 or 15 feet underground. This time, though, I was having trouble finding the light. I just saw a broad washed-out pale area with the skinny branches of the small tree in silhouette.

I was leaning into the hollow trunk and peering upward, looking closer and moving my head back and forth, trying to find the light past the branches when I became aware that a small figure, perhaps three or four feet tall, was sitting in the tree and apparently blocking my view of the light. I moved my head closer at it, feeling somehow that I should be able to somehow see through its eyes and out the back of its head, as though there wasn't anything back there. Its face was round and broad, almost slightly square, and its mouth was stretched in a wide toothy grin. Its eyes were relatively small and very round, and were entirely black with a slight cloudiness, and looked somehow soft like round dark grapes.

As I came close to the head, looking at it and the eyes, I suddenly realized that it wasn't really alive, not as we think of life, that it had an emptiness about it, but that it was somehow nevertheless animated, though by something that wasn't actually living precisely in it but behind and somewhat above it. It gave a short laugh and said that I would never be able to look through its eyes that way.

I was fairly close to it now, and there was suddenly a feeling of great danger and of tremendous power held in check, power that could be released at any time and to any degree necessary, and that it was only letting me do as much as it pleased it to let me do, and that I should not tempt it too much.

I had a brief vision, then, of what could happen. I saw its body silently crackling with white energy going out all around it like electricity, and its arms becoming much longer and reaching out for me, with long hands and long fingers ending in pointed nails. Its face seemed more angular, but still with the wide, toothy grin and small wide open black eyes. Its face got closer to me and also seemed to somehow project inside my head, and I felt tremendous terror wrap around my brain like a fog, not the kind of terror where you run, but the kind of terror that brings you to you knees, hovering between consciousness and unconsciousness. I felt my awareness and my brain cringing, shrinking in on itself, feeling like something caught in mid-spasm, shrinking to a point and then starting to fade out, leaving only the face and the eyes and the terror.

And then I was moving my face back, somewhat nervously, and trying to look around the figure to each side, trying to find the light in the sky. I finally reached up and lifted the figure, the little man, down from the tree, but I still couldn't find the light, just a broad diffused light through the dark branches, and light that shown down softly on the dark water below. I finally left the tree and the dream proceeded to other things.


That Sunday, after the dream, I happened to watch the last half of Waterworld on the TV, a movie I had never seen. In it, the main character had a boat made of metal or metal-like pontoons and with tall metal masts and supports. Near the end, he rescued a little girl by blowing up an oil tanker run by pirate-like people. He did this by dropping a lighted flare through a wide metal pipe that led to a lake of dark oil far below. The light fell onto the oil, which then erupted into pale streamers of fire and exploded. Fire boiled through all the openings of the ship, and blew open new openings. People were running everywhere in mindless terror.

The movie had in common with the dream the metal boats, the light on a dark liquid far below, bright streamers that were electricity in the dream and an explosion in the movie, and terror.

Dream - A future or other-time self tries to kill me

Around July 1, 2007, I had a dream in which a future or other-time self came in my bedroom, where I was laying in bed, and pointed his hand at my face, with the fingers formed into a gun shape.

I begged him, "No... please... don't..." He pulled the "trigger" anyway.

Nothing apparently happened when the trigger was pulled, but I felt that somehow something did happen, that the effects were or might be somehow delayed.

I realized sometime later, after awakening, that the figure looked more like my younger brother, as he looked twenty years ago, than me. I'm not sure of the significance of that, as I did not feel in the dream that the person was my brother. Perhaps the person was far enough removed from me genetically to have just a family resemblance, instead of looking specifically like me.

A vision of small Gray head swooping toward me

Around July 3, 2007, I was sitting at the computer and closed my eyes to try and go to sleep for a while, and immediately saw a tiny head in the distance ahead of me and slightly to one side. It seemed to be the head of a Gray-type entity, the ones commonly assumed to be extraterrestrial aliens. It rapidly moved toward me, enlarging as it came, though it always remained small. As it approached it became clearer and its appearance was also shifting, becoming somewhat different. It remained approximately the same color (which I think might have been light blue instead of gray), but the shape was almost the reverse of the standard Gray alien shape. It had a very small, rounded head with bulging cheeks. Its eyes were like shiny plastic, and ran around to the sides of its face. The eyes were straight on top and rounded on the bottom, giving the Gray a slightly angry look. The eyes also had thick, black rims around them, like goggles.

Oddly, although it felt at the beginning to be far away, it also actually seemed to be only four or five feet away for some reason, only actually getting a foot or two closer to me as it swooped toward me. It was almost like it was more a representation of distance than actual distance. Or perhaps the distance was not a physical one.

This was not a dream, at least not in the traditional sense. It was more like a vision. I wasn't sleeping when it happened, and I didn't try to sleep for a while after it happened.

At the time, the face reminded me somewhat of a gerbil or hamster with its cheeks stuffed with food, just because of the bulging cheeks, not for any other reason. After thinking about it some more, it seemed to also resemble a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle a little bit, although it wasn't that exaggerated. However, I soon found something else that was startlingly reminiscent of it.

A day or two before the vision, I had gotten an issue of Discover magazine in the mail, but I hadn't read it yet. About a day after the vision, I started looking through the magazine and found a picture of a swimmer's head sticking partly out of the water. The picture was evidently taken fairly close up at a low angle, and the top of the head, covered with either the top of a wet suit or a tight cap, was a smooth light blue and appeared very small. The front of the face was exaggerated and the bottom part was apparently in the water, with a yellowish snorkel in the mouth making the bottom part of the face seem to bulge enormously. The swimmer also had enormous black-rimmed goggles on that were straight on the top and rounded, in an angular sort of way, on the bottom.

It seems likely that the vision was for some reason connected with that picture, though I don't know why. It may also be that more than one thing was represented by the vision, and the different things were combined into one image, but I don't have any real evidence for that.

The picture in question is on page 18 of the August 2007 issue of Discover magazine.

What if we didn't die tomorrow?

If we were to die tomorrow, and we put all our affairs in order, and did everything that we had to do and said everything that needed to be said, and then tomorrow came and we did not die, then what?

Was the time wasted? Would we have been better off doing something else, perhaps just going through the day as we normally do?

Probably not. They were all things that needed to be done anyway (assuming that you didn't actually give away all your stuff).

Just remember to treat people well, and even if you do not die, opportunities pass and may not come again. Leave good impressions behind you, and try to make the world a better place.

Sliding down the stairs

For several years when I was very young, we lived in a house in a small town in north-central Missouri. We moved there from my grandparents' farm probably sometime when I was three, but I could have been as young as two. I slept upstairs there with the rest of the family in a converted attic. The bathroom and the living room and the kitchen were downstairs, along with another room.

My little brother was young enough that he crawled around when we first moved there. My mother eventually had my father put a barrier across the stairs, so my little brother couldn't get to them. It was basically just a board, tall enough to prevent him from getting over it, and could be moved out of the way as necessary. Still, I moved to try to push him away from the stairs when he was heading for them.

One day I was going downstairs and had gotten past the barrier, and was on the steps but not very far along. I was walking down and talking to my mother, who was on the first floor a few feet from the bottom of the stairs. Suddenly, somehow, I almost entirely missed a step, hitting just the edge of it with the edge of my heel, which then slid off to the step below. I fell forward with my hands stretched out in front of me, and my whole body fell on the stairs. I slid forward with my head up and my arms straight out in front of me with the palms turned up, my wrists and arms and body sliding along the front edges of the steps, all the way to the bottom. I couldn't stop myself, I just kept sliding. My mother was still there near the bottom, watching. I was terribly embarrassed. I felt that I had failed, that I had done a terribly stupid thing, that it was not something someone my age should do.

I wasn't injured, except for a long scratch on my wrist, I think my right one, going back up probably halfway or more to the elbow. It was really a very minor scratch, but it was further evidence of my failure.

When my father came home from work for lunch, I didn't want him to see it. I held my arm behind my back, even while we sat at the table and ate. He kept turning and looking at me and asking about it. My mother finally said something to him about what happened, something brief and about me being embarrassed by it. I continued to hold my arm behind me, though.

When my father came home that night, I was playing on the floor. He bent down some from several feet away, trying to get a look at me. I didn't try to hide it anymore. It seemed silly to do so by that time. My mother said something to my father about it, and my father asked me something about it. I frowned, not really looking at him, and gave a curt answer, acting like it didn't matter. I didn't want to discuss it, and pointedly concentrated on the toys in front of me.

Dream - The hidden town and the TV Superman

On Sunday morning, November 9, 2008, I had a dream about the TV Superman of the 1950s, George Reeves.

In the dream, I was in a broad grassy valley or plains area, perhaps in Nevada, perhaps in a state to the east, maybe even Colorado. It was someplace I had been in other dreams, though I'm not sure I knew it then. At some point I had to go up a mountain. It was something I had been concerned about earlier in the dream, that somebody would have to do it. A steep path led straight up the mountain. The path wasn't rocky, just very uneven, dirt with humped areas, in places covered with long grass partly laying down. In real life it would have been impossible to drive, as it was something like a 60 degree slope in places. In the dream I think I made it at least part way up in the car, though near the end I went on foot, leaning forward and holding on to the mountain with my hands.

At the top there was a gateway or opening into a small city. The city seemed old fashioned, almost medieval. They seemed to have a lot of pageants going on. I had gone up there with someone with me. We were met at the top by some people and shown around. It was a whole different world up there, dim and a little wet and misty, and seemed to be covered by and surrounded by clouds, hiding it. We were eventually taken to a place to eat. At some point George Reeves, the TV Superman, showed up. He had a big smile and seemed very happy. I think he had some part in the plays. I think he may have even been wearing the Superman suit, though I'm not sure about this. It seems I was actually him for a while, though I switched back. It seems also that he was in black and white, though the rest of the dream had some color.

It was time after a while to go back down. George Reeves was also going down on one of his periodic trips. We went toward the exit to the outer world, and I saw that now it had tall thin pillars by it with an iron fence on either side with the top sloping up very high as it approached and joined the pillars. A carriage being drawn by two white horses was going toward it, and I think it was supposed to be George Reeves' and maybe our method of transport. Something changed, though, and the horses weren't used. Either the carriage went on without them or a car was used instead. He went first and I went over almost immediately afterward. The way down was different than it had been. It was paved now, with brick I think, and had different levels, where it would slope steeply but not so steeply as before and then drop sharply for a few feet and then another stretch of steep slope and then another sharp drop, etc. It had low walls on each side, of concrete I think, maybe two or three feet high, and beyond that, a jumble of scattered things on the mountain, various artifacts, little statues and short pillars and maybe small tables and more.

It seemed that his car had quickly gone to the left and over the low wall. I scrambled down to it, calling out to the others back up at the top. I was trying to find him, to see if he was alright. The car seemed gray and very hazy, almost ghost-like. He didn't seem to be there. I worried that he was hurt. I looked back at the path going down the mountain. It had various obstructions in it, small statues and tables, etc., looking something like a pinball machine. I worried that he had fallen and had bounced off of some of them and had gotten hurt. I continued down, trying to find him. I felt that he had gone this way.

After a little while, the path widened and the slope became more gentle, with widely spaced little round tables with central bases, some with white carved human legs or feet sticking out of the sides or at the bottom. It led toward an even wider area that was made of shiny dark brown material, probably tile or brick, and became the floor of a large room, gently sloping. The room was filled with widely spaced little round tables with central pillars and little carved white human legs sticking out at the bottom. They probably had a couple of chairs per table, too, though the other area may also have had that. The tables in this area were much more uniform in appearance, though.

He wasn't here either, but I partly sensed and was partly told by the others that he had gone into the room and then off to the right. The room narrowed in that direction, sloping from the sides in partial steps, like the road had done going down, toward a somewhat complicated wall, like overlapping rectangular painted wood plates with frames around them like 2 x 2 boards, and that he had gotten through it somehow, through some hidden opening or maybe even physically passing through the material at a special place in a special way, and passed through into another dimension, to the world on the other side. It was something he had done before, some kind of periodic business trip.

I thought of maybe trying to follow him, but I wasn't sure how he did it and there also was the matter of the others. Some or most of them were relatives who had also come down but were a ways behind me, back on the sloping road at different places but not too far away. Going back, I came to a place where one of them was, a girl in her early teens, at a place just past the low concrete wall that marked the edge of the road. There were some things in that area, various things clustered fairly close together.

My mother was on the other side of the road and some distance away, I knew, because she had called out to me when I was earlier shouting out asking where everyone was. We talked back and forth a little bit now, loudly calling out our answers. There was also someone else much further up the road, but I'm not sure who right now. There was also a car somewhere. Perhaps the girl was even in the passenger side of it, or was sitting outside but just beside it. A lot happened, especially earlier, that I don't remember.

Dream - A man is served a meal by a mysterious figure, in preparation for a mission on another world

On the morning of August 28, 2008, I had a dream that started out fairly normally, in that it involved driving, something I once did a lot of. It soon changed, though, to something much stranger.

In the dream I was driving on a divided road, seemingly somewhere in the Wickenburg area and past it. My brother was with me in a different car. We might have been competing in some way.

Later I was a giant figure, moving the cars by hand like they were toy cars. Later on I was walking and normal size, though it seems I was also controlling the cars, at least for a while.

Walking, I came to someone who was being given a meal by the road, not a last meal apparently, but a special one-time thing, apparently from God. Various dishes were presented on small, saucer-like plates. They were being served to the man by arms that faded to an indistinct body that faded out before the legs were reached. The food included biscuits and many different kinds of cooked vegetables, and other things as well. I noticed in particular a plate of creamed peas and a plate of corn, perhaps a little creamed also but not much.

The food was supposed to be exact, perfect recreations of things served many decades ago by someone, I think maybe my grandmother on my mother's side. She herself, my grandmother, was coming from maybe ten or fifteen feet down the road, having seemingly materialized there, apparently as a reassurance that the dishes were in fact genuine. She never actually reached where they were being served, at least not that I saw. She seemed to always be in the process of walking there.

Though the meal was not exactly a last meal, it had the feeling of finality about it, and seemed to be a reward or inducement, perhaps even the promise of a future reward, a showing that the promise could be kept. The man was to be required then, or was being recruited to, perform a duty that involved going to a world that was faded of color, drained of it, where the people there and the reality there were more shadowy things than the reality here, but that reality was nevertheless real to them and had its own rules that it followed.

The meal apparently ended early for some reason, and the dishes that were being held out were put down and the man stood up, apparently having actually eaten only a little of it. The time had come, seemingly a little earlier than expected, for his mission to begin.

If a Burglar Came

This is a scenario I thought of when two bags of trash were sitting in the kitchen against the back door. For much of this time, which was during the day, the door was unlocked, though it is normally locked. I thought of various incarnations of the story, some of them with me starting it and some with my mother starting it, before deciding on the one here.

I planned to tell this story to my mother, but I put it off for quite a while before saying anything. When I did, though, she seemed to be distracted with what she was doing or thinking at the time, and it was hard to get her full attention. She did finally mention that she thought the Boston Terrier was much more likely than the Pekingese to grab the burglar's shoes and run around the yard with them.

This story is dated 12:28 AM, November 4, 2008, Arizona time (MST).


IF A BURGLAR CAME

My mother: There are bags of trash still sitting against the door.

Me: Yes, and the door is unlocked, too. Anyone could get in.

My mother: Yes, anyone could get in.

Me: If someone did, he would go, "What the ??? AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" and fall face first over the trash. Then the little dogs (a Boston Terrier and a Pekingese) would come up and grab his shoes in their mouths and run madly back and forth over the yard with them. The burglar, rendered helpless by the loss of his shoes and knowing that the game was over, would take out his cell phone and call 911 himself and tell them to just come and get him and get it over with.

[Pause]

My mother: That is very strange. [finally smiles]

The Cyclops and the Hockey Match

This is another story that I did for a message board for a thread that was normally concerned with comically constructing new words and definitions. At that time people were taking turns writing short stories containing a short list of words given by another user. The story is changed slightly here in that it is broken up into two paragraphs instead of being contained in just one.

This story was one of two that I did for my post 997 on that message board. The other story was separate from this one, with its own list of words. The list of words for this story: cyclops, hockey, panties, mesa, grudge

This story is dated 3:44 PM, December 1, 2006, Arizona time (MST).


THE CYCLOPS AND THE HOCKEY MATCH

One day while playing hockey, the cyclops fell off his mesa and tore his panties when he landed. They were his favorite panties, too. Not being one to carry a grudge, he only destroyed part of the mesa, coincidentally the part that held the opposing team. The match was canceled, the newspapers said, because of an act of God.

The cyclops knew better, but he was busy trying to find some new panties.

A sly school paper

Back in high school, a long time ago, a teacher gave us a homework assignment to write something using a list of words. One of the other kids, a boy, wrote something particularly good. We were evidently supposed to read them to the class, otherwise I wouldn't know what he wrote.

He said, in part (this is an approximation), "I had a dream last night about a foxy lady carrying a suitcase with a snake hanging out."

Suitcase and snake were probably words from the list. Fox was definitely one of the words. There was some question in the class about whether converting it to foxy was proper. The other kids liked his story, though, and laughed when he read it. I did, too.

Other worlds with other versions of us

There are theories in which an infinite number of worlds exist in the universe, and theories in which an infinite number of universes exist. Within these infinities, every possibility is explored. It's said that everything that can exist, must exist, and must exist an infinite number of times.

And so, there are worlds where the sea and the land are populated by creatures that do not exist in the seas and on the lands of our Earth, but the humans are exactly the same as they are here. The humans there have our faces and our names and our life experiences, and live in houses that look like our houses and have neighbors that look like our neighbors, and they speak our languages and live in countries that look like our countries, which have histories that are like our histories.

The fish in the sea are different, though, as are the animals on the land, and they have different names. This situation exists an infinite number of times in an infinite number of worlds, because no matter how unlikely, it is possible.

100th post

This is the 100th post on this blog. It took a bit longer than I thought it might, though perhaps not as long as I feared it might be. The total mix of subjects is also not quite as I had at first envisioned. I had originally intended to include some thoughts on some areas of science, the paranormal, unknown animals, time travel, books, current events, and even politics. Perhaps I'll get to some of that in the next hundred posts. Time will tell.

Dream - Contacted by space aliens, a father prepares to leave

On the night of November 12-13, 2008, I had a dream about a father, previously contacted in some way by space aliens, who told him they would come back and take him with them, and also perhaps one of his children. He was sorrowfully preparing to leave his family, perhaps forever, as he awaited the aliens' return.


In the dream I was part of a large family. There was a prediction made by somebody, it's uncertain who, but the husband had some kind of interaction with a space alien or intelligence. It's kind of vague. He might have seen some one or more aliens physically, or there might have been just a spaceship and a light. I know there was a very deep voice speaking and a light, and I think there was also a ship, perhaps not quite landed, and some presences in or associated with the ship, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet away bathed in intense light, but also seeming closer, because of their impact on his mind, their burning presence. They were roughly like traditional gray aliens with big black eyes, but seemed slightly taller and more substantial, and their eyes were narrowed at the top, giving their faces an angry intensity. He knew what was going to happen in the future regarding him, that they were going to come back and take him and I think one of his children.

I was also aware, very strongly, that it would unfold like a movie script, that it literally was on some level a movie script, that direction was being given. Sometimes I could hear a faint but close deep voice somewhere above and behind me, saying something about what would happen or what was happening now.

The family consisted of a husband and wife and maybe six or so kids, perhaps even a little more, with the oldest in the early teens and the youngest probably around three. They left home and went on a trip somewhere, that the husband was or had been directed to by the aliens or their prediction. He had a specific destination or interim destination in mind, but they didn't go very far without stopping. I was under the impression that it was a temporary stopping place and they were going to move on, perhaps the next day. It was evidently a hotel or motel or inn, something they were paying for, but seemed very homelike. It also felt like it was associated somehow with a friend, that he was staying because of the friend, that it was perhaps owned by the friend.

The father looked something like Robin Williams in his thirties, though he also looked a little like me. I was one of the older kids, perhaps around ten or twelve, maybe slightly older, though toward the end I became more strongly associated with the husband, though still not quite him. The family seemed to be a happy one, though the husband was tormented by his visitation and what was going to happen.

Most of the family was in the living room. The kids were doing various things, playing, a TV might also have been on. I was behind the mother, who was on her knees playing with one of the youngest children. She was also talking, sometimes to the one she was playing with but also to the husband and maybe also to some of the other kids. She looked something like a younger version of my mother. I was behind her, maybe on my knees, leaning forward and hugging her, and maybe sometimes talking also. I dimly heard a deep voice above and behind me, perhaps around ceiling height. It talked for a while and then stopped. The father may have been aware of it more than I was and may have heard it more often. There was later strong indication that this was the case.

I went into the kitchen area, where a couple of the kids had gone. A medium-age kid was playing with a younger one who had been put on or had gotten on the counter. They were talking about a game or something else, some other activity, something they were playing, kid-type stuff. It seemed another little kid came in and then left, and the others started to leave, too. I may have lifted the littlest one off the counter, or someone else may have done it.

Then I went into one of the bedrooms. One of the kids, not one of the kids from the kitchen, but one who was part of the game being played, which may not actually have been what was being talked about in the kitchen, had hidden under the bed. After being found, the kid left. I think I may have helped the kid out from under the bed. I knew there was also another one, a little girl, and felt she was in the closet. As I turned toward the closet, which had a folding double door, the door on the right began to tremble, then shake, as she increasingly tried to get someone's attention, to show that she was still there and hadn't been found. I was talking to her then and she was talking to me. I was becoming increasing overcome by sadness, and I opened the door and took her into my arms. I held her and hugged her. She kept talking about the game and things. I was saying how much I would miss her and the others. It seemed I was now the father or strongly associating with him.

We went back to the living room. The father had evidently received another message from the aliens, from the voice. It seemed to be something only he could hear. I'm not sure if the others could hear what was said earlier in the dream, perhaps even I was not supposed to be aware of it. The father was standing near the middle of the room now, among the children. He had been giving them little hugs. The mother was a few feet away. The father was crying a little and was trying not to, his face contorted a bit. He was standing a little stooped. He said that he would have to leave shortly, and talked about how much he would miss them. I knew he would take one of the children with him, but I didn't know which one it was. Perhaps it was the little girl who had been in the closet. I felt that this might be the case.

There was a door toward the left, at the edge of the living room that led to a carport or garage. The door was at a corner that projected inward into the house, a corner that was a little more severe than 90 degrees. The door was directly at the corner, at the left, and may have been part of a double door system with the other door on the right side of the corner, with the doors having their hinges on the sides away from the corner.

The door on the left started to open slightly, and we all turned toward it, looking at it. The door opened a little more and air was softly coming through it. The air seemed both slightly warmer and slightly cooler than the air in the room, and much fresher and also a little dusty, and maybe also a little damp. The door opened more, much wider, like it was being opened by the wind. Was this them, was this it? The room beyond was dim, and had a concrete floor with a lot of stuff piled in the middle, some in boxes and some not, going up maybe five or six feet high, but broad areas around it were clear. A broad walkway or sidewalk was beyond it, lit by some light from an unseen source, perhaps a yard or street light. Two or three kids ran by from right to left, evidently playing, and after a pause, two or three more. Was it just the wind and just the kids, were the aliens still out there, about to appear any moment? We continued to watch.


My mother came to the bedroom door and woke me up then, wanting to say something to me or ask me something. She was wearing glasses, something she doesn't normally do when walking around. I raised my head and looked at her and replied. A tear rolled down the side of my face as I talked, perhaps something from the emotion of the dream, and I wiped it away.

Line 'Em Up

This is another humorous poem. The numbers in the poem refer to the lines in it, with each number corresponding to the number of the line in the poem. The last two lines are not numbered, though the last one is otherwise referenced.

This poem is dated 12:41 PM, August 28, 2007, Arizona time (MST).


LINE 'EM UP

This is the first line
And here is the second
The third comes next
As the fourth one's beckoned

The fifth went down
And then the sixth
Then the seventh was next
And the eighth forthwith

The ninth went in
Before the tenth did come
The next line's the end
And I'm really bummed

Dream - The bird-boy, the Christmas pageant, mall shopping, stolen presents, and the award

On October 4, 2008, I had either one very, very long dream that was in two parts, or two dreams that seemed later to be connected. Either way, they were both interesting. Even though the part I remember is very long, the actual beginning is forgotten.


In the dream, I went into a small shop, a gift shop of some kind I think. It seemed to be part of a mall or plaza. I think I was just going to look at things quickly and then leave, but they had some kind of strange new bird that somebody had brought in, a type of bird that had been discovered a little earlier and was just now being reported to the world. The reporting itself was a news story and not part of this shop and maybe not even about this particular bird, though it seemed to be one of the first ones that were brought in.

There was also a second bird of some type in the store, on the other side of the room next to the wall, on some shelves or some piece of furniture or display. It was smaller and different from the first and much more like a bird in appearance, and I didn't pay much attention to it.

The first bird, on the counter, had a head very much like a human toddler, a little boy. Its body was also vaguely like that but its legs, which I never really saw clearly, were bird's legs. Sometimes it seemed to have hands and sometimes little white wings. Its neck was a little long for a boy and it had wrinkles like an old man. Sometimes when it moved its head down and smiled, the wrinkles moved into its face, otherwise its face seemed smooth. It was a little smaller than a human, perhaps only fourteen inches tall, not counting its legs, which were in any case very short and I think dark colored. It was brought in by a man in late middle age and I think with a woman with him, probably his wife. The bird/baby boy was being propped up by the woman behind the counter. I had looked briefly at things in the store and then gone back to it. The man and one or two other people were there at the counter, women I think, talking about and oohing over the bird. I talked some to the bird, too, like one might talk to a baby or even a little dog. The bird looked back at me and sometimes made little sounds, not much and not anything meaningful.

The bird's body was originally wrapped in a pale blanket. This was taken off and I was confused that the bird apparently had two pouches across its lower stomach, one above the other, tight against its body. This was like a marsupial, but it was supposed to be a bird. Then they lifted it out and it turned out to be just a leather pouch it was in. Out of the pouch, it was revealed that the bird was wearing a white diaper.

I kept talking and making sounds to the bird. Eventually we went to the back of the store, where a few tables were set out for people to eat at, though we didn't use them. I was standing talking to the bird, which was flying and hovering in the air, moving its tiny wings. Sometimes I was on my knees partly looking up at it. It was getting better at making sounds and seemed almost like it was making words. I said "Goo-goo" one time to it and it said the same thing back to me. The man at that point came over and tried to discourage me from doing it, saying that they were going to be putting it in some kind of school shortly, maybe in a few months, I'm not sure. The impression is that he didn't want the bird learning nonsense sounds, he wanted it to learn real words.

The man sat down at a table while I continued to look mostly at the bird and sometimes talk to it, while I also talked to the man, usually continuing to look at the bird and only giving the man occasional glances. I wondered how long the bird could live and how old it was and how long its childhood was. I asked the man how old he thought I was. He was saying something about how he didn't know and I could be blah, blah, or could be blah, blah, etc. I said I was 55. He said he would never have guessed.


I was in a big mall, then. Thousands of people were in a huge room sitting in built-in seats watching a performance, apparently a Christmas pageant, though I'm not sure how much of it actually directly related to Christmas. My mother and one or two people with her were in the seats, also watching it. She sent me out to shop, holding a list of things to get, mostly gifts for my brother. I visited various small shops, getting almost all the presents. They were almost all in clear plastic bags, separately, though one or two bags may have had more than one thing in them, and an item or two did not have a bag. All of the items were very small, including a camera.

I went to the far end of the mall where a movie theater was, visiting a restroom. It was getting late, and I was getting concerned about dinner. I started heading back finally to the huge section where thousands of people were seated watching a performance. Middle-aged women in makeup and jewels and fancy clothes crowded around the entrance with me, pushing against me, smiling, talking to themselves and sometimes to me. Inside, people were singing, and some of them were going down the aisles and through the rows singing and doing various minor performances and interacting with the crowd.

I finally managed to get away and make my way back along the shops, stopping every few shops and sitting down at little tables just outside the shops, and going through the collection of bags and looking at things. I thought that I should combine some of what I had, and put the items without a bag, there were perhaps only a couple that way, into the bags, combining them with whatever was in there.

The last shop I stopped at, some kind of eating place, there was someone at the back, a relatively young, short, thin person. It seemed like it might be a man and then it seemed more like a woman. The uncertainty went back and forth for a while, even later after we had talked some, though finally near the end it seemed that she was definitely a woman. She was a little like Rachel Maddow at MSNBC, short hair and all.

Now, at the beginning, she was at the back, behind the counter, saying something sardonically about someone saying something about Stephen, and that her name was Stephenson. I perked up and became interested at that point, because my own name was Stephen, though I hadn't said anything and it didn't seem possible that I was the one she was talking about. I called out that my name was Stephen. She seemed interested and said, smiling, something about it being a coincidence and went to her right and exited the counter and the room. She came back into the store, then, or maybe appeared just outside it. A woman in the store and I think another employee were singing and going to this place and that, sometimes popping out of some different place unexpectedly, at least once appearing outside the store. The first woman was part of this performance and also singing and popping out of different places. This didn't go on for very long before fading back in intensity and then mostly stopping. I wondered if this was something they did there frequently.

I had gone forward into the place at first to get a little closer after I said something to the woman and she started talking to me, and then I went back out as they were performing. I went back now to where I had been sitting to get the bags and try to sort through them and find good places to put the items without bags, and found almost all of them gone. Someone had stolen them. I started searching an accordion-like briefcase I found on or by a picnic table-like seat by a small rectangular table just inside the business. A man sitting there and talking to a person on the other side of the table partially turned towards me and was upset that I was looking through his briefcase. I continued looking but didn't find anything but some papers and other normal stuff. I finally stopped looking in it. I had to leave, I had to search elsewhere for them now. I went back out.

I sat at a very small, round table just outside the place and looked through what I had left again. I came across two knives I had picked up along the way at different places. One of them had maybe an inch and a half broken off the blade, and I had earlier used the square corner at the break to carve something in the face of a soft brick-like thing, kind of a message, though I think the carving looked almost like runes. It was way back where the thousands of people were watching the performance, in the seating area. The other knife had a wavy blade, like it had been bent and then straightened out, and it had some big raised smooth dark areas like old rust or old food.

I considered just leaving them on the table. They would be picked up when the tables were cleared, but I worried if someone should find them, maybe even some kids, and get into trouble with them. I finally decided to take the broken one. It seemed for some reason to be more dangerous, the other one seemed old and worn and weak. I left it there and went out into the mall.

I looked briefly at some places nearby, and then started flying sitting up, partially cross-legged. Some people were beside me to the right, following on the ground, mostly women. As I went on they came closer, touching me with their shoulders or heads, oohing and aahing and making little appreciative comments about my flying. The mall seemed much larger now, and had aisles go off at angles to the one I was on. I was flying back toward the movie house at the far end. I had to go to the bathroom and thought I could use the restroom there and look for the missing stuff on the way. It was getting late and I would have to go back to the others afterwards and we would have to decide what to do about the missing items, to try to get them again or get something else instead or maybe just do without them.

The aisle was much bigger and longer and fancier than it had been. It was paved in different areas with different kinds of paving stones or tiles. Some areas had large tan shiny brick-like tiles, some had smaller brighter squarer ones, etc. A largish shiny brick-like one of one kind or another was predominant, though. The mall aisle had a gentle downhill trend with a series of a few downward steps every few hundred feet.

At a place where an aisle crossed this one, I saw outside through a large window area a giant Wizard of Oz-like head pushing its way through the dirt with hands sticking up by its jaw, palms out, coming toward the mall at an angle. Like the Wizard in the movie, it had a scowl on its face. It went to the mall near the intersection of aisles and got inside. I thought it was probably a hologram and part of the show. Inside it met another head coming the other way and they stopped, facing each other a few feet apart. I flew over and around them, and as I did they faded to a grainy semitransparent blueness, confirming they were indeed holograms. I felt satisfied by this, and as I flew I saw a large dark bronze lion head on the outside wall of the other aisle, filling a doorway. I felt that it was also capable of movement, particularly facial movement. I got the impression that it was somewhat amused, but it didn't seem to move much, if at all, while I was watching it.

I went back to flying down the aisle and soon came to two tall, short buses, one immediately behind the other, and heading away from me, apparently used for tours of the mall. A very tall, very hairy man was laying on top of the bus closest to me. He was probably seven or eight feet tall and dressed like a street thug from an old movie, even having I think a soft cap. I wondered if he took the things I had bought and I think asked him about it and pulled or pushed him by the shoulder, turning him partly over. I saw part of a large clear plastic bag or two under him. He said, "Hey, what is this, I can get a gun!"

I pulled him off the top of the bus and he fell flat against the ground with his hands and arms partly under the end of the bus and his head against or at the end of it. The bus had stopped. I fought an accomplice then, a much smaller man but much larger than me, who also said that he could get a gun. They were both dead now, or apparently so.

The police came and a detective questioned me. I told them what had happened, that I had done it, that they had said they could get a gun. The detective immediately accepted it then, happily, and said something like, "Well, that's it, then!" and the small bus was found to have a lot of stolen loot in it. Most of it was other people's, but they happily gave it all to me, happy that the case was solved and they had gotten all the loot back before it could be gotten rid of. In fact, most of the stuff that was mine was still missing, so presumably they had gotten rid of part of it. They were happily giving everything to me, though. I wondered if I should say anything and worried about what would happen if they found out later. They kept going on about it and it was getting more and more awkward to bring it up.

I was being congratulated and about to be given an award, including prize money. It was going to be given, they said, by Bill Maher, but I had Regis pictured in my mind and associated with that name. I was pointed toward an ornate box the size of a small room, in the street that was the mall aisle. The room/box had heavy raised simple designs on it, and was apparently made of dark brass with a door of the same material and its own heavy raised simple designs. A person stood guard there, acting as a doorman, dressed in court finery from around Shakespeare's time. A crowd had gathered, everyone was happy. It looked like I wasn't going to be able to get to a bathroom right away, though I glanced somewhat wistfully around the area as I flew toward and around the box/room, waiting for the door to open and the person to come out with the award and the prize money.

Dream - Zombie dinosaurs!

On October 1, 2008, early in the morning, I had a dream in which I was chased by dinosaurs that turned into zombies.

In the dream, there was a large, pale, square building, maybe as much as five or six stories high later, but maybe not quite so tall at first. There was a balcony at the back that went around to the left side, as seen from the front. It was dark. Dinosaurs were in the back yard area, including Tyrannosaurus rex. Someone had antagonized the dinosaurs, teasing or taunting them from the balcony, despite my warning not to do so. We were being chased now, particularly by a T. rex, and I was running from them around to the side.

We passed the stairs at the side that led up to a landing that might have been an extension of the balcony. The stairs were narrow. I looked at the stairs, wondering if the dinosaurs could somehow pull themselves onto the landing/balcony. I decided we had to get up the stairs and try to get inside. I urged the person to get up the stairs. He went up them, then, and I got up them somehow, too. I was worried that the dinosaurs would get up on the balcony again. We had had quite a fight with them before driving them off into the yard.

Then the dinosaurs changed into zombie dinosaurs, white with pale blue shades, and we were being chased by a zombie T. rex. We got into the building and were making our way across an encircling hallway and into and through rooms, some of them large. They got inside and were after us. I realized that the interior of the building was something I had seen before, several times, and it had a comforting sense of familiarity about it.

We passed people at various places, then we started running into zombie people, like the dinosaurs white with blue shades. Evidently zombiness was being passed on, like a contagion. The dinosaurs seemed to be changing into people, too. Some of the zombie people were very large, maybe seven feet tall, and heavily built. I also saw some that seemed part dinosaur and part human. The zombie people sometimes looked at us evilly. They seemed to be wanting to get us, too, though they didn't always try very hard.

Then we ran into zombie objects. Even objects were being converted. I was pushing at the objects with something. Some of the objects were boxes, even wooden boxes, and some were types of equipment, I guess, and maybe small statuary and some furniture. I was using the thing I was holding to damage the objects I was pushing at, which were generally boxlike things. Sometimes I was able to push all the way through them, almost ripping them in two. The objects were all pale like the other zombies, but unlike the animal and people zombies the objects seemed weak and easily damaged, like the material had been damaged, like it was rotten.

Then the zombie people and zombie objects started getting friendlier. The people had little smiles and they didn't seem to want to get us anymore.


More happened earlier in the dream, but the memory of it has largely faded away. There's a feeling that my grandmother's house, the one in Arizona, might have been where it started, and that it changed into the place where the dinosaurs were. In real life, of course, it was a much smaller house than in the dream.

Color Bother

This is another light, good natured poem, this time talking about finding rhymes for colors. I wrote some parts of it fairly easily, as some colors have many possibilities for rhymes. Some other colors, though, required extra thought. Also, although I already knew that the final color listed would not have a rhyme, I thought of a few different ways to handle it before finally deciding on the one shown here.

This poem is dated 6:27 AM, August 27, 2007, Arizona time (MST).


COLOR BOTHER

This charming fellow,
Found a rhyme for yellow.

And one for red,
Popped out of my head.

And one for green,
Came quick and clean.

I found one for blue,
And you can, too.

For the color purple,
Roger Miller used syrple.

But orange has none,
So I ate one.

Who is the best?

When you say that someone is the best at something, you are automatically comparing them to others. You can't make valid comparisons unless you know what the capabilities of this person are versus the capabilities of the others. A ranking has to be established. If the knowledge to make such a ranking doesn't exist, then the best cannot be determined.

You might say that somewhere, the best person at something exists, and that this best person is not known to us as best or to anyone as best. This may be true, but it falls into the vast quantity of things we don't know and may never know. Not only is it unknown, but it's unlikely to affect us to any great degree. That being the case, it becomes largely or totally irrelevant to us.

We may speak, for instance, of the greatest artist known (and different people will pick different artists for this). We don't usually speak of the greatest artist unknown.

It may be sad to think that the greatest artist may not be known to be such, perhaps not even to himself. However, if a person's work is unknown or unrecognized, there would seem to be little we could logically do unless we were made aware of it.

Great works of art and literature, and even great inventions, may be lost to us because not enough people are aware of them or their significance. In fact, this may be more the rule than the exception, as we are probably aware of only a tiny fraction of what is out there.


God sees everything, and knows who is the best and who is not. We can't see everything, and make determinations on who is best based on what we do see. If we can't see it, we can't make those determinations.

The Candlestick and Jack's Friend

This is something I came up with not long ago, though I'm not sure now what prompted my thoughts on the matter. It is, of course, a sequel to the "Jack Be Nimble" nursery rhyme, in which he jumped over a candlestick.

This poem is dated 1:59 AM, November 29, 2008, Arizona time (MST).


THE CANDLESTICK AND JACK'S FRIEND

When Jack jumped over
The candlestick,
His friend thought that
Looked really slick,
And said, "I, too,
Can do this trick."

But her overconfidence
Was a little thick,
And she burned both ends,
And called in sick,
And she still can't sit,
But she's one hot chick.