The Real Folk Blues

Title is from a song used in the anime "Cowboy Bebop" just because I don't really know what to title this.  I don't even know if I should be posting this here as it might drive away my fiction readers and potentials... but, argh... I need to rant somewhere or I'm going to explode. 

In late March, I won my case for Disability coverage.  This is due to the shameful condition that I have - bipolar disorder with a high propensity toward anxiety.  I do actually work, but I cannot maintain more than a very low-stress (and unusual) part-time job that gives me little contact with people.  Give me a list of things to do, things to clean up, leave me alone to do it and I do it, that's really all I can handle.  The normal "boss tells you what to do and supervises you doing it" is too anxiety-riddled and occasionally anger-confrontation triggering with me.   You can say that this is why if I ever got a "real career" (outside of cleaning a horse stable for minimum wage), writing would be perfect for me.  I write, I send... I'm actually very good with taking constructive criticism in written form, it's just flesh/face-to-face stuff that causes problems.  Artists can be neurotic as all get-out and still produce good things, right? 

I was told that it takes usually a month to start seeing Disability checks and/or your back-award (I have a substantial one coming, covering years.  I am hoping to invest it in something I've never had before: a savings account of some sort so that maybe, just maybe, when I'm sixty-years old I don't have to eat dog food to survive).  I've heard it could take longer, but most people get it within a month or two...

It's been two months, and aside from a letter stating that I did, indeed, receive judgement of award, I've not seen or heard hide nor hair of it.  At a meeting with my social-caseworker, we called the local office and, I kid you not, got a response of "Good luck." from the person on the other end.  (A wish for good luck, not sarcasm, but it shows that whomever is on the other line probably gets a tragic number of these kind of calls).   On the literature I received, it said that some cases take up to five months.  I hope it's not that long. I mean... I'm already having fantasies about finding my way down to the local offices with a wheelbarrow full of manure and just throwing it at people.  

I did mention that I'm crazy, right? 

And right now... is not good.  Due to some unexpected expenses that just blindsided us out of nowhere, my guy and I are having trouble paying our basic bills.  Since I got paid my (minimum wage!) check tonight, he was able to buy for us some bread, eggs and milk, which we have been lacking over the last week.  Seriously, bread, eggs and milk are luxuries right now.  Also, if I disappear from online for a while, it's because that bill is due. 

I mean, if I don't even get my full back-award right away and just start getting the monthly, it's going to help us out a lot, but you see, life likes to play a game called "Yank Shadsie's chain."  At this point, since the news from the local offices is "It's supposed to take sixty days, you should be seeing it oh about this week" and not seeing anything actually show up, I'm wondering if something got mixed up in the files and they're sending my money to the wrong person, or if I didn't *really* get awarded squat and the letter of award was a lie, or the lawyer on my case is being douchey about things somehow... (haven't heard from him lately, either).  This is just me being paranoid, I guess.... another part of my condition. 

I just want to scream WHERE'S MY FUGGIN' MONEY?!!!!

I'm sick of living on a knife's edge.  My guy and I have done it a lot... that's what being working poor IS.  You have things alright for a while, just enough to get you calm, then - WHAM! Some stupid bill or situation or asshole comes out of nowhere and you teeter, wonder if you're going to be able to afford to drive, or to pay your rent, or to eat, or having to trade off one for the other, and it takes a LONG time to recover to that place of quiet calm (which, by the way, is a "calm" that still has bill collectors from past knife-edges and/or student loans or that hospital-bill from a work accident that your boss was supposed to have paid two years ago coming up on you). 

I'm just... sad... and pissed off.... really pissed off right now.  It's one thing to just be poor, but to actually expect someone out there to HELP you, who said they were going to do it, only to YANK your damn chain until you feel like hanging yourself is just...

I don't know if "life is suffering," but it certainly is AGGRAVATING.

Sola's City

A strange little random short story about a young woman wandering around in an inexplicably empty city.  I had the idea for this piece for a long while, but I think it's kind of interesting that I did the first hand-writing on it while on a road trip just after exiting the claustrophobic chaos that is New York City.  (Glad I finally saw the place, don't want to live there).  This is one of my "mind screw" pieces.  Enjoy. Or don't. In any case, it's here.

Sola’s City

S.E. Nordwall

Sola wandered the silent city alone.  The area was not truly silent, just much quieter than it had been before.  Birds chirped and wind whistled through the streets, but the only sounds from a human source anymore were the words of Sola, who was talking to herself. 

“The lights are still on,” she muttered to herself.  “I wouldn’t have expected them to last this long.  Maybe it’s just the city that’s all empty like this – maybe the plants are still running.” 

Sola was in her home city, Freeton.  She’d arrived there after a long drive to find it deserted.  Sola did not know if what had happened to the city had happened to the entire world, but she had her suspicions.  She’d driven around the suburbs and outlying boroughs to find them devoid of human life.  She remembered seeing a bright flash of light while on the highway at night almost a week ago.  Sola had kept driving in bewilderment as the highway was void of vehicles.  That was it- there were no cars left in the city and no people.  It couldn’t have been a bomb of any sort – that bright flash of light – since she had survived it and little was disturbed. 

This was unreality.

Sola had been wandering around in it for several days.  She passed by the Great Gear Clock in the town center.  Its minute hand clicked forward, marking illusion.  The young woman wondered if she’d somehow jumped outside of time or to a parallel universe. 

That clock had been designed by some artist she’d forgotten the name of.  It was installed only about seven years ago – a funky, chunky thing cast in a golden-toned polished bronze.  Other cities had their landmarks – Philadelphia had its Bell, New York had its buildings, bridges and Broadway, both had drivers who did not know the meaning of turn-signals… Sola’s city had that big, stupid clock. 

“The sky is like a sapphire,” she said to herself, looking beyond the grand timepiece.  “Maybe I should stop.  I’m talking to myself.  Crazy people talk to themselves.”

Sola supposed that she could pray, but she really didn’t know whom to and, according to her mother, that was just as bad, if not worse, than one’s talking to oneself.  Sola’s mother had taught her to pray when she was a small child, but in the course of life had lost her faith in a way that led her to condemn it and all related subjects as forms of insanity.  The aging woman had come into her latest view with the exuberance of a new convert and a zeal and certainty more appropriate, Sola thought, to a member of her own generation.    Unlike her mother – or that uncle of hers whose views had gone in the opposite direction with a particularly conformist church that she found creepy, Sola wasn’t sure about anything. 

She was even less sure of anything in this bizarre, empty world. 

“Ha!” she laughed, “I suppose I can talk to myself all I want to!  Mom and Uncle Jimmy aren’t around to tell me not to, are they?” 

It was three days after that when Sola found the kitten.

The city had seemed to be devoid of animals as well as humans, save for the wild types.  Songbirds chattered from power lines and she’d caught sight of three deer wandering down

Main Street

– a whitetail buck and two does. 

Still perplexed at the continued hum of electricity and other conveniences, Sola got herself out of bed in the bright glare of an early summer Saturday morning.  She filled up some plastic bottles with water (the plumbing in her apartment was still working as smoothly as ever) and loaded them into a small backpack.  The television was static and, while her computers (both the tower unit and the laptop) still worked, the Internet had been down ever since the “emptiness” had begun.  The landline telephone gave her nothing but a repeated computerized message about any numbers she called being out of service and her cell phone lately seemed to think that everywhere was a dead-zone. If there was an outside world anymore, there seemed to be no way of connecting to it. 

As she stepped down the stairs outside, she heard a strange squeak.  A little white shape came bounding out from behind a bush.  It had bright pale-blue eyes and skinny limbs supporting a fat little body, round in way that kittens often were from baby-fat and bellies full of mother’s milk.  It sniffed Sola’s feet.

“Well, hello there, little one…” she said, noting the soft gray markings on the animal’s ears, nose and tail.  The kitten was clearly of Siamese descent, though of the rare “tabby-point” kind.  The animal’s forehead bore gray stripes and the tail was trimmed in circlets. 

“Do you belong to anyone?” Sola said as she cautiously picked the kitten up.  She wasn’t talking about a human master.  Her eyes scanned the area to see if there was a mother cat around.  The kitten purred and squirmed.  It appeared to be at a just-weaned age and was definitively a male.  Sola set the kitten down, not really knowing what to do with it.  She expected it to scamper off.  As she walked down the street of her empty neighborhood, she found it following her.

“Alright, alright,” she laughed, “I’ll see if I can find you some canned cat-food while in town.”  She paused and picked the tiny fuzzball up again.  She held him close to her chest, listening to his thunderous purr.  “I guess…” she said tentatively, “if you have no one to take care of you, I’ll have to do it.  I think I’ll call you ‘Ring,’ since you have rings on your tail.” 

The young woman looked to the sky and sighed.  “This beats talking to myself, I guess, though I’m sure you don’t understand a word I’m saying.” 

Sola wondered briefly why it was considered crazy for people to talk to themselves, but not to an animal.  Even people who had a problem with others talking to God didn’t usually have a problem with them having one-sided conversations with Dog.  Animals for-sure existed as much as the self did, but animals didn’t know what people were saying, for the most part.  Sola had known dogs that could decipher the word “walkies” enough to get excited about it as well as a cat belonging to an aunt that knew what “sushi” was.  Said aunt was the type to share small amounts of takeout with pets.  Sometimes, that cat would just jump up on the kitchen table with people seated at it, too.

Ring followed Sola to a shoe store.  Sola felt lucky to find the front door open, though she found the chiming of the little bell mounted on the door’s corner eerie.  The soles of her old runners were getting thin.  She tried on a pair of dark leather work-boots, though she removed the straps.  She sat on one of the chairs in the store’s front dangling a bootstrap in front of Ring, smiling at the kitten’s frantic antics. 

“You know, Ring?” she said, “I once had the thought to gather a whole bunch of these – bootstraps, I mean – and weave them into a noose to hang myself with.  People all over the place tell you to ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps,’ you know?  It was going to be my answer to that.” 

Sola laughed aloud as the kitten jumped and danced, and got one of its hind legs tangled.  “I think you and I will get along real well,” she said with a pleased sigh. 

In her strapless boots, Sola hit the street again and walked to a grocery store she knew to procure some cans of cat food and a few other necessities.  One could never have too much toilet paper.  The doors opened for her just as they had in the time of people.  While it was bizarre and worrisome that everything meant to serve mankind was still working without a hitch, Sola was getting used to it. 

“Maybe we’re a couple of bugs in some kind of alien’s jar,” she mused, talking to the tiny cat at her feet.  Ring had taken to following her as faithfully as any puppy, a far more common trait in kittens than was widely known. 

“What I like about this,” Sola said, popping a can of “Mariner’s Catch” into a canvas “Save-the-Earth” bag she’d taken off the side of a register up at the front of the store, “is that everything is gratis.  I didn’t have to work hard to get any of this, nor am I having it denied to me because I worked hard, but was unlucky enough to not have the work pay well enough to feed myself, let alone kitty-cats.  When I came home to the empty city, I’d been driving home from looking for a job… I had to go far out of my way to put in my bid with a bureau that’s supposed to find jobs for people who have trouble getting hired by conventional means…” 

She picked a bag of dry cat food off the shelf, figuring her new kitty might like that, too.  “To tell you the truth, Ring, I’ve long had a little fantasy about wandering around in an emptied world.  Living the dream – woo hoo.  I always figured it wouldn’t be what I wanted when I got it, though… that I’d be lonely or have a hard time surviving.  Characters in post-apocalyptic stories always have a hard time surviving. 

Sola picked up the little kitten.  He squirmed in her hands.  “This isn’t so bad, though,” she asserted, “… not really.  I suppose I never knew until now how little I’d miss people.  The city is quiet now and I don’t have to worry about what anyone thinks of me… at least, as long as I take care of you, hmm?”

The young woman held the cat close to her and shouldered the canvas bag filled with the things she wanted to take back to her home, including a small bag of clay cat litter that proved to be quite heavy.  The sun had set when she stepped out into the vacant parking lot and made her way out into the streets.  Something unusual caught Sola’s eye.  She set her bag down and gently released Ring.  Ever since she’d seen the mysterious light, the only car she’d glimpsed in Freeton was her own. 

She saw a car and it was her own – just off the main thoroughfare into town, its front end wrapped around a tree.  Sola picked up her feet.  Broken windshield-glass was everywhere.  Shadow figures appeared around her and she heard the garbled noise of police speaking into communicators.  Red and blue lights flashed round-about her.  Sola could not make anything distinct out of any of it.  Everything was made of shadows and static. 

She stood suddenly still, like a confused animal in the center of a highway.  She found herself paralyzed like a mouse captured by a cat.  Her every muscle locked.  There was a body in the driver’s seat of the car – or what was left of it.  Sola couldn’t get a good look at the face, but the long black hair and the clothing that it wore reminded Sola of her own long hair and what she’d been wearing several nights ago. 

In the flashing lights, she picked up her feet to avoid nuggets of glass and spatters of blood.  Just as quickly as it had appeared, the vision dissipated, leaving behind nothing more than a scarred oak.  Ring came padding up to Sola.  Aside from his tiny squeaking and the wind through the leaves, all was silence. 

The young woman did not sleep that night.  She sat up on her apartment’s small balcony as the sun rose; her knees were curled to her chest as she sat on the bare concrete, her tailbone hurting.  Ring slept upon a folded-up towel, curled into a fuzzy little kitten-ball. 

“I don’t think the world ended, Ring,” she said, talking to the feline although he was snoozing.  “I think I ended.  The world melted away for me, but really, it was only me that melted away.” 

She petted the kitten with two fingers and awakened it.  Ring purred and rubbed his face against her thumb. 

“I don’t know where I am now.  I suppose I can’t go back.  I don’t want to, though.” 

“Mew?” 

Sola smiled, positioned herself to sit cross-legged and brought Ring into her lap.  “The more I think of it,” she sighed, “If I had the chance to go back, I wouldn’t.  Alone, but not lonely… I suppose it’s a rare achievement.” 

The sun glared over the empty streets below.  Sola could see the Great Gear Clock without the foot and car traffic in the way, as it had always been in past days.  She stroked her purring kitten. 

“This is my city,” she sighed happily, “and here I am free.”  

More of Shadsie's Animal Adventures

Cross-posted between Deviant Art and Blogger.

Some days I feel like “Shadsie Irwin.”

Yesterday evening, I went into work – for anyone who doesn’t already read me regularly, I work on a farm cleaning up after horses.  I got a surprise.  

There’s a big barn and a little barn and on a yearly basis (I’ve been working there for a couple of years now), springtime brings birds that like to nest in the big barn.  I think they’re swifts, not entirely sure – they look reasonably like that family as illustrated in the Peterson’s Guide.  There’s a pair that’s been taking a particular nest-building site inside the big barn that my guy, Bob, and I like to call “The Bickersons,” because they loudly argue.  Drives the barncats nuts… Brave little things – they’ll swoop right by your head if you’re too close to their nest, dive-bomb the cats…

Apparently, the Bickersons’ brood from last year came back with them and a pair of young birds has been staking a claim in the little barn for the first time – right inside the doorway.  There are lots of fly-paper and fly-sticks hung up there because the little barn is close to the Great Lord Smellypyle (manure heap) and gets things especially bad and especially early with the flies.  So, I go into the little barn to take care of the couple of the stalls I’m in charge of cleaning there and I notice something odd about the orange, tubular fly-stick hanging from the ceiling… I thought it had a rather large bit of debris caught onto it from wind.  I took a second look and it was a bird.

A bird was just stuck on there by the wings and tail.  I looked up, thinking “poor dead thing, to die like that,” then to my resolute horror I saw its head move.  It was still alive, the poor thing! I called Bob at his work, asked what could be done… tried to rouse my immediate supervisors who live on the farm, but they were out partying – it’s Saturday… wound up getting one of the neighbors who lived on the property to help me out.  We took the fly stick down and gently pried the bird off.  I set it down to see if it could fly and it couldn’t get off the ground.  I scooped it up, just as Mr. Big, the multi-toed giant shorthaired barn cat came thundering up.  Told the neighbor to get on his computer and Google wildlife rehabilitators. Called Bob again, holding the scared little swift. 

It was close to quitting-time for Bobbert, so I waited, holding the little bird gently while he picked up some organic/non-toxic goo-gone and the kind of scentless, neutral dish soap people use on animals caught in oil spills.  The bird was nice and calm for me – probably in shock.  Its left claw had a death-grip on my thumb.  The barncats were especially interested in me…  And, so I started in on my work quite late because of birdy-rescue.  Bob and I managed to get some of the goo out, but ultimately we wound up finding a box, putting some soft hay in it, and Bob took it to the local wildlife rehab while I did my job. Bob said the people there were going to keep her until her tail feathers grow back in – because the fly goo had just wrecked it.  Her wings weren’t really all that bad.  I’m hoping she hasn’t laid eggs yet because that means they’re pretty much doomed.

Then, for dinner, I had Dairy Queen chicken strips.

Ideas for a story, possibly novel

I have a stray idea that I sketched in a notebook.

Yep, that's a human heart embedded with clock-gears.  I don't have enough "story" in my head yet to start writing a story, all I have at present is a sketch.  Perhaps if some nice people were interested in publishing my other work (how many months ago did I send out queries for novels  "A World of Rusted Dreams" and "Malarkey and Belinda?" ), I'd have the little bit of umph I need to get my head on an original story idea like this and out of the stupid videogame fan fiction I've been into of late.  (Though fans of my fan fiction probably want me to stick around in that world).

Anyway, I have a title and a basic concept... on a torn out notebook page... with a creepy drawing of a heart.

Title: "Secondhand"

Setting: The setting is a world where the "seat of the self" isn't viewed as the brain, but the heart - kind of like the way of thought in the ancient world (Ancient Egypt, if I'm not mistaken), except in this world, it's actually true. More appropriately, the "soul" of a person is in their blood in this world.  There is an energy or "essence" that is known to flow in the blood of humans and animals and it is a measurable, scientifically-known, detectable material thing rather than a vague concept.  This energy, however, is mysterious and things about it are not completely understood by the science of this world.  It is thought to be the root of emotions.

This "essence" vanishes from the body after death.  It is not known whether it lives on or just decays into the earth like the rest of the body. It sort of just disappears - poof, no residue left behind at the moment of dying. I am thinking that most people in this world are of the latter ("decays") opinion, but there's no hard proof either way, which pretty much makes questions of the soul in this world much like questions of the soul in our world. 

Basic Plot: One nation's scientists/thinkers/engineers have discovered a way that the "essence" can be regulated.  If it's "flow" through the body is adjusted, it can be tightly controlled and thus emotion can give way to reason, calm and the controlling of a populace. The "essence flow" can be controlled through controlling the actions of the heart.  Being that this particular, powerful nation's culture generally frowns upon "overages of emotion" so a governmental motion is carried to give people after a certain age (when they are out of childhood and have stopped physically growing in any significant way) artificial clockwork hearts.  The artificial hearts allow blood to flow normally, but regulate the "essence."   

(Remember, kids, this is a fantasy world, I'm not even trying to be medically accurate).

Having an adult population with clockwork hearts (called "secondhand hearts" and the surgery to get one is called "secondhanding") keeps society on an even keel.  The people are kept "controlled."  However, as it turns out, these "secondhand hearts" don't work for everyone. Even people who survive the surgery intact sometimes, without explanation, continue to emote strongly, secretly question their government and innovate in unexpected ways...

I'm thinking that much of the story is in a protagonist seeking asylum from his country of origin in a country that has developed a "world gate" enabling contact with our world and the guy ends up explaining his world and his country to an interviewer from our (brain-based) world.  I also think the day he found out that his "secondhanding" didn't take and he was an "Irrational" (a person that would be branded with the epithet) when he *had a dream.*  It was actually a pleasant dream, but is scared the poo outta him because adults with secondhand hearts don't have dreams.  (REM sleep is essential for our brains, but not essential to survival in blood-soul-world) - and dreams are looked down upon, something "to be stamped out" in the secondhanding culture because they are irrational, something the society wants to eliminate. 

~~~~~

I think I may be channeling a bit of "Brave New World" here. I know I'm channeling a bit of the anime, "Kino's Journey" - there was an episode of that detailing a small country where people were lobotomized into adulthood and strict, unquestioning obedience of their government.  I think this idea is also a metaphor for psychiatry in a way:  I have a disorder for which I take medication and make attempts to "normalize" myself in order to function in the world.  How much should someone give up of themselves in order to be a part of the world? How much should someone give up of themselves to feel like they're in control and to feel like themselves?  Where do we draw the line at order and disorder?

I read an article yesterday on a news site where some guy was trying to "debunk the myth of the mad genius" well, I tell you, bunk on him because there are ideas I know I'd never come up with or be able to do with any kind of realistic efficacy if I were *normal.*  I see this as one of those ideas.

I can turn my fanfiction into gold?

No, I can't. I just read another confirmation that I won't be an easy success because... I don't write erotica!

I found an article today that amused me at my favorite amusing-articles waste of time site: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-tips-turning-awful-fan-fiction-into-best-seller/ 

Mr. McGinley needs to think seriously about cobbling together all of those fake and purposeful "bad book passages" samples he provides and making them into a book, because people would read it for the So-Bad-It's-Good quality. Now, if those passages are from actual manuscripts he's come across... dude, those books will be totally successful - not as romance but as comedy. 

Despite my penning of original work every once in a while, (stuff I post here) I've been steeped in the fun and free and wild world of fan fiction for a long time. (I post my fanfiction on fanfiction and specific-fandom sites and do not "glut" my blog with it, as I write a lot of it). I have read and skimmed many a fanfiction that was meant in all seriousness that reads just like the "fake-bad" passages in the article!   And not just because I used to go to "snarker" sites. I don't bother with the general meanness of those anymore, but still come across some real comedy cold when looking for fan-things about favorite worlds and characters to read.

My own work is... different... than the stereotypes comedians like to point out.  Is about 80- 90 percent of fanfiction pairings/love/humping-if-the-site-allows-adult-stuff-or-you-can-lie-and-get-past-the-filters? Oh, yeah.  There are also lots of fics of the other variety (the rare species "gen," as rare as the legendary unicorn some would say) all about friendships and adventures and "what if something went wonky in the world?" and the latter broad-category is the variety I'm known for.  And then there's the stuff I pen that people might not know what to do with, like a surreal-imagery-split-dimensions thing I wrote that I feel an urge to make into a wordless fancomic and one story I wrote that's essentially a romance between robots where the whole thing being *completely sexless* makes sense.  It's also kind of one-sided, as it involves one of the partners being in an eternal sleep inside a sword... if you know the fandom, you know instantly what I'm talking about and if you don't, what I said makes no sense.

Er, long story short, my fanfiction, much like my original work... isn't titillating, it's just WEIRD. A friend once compared my writing style to that of Madeline L'Engle, which I took as a great compliment, but I honestly don't know if her style of work would be published/publishable today and that means I'm screwed as far as getting rich off of anything creative that I do, hmm? 

As an asexual / sexually uninterested person, I don't think I can write realistic screwing from the perspective and for the general titillation of normal people.  I could hack at it, certainly, after all, I've never killed anyone and I write scenes of war and murder into my stories... but if I wind up writing "he waggled his sex for her pleasure and they made the sex," I'm going to be *laughing* too damn hard to pound out anything!

Though the article did give me an idea... the love with a monster thing.  I think it would be fun to write a romance between a naive girl and a zombie... whom she UNDERSTANDS! despite his undeath.  It would contain literal boning! Maybe I can even go one step further and have girl meets skeleton!  I could title it Afterlife Affair: Love in the Midnight Cemetery. 

If it is to be a fanfiction-turned-book-proper, hmmm.. It'd start out as a Legend of Zelda something involving a Stalfos, a canon skeleton-enemy and then it would morph... and....

My brain hurts.   

An Internet Pet Peeve

A quick glance at something reminded me of a pet peeve of mine on the Internet.  I don’t know if it’s a writer’s peeve or just an argument-style peeve. 

I hate it when people seem to think quoting someone and leaving means they’ve won the argument. 

Quotes from famous, admired people are just fine and dandy – when used at the head of an essay or as a *part* of an argument, but when you simply *quote famous dead guy here* and don’t add any of your *own* thoughts to it or explain why this agrees with you or supports what you want to say and use it to say everything, isn’t that what we’d call an Appeal to Authority?

Or at least uncreative. 

The same applies to the quoting of scripture for me – unless you’re answering a question about history or the work itself, if you’re using it to apply to some modern, real world argument, in my opinion, you should back up what you want to say by actually saying something yourself. 

To use a hypothetical example for something that’s not too real-world controversial, say I get into a fandom argument over the Legend of Zelda series.  Maybe it’s a Timeline argument and I’ve decided “I think the current official Timeline is bunk.**”  I could look up one of the many quotes by Nintendo officials about how they consider gameplay more important than story, but if I simply listed a favorable quote, then walked away and didn’t back it up with my own opinions, I’d feel like I’d not made a good argument.  If I use a quote not-from-me as a “You’re stupid!” or “everyone should agree with me right the hell now!” weapon, it’s even worse if I appeal to authority without saying anything of my own.  

Maybe the originator of the quote would see what I was doing and come along and say “You’re out of line, I didn’t mean it that way!” or “Yeah, I did mean it like that, but you’re using it like a club is soooo dull,”   - which, perhaps, is why so many people in serious arguments favor the words of the dead…  

So, if you’re going to whine and moan online about the existence of things, people or ideas you just wish were dead, gone or changed, or you want to call someone stupid, don’t quote some dead guy or some block of literature and think you’ve “won” because you’re so creatively dull or empty-headed that you have nothing of your own to say.

If anyone ever gets into a habit of quoting me after I’m long dead (like that would ever happen), remember, you will be doing a disservice to my memory if you depend solely on me. Use your own words to back yourself up! 

(** Zelda Timeline for those interested in my opinions on it… I kind of do think the above and don’t at the same time.  I’m willing to go with the current canon, and it has inspired some fanwork from me, but I kind of think it was an ass-pull, just because Nintendo never set out to have 16+ games when they made the first few).

The Adventures of Princess Poo-Poo

A bit of humor writing  - a story born from inside jokes between me and my significant other. 

I work part time at a horse farm and that's led to a weird narrative between us that has me as an anime-style magical girl fighting "In the name of the Poo!" and so forth. These little narratives include real life individual animals we know, with their personalities. (There's a clowder of barncats on the farm as well as the horses).  We keep talking about making our stupidity into a series of Flash animations (we'd need to teach ourselves Flash first) or a comic... since I kind of suck at comic-style art and since our little stupid-stories are rather incoherent to begin with, I decided to experiment with a flash-fiction short story.  I may or may not write more of these. It depends upon how destructive this stuff prooves to be toward reader's brains.

The following is very short and very stupid. You've been warned.

The Adventures of Princess Poo-Poo

Tale 1: A Girl and Her Rake

Evil can be found in the most surprising of places.  At an unassuming little farm somewhere in Pennsylvania lives a being of unfathomable power.  The farm raises and keeps horses – the most magnificent of beasts and celebrated poopers.  All of that poop has to go somewhere.  In the case of this little farm, it goes to a big pile on the property. 

What the owner and keepers of the farm do not know is that the pile, having sat a sufficient amount of time, has gained sentience.

A malevolent sentience. 

Its motives are not exactly clear.  It probably wants to take over the world or something cliché like that.  It broods upon the farm, sending out its fumes of pure evil and plotting…plotting…

One keeper of the farm knows of the danger in this smelly pile.  Most people see a mere stablehand who works part-time.  Truly, however, she is a protector – a lady-knight with a rake – and the only thing standing between the world and the forces of reeking darkness.  She is…

MAGICAL STABLEHAND PRINCESS POO-POO!

“You stupid, disobedient human!” 

A small black cat padded down the main aisle of the barn, her footfalls silent on the neoprene surface of the floor.    

“Not now, Grapple-Kitty!” the Stablehand said, shouldering her plastic-headed pitching-rake.  “I still have work to do.  I’m almost done.” 

“But I want your lap!  Now!” Grapple-Kitty complained loudly.  The Stablehand and her partner-in-life-and-sometimes-crime-fighting, Retail Man, had dubbed the feline “Grapple-Kitty” because of her strong, sharp claws.  She loved nothing more than the soft, warm lap of a seated human, but she could shred a lap in minutes if said human was not wearing many protective layers of clothing.  To cuddle her without military-grade body-armor was to invite tiny pinprick holes in one’s body – and that was the least of injuries she could inflict. 

The Stablehand, when she was Princess Poo-Poo, had taken to using the cat as a part of her toolkit.  She was, naturally, a grappling-hook.  Princess Poo-Poo could swing by the animal’s tail.  Another cat entered the barn, a tortoiseshell female nicknamed Poo-Kitten for her amazing ability to telepathically communicate with poo from any species.  Poo-Kitten kept tabs on all the goings-on around the farm. 

“It looks like a quiet night,” the pudgy, multicolored cat said.  “The horses are happy out in the fields and I’ve seen no sign of Lord Smellypyle’s machinations.”

“Alright,” the Stablehand replied.  “I guess it’s just one more stall to do, then I can sweep and meet Retail Man for dinner.  I wonder if he’s had a hard day protecting people from misplaced merchandise…”

Then, just as the Stablehand put her rake to a spat of somewhat-fresh horse manure, it began to shake and move. 

“What the fork?!” the young woman exclaimed.

“Danger!” Poo-Kitten declared, “That poo has been corrupted!” 

“Corrupted?” the Stablehand asked. 

“You should transform into Princess Poo-Poo right now!” 

Nuggets of manure began to crawl out of the main pile, brown and slow.  Little legs were visible upon them. 

“This must be part of Lord Smellypyle’s latest takeover plan!” Poo-Kitten yelped.

“What is this?” the Stablehand said, shivering, “It’s…It’s…. Spider-Poo!” 

Little road-apples with spider-legs began swarming all over the stable-stall.  They spilled out into the aisle.  The pile they came from was not exhausted. 

The Stablehand concentrated and began a chant:

No stench of turds or dark of night

Can hold back my will to fight

In the name of poo I will punish you!

I am Princess Poo-Poo!

Ribbons swirled around the Stablehand’s form, imbuing her with power and surrounding her with sparkles.  She was left in her normal clothes – jeans, muck-boots, a t-shirt and a flannel over-shirt, but now she had a broad pink bow on her chest.  It was made of the gel-like stuff used in air fresheners.  

She swung her mighty pitch-rake, now glowing with a white aura of power.  Poo-spiders crumbled before her, but they just kept coming.  Grapple-Kitty sunk her claws into Princess Poo-Poo’s left thigh and Poo-Kitten took refuge atop her head. 

As the mighty warrior swung her weapon at a poo-spider that jumped up to attack her face, she heard one of the barn doors open. 

“Retail Man, stay back!” Princess Poo-Poo shouted authoritatively. 

Too late. He’d come through the door in his business-suit and the spider-poo rushed him.  Oh, the carnage! Little poo-balls bounced all over him, shoving themselves into any open space and orifice they could reach, stabbing him with their little spindly spider-legs. 

Princess Poo-Poo roared and rushed to free her dearest partner.  Her rake when snick-a-snack! Poo broke like snow all over the barn.  Everything was lost in a diarrheic haze. 

Retail Man did not move.  “Speak to me!” Princess Poo-Poo pleaded.  The cats dislodged themselves from her person.  Princess Poo-Poo paused, bowed, and then stood, clutching her rake with a white-knuckled fist. 

“I will avenge you, Retail Man.”

“I’m not dead.” 

Princess Poo-Poo gasped.  Retail Man stood right beside her, adjusting his now brown-and-green-smeared tie.   “What happened?” he asked. 

“Sp-Spider-poo.”  Princess Poo-Poo choked out. 

“I guess I’ll get the cobweb brush.” 

“The spider-poo has been neutralized, your grace!” exclaimed Poo-Kitten.  “I sense no more malevolent entities.  I think I’ll go bother Mr. Big now.”  With that, she scampered off to meet one of the farm’s other cats, a huge tabby with thumbs named Mr. Big. 

Princess Poo-Poo looked at the colossal mess she now had to clean up. She gripped her rake and roared to the heavens. 

“SMELLYPYLE! I’LL GET YOU FOR THIS!” 

**********************

Join us next time for fun and adventure with a whole cast of characters:

Princess Poo-Poo - Defender of the Barn!

Retail Man – Superhero of the Business World!

Poo-Kitten – The cat who talks to poo!

Grapple-Kitty – With her claws of doom!

Mr. Big – Possibly a double-agent?

Dr. Bigaboom – The mysterious mad scientist!

Phoenix – The drunken horse!

The Great Bladder – Upset that he’s an evil bladder in a jar instead of a brain in a jar!

Lord Smellypyle – The evil dung heap!

And many, many more…. Maybe.