Destructapalooza! '13

Here at the thunderstrokes home base, we held our 2^nd Annual Destructapalooza! celebration just prior to the Super Bowl last Sunday. 

Tbf’s of the blog probably remember last year’s event.  Resulting as it did from a moment of sheer inspiration, we never gave it an official name; instead, it was typically referred to as “that thing where we smash the gingerbread houses with the bowling ball.”  If you want, you can read about that first one, and watch some video of it, here. 

This year, we gave it a much shorter, ultra-retro-cool moniker, because once you’ve done it two years running, it’s pretty much on its way to becoming an annual tradition, and as such deserves to be officially recognized with its own registered and trademarked name. 

Encouraged by the phenomenal response of the ten family members and friends who took part in the festivities last Sunday, we have decided the time has come to turn Destructapalooza! into a mainstream cultural event.   We have a national expansion plan ready to roll out, and have retained a high-profile marketing company to help increase our brand awareness.  If all goes well, by the year 2023 Destructapalooza! will have passed Festivus as America’s 47^th favorite annual celebration. 

We envision Destructapalooza! as becoming the crowning glory of a new holiday which puts a bold exclamation point at the end of the winter holiday season.  As it stands now, the holidays are just allowed to trail off indeterminately, like an old cat looking for a place where it can quietly die alone.  Everybody is forced to decide on their own when they consider the holidays to be over.  Sure, most people are ready to put the season behind them right around New Year’s Day, but you also have those who wake up on December 26^th and strip their homes of all Christmas ornamentation faster than the Grinch stripped Whoville.   And what about those people who refuse to acknowledge any end to the holiday season, and keep their trees up in their living rooms year-round, and turn on their outdoor light displays when they think nobody else is watching?

Hard Freeze in Phoenix

We recently endured a stretch of freezing nighttime temperatures.  This usually means two things:  Hell's weather hotline is being swamped with calls, and it must be time for another Eagles reunion.   

In our desert climate, freeze warnings are a cause for great alarm.  We don’t often have to deal with water in its frozen state.  Come to think of it, we don’t often have to deal with water in its liquid state either.  Ditto for water vapor.  Consequently, we run our water pipes willy-nilly all over the place because we don’t have to think about protecting them from the cold.  We leave our animals outdoors year-round, because there's not much chance of them turning into petsicles overnight.  And we buy our plants based on their pretty shapes and colors, not on whether they can tolerate a freezing night or two.    

Nothing seems to mobilize the valley quite like the threat of cold weather.  In their finest moments, the Suns used to be able to muster up a similar sense of civic industriousness, but those days are long gone.  But anytime the forecast calls for 32 degrees or less, people you normally never see are outside with their ladders and their bed sheets, frantically working to cover up their citrus trees and bundle up their bougainvilleas.  

Anyway, this being one of the more dramatic examples of cold we’ve endured in the last thirty years, I thought it would be a good time for a visual survey of how different people approach the problem of protecting their plants.  I took the following pictures almost entirely from one small neighborhood in the area where my oldest daughter goes to school.  

As you will see, there is a wide range of techniques, philosophies, and strategies evidenced in the following photos.  Covering up, with plants as with fashion, seems to mean different things to different people.  

This is a reasonably average Arizona response to a freeze warning.  You pull out the pool towels (which you're not using at the moment anyway), maybe grab a few blankets, and head out front.  If it's a plant you really don't want to lose, you drape a towel over it and hope for the best.  It's not foolproof, but it does strike a balance between having to re-landscape your yard in the spring, and sitting out all night with the blow dryer.

A Bug's Death

It’s Wednesday morning, and we’re running late.  I’ve got about five minutes to get Maria dressed, brush her hair, and get her to preschool.  Luckily, the school is only four blocks away, and it is preschool after all, not a job interview; but still, I don’t want her to be late. 

By the time we rush out the door, I have one minute to get her to school.  With an automatic expertise born of endless repetition, I click her into her car seat, close the door, and hustle around the back of the car.  As I whip by the plants that line the side of the carport, I happen to notice a strange, dark spot on one of the white lily blossoms.  By the time the blot has registered in my mind, I have already opened my door and lifted one leg to step in.  I stop in mid-motion.  

What was that black thing on the lilies?  To ask a question like that, in a situation like that, is one of the things that makes me me.  Another is my inability to ignore the question. 

In spite of the pressure to get Maria to school, I step back, leaving the car door open while I take a look.  It was probably just a bit of trash that the wind lodged there, or a piece of foliage burnt to a crisp by the wicked sun.  But I have to verify; my innate curiosity has been aroused.    

I back up until I can clearly see the stunted white flowers of the lilies, which have sprung up unexpectedly because of all the recent rain.  The blossoms are anemic and tightly bunched; they look like small groups of geese being throttled, bills open, heads lolling.  On one of these flowers is a bug.  It’s a pretty big bug, easily the size of a thumbnail. Its body is elongated and flat, its head small and black.  Legs jutted up and away from the body before angling acutely down at the joint, reminiscent of a spider.  They are streaked with bright yellow and red.  The colors are striking, and for some reason the yellow, red and black pattern has a streamlined quality to it that reminds me of a football uniform.  And not a bad-looking one at that. 

I have never seen a bug like this before, and I’m the kind of person who keeps track of these things.  I get excited.  I immediately come to grips with the fact that Maria will be late to school; nothing matters more at that moment but getting a picture of this exotic-looking insect.  I hurry back into the house, where Elizabeth is in the kitchen, watching me quizzically as I pass through the dining room.  “What’s wrong?” she asks, but I don’t stop to explain.  I just say, “Need a camera,” and then grab one from the desk and rush straight back out the door.  I snap a few quick pictures of the bug, which hasn’t moved, then hop in the car and zoom off to school with Maria.  I’m hoping the creature will still be there when I get back, so I can take more carefully composed pictures.

Yes, I am one of those people who takes pictures of weird-looking bugs.  Now you know this about me.  It was bound to come out sooner or later.  I’ve been taking pictures of unusual insects for a while now.  So far, I’ve contented myself with photographing the ones I see around our house, in the front or back yard.  Some of insects I find are alive and well, like the one on the lily blossom Wednesday morning, but oftentimes I discover them only after they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil. 

Mystic Monologue

Follow me…follow me…follow me…

Hello?

Follow me…follow me…follow me…

Hello?  Who is this?

Do you hear me?  Are you listening?

Yes, I can hear, although it sounds like we have a bad connection… I can barely hear you.

There’s nothing wrong with the connection; you’re just learning how to listen.

Who are you?

I am your soul.

My soul?

Yes.  Do you hear me?

Yes, I guess so.

Follow me.

Where?

If you believed that I am real, you would not need to ask where.  Do you not believe that I am?

I…I don’t know.  I mean, I think I’ve always believed in the idea of having a soul…

You think.  Ideas.  Yes, you have many ideas, don’t you?  But not many beliefs.  Isn’t that so?

I suppose that’s true… Is that a bad thing?

That depends on the beliefs.  

Well, doesn’t the very fact that we’re having this conversation tell you that, on some level, I must believe that I have a soul? 

That is a very smart answer, which is not the same as a good one.  I don’t know, does it tell you that?

I guess so. 

Follow me.

But why now?  After all these years, why, all of a sudden, are you speaking to me now?

Well, that seems rather self-evident, doesn’t it?  Because you are listening, of course.

So, I had to start listening before you would speak to me?  Isn’t that kind of backwards?  Wouldn’t it have been better for you to speak first, so that I knew there was something to listen to?

I was speaking; you weren’t listening.

So you’ve been speaking to me all along?

Always and forever.

And I just wasn’t hearing it?

Or listening.

So what happened?  What changed that now I can suddenly hear you, or listen to you, or whatever it is that I’m doing?

Dark Tower: Roland Lives!

The following is dedicated to Roland Deschain.  May your quest bring you peace, gunslinger.

A number of strange things have been happening to me over the last several weeks, all of them connected in some way to the Dark Tower series of books by Stephen King.  This happens sometimes when I immerse myself too long into someone else’s world; I tend to fall under the influence of its gravitational pull until I am orbiting around it like a trapped satellite.  And this is such a long series of books, many thousands of pages.  It has taken me the better part of a year to read them, which has both prolonged the effect, and made it more pronounced.

At least this is the reason I am giving myself for the strange recent occurrences.   I have been tarrying too long in sai King’s world, I explain to myself; that’s all it is.  All I need to do is finish the last book, and then allow time and distance to break the magic spell of gravity, and free me from its hold.    

But, for the time being anyway, the character of Roland Deschain, the gunslinger, has besieged my mind and infiltrated my imagination.  These things I’m about to relate have more to do with him than anything, I suspect.  The character whose quest for the Dark Tower is documented in these books is so vividly drawn, so profoundly flawed and yet so powerful, that I have found it hard not to believe in him.  This, of course, is reason enough to finish the last book as quickly as possible, and then wait patiently to try and reclaim my rightful place in reality.   

Before I can do that, though, there is some painting and some tiling that must get done; yes there is...but now I’m putting the cart in front of the horse.

The first notably odd incident was last month.  It was a sleep-in day for me, so it was seven by the time I rolled out of bed.  I was the last one to wake up, and I could hear the television in the back room as I slumped down the hallway.  For once, our black lab Chubby was not creating a one-dog obstacle course in front of me as I walked, which could only mean they must have fed her already, and let her out.  Thankee-sai for small miracles, I muttered, not noticing my unusual choice of words, or recognizing that it was unusual, until later.      

Elizabeth was standing at the stove, making breakfast for the kids. 

“Mornin’,” I said, rusty-voiced.

“Good morning,” she said, turning and smiling.  “Would you like some eggs?”

“No, thanks.” I leaned drowsily against the counter.

“The coffee’s fresh,” she said over her shoulder, having returned her attention to the eggs.

“Thankee-sai,” I said reflexively, pushing leadenly off the counter and crossing the kitchen to where we kept the cups, and the coffee.  “What time did the girls get up?” I asked, pouring myself a cup, and carefully lifting it to the table. 

“Maria wandered out here about a half-hour ago; and you’d have to ask Jess, because she was up watching TV when I got back from the gym.”

“At six o’clock?” I asked, sinking slowly into one of the kitchen chairs. 

“Uh-huh.”  There was disapproval in her tone.

“Well, I guess at least she won’t have trouble adjusting to her schedule when school starts up again.”  It was less than two weeks away from the start of the school year; I was tracking it very closely.

“I guess.”  She sounded doubtful.  “Would you like creamer?”

“Sure.”  When Elizabeth said ‘creamer,’ she was talking about the condensed, exotically-flavored liquid stuff in the fridge.  Normally, I would just mix two teaspoons of sugar and some plain powdered cream in my cup, but that would require getting up again since I had forgotten to do it while I was standing by the coffee maker.  “How’s Maria?  Still sneezing?”  Maria had caught a head cold, with congestion and a runny nose, except that instead of coughing, she would go into these extended sneezing fits.  Then each of us began to have them, although whether it was catching or just the power of suggestion was impossible to say.

“Haven’t heard a thing this morning,” she said, handing me the cold plastic bottle of cinnamon-caramel-vanilla macchiato.

“Thankee-sai,” I said, reaching for it, but she pulled it back quickly.

“Alright, what is that?” 

I hate when that happens

If you’re old enough, you may remember a series of Saturday Night Live skits that were popular back in the mid-80’s.  They featured Billy Crystal and Christopher Guest as Willie and Frankie, two pals who work as overnight security guards in a big office building in the city.  They pass the time describing to each other the odd, elaborate and excruciating ways they have found to inflict pain on themselves in their spare moments.  What makes the skit funny is that they talk about these intentionally masochistic acts as though they were simple accidents, much like walking into a glass door, or stubbing a toe.  And each vividly rendered description of self-inflicted suffering ends with some variation of, “Oooh, I hate when that happens…”

Note:  Here you can read this transcript of one of the 'I hate when that happens' sketches.  Or, you can watch a different one via hulu.

I always liked those sketches, not because I enjoy rolling in razor wire and then soaking in a hot tub filled with Listerine in my spare time, but because it does kind of point something out about human nature.  About how sometimes we take things which are completely external to us and make them personal, and then proceed to hurt ourselves with them.

Let me give you a theoretical example from my own life.  Wait.  I guess it’s not theoretical if it really happened.  Let’s turn it into a theoretical example of something that really happened.

100th Post Spectacular!

Well, the title gave it away:  we've reached the 100^th post on thunderstrokes!

 Many of you who knew me before I started the blog weren’t even aware that I liked to write.  Many of you who had pinned me down on that point had never seen any actual examples of my writing.  People whom I consider to be close friends had read little, knew little about my ardent desire to be a writer.  They didn’t know that since the age of ten, I defined myself to myself always first as a writer.  That definition never truly left me, but it was modified:  writer-in-training; then, later, writer-in-waiting.  A theoretical writer. 

What an extraordinary waste of time! 

The only way to be a writer is to write.  Duh, right?  Write crap, and then write some more crap.  Then learn from the crap you wrote, and write more crap, and more crap, and more crap until it stops being crap. 

That’s what thunderstrokes is:  the place where I go to write my crap.

That fact that some folks seem to be enjoying the crap I’m writing tells me that you people must be surrounded by such a high level of quality in your day-to-day lives that you like coming here because you miss the unique odor, or like to reminisce about your own days of crap, writing or otherwise.

In my more doubtful moments, this is the kind of thing I tell myself.

Considering where I came from, the fact that I still have doubts after 100 posts shouldn’t be too surprising.  The good news (for me and my crap, at least) is that they are no longer crippling doubts. 

Instead, they are doubts about whether I’m not being honest enough, or too honest.  Whether I’m being funny enough, or too funny; or smart enough, or too smart; whether I’m simply stating things which are so obvious that nobody even thinks to bring them up, or writing things so far out there that no one will have a clue what I’m talking about.  Whether I’m taking short cuts and being lazy, or boring the bejeezus out of my readers.  Often, they are doubts about very mundane things; for instance, right now I’m having doubts about using the word ‘crap’ so many times, and doubting whether I should have even written that part.  Who wants to hear someone talk so much crap? 

After 100 posts, I’ve learned that doubts do not go away; they just change shape, and come at you from new angles.  But even that is something I only could learn by writing.

So I’ve learned a lot after 100 posts.  Here are some of the other things I’ve learned:

the secret lives of goldfish

One of our goldfish is dying. 

Again. 

I dare you to read my mind...

This is the second time for this particular fish.   The first time was at least a year ago.  It started acting strangely, lying listlessly on the bottom of the tank for a day or so, which was followed by a phase of darting frantically from side to side, as though his tail were on fire, or he were desperately fleeing from a goldfish-sized Grim Reaper.  It’s really kind of sad to watch a goldfish flee from the Grim Reaper in a tank roughly the size of a motorcycle helmet; it would be like watching one of us trying to dodge him in a locked cruise ship cabin.  From there, he appeared to go into something like a fish coma, floating through the tank in strange positions, such as pointing straight down, or tilting sideways like a swamped sailboat.  After about a week of exhibiting these strange behaviors, he must have been granted a reprieve from said Reaper, because he mysteriously – and abruptly – returned to health, and has been a perfectly normal goldfish since.  That is, until last week, when I saw him laying on the gravel at the bottom of the tank.  At first I had forgotten this had happened once before, and I prepared to break the news of his imminent demise to the rest of the family.  Then he started his frenzied, tail-on-fire swimming, and it all came back to me. 

Our fish tank sits on a dresser right next to my writing desk, which I affectionately refer to as my perch (in the avian sense, not the fish species; that would be weird).  Right now, he’s resting limply over the side of an overturned ceramic seashell, looking like he’s at death’s express elevator door, just waiting for it to close and give him his final ride to the top of the tank.  But his fins continue to swish faintly, and his gills are moving, so who knows?  Two minutes later he is swimming head-first repeatedly into the gravel, and two minutes after that, doing a pretty good imitation of an alligator’s death roll.

I helplessly wonder about this goldfish.  Is he suffering?  Sure looks that way to me.  Is he really dying?  I wish I knew.  Is the whole thing a desperate bid for attention?  I wouldn’t have asked this, but right now he is peering at me, one huge eye filling up a small hole inside a large, hollow rock, as though surreptitiously gauging my reaction.  Wouldn’t it be more humane to put him out of his apparent misery?  But I remind myself that he recovered once before; wouldn’t it be wrong to give up on him when he’s already demonstrated such amazing recuperative powers?  (In my mind, I keep hearing the classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail line, spoken by the old man who is being ignominiously hauled away with a cartful of people felled by the Plague, pleading feebly:  “But I’m not dead yet…”)

The interview

Continuing on with our theme of January being the month in which we look back at the past and also look forward into the future, I’ve decided (in consultation with my California Psychic) that now is the perfect time for the first ever thunderstrokes interview. 

So who will be the lucky person to serve as the subject for thunderstrokes’ inaugural interview?  Well, that honor can logically go to only one individual:  me.  That’s right, I’m going to interview myself. 

Now this idea may seem strange, but it actually makes sense.  Interviewing myself will allow me to go on the public record at an early stage about the blog, its humble beginnings, and the notable achievements of the first six months.  It will also help to reinforce the edifice of plausible deniability I’ve constructed to combat the rampant rumors that I am, in fact, the Batman.  Plus, this exercise will undoubtedly be helpful in preparing me for my future as a bestselling author, when I’m sure to be inundated with interview requests and invitations to presidential retreats. 

Luck, as I once heard a very small and wise person not named Yoda say, favors the prepared. 

the butterfly hole

There are many connections between this and the last post, "a funny thing happened on the way to a life."  They are companions in a way, but I imagine the differences between them will stand out more than the similarities.  

If Shel Silverstein wrote about the topic of discovering yourself (and it's entirely possible he did), it might have sounded something like this... 

the butterfly hole

For years I would watch the butterflies

that randomly flitted by

never really knowing what they were

bits of magic in the sky.

Where do butterflies come from?

As a question I thought it quite fair

until I discovered a hole in my head

hiding right beneath my own hair!

Now a hole, people say, is a bad thing,

something that ought to be fixed.

Walking 'round town

with a hole in your crown

is just no way to go

(this we all know)

unless you’re a whale

or an ‘o.’

Night of Terror in Zanesville – or, Lions and tigers and bears, O hi (o)!

October 18^th, 2011

Somewhere near Zanesville, Ohio

911. What’s your emergency?

I just saw a lion crossing the highway!

Excuse me sir, did you say a lion?

Yes, a lion.  Crossing highway 75. You need to get somebody out here, and I mean pronto!

Sir, can you describe the lion?

Describe the lion? Uh, well, he was big and brown…and he had a black mane, and I just saw him cross south of milepost 129.  I’m not kidding, someone’s gonna have a serious problem soon if they don’t get that animal.

Sir, are you sure it was a lion?

Trust me, I know it sounds weird, but it was definitely a lion.  We need the police, or game and fish, or Barnum and Bailey's, or somebody, quick.

Sir, how do you know it was a lion?

How do I know it was a lion?! Because I saw The Lion King, and @#%*&$! Mufasa just ran in front of my car!

Full Body Scans Ending?

This post marks the beginning of a new section on thunderstrokes called Free Radicals.  Free Radicals is the name I'm giving to some of the strange, spontaneous and/or random things that enter my head.  They generally fly directly in from the atmosphere, but for some reason don't fly out again.  Instead, they ricochet around inside my brain, damaging healthy cells and causing premature aging until I finally crack my head open and let them out.  They are mostly fragments of ideas, or small bursts of writing that I can't, or don't want to, turn into full-blown posts.  Since, strictly speaking, I didn't create them, but merely caught them, like a social disease, I assume no responsibility for their quality or appropriateness.

So I was driving Jessica to school today, and heard a news story on the radio about those full body scanners at the airports that everyone’s been complaining about.  According to the story, the TSA has begun replacing the extremely accurate 3D scanners because of the public outcry.  

This was the most innocuous of the images I found when I googled "airport full body scanners." There are others.

The way it was described on the radio, the new generation scanner eliminates the provocatively realistic images and instead shows stick figures.  Arrows point to areas that need to be checked further.