Author: Paul

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Pizza delivery – before, during, and after the game

I heard an ad on the radio for a local pizza place. They advertised delivery “before, during, and after the game!”

Then I started to worry. “But what if there’s no game on? WHAT THEN?!?” – until I realized that they didn’t say how LONG after the game they stopped delivery.

After all, it’s ALWAYS either before or after SOME game or another. Right now, it’s 17 1/2 hours before the SU basketball game on Sunday.

And they didn’t specify WHAT game. “Hey, I was just about to start a new game of chess by mail! I WANT MY PIZZA DELIVERED!

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The nature of fairy tales

Fairy tales are “… a counter-history, a ceaselessly whispered assertion of truths that cannot be reached by the straight and narrow road of realism. You can travel that road as long as you like, and certainly the sights to be seen along it are splendid. But it cannot take you where it does not go.”

~ Laura Miller, “Jean Thompson’s ‘The Witch: And Other Tales Re-told’ “, New York Times Book Review, October 24, 2014

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Birth of the Ermine Avenger

Forecast is for possible thunder on Christmas Eve. Donner and Blitzen may be dodging actual thunder and lightning.

Me being me, I am now thinking about a story about what would happen if Santa’s sleigh got hit by lightning.

Maybe a new superhero would be created. BIRTH OF THE ERMINE AVENGER. Or maybe the result would be a Santa hybrid: half-man, half ermine.

At least being a superhero would give Santa something to do the other 364 days of the year.

This probably means another year with coal in my stocking, doesn’t it, Santa?

And I was so close. 363 days of being good, down the tubes.

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The audience my writing deserves?

I’ve been seeing ads for a course for writers. The ad asks, “Ready to find the audience your writing deserves?”

I’m not sure I am. I’m afraid they’d turn out to be the detainees at Guantanamo, and that my writing was being read to them as punishment.

Camp PA: … that was a lovely song by Barney the Dinosaur. And next, ANOTHER story from Paul Baxter.
Detainees: NO! NO! STOP! WE’VE HAD ENOUGH.

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Better than some humans, I’d wager

I just heard tell of a town considering a local law governing the behavior of farm animals. Absent pesky inconvenient things like the actual substance of the law, I am free to imagine what they might be concerned about.

Are they going to institute a dress code? Have they finally gotten fed up with Donald Duck not wearing pants? Are they going to outlaw playing leapfrog with a unicorn? I mean, that’s a good idea, but I’m not sure it needs to be a law.

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Quotes from Winter’s Tale

I’d call it the Quote of the Day, but I have two, both from Mark Helprin and Winter’s Tale:

“Peter Lake had no illusions about mortality. He knew that it made everyone perfectly equal, and that the treasures of the earth were movement, courage, laughter, and love. The wealthy could not buy these things. On the contrary, they were for the taking.”

“Winter then in its early and clear stages, was a purifying engine that ran unhindered over city and country, alerting the stars to sparkle violently and shower their silver light into the arms of bare upreaching trees. It was a mad and beautiful thing that scoured raw the souls of animals and man, driving them before it until they loved to run. And what it did to Northern forests can hardly be described, considering that it iced the branches of the sycamores on Chrystie Street and swept them back and forth until they rang like ranks of bells.”