rop caps are delightful, and so is collaboration. Tonight’s post is all about collaborative work on the internet, or what might be called omnilaboration, since ‘co’ is two, and the internet is a giant wad of artistic and creative types.

I got this opportunity from Jake Gest, who won the right to establish the subject of my frog blog by being the first and tweeting the word “frog” when I asked for input on Twitter. Later on I wandered over to his blog and saw his post about this free drop cap site by Jessica Hische.

Never in my lifetime have I had so many people to work with, and I don’t even know any of them. Goddess bless the internet. The worldwide web is a web of heads and hearts. It might even be considered one giant world-encircling, globe-girdling, graphic poem song book painting operatic omnilaborative artwork, a symphony of sympathy.

Unite,

LWIII

Just saw my favorite YouTube video of all time, and have to share it. I’m one of those guys who has very high hopes for the human race, and believe, along with Norman Cousins and others, that our race is still in its infancy, and the future holds strange and wonderful glories undreamt of by us big babies.

A still more glorious dawn awaits, not a sunrise, but a galaxy-rise.

~ Carl Sagan

Many thanks to John Boswell at Colorpulse for creating that masterpiece.

We shall overcome,

LWIII

Once upon a time there was a little mouse. Her name was Story. Which wasn’t her real name of course (that was Agatha). Since who ever heard of a name like Story? But everybody called her Story because she never told the truth, at least not the truth like mouse-folks was used to hearing it.

When her mama asked if she had brushed her claws before bedtime, she said of course Mama, I used the roof. And when her brother told her to hurry up, they were late for school, she said she was trying, but her tail got so heavy it sunk into the ground and now she was stuck.

Nobody could ever get the truth out of her, but they didn’t mind so much, because they liked her stories. Her homework was flew to the moon by a golden hummingbird-frog. She was late cause a cow stepped on her and it took so long to get unsquashed. The reason spring came early that one year was because Old Man Winter had forgot his trousers in the mailbox and had to stay home.

Some of her stories was funny, and some were sad. This is the story of a sad one.

LWIII

The frog sat on the log in the bog like an amphibious hog, oinking frogways. I love frogs. Never ate one, but I bet if I ate a frog I’d like that too. Not that many things in this world I don’t like eating.

But let’s put eating aside for a moment, after I finish my little snack here before I continue….

Okay (yum, that was good, a mini cinnamon bun w/ my coffee), as I was saying, frogs rock. For one thing, they’re green, and green is good. Also they make very cool noises. I love sitting on the porch of my shack by the swamp on an illustrious eve, moon in the clouds, tadpoles on the make, and listening to the chorus of frogtown chirruping in the distance. Homey.

Frogs are also like the canary in the coalmine for our environment. They’re kinda touchy critters and as soon as an environment goes off they get cranky and start croaking (not in a good way). So we need to listen to them live.

Ribbit,

LWIII

(Many thanks to Jacob Gest @jakegest for his generous frogmalion.)

In my dreams I told my dream teacher I’d never talk about my dreams in a blog. So, since I’m all about lies within lies within lies within truth, I’ll do it anyway. Anybody who hates listening to dreams, you can leave now.

Last night I had a dream. I was at some sort of art school, a dream art school that was a combination of theatre, literary, graphic, frog, and applesauce, or something. You know how dreams are.

I had met a fellow student who was kinda famous, some sort of prodigy. I felt really lucky to have him as a friend and was kissing his ass madly, trying to be as cool as him so he’d like me. For some reason, even though I kept doing stupid stuff per normal, he still liked me, and took me up to his dorm room/intellerstallar spacecraft or whatever.

Man it was amazing there, shelves and shelves of beautiful doohickeys: steampunk meets Mr. Limpet and the fairy princess. Lots of dream-models of traveling stuff, tiny trains and whimsical planes and elegant little dancers. I was having problems with my own work so the place morphed into my dump that was full of mostly blank notebooks and a few scrawlings.

He said he wanted me to write something down, and in my haste to find a pen and something to write on, I knocked down my tall freestanding shelves with my notebooks piled high on them. What a mess, blank pages everywhere. I had to hurry because he had told me already, and I needed to write it down before I forgot.

Finally found a Sharpie and an old envelope or something. When I wrote it down, very carefully, strange points came up at the top of ever letter, some weird dream auto-calligraphy. This is what I wrote:

That’s very important. Might not seem like much now, but that’s because you’re awake. If you were asleep you’d go OMG! Curtains rise.

I woke up after he told me that and got out of bed and wrote it down (with a Sharpie on an envelope, strangely enough, but without the pointy letters). Then, when I really got up later, I thought I remembered it, so didn’t check the envelope. Just hopped onto Twitter and shared the news thusly:

The beginning is the part that you see.

I kind of like that better, because it’s easier to understand while awake. If you think about it, every moment is a beginning. Everything you see at every moment is beginning. Ends are something of a literary or human fiction. The problem is to see that. But as soon as you do see it, it’s like – yes, this is the beginning! And once you can see that, you can begin.

For esthetic types, writers or painters or frog/applesauce guys, this phrase is even more cogent. Because that’s exactly what one does at the beginning of an artwork. You see the beginning. Oftentimes that’s all you can see, and frequently it’s all you need to see. Since you’ve seen it, everything else flows organically from that first moment of sight.

Begin now,

LWIII

So what’s up with the Golden Rule? I think it sucks. If I followed the Golden Rule I’d be in jail right now.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Pfft. Like even. If I did unto others the way I wish they did things to me, everybody would hate me. I’m just not that picky. I sure wish people would cuss more. It really offends me that people don’t say motherfucker more often. And I love it when people lie, especially behind my back. And if I had a dime for every time I noticed somebody who I wished would throw me down, tear off my clothes, and sit all over my face, I’d be rich. No idea why they wouldn’t want me to do that to them.

So it’s crazy to treat people the way you want to be treated. You treat them the way they want to be treated.

Therefore I’m coming up with a new rule. Call it

The Platinum Rule

Do unto others better than you would have them do unto you.

There,

LWIII

I’m a mouse guy, I admit it. Always been, always will.

Grew up singing “Here I come to save the day!” Mighty Mouse was always on the way in my imagination, and he’s still nibbling away down there, trying to poke his way into reality. Not sure I ever saved any days, but I sang that a lot anyway, and always wished to save at least one day.

We are God’s little mice after all, running around and scampering all over each other down here on earth, sometimes being naughty, and wishing we were bigger.

Timothy Little, my mouse-hero from Little Did He Know, last NaNoWriMo’s production, is going to get a sister in mousehood this November. Her name will be Story (Agatha Pipswhistle, or something) and her book will be called The Story of Story.

Mouse on,

LWIII

I keep getting this sneaking suspicion that bad is good. May be that’s easy to say from the relative isolation of high atop my rusty tower here in the mutant forest, but it seems true. So much good comes from bad that how can bad be bad?

Of course too much bad is not a good thing. But too much good is not a good thing either, so that doesn’t prove anything. An example would be a goody two-shoes. Nobody likes someone who is too good. They’re annoying as heck. One good shoe and one bad shoe is just about right.

One of my multitudinous and sadly disappointed spiritual gurus used to be fond of saying, “The wound is the resource.” The thing that attracted me to her in the first place was that she was not all sweetness and light. She had no interest in bringing on the new millenium when everything will be perfect all the time. To her, evil was just another part of what is, and not something to be wiped off the face of the earth.

Poor evil.

Seems like the part of us that is most interested in perfection and immortality is the ego section. The soul or spirit ain’t quite so picky. Spirituality that is all about making everything perfect is the ego talking, as far as I can tell. Spirituality in service to ego, oh yay.

The worst of all bads is death. Yet without death everything would suck. In fact there wouldn’t be anything at all, since death is what we live on. I can’t believe there are people who want humans to live forever. Bummer dude.

Shit,

LWIII

Man it smells good outside. Not often in Colorado can you step outdoors at four in the morning after an all-day rain yesterday and smell it. Look up and it’s still overcast. Cool, autumny feeling, puddles. No people around being stinky. Pretty darn sweet. And silent as a snoozing turtle.

Insomnia has never been one of my problems. I’m more of a somniac, the kind of guy who gets weird looks from the pharmacist when he goes in and asks for a bottle of waking pills. You got anything that can help me wake? A master of sleep, that’s me. Unconsciousness has always been my favorite state of mind, since you don’t have to deal with gravity when you’re unconscious. Gravity, that bane of lazy people.

Plus when you’re unconscious you get to dream, and dreams are the best because they end. No matter how bad they are, and mine are usually great, they end. As far as I can tell so far, life never ends. People say it does, but they say a lot of things. Life strikes me as a series of getting up to go to work that never ends. Whew, being unconscious is mo betta.

Of course, what am I whining about? I’m a writer. I don’t have to get up to go to work anymore, all I do is sit around and blab with my fingers, any time of the day or night. My only concern right now is whether I’ll be perky enough to enjoy the Broncos game later on the telly. Oh woe is me.

Anyway, not sure what this blog was about except maybe being awake. Sorry to have to discuss such a disturbing subject.

Your partially wakened,

LWIII

Once upon a time there was a little girl. She was the most precious and beloved little girl in the whole wide world. People loved her more than anything. Circus bears would laugh to see her wave. The bumblebees buzzed for her. The moon giggled at her passing in the early eve. Sad old men would smile when they remembered her sunny ways. Young boys skipped and jumped logs and climbed trees for her. Mean bent Gypsy ladies told her future with a grin. Butterflies danced in the morning. Swallowtails flew from the trees and circled around her in flocks like fairies. God said Yes.

Her name was Story, and What Might Have Been, and What Could Be, and It Is. You may have heard her tale once. It has been going on for a long long time, yet she remains ever-young.

And then it came to pass,

LWIII

Anyone within screaming distance of my hovel vile is well aware by now that I’m in the process of writing a children’s novel, revising another as well, writing the second book in a two-volume fantasy, and have in hand the mss of the first finished ha ha book that needs editing the way a dog likes bacon. And yet day by terrible day I find myself drawn inexorably for hours to the online objet called Twitter.

Why this should be so I haven’t the foggiest. Oh…okay, actually I do have a fog, a giant one, the kind of misamic dank that could cover the entire eastern seaboard in pea soup of the dankest, darkest variety, completely socked in.

It’s a massive hoot, first if all, the most fun this writer’s had in quite some time. I kind of feel like I was born for it, the class clown’s heaven, and a wordsmith’s paradise, as long as the smythe is a dedicated procrastinator like myself. Most writers clasp procrastination to their souls with hoops of steel. Anything to keep from facing that dreaded blank page, all by your lonesome. And Twitter is a blank page with words already on it. Other people’s words for goodness sake, that you get to respond to! You can write and not be alone. Whoo-hoo!

There are some terribly attractive sorts on Twitter, the pageant of humanity in all its scruffy glory, scrolling downward on your screen avatar by avatar, as they post their witty words or imaginative links or favorite tunes or daily tasks and habits. I’ve made some delectable friends there. And it’s the perfect place to share some of the quotes from my Extracto Literarium – another one of my favorite procastinatory delights, gathering goodies from other people instead of going through the grueling process of making them up myself.

Plus I have this really fun thing I do that gives me the chance to work with God, word-to-word. Yep, William Shakespeare. There’s a guy on Twitter named @IAM_SHAKESPEARE who is tweeting the bard’s entire body of work, line by line. So when one of his tweets pops up on my screen, I giggle and go for it, taking a couple words or three and using them as seed corn for a 140 character-or-less harvest I call twitoetry, or poemitters, or poetweets, or something.

Here’s an example from yesterday:

@IAM_SHAKESPEARE  BERTRAM. I’ll lend it thee, my dear, but have no power

@TomYHowe  Lend it thee, I’ll give it back, as soon as I am done, though I may play with it a bit, because it is so fun. Who needs virginity anyway?

Ha, could I have any more writer-laughs?

No,

LWIII

Read this tale once. Long ago, in the misty mists of time. Last night if I recall rightly, and part of today. Called The Legend of Jimmy Gollihue. Don’t sound like much, I know. Legend, ha.

Well, come to find out it is a legend, a true one, as true as magical realism can get – which is a lot truer than regular realism, since it includes magic and miracles. No idea why this one tale is so special to me, who has perused so many tales in his life it’s a miracle he ain’t grown one.

Maybe it’s because I like words, love the Southland, am a sucker for love stories, tall tales, and immaculate beauty, and have a keen appreciation of myth and fable. Also love asskickers, btw. 

I ran across this magical gem of trade paperbacks as an accident, really. When I was kinda new to Twitter I chummed up to a guy named @George9Writer. He was friendly, helpful, seemed a nice guy, and as a fellow writer I thought I’d give him a hand up by ordering his first ever book (poor fella, a self-publisher like me, welcome to schmucksville). Turns out he gave me a hand up – a hand up into one of the best novels I ever read in my life – and boy am I grateful.

Thank you George LaCas. I will ever be your friend and avid reader. Really looking forward to my second runthrough of Legend in a week or three, after my ravished soul has got a chance to settle down, let the ol’ language bone cool off some. I know there is more glory to be had.

Whew,

LWIII

(do have to warn you he edited it himself, so it’s only a modern classic and not a masterpiece, which may actually add to its charm for me)