Lily

Saw this lily at a local garden center and had to buy it and share it with you. Beautiful.

E is for effort

"You get points for effort." Really? I've heard that phrase a few times in my life. And it leaves me with a few questions.

First, who is rewarding those points and why do they have the authority to give them? Did they go to college for a degree in point rewarding? Or are they just judgmental and think they're allowed to give points because they're more awesome than the rest of us?

Second, points for what? Can we cash in the points for merchandise? Is there a goal where we reach a certain number of points and win a car? Or win a game? Get a trophy? If they're not worth anything, I don't want them. You can keep your points.

Third, who thinks that phrase is a compliment? People pretend that it softens the blow when they add it after they've told you that you've failed. Here, I'll kick you, and then tell you that the kick could have been worse. Whee.

Fourth, why am I ranting about this? Well, I don't know. I haven't heard it in years, but I read a book recently in which it was used, and I think it made me angry.

Fifth, why angry? Because I get tired of people offering their opinions when they are unsolicited. I know people who believe themselves to be authorities on many things, but they are not. And their willful disregard for facts makes me crazy.

Sixth, when am I going to stop ranting about this? Now.

D is for Dance

I always wanted to know how to dance. I was raised in a very religious home, and that was simply something we weren't allowed to do. You could clap to music and maybe raise your hands, but no hip action and DON'T MOVE THOSE FEET!

When I went to college, I took a few girls dancing. Apparently they were torn between horror and hysterical laughter by my dancing. One of them finally told me that she loved me as long as I didn't dance. For many reasons, that relationship didn't last, but now that I think about, maybe that was a reason, too.

These days I dance in the privacy of home, especially when a happy song comes on the radio or plays on the music service. My dancing would still probably horrify any onlookers, but since I'm alone, it's no one's business but my own.

Someday, though, I'm going to meet a girl who dances as badly as I do and enjoys it as much as I do...and we're going to dance the rest of our lives together.

C is for Catamount

"Catamount" is another name for a mountain lion or a cougar. Bet you didn't know that. Catamounts also are an occasional predator of humans. Mind you, this is mostly caused because the catamount population is increasing after years of decline due to conservation. It's not that the big cats seek us out or lure us to their den with offers of Twinkies and beer. No, it's that they're hungry and we're convenient and look tasty--it's the same situation that a cheerleader confronts when she attends a frat party, although not as risky.

Certainly we humans are the only species that considers ourselves a delicacy. Apparently, after one taste of human flesh, the consumer of said flesh desires nothing else, be that consumer an animal or a man. Notice how many books and movies show humans as the equivalent to potato chips. "You can't eat just one." I'm surprised Lays doesn't offer a human flavor; Hannibal Lector would be the spokesperson, of course.

Considering how many chemicals and medicines we consume, we're not health food. Definitely not organic and probably not free range. We should make other species aware of this. When we're walking in the woods and we hear a sound that could be made by a hungry bear or a ravenous sparrow, we should say, "I just had a soft drink that contained large amounts of Red Dye #1 and carcinogenic preservatives. I eat prepackaged foods all the time that are loaded with trans-fats." Naturally, a health-minded animal will turn away, and we will be assured of our continued well being until our arteries explode.

Catamounts are beautiful animals, but we shouldn't make them into our pets. I read a horrible news story the other day where this lady named Constance raised a cougar from birth, and it was as "gentle as an lamb," but then it turned on her savagely, stole her identify, destroyed her credit, and then ran off to Africa with the family dog. The lady was heartbroken, but it's her own fault.

Constance forgot the first rule of pet ownership: Don't let them know your financial information. I'm careful to make sure my fish never get any more information than they need to conduct their business affairs. At the very least, you shouldn't let catamounts drink and drive. Show some responsibility. And don't sprinkle yourself with seasoning before you venture into the forest. That's just asking for trouble.

B is for Bond

"Bond. James Bond." And with that iconic line, the original action hero introduces himself to people that he will be soon either be loving or killing and sometimes both. I grew up on the Bond films and even read the Bond books and short stories. I'm among that small crew that likes Roger Moore's Bond best, mostly because his movies were bigger and funnier.

But I confess here: I often found myself rooting -- well, not rooting -- maybe admiring the villains. After all, they build things: hovercrafts, lasers, solar ray satellites. Amazing things. One of them built an underwater city; one of them built a space station. Admittedly, there's that whole pesky destroy-the-world plan, but otherwise, they're doing great work.

Bond, on the other hand, just blows things up. You always know where he's been by the trail of destruction he leaves. Even Q only makes devices to destroy Bond's enemies. Where is His Majesty's Secret Space Station? Nowhere, that's where.

Bond villains, of course, always lose, mostly because they spend their time bragging about their plans instead of SHOOTING BOND ON SIGHT. If I were a Bond villain, the movie would go like this: "Bond. James--arggggh" And then I would proceed to conquer the earth.

A is for Alpha

Alpha is, of course, the beginning, and this is the beginning of the Blogging from A-Z Challenge.

A is also for April, which is the month of the Blogging from A-Z Challenge.

And A is for Anecdotes, which are little stories. FLOOZY & Other Stories is basically filled with anecdotes of various lengths. I'm not sure when an anecdote becomes a short story--maybe when it's longer than a few paragraphs. I don't think there's governing body that decides the various story length. But maybe so. There are governing bodies for just about anything these days. I want to be on one of those bodies. It must be satisfying to make those decision--as long as you have the ability to enforce them. Otherwise, you're just being annoying.

Anyway, that's my first post for the Challenge.

Blooms!

I went to the little lake near my home on Sunday and took these photos. Love the blooms. All the other vegetation is still brown, but there are signs of spring everywhere. In two or three weeks, things will be green! I can't hardly wait.

The Burden of Beauty

Excerpt from A Little Floozy
By Stephen B. Bagley

I just had a sudden insight that I’m sure may have escaped your attention. Well, don’t feel bad. After all, I’m a genius, and you’re not. But you have a sweet spirit and will probably be spared when I conquer the earth. But that’s not a promise. Stop being so needy.

Anyway, my insight was about The Burden of Beauty. The capitals on The Burden of Beauty should clue you in that this will be our topic. Or really my topic. I’m writing, and you’re reading. It’s good to keep those roles straight.

Yes, it’s true that beautiful people get the best jobs, make the most money, get better care in emergency rooms and hospitals, receive more respect from their peers and loved ones, and live longer. These statements are all supported by statistics, and not ones I made up, either.

Naturally, you might think this would mean everyone would want to be beautiful or handsome as their gender may be, but let’s take a closer look at these beautiful people—and I don’t mean by hacking into the webcam on their computer or lurking outside their house at 3 a.m. until they call the police and get a protective order. I miss you, Dolly Parton.

But imagine, if you can, that you are a beautiful person. You have always been beautiful. In school, you were the football captain or head cheerleader, as your gender may be. You married another handsome and/or beautiful person, and you both have beautiful jobs. Naturally you have two or three beautiful children. You attend a beautiful church and play golf and/or tennis at the beautiful country club. Your life is just beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. And then you die beautifully and go to beautiful heaven... No, wait, that wasn’t where I was going with this.

It’s the mirror that trips you up. Around forty, you look in the mirror and discover to your horror that your face looks like a National Geographic relief map of the Grand Canyon. How did that happen? Just yesterday you were crushing some poor ugly person’s heart at the prom as you let him or her down gently.

Now you look ... old ... older ... not as young as you once did. Let’s just say somewhat less young and be done with it.

If you’re a woman—and some men— you hightail it to a plastic surgeon who pulls the skin on your face so tight that even mannequins look at you with horror. And you have other body parts tucked, bobbed, lipo-sucked, fat-vacuumed, and generally lifted until your knees are floating around your chest. You sigh in relief—which is the only noise you can make until your face relaxes.

The bad news is this is all temporary. Well, it’s good news for your plastic surgeon because he needs to keep up those alimony payments to his first through fourth wives. But the bad news for you is that gravity is relentless as is time, and baby, they’re coming for you no matter where you hide.

Think of what a burden it must be for a beautiful person to always have to fight to be beautiful or handsome as their gender may be. They never get any rest. They have to constantly worry about maintaining their looks. It’s a hard life. Of course, I know. Oh, how I know.

But you, you happy hideous thing, will never suffer as I have. I would almost trade lives with you. Oh, who am I kidding? No, I wouldn’t.

Excerpt from A Little Floozy. Copyright 2014 by Stephen B. Bagley. All rights reserved. No copying without express prior permission from the author and publisher. Thank you for reading. 

Walking among the dead

Today I walked among the dead. 

Not my dead.

Strangers in an old cemetery a few miles from my house.

Thought I might take photos...that the late winter sun might illuminate a particular stone or give a halo to an old weathered angel.

Instead I just carried my camera and walked among the rows of graves. Stopping to read a date or name. My feet crunched the old brown leaves. The few trees were bare except for a row of bedraggled evergreens along one side of the cemetery.

And I thought about life and how it goes so fast. How we can't hold our dead no matter how much we try, no matter how much we cry, they slip away when we're not looking.

I thought about those who have left us and how I miss them. My grandparents, my parents, aunts and uncles, cousins ... my baby brother ... My mother was so sharp, so smart, she would see right through your soul, and my father loved to laugh and loved to make me laugh. All those losses. Is that why we're ready to go at the end of our lives? Do the losses pile on until our spirit is ready to fly, to escape the burdens of sorrow? Or maybe we're just ready to meet them again. Maybe we're tired of not being with them. Maybe we're just tired of this earth.

I sat down in an old concrete bench beside an empty tree.

Across the rows, I heard a mockingbird and saw a robin. I watched a lonely cloud make its way across the pale blue sky. And I felt the stillness settle into me, the quiet calm that I call peace for the lack of a better word. I stopped thinking for a while, stopping imagining, stopped remembering.

For a few moments, the horizon held me. That beckoning sky. The endless heavens beyond.

Then I took a deep breath of the cool wind. I smiled for no particular reason other than it felt better than not smiling. I stood, walked back to my car, and drove back to my life.

Sunday at Smith Lake

Went out with my camera and took a few photos of Smith Lake this afternoon. Man, it's still cold, but warmer weather is supposed to be headed our way. I sure hope so. Winter is dragging me down.

Our Romance

Our Romance

Not each other’s first love
or even each other’s second.
We both lived a life before
and carried the scars to prove it.

We did not love at first sight --
life would never be so neat --
you grimly committed to him,
and I determined to stay with her.

How we fell into each other’s arms
proved more to be a laugh there,
a shared moment here, a meeting
of minds and battered hearts.

Remember our sweet surprise
when this casual acquaintance
grew into a firm friendship
and fantastically something more.

Not each other’s first love
or even each other’s second,
but if fate is finally kind
we will be each other’s last.

Copyright 2014 by Stephen B. Bagley. All rights reserved. No copying without prior express written permission from the author and publisher. Thank you for reading.

Full moon tonight

I bet the wolves are howling tonight. Below the photo is a poem from my forthcoming book Undying: Poems of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Photo copyright 2014 by Stephen B. Bagley

Moon

She sent the kids to her parents.
Then cleaned the house
spotless like he wanted it.

She cooked his favorite foods,
ham and loaded potatoes,
coconut cream pie for dessert.

She put on the yellow dress,
but wore nothing underneath
because he always liked that.

And when he came home
she waited by the door
with an icy beer to sate his thirst.

After dinner, she gave herself
to him, pretending to enjoy
his uncaring and clumsy hands.

When they finished, he laughed
and said, "I'm glad you learned
your lesson last night, babe."

She smiled as her hands
covered the mottled bruises
on her bare arms and neck.

He rolled over and slept
self-satisfied, while she waited
for the sacred moon to rise.

The silvery light touched
their bed and slid over her face,
her eyes gleamed yellow.

She ran her tongue
over her newly sharp
teeth and tasted the air.

She reveled in her soft fur
as her nails became claws
and muscles writhed.

Then she turned her great head
toward his sleeping form
and smiled a predator’s smile.

When the morning sun rose,
neighbors found his body
here and there and even over there.

Copyright 2014 by Stephen B. Bagley. All rights reserved. Excerpted from the forthcoming book Undying: Poems of Fantasy & Science Fiction. No copying without express permission from the author and the publisher. 

Mess

Discipline requires order, but creativity requires mess.

A particular kind of mess, but mess nonetheless. All writing -- for that matter -- creative endeavours of all types -- are the product of the tension and cooperation between mess and order ... or if you want to be fancy ... creation and entropy.

Here's a good example. I have a huge folder filled with all sorts of news articles, briefs, scraps of paper with curious words scribbled on them, photos from various magazines, movie and sporting event ticket stubs, you name it. When I feel blocked or drab or bleak, I rummage through the folder. I jumble things up. Could this photo be linked in some way to this ticket stub to that word? Rarely do I glean a complete idea from this mess, but bits float up or drift by.

From this mess, I gain an idea, perhaps for a humor column or a short story. And then order comes in. I figure out the length and the words and what I need to do each day to finish the project.

Once in a while, I have the impulse to organize the folder -- which is actually a couple of boxes now -- but I resist. That mess, those odd juxtapositions, spark creativity.

Perhaps other writers -- you maybe -- are ordered all the time. I admire you. But I will never be you. I will be here in mucking in mess striving to make order out of the drifting ideas.

Grit

I've always said I was bloody-minded. Lots of people take that to mean blood-thirsty, which is incorrect. No, it's more of a stubbornness, a willingness to do whatever it takes to accomplish my personal goals. It's not ruthlessness, because that would imply that I'm willing to or even eager to hurt other people, but that's not correct. This doesn't have anything to do with other people.

No, it's the willingness to be ruthless with myself. To ignore my hurts and pains to keep going. Grit might be a better word. Particularly since the dictionary definition of "bloody-minded" seems to be "difficult to deal with : not willing to help others do things." The British define it as someone who is "stubbornly contrary or obstructive." Which are not the meanings I choose.

Yes, sometimes I made words mean what I want. Don't you?

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.” 
― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

But I think I'm going to use grit now instead of bloody-mindedness, if you don't mind and even if you.

It's just a question of who is going to be the master. I think.

Today's report card

Here's how the day shaped up in regard to my goals.

- No writing besides the News on Facebook and this post.
- Did some household chores.
- Called two friends.
- Worked briefly on two books that I might publish for other authors.
- Ate low carb meals every meal and only cheated once and then only minorly. Feeling much better about my health and fitness plan.
- Blood sugar is going down.

Bad news on my blood pressure, though. It's remaining higher than it should. Will have to work on that.

Getting my blood sugar and blood pressure down are my top priorities these days.

Anyway, hope you had a good day and have a great tomorrow. Talk to you then.

Today today today ...

Slept late today after a bad night of tossing and turning. Woke at up 5 a.m. and took a couple of hours to go back to sleep and then woke up with my back hurting and my head pounding. Watched church on TV. Couldn't bear the incredible cold. And the noise. The people.

Cooked a low carb lunch. It was quite good. Fish with peppers, onions, tomatoes and mushrooms with sides of spinach and mustard greens and a lettuce salad. Delicious.

Watched a New Year's concert that I had recorded a few days back. Beautiful music from Vienna. I try to watch that concert every year.

Went to Staples to walk around and get a little exercise. Bought a few things. Came home and watched a recorded show. Elementary. The show is Elementary, I mean.

Earlier I also watched the end of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. I had never seen that movie. I know it's supposed to be a classic, but it seemed dated. Still, there were good moments in it.

And that was my day. Aren't you glad I shared? Now it's time for bed. Night.

The last 2013 Christmas

Need to post this and go to bed. Had a great day, if very tiring. My roomie's son and family came for the last Christmas celebration of 2013. We ate at Santa Fe Restaurant and then came home to open presents and spend the afternoon playing games and watching Despicable Me 2 while munching on popcorn, string cheese, and candy. Well, they did. As part of my new fitness regime, I didn't partake. And I didn't miss it. I did drink some bubbly (Dr Pepper 10 and A&W Root Beer 10), and that was enough of a treat.

I will have to start taking down the decorations now. Hate to do that. I have enjoyed having them up, and it's a lot of work to take them down. Well, it has to be done, and there's no hurry. I'll work on it this coming week.

Anyway, hope you had a great day. I did. See you tomorrow.

The Secret

I've been working on my New Year's Resolutions. They're still a work in progress. I know the general goals, but mapping about a workable plan for each takes some time. Particularly for the large goals like writing a book, taking over the world, becoming a billionaire, etc.

Writing a novel can be as simple as one page a day. Think about that. One page a day the entire year, and you will have a good sized novel about teenage vampires who sparkle. The problem being that takes a commitment that many people lack. That I often lack. What keeps us committed? What makes us motivated?

I think goals are good: you exercise to live longer or be healthier; you write a book for fame or money or communication; you master physics to created a space-time tunnel to Mars from which to launch your robot flying monkeys on unsuspecting humanity, see how they run; and so on, but the process has to be enjoyable.

Yes, I think that's the secret to keeping any resolution or reaching any goal. You have to enjoy the process. "Joy in the Journey" to quote the title of a favorite Christian song of my mother. She believed in heaven, but she also believed in enjoying life in the here and now, also. She told me once that she never got tired of life; she wanted to wake up each morning. If her body hadn't betrayed her, she would happily be with us still. The Mormons have a variation of that: "Man is that he might know joy." And we Baptists love plunging people into ice cold water in unheated baptismal fonts. Feel the joy!

My point is that it's all well and good to resolve to be better -- I think we should and I don't quite trust people who don't try -- but we should also remember life down here is short and we should seek what wholesome joy we can find and share it with those we love. Remember in the end, we're all going to die of something.

Today's the day

Today's the day I change my life. Today I will eat better. Today I will exercise. Today I will be kind. Today I will be humble. Today I will change.

Or maybe tomorrow's the day. I'm busy today. I've got errands to run and things to do. But I can park my car farther away from my destinations. If I'm not in too much of a hurry. Time is short. Yes, I can't waste time. On days when I'm not busy, I will do that whole exercise bit.

Being kind is kind of hard. I mean, how do you do that? It's not like you can run around telling people you're being kind. No, you have to do something kind. To someone else. Which means I have to find someone to be kind to first and then be kind to them, too. Did I mention time is short? Maybe tomorrow. Maybe kind thoughts are enough. I'm thinking kindly.

Although not right now. Right now, I'm mad at that jerk in the black truck who nearly hit me at the four-way stop an hour ago even though it was CLEARLY my turn. I think. Doesn't the guy on the right have the right of way? Well, whatever. He was a jerk behind his black tinted windows. So dark that you can't see in, so he could be doing anything! He could be drinking beer or driving naked. Jerk. Naked weirdo jerk.

Anyway, I will change. Become a better person. Or thinner. Maybe both, but that's a lot of work, and I'm so so so busy. But my mind is made up. I will change starting today.

Or tomorrow.

But soon.

Happy New Year!

I hope the new year is filled 

with peace, health, love, and laughter 

for you and yours!