Sunday, May 25, 2014

Once upon a song

I sometimes I write comics other times I write dorky myths. Here is a dorky myth.

"I hate men," said the fat little god with the razor sharp teeth.
" - and I will tell you why before I eat you."
He began his story-

Long ago the stars sang a song.
Everything danced the dance of the song that the stars sang.
They sang of what is and what was and what will be.
what is and what was and what will be
and what they sang was what was done.

Their's was a song of beauty without mystery for in the song every step was prescribed. The stars sang of the movements of the planets and the tiniest step of an insect. Nothing was missing from the song.

The song held for every living thing a constant terror.
 In every note of the song was the crunch of broken bones.
The inevitable gnawing of the bones of those who were dead and of those who would be dead.
And there were no other living things but the dead and the dying.
But they lived by the song and the terror for the song had to be.

The gods loved the fear and they filled their nostrils with the terror of the living things. They were huge and fat. They were happy.
Until.
Another voice began to sing.
It could hardly be called singing - a small murmur, a buzzing, disrupting the song of the stars.

The stars didn't care. They sang on - as they always sang and always would sing and they danced their dance ever heedless of the things below them.
But the gods were perturbed.
"Who dares?" they sneered.

The thing that murmured was by far the most pathetic of the living things. It had neither claws nor fangs. In fact these things spent most of their time trying -but failing- to avoid being eaten.
The thing no longer wanted to spend its nights in the caves and its days running.
So it murmured. And the murmur grew louder.
The murmur grew into a song.
The song was about the weak thing getting stronger and what the song said came to be.

The gods hated this but the thing gave them sacrifices and foolishly they were appeased - but they shrank and shrank and hardly realized it until they were so small they could hardly do him any harm.

That is what the little god said, my son, when I met him.
From his story we can learn many things -
We can learn why men find  things that lack mystery to also lack beauty.
We can learn why men watch the stars and listen to them because they are too lazy to sing their own songs.
 And some still say that the song of the stars lives in three old women - but they are three old women and they no longer shine as brightly as they used to.
We can learn a great many things about ourselves from the little god's story.

But, Father - didn't the god have razor sharp teeth? And how is it you are here to tell me the story now?
Yes- my son, but the gods cannot sing. So I sang him a song about me going home safely and that is what happened.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Teenage Soup for the Chicken's Soul

On a recent afternoon I was going through stuff in the house trying to eliminate the avalanche of junk that slowly acummulates anywhere that people have lived for a while. This is mostly accomplished by giving away very small track shorts from high school that no longer fit me. The public is generally appreciative of my refusal to wear said track shorts. While sifting through this great host of junk I spied a book called, "Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul." It is full of inspiring tales of teenagers becoming less covered in acne and then getting to be prom queen (and or tales of people who surf without arms or legs while raising money for children with cancer and being valedictorian- these stories never cheer me up for some reason). Anyway I saw this book and said:  


...


...

Behold a story is born.


Murder chicken is taunted by nefarious youths.

The crazy. It's in his eyes.


Teenage soup. Iphones for added flavor.


Murder Chicken makes a scientific discovery that if boiled down long enough teenagers morph into hash tags and annoying phrases. He records his findings dutifully - they could be of inestimable value to the scientific community.  

He donates the evidence to his local goodwill.