David Raffin
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Life is rough / if you are a Billy Goat / and you are gruff. Then you meet a troll under a bridge / and enough is enough / for you are king of the ridge.
Writing
Postage past due
I received an Xmas card saying, “Don’t get trapped in a snow globe.” Now I am trapped in a snow globe. I have almost no one to blame but mysel…
After all, this was a trap.
The mathematics of culpability, squared.
Years ago postage stamps were bothersome. With the advent of self-adhesion, we finally licked that sticky little problem. Progress, but at great price.
The pudding of Xmas past, the gruel of Xmas present
The most famous reindeer of all was Charles Dickens. What a Dickens!
He invented Xmas pudding. Which hardly anybody eats anymore. He started the tradition of orphans eating thin gruel. Now nobody eats gruel. Except orphans. Xmas morning: “Hello gruel world.”
(Gruel world is a future theme park for orphans.)
The Dickens, you say!
(This festive octopus painting by Richard F. Yates.)
The stuff of monsters and love stories
Every good long-term relationship is built on one of the participants not being eaten by a monster. This is my writing tip for the day.
One of the participants in a love story being eaten by a monster, of course, is the stuff of tragedy.
Unless it’s a comedy.
Whenever I have a character be eaten by a monster I don’t plot it out. Because that’s not the way it happens in the real world.
Remember that a tragic love story is still a love story. This may be viewed as a flaw in the categorization of stories.
War on Xmas / Bear of the month
I am ashamed that we used chemical weapons in the war on Christmas. First we used laughing gas–then we used crying gas–then we used laughing gas– then we used crying gas… In the end, people didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
***
Join the bear of the month club. Get a bear delivered to your door every month. December is grizzly.
They’re good bears. A little cranky. But that’s just because they’re hungry.
Bears have pretty simple rules about eye contact. Reasonable, even.
If just one poem about Llamas and Alpacas will make you happy…
Llamas and alpacas/will never attack us/as long as we scratch them on the head/they’ll climb up the mountains/and drink from the fountains/and build up a lot of street CRED/for wherever they go forth/be it due South or due North/they never go looking for trouble/I asked one beside me/while it drank some chai tea/how they remained in this karmic bubble/it’s ever so simple/we came from the temple/we aren’t looking for any drama/whatever do you mean/said I, turning green/Oh, that one over there is the Dalai Llama.
Not how, but why to make a monster
He’s really quite a lovely fellow/though his skin is green and eyes are yellow/I certainly applaud your use of time/Doctor Victor Frankenstein/
Yes, he is, indeed, very top shelf/I needed a friend so made him myself.
Mud in your eye, here
The ‘Mud in your eye bandit’ always screamed “Here’s mud in your eye!” before actually throwing mud in your eye. He said he stood for radical honesty. Really, he just liked throwing mud in people’s eyes.