Bravery

Near Phnom Penh, Viet Nam, 1969: My friend Gregg L. was a writing buddy at Midwestern University. He was a short, loud, burly guy who wrote short-stories meant to be both gritty and insightful, but he once confided that he actually made some money writing ... throbbing-bosom Romance novels under a flowery Nom de Plumeria.

An ex-soldier, he'd modified a small and mild-mannered orange Honda motorcycle into a arched-handlebars hog, or perhaps a piglet. He had a very fancy medal for bravery in the Viet Nam war. It happened like this ...

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Spooks and Snow

Night before last, the hail pinging on the window above my bed called me to come and look from the back door. The tiny hailstones heaped upon the back deck, then blew away, leaving slippery ice in the morning, to the consternation of the dogs.

In my late-afternoon errands, the overcast sky drifted high above with stories of clouds in shapes and shadows, and the mountain gray with a thin dash of snow, just from the night.

Tonight, goblins will come. Young Ron and Katie across the street have a hierarchy of carved pumpkins, a lighted cornstalk path through scattered hay and huge purple spiderwebs to their door. Looks like a gremlin-grabber to me.

Adrienne and I, newly among the living, cannot rise to carve our pumpkins, so Adrienne has dressed one in a cowboy hat and the other in a bandanna, with twinkly lights. We plan to put the goodies outside in a bowl, with a sign saying "Take only two. Boo!"

Us? We're going to hide, deep inside the darkened house, and watch a really silly movie.

Keep Your Eye on the Ball

Life can look kind of tough sometimes. But maybe it's how we go about looking ...

Daigu Riokan ("Great Goof" or "Big Fool") became enlightened and decided not to take students but to live as a hermit and subsist on alms. Consequently, he was very, very poor.

However, that's not the end of the story.

One day a thief broke into his hut, and finding nothing worth stealing, trashed the place. Finding this, Daigu Riokan wrote this haiku --

The thief left it there,
there in the window --
the shining moon.

The Shirtless Shirt

Henrietta, Texas, 1955: Yesterday I received a comment on the "Sleuthhound Club" post from Mary Lefevre, who would have been the youngest member of the club, but she was only a toddler at that time. We sleuthhounders attempted to play a trick on her and on John Burkman, regarding a rocket-ship, which we'd read about in a Little Lulu comic book.

The deal was that Lulu and Annie came along and found the Boyz Club boys -- I think that it was after the Boyz Club in Little Lulu comics that several rap groups are named -- and the boys were constructing a rocket ship to fly to the moon.

Later, when the girls had gone, the boys hid the wooden rocket ship, and sprinkled some ashes on the ground to simulate the flames of departure.

Annie and Little Lulu were quite surprised upon their return to see these ashes, and concluded that the boys had indeed flown to the moon.

As Annie and Little Lulu walked around their neighborhood, the boys, in hiding, lofted bottles containing messages. These bottles, apparently falling from the sky, told some lurid tale of moon-monsters.

We of the Sleuthhound club thought this plot ready-made to trick Mary and John. After all, they were very young.

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Weak with Flu and Laughter

The radio said there would be a big flu season. So far, around our house, this appears credible.

Adrienne got irritable and punky Sunday, when we drove to Ashland, Oregon, the home of the annual Shakespeare Festival, about an hour north of here. There's a pretty University there, and a quainte downtowne with precious shoppes, where after a long wait we got a mediocre breakfast at high prices. However, the service was only so-so.

When we got home, she retired early, and Monday was mongo ill. Suspecting the worst, I went shopping. We got the TheraFlu, the Advil Day and Night, the Alka-Seltzer Deeply-Serious Cold tablits, and the ever-handy coca-cola and saltine crackers. A good thing, too.

In the early evening, I fell out too, and slept through the night, all the next day, and the next night. On the mend now, ate rice and a kipper, and seeing as how I was feeling more chipper, asked dear Adrienne did she want a kipper.

She groaned, "No kipper. No skipper. No dipper."

See, incomprehensible! She's feeling better!

Gonout. Backson.

Out of my body, back soon. Please leave a message. WCB.

Obligatory Daylight-Savings Story

I tell this identical story to Adrienne twice every year, to her eternal disgust, and so it's natural to want to share it with you, too.

But since we've got hyperlinks on this website, I'll just refer you to the Newfangled Daylight-Savings Time story.

Law 23 of Business Problems

This is a simple law of nature, but one which is very handy:

Every Business has One of Four Problems: Employees, Capital, Machinery, or Inventory

That's it.

Some businesses have more than one of these problems. Problems aren't necessarily bad, but the problems do need good solutions if the enterprise is to flourish. If mismanaged, employees will shipwreck you. So will mismanaging your capital, machinery, or inventory.

It's something to consider when planning a business venture. If you can solve these problems, and if you can locate customers and market successfully to them, the business might do very well. There's more to life than running a business, but a business can be a good way to finance your life, and lots of people enjoy the challenge.

The astute reader will say, "Oh, but what about personal services businesses?" For example, dogwalkers and bookkeepers and barbers and lawyers. These businesses do not necessarily require any significant amounts of employees, nor capital, nor machinery, nor inventory.

In these cases, you are selling your time, and time is the only commodity in the entire universe which is absolutely limited to you. You are not obtaining the leverage afforded by employees, capital, machinery, or inventory, so in this case the best plan is to (a) earn a lot of money for your time, relative to your needs; (b) enjoy the thing you are doing; and (c) stash away and invest for a rainy day.

Knowing this important secret of the universe, go forth and prosper.

Big Day for Traktor on Amazon.Com!

Amazon.Com: Today Amazon announced a mongo extension to their book search, because now you can search for words appearing in the text of the books.

Naturally, humbo as ever, I mediately searched for "Traktor Topaz" (my stage name), and by gosh there in American Basses, by Jim Roberts (former editor of Bass Player magazine), you find described the Mobius Megatar touchstyle basses that I make!

You can do a search on Amazon for 'Traktor Topaz' or 'Mobius Megatar', to see a nice picture of the page along with a picture of the instrument, but here's what it says ...

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Trademark Notice This, Pretty Please

Thanks today to the nice folks at abcmalaysia.com, for their recent website modification to remove references to "bloggard", which is a trademark of Arthur Cronos (me humbo sef) and Voltos Industrial Internet. Other trademarks include "The Bloggard" and "Adventures of Bloggard".

The abcmalaysia.com website seems to be run by some nice people who work like crazy, and keep prices low and service high, and I very much appreciate the mods they made so as not to infringe upon my trademark.

Remember folks, The Bloggard is so proud of his name he doesn't want to share it with anybody! (But keep those cards and letters- oops! I mean, comments and links coming in, folks!)

Thank you kindly.

It's Fall with a Vengeance

Mount Shasta: The pines and cedars are ever green, of course. But the birch on the front lawn has burst into a pale yellow, and now a million tiny perfect leaves swirl in heaps upon the lawn. The dogs root and sniff, suspicious.

In the back yard, the apple tree is turning, and the pear tree close behind. The leaves on the holly are still deep green, and the bright red berries say Yule must be on the way.

What is Brother North Wind's secret?

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The Expanding Bloggiverse

Mount Shasta: I've tinkered with the layout of "Adventures of Bloggard", but the design is still flawed: If the browser is too narrow, the grey column on the right gets squeezed down to the bottom of the page, which is nigh on useless.

If you are a CSS-layout guru and think you could improve the stability of this layout, I'd love to hear from you. I keep saying I'll go study CSS some more, but I've become caught up in the challenge of writing a new story every day.

And here I'm clearly losing ground.

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The Dangerous Phone in the Lobby

Denton Texas, 1964: At the Holiday Inn, my roommate Pat was the dining-room host, and I was the bellboy. We both took Spanish class, so we practiced by insulting the guests sitting in the booths. ("Yo pienso que este hombre es un burro con arreyos largos." ... "Si, yo tambien.")

This generally worked pretty well, as the guests generally didn't speak Spanish. One day, however, the guest spoke Spanish very well and, well, that was the end of our Spanish practice.

But back to the dangerous payphone in the lobby. The first dangerous thing was that it was installed only a few steps away from Pat's station in the coffee shop.

The second dangerous thing was that its phone number was very similar to the phone at McConnell Hall, the large women's dormatory.

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How to Pick Up Girls (Part 2)

San Francisco State, 1972: I'd read a book about how to pick up girls. Actually, it was about how to get laid, and was entitled "Scoremanship". I cannot recommend the book for its attitude, but it had this one magnificent technique for meeting women.

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How I Gave Up Newspapers

Clement Street, San Francisco, 1973: After living on Ulloa street, and before the North Beach Apartment from Hell, I lived on Tenth Avenue at Clement Street, with a roommate named Pat Q. At that time he was a photographer with a darkroom behind our kitchen, and was maniacal taking and developing pictures of the San Francisco Ballet. (Later he became a contractor.)

I was attending San Francisco State, in the Creative Writing department, or that is, I was for a while. I discovered that the classes interfered with my writing about as much as they helped. And at about that time, my mother, from whom I sponged funds for this education, lost most of her money in the stock market, so I had to stop the school, which was fine with me.

Every morning, I had a routine.

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Shootout at the Westbury Hotel

Westbury Hotel, San Francisco, 1974: This guy was robbing the downtown hotels, always late evening. He'd hit the Cartwright twice. It was a simple robbery, just walking up to the front desk, and, with a pistol, requesting the cash.

Two blocks away, at the Westbury we were talking it over. Mr. Slocum, the Security Cheif, worked nights along with me (the desk clerk), Henry So the night auditor, and Manuel R. the night manager.

Slocum liked working nights. He was a portly, well-spoken, bald fellow who wore three-piece dark suits, belonged to one of the old San Francisco clubs, and in fact lived in a room at the Press Club. He found working the nights restful.

Henry So, lately of Hong Kong, was the regular night auditor. I filled in on the audit two nights a week. In theory, it would be me or Henry So who got robbed when our time came.

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How I Gave Up Television

Fernwood Street, Hollywood, 1970: My old ex-roommate John Hill, the Rock and Roll bass player, and I decided that we'd move out of the house at Third and Western. As I remember, we decided this right after Lamont and Carolyn decided that everybody else should move out.

We found an inexpensive place with one bedroom in the back. John took that. I took the living room up front for my room. There was a kitchen and a bath in the middle. Perfect!

I had only two pieces of furniture: a thin mat on which I slept, and a wooden desk from the second-hand store. But when we moved in, I went to the rent-a-couch store, and there I rented a television.

That's how the trouble started.

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The Lord of the Wood

A woodsy mountainside in California, Summer 1975: I subscribed to Green Egg, edited by Tim Zell. I think 'Green Egg' meant the planet earth.

It was a Wiccan publication, a half-size underground zine that came out eight times a year on the usual holidays -- Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lughnasadh, Mabon, Samhain, and Yule -- and there I read about a big gathering mid-summer, so that would be Litha on the Summer Solstice (June 21).

I rode my motorcycle down the freeway, always an buffeting excitement, and my tail was plenty numb by the time I parked outside a modest cottege in Silicon Valley. I heard singing inside, some Celtic thing, so I burst through the door and asked was this the revival meeting?

To general good vibes, I was introduced around, to Tim Zell, and his wife and goddess by the name of Morning Glory, and she was a glory to be sure. A caravan of vehicles was planned, but way too far for my moto.

So that was how I got invited to ride in the converted schoolbus with Morning Glory, and Tim Zell, and the python, and the boa constrictor.

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The Crash

Saint Louis, Missouri, Winter 1967: Working two jobs let me save money for my visit to England. I worked days on the Rock Island Railroad in my jeans and brogans. Then, wearing a suit, worked as night manager at the Hilton Inn.

Light snow flurries spun around the Volkswagen as I zoomed up the freeway toward home in the dark early morning. The four-lane had little traffic, and soon I'd be home -- an unheated trailer off the end of the jet runway of St. Louis International. I was tired.

Just past the crest of a hill, I drifted to the left, then started to enter the leftmost lane. That's when it happened.

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Welcome to the Hob Nob

Denton, Texas, 1960's: At North Texas State University (now called University of North Texas), Larry Burns and his father ran a coffee-house across from the English Building. It was called The Hob Nob. This place was home to some of us. Maybe it was your home, too.

I used to hang out with fellow artistes and literati Paul Miner, John B., and Billy Bucher. Paul drew pictures and wrote stories. John wrote stories and edited the school's literary magazine. Billy played jazz music and wrote stories. I wrote stories.

All of us drank a lot of coffee and gabbed for hours and hours at the Hob Nob. We had a crew of friends -- Rex May, John Mahoney, Larry Pine, Tex Allen, John Hill, Camilla Carr, Michael Murphy, and lots more.

The cups of coffee never stopped. The conversations never stopped, spinning and turning and returning again. This it was, once upon a time.

My friend Bill Bucher has expressed an interest in writing some micro-stories about that time, and about times that came later, and if any other Hobnobbers find us, we'd invite you to join in. For this purpose, we've set up a separate weblog for tales from that time, and tales from our later lives.

Please come visit us at the Hob Nob. The coffee is as strong as ever, and in time we're hoping the gab will flow, richer than ever.

Introducing: The Hob Nob weblog.

Telemarketers

You know there's a new "Do Not Call" list being promoted, but from what I hear, it doesn't make much difference. I've not added our phone numbers, because I enjoy most telemarketer calls.

I figure that, since they've called me on their agenda, surely as a human I have a perfect right to reply on my own agenda. My agenda is usually the amusement of The Bloggard, and I've noticed that if you just continually misunderstand a telemarketer, he or she will usually entertain you mightily.

For example, this morning at home, I got a call from a young lady wanting me to subscribe to a newspaper. Holding my tongue in the roof of my mouth while speaking, which made me both hard to understand and very dumb-sounding, I asked her what was a Record-Courier anyway.

When she explained that it was a newspaper, I asked her did you need to be able to read.

She pointed out that I could tear out the coupons, which had pictures. I told her that I'd not been trained in pictures, and then asked her why she was calling me.

She told me she had a great deal and quoted some numbers. I fed back the numbers incorrectly to her for a while, and then started all over at the beginning asking what was a Record Courier anyway. But finally my breakfast was burning so I had to end the call.

But in the office today, I encountered an all-time low: two telemarketers at the same time.

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The Wild Speedometer

Dallas, Texas, 1965: I didn't know much about negotiating back then. I knew I wanted to buy the Morgan Motor Car, and Little John had a demonstrator for $3000. I wasn't able to talk him down, and he wasn't much interested in my trade-in, a faded-paint Dodge Lancer with "The Spook" written on the back.

The First National Bank of Henrietta finally came through at the end of the day, a day I'd been close to tears several times, and just as night was falling, Little John handed me the keys.

I'd never driven a sportscar. Certainly not one like this.

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Ruru the Guru sez "Personals? Sure!"

San Francisco Yellow Pages, 1986: In the Yellow Pages that year you'd find listed "Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service" at 221-3333. If you called it you might hear this --

"Hello and thank you for calling Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, your personal telepathic message center, it'll tweak your head!

"I am your Host and Operator Ruru the Guru, speaking to you direct from the Himalaya Hideaway.

"You know the other day I was delivering a telepathic message to a Muni bus driver on the 22 Fillmore. It was from his girlfriend, and she said ...

"Bill, honey, can we still be friends?

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The Man Who Ran Over Himself

Parker and Geary, San Francisco, 1985: Jill was my inamorata when I lived in Dallas, selling answering service equipment for StarTel. She'd been shocked when I said I wasn't divorced yet, just certain that I was just playing her.

Standing there in her house, I dialed Network Answering Service and got Lori on the line. "Hi, Lori," I said, "I've been seeing this woman named Jill, and she thinks that since we don't have a divorce, maybe we'll be getting back together. This worries her. Would you reassure her?"

Jill was making desparate No, No! gestures, but I forced the phone into her hand and moved it up to her ear.

"Hello?" she said.

I couldn't hear what Lori said, but as Jill listened, the worry lines faded from her face. The women finished their talk. And that was that.

Probably because of this reassurance, Jill came with me on my next visit to San Francisco. And that's where we saw it.

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The Wolves in the Woods

Contoocook, New Hampshire, Winter's Night, 1958: On the full moon nights, by 8 pm on a snow-laden evening, the countryside was bright and clear at the big hill behind Barnard's farm.

The fathers took the children tobogganing down the big hill in the moonlight, and the bright ice-laden snow twinkled like diamonds beneath the moon. Adrienne was nine, bundled up so snug with her stylish earmuffs.

Beside the dark woods, down the clear-lit hill upon their bucking toboggans, the children would glide, crying out in pleasure at the speed and the ghostly light, breath in clouds, their voices thin in the chill air.

And then they saw the wolves.

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Ruru the Guru sez "Messages for Today"

San Francisco Yellow Pages, 1986: In the Yellow Pages that year you'd find listed "Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service" at 221-3333. If you called it you might hear this --

"Hello and thank you for calling Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, the world's fastest telepathic answering service. It takes most no time at all to send your messages to everybody ... well, just about everybody.

"I am your Host and Operator Ruru the Guru, speaking to you direct from the Himalaya Hideaway.

"And now for the news ..."

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Raising the Rates

San Francisco, 1982: The staff at Network Answering Service were clamoring for raises. But we had no more funds. We had as many clients as we could handle, and our signups just replaced clients who left through natural causes. What to do?

My wife Lori booked a CPA consultant. After examining our books, he suggested the obvious. "You need to raise your rates," he said. "They're just too low."

Well, of course they were, but I was terrified.

I could see it so clearly ...

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She Ain't Heavy

Two monks were once travelling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was falling. As they came around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.

"Come on, girl," said the first monk. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

The second monk did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. "We monks don't go near females," he said. "It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"

"I left the girl there," the first monk said. "Are you still carrying her?"

Ruru the Guru sez "Nobody Home"

San Francisco Yellow Pages, 1986: In the Yellow Pages that year you'd find listed "Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service" at 221-3333. If you called it you might hear this --

"Hello and thank you for calling Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, the world's most reliable telepathic answering service.

"I am your Host and Operator Ruru the Guru, speaking to you direct from the Himalaya Hideaway.

"You know, just yesterday three different people telepathed me up with basically the same question ...

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How I Became Traktor

Sausalito, May 1991: Years ago I'd decided to change my name, from Richard French to Arthur Cronos. My then wife Lori didn't like the idea, and as it turned out, I should have listened to her.

However, I had thought deeply, but not deeply enough, and I was headstrong, so I made up a whimsical name to scare her with, so that she would accept the name I'd originally chosen.

You might think that was clever, but actually I'd got the idea from a Little Lulu comic book, many years before ...

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Law 23 of Luxury

This is a simple law of nature, but one which is very handy:

The One True Luxury in Life is Time.

That's it.

Assuming that you have talent, apply yourself, and have reasonable luck, you can build a business, create a monument, do something wonderful.

In this endeavor, you may require money, people, knowledge, natural resources. Assuming you have talent, apply yourself, and have reasonable luck, there is no particular shortage of any of these things in the universe. For all practical purposes, from your point of view these things are unlimited. That is, if you have talent, apply yourself, and have reasonable luck, you can obtain pretty much any amount of these things. So you can build a business, create a monument, do something wonderful.

But, for practical purposes, there is one thing in the Universe which is absolutely limited: Your time.

We don't know how much you've got, but we do know that when you've used it up, there is no more. Therefore this is the most precious thing in your Universe. More precious than gold, more precious than fame, more precious than water.

If you've got lots of time, you must be rich.

But what if you spend all your time on ... stuff? What if you spend all your time moving toward something, but hardly any of your time being here? What if your time is not enjoyed? What if you're spending time doing stuff you don't like?

You are spending the most precious thing in your Universe. Is this wise?

Spend wisely: Planning with care, live the life you have. The one true luxury is time.

Knowing this important secret of the universe, go forth and prosper.

Bob's Typo Collection

You may recall my friend Bob who started Bob's Typing Service sort of as an accident. I suppose that, typing and typing, you just look at words a lot, but Bob became quite expert as a proof-reader.

In fact, once he moved away into the mountains, he sold the typing business and now operates TypoFinders proof-reading service, on the internet, using a simple website that I designed for him one afternoon. With an internet connected laptop, he works from his mountaintop home these days.

I was thinking of him because he sent me a few typos last week. Just as I collect quotes, Bob collects typos. Here are a few for your enjoyment --

“We proudly feature some-day shipping.”

“Sign up now for our Beauty and Fitness Curse.”

"This house features an enormous dick, suitable for entertaining or just enjoying the view."

Want more? Visit the typo gallery at TypoFinders!

Adrienne, the Vegetarian

San Francisco, 1982: A few years before I met Adrienne, she was dining in San Francisco, at a swank place on Nob Hill called Julius Castle, which is mentioned in one of the Sam Spade mysteries from the 1940's, so I guess the restaurant's been there for a while.

Adrienne and her escort decided to try wild boar, a special on the menu. The dinner seemed all right.

But that night ...

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