Pokemon HGSS Walkthrough Part III Sprout Tower
another pokemon walkthrough; i put them here because i don't want to lose them

a friend came over and i showed him a little about the publicity angle of the poetry reading which is coming along much better now. i have a facebook page; i've told all my facebook friends; i have a poster (though i haven't copied it), i have actually called both newspapers, though both were closed, it being saturday and all. i uploaded pictures, built sites, did p.r.

but, as i said to my friend, and he was somewhat mystified by this, my motivation is really that in a sense, being a bum and a hobo, albeit 40 years ago, i feel like i've been carrying around this secret, and in a sense i'm telling the town now what i've been carrying. i walk around, and, if i'm trapped in a line at the post office, i write haiku, and that means, i get my head into some moment, which could have been in, say, texas, and i try to condense that into seventeen syllables, and it may be good or bad poetry what do i know, but it gets me out of that feeling of being stuck in line. it's a kind of discipline, to take all those moments, and condense them into seventeen syllables, with a clue of both the place and the season, the season as they would know it in, say, texas, and then i have five hundred or more of these, and i have them all in one volume, and now it's time to show. i feel it, that it's time to show, and i also owe the homeless shelter a favor, since they were there for me one time when i was freshly kicked out of my own house.

the homeless shelters, they say, and others of its ilk, such as the women's center, are responsible more than any other thing for the reduction in the murder rate. i guess that, in the old days, if folks had nowhere to go, they simply went back & murdered the aggrieved spouse, so that this is a benefit of the modern world, one that should be upheld and maintained, like an interfaith center and a teenage help line. if it saves lives, i'm for it, because it could be mine or that of my kids, and i'm glad they are there when my folks need them. that's the first thing. but second, if i'm scrawling this little poetry on little sheets of paper and stuffing them in my pockets at places like the post office and all, i'm hiding secrets, and that doesn't quite feel right, i'd like to say, at some point, yeah, i've been pushing my kids in the swing at turley park for years, and in my head, i'm thinking about that time i was out in west texas watching the san juan river crawl its way down toward mexico, and you want to know what i got in my pocket, here it is. so the little logos i put on my poster say, southern illinois poets, stand & deliver. it's got a kind of wild west, up front feeling, hopefully someone will show up.

turns out the story itself is worth hearing, i've certainly told it enough (see the template of this very blog, where you can read the true versions, in prose, of every step i took) and in fact i rarely tire of telling it so if that's all that happens on that particular night, or if the poetry is bad (which is a distinct possibility in my case, i say possibility because, isolated as i am in my own head, it's reached the point where i almost wouldn't know one way or the other, unless forced to actually read it out and see what people think), at least i'll have an entertaining story to spin out and give people to carry with them, out into the february night. just from the telling of the story to my friend, i know how easy it is to get carried away in the details of what happened say, when the al-can highway washed out and we spent days and nights in a tiny mountain town of british columbia, looking at the northern lights and waiting for a little road repair. or, the mexico and guatemala part, which are pretty much left out of the book but nonetheless tellable, interesting stories. the real version, the prose, just passing through, i actually need to work on and finish this year; that's part of my goal.

so a week from wednesday (or wenny-denzy, as i've taken to calling it), i'll be there, reading this stuff out, and raising money for the local homeless shelter, which i consider to be an important contributor to sanity and sustenance of life in this town. but in the meantime i have to print more books, print and deliver posters, and keep up with other work-related stuff, which is also heating up and causing a certain amount of busy-ness and panic on my part. i've got irons in the fire. a few too many, in fact.

it's cool and clear out, and this is good because a plastic-handled spoon fell down into the dishwasher and melted on the heating element causing a wretched stink to fill the house and leave us a little aggrieved. not a bad time to air the place out though as februarys are known to bring ice storms not to mention leap day, which could add to the misery this year if not thow off all the electronic devices. the powers that be want to eliminate "leap second" because it really gets in the way of all that electronic calculation, but in fact if those electronic devices are off by one second or so, we're all a little better off, because we won't be able to be anal and all worked up about it. it's like that woman in iowa, whose house was about an inch off of the straight north-south axis, and she knew it, and she went bonkers. why? because she couldn't pick up the house and move it. i say, pick up the earth's axis, and move it about an inch, and see how many people we lose. but do it gently, don't do it with a tsunami.

which reminds me, i finished the jigsaw puzzle, and it was missing two pieces, so finally i moved the couch and got everything out from under there, kids books, a sock, a paper clip, all kinds of stuff. and sure enough, one of the pieces was down there. but the other? it's still gone. who knows? those reindeer, they contributed one of their own to the great environment. but what does a single jigsaw puzzle piece do, when it's out in the world, say it fell between the pages of some book in the end-table magazine-holder, and it's just sitting there until we find it somehow, years later? it's worthless, separated from its friends, much like a single sock is worthless without its mate, unless you happened to buy a dozen that were all similar. as i put this puzzle away, i'm intensely aware of how useless it is, i can't even give it away, when it's missing one piece. the hardest puzzle i ever did, too.

so what's with the world pictures? it's a picnik retrospective. picnik is the poster-art maker, photo adjuster, pop-artist toolbox, it's been free all these years, but google is closing it down, maybe because it was too popular, or too free. we can make all the pop art we want until april, then it's all over, maybe somebody will come 'round and provide another, but maybe not, and that's ok, i feel like once again, i'm rolling from one free site to another, like i'm on the road again, or maybe on the train, jumping up but trying not to kill myself, or landing on the gravel and hoping it doesn't put a hole in whatever i land on. one side of me, and you can check out my template here, is always on this big long ramble which, one could say, just goes from one public spot to another. and as long as you're not a public nuisance, you kind of stay under the radar, you help folks out and don't cause trouble, then the world allows you to pass through and says, be my guest.

which reminds me, it was polar bear weekend here, which meant, mass binge-drinking spectacular among the college students, kids puking and ending up in the e-r all over town (at least last year they did) and everyone a little worried that someone might die, or sit down on the railroad tracks, or some other thing, so they write letters to the parents and everyone gets offended, like you're telling on us before we even did anything. but i say, and i'm kind of part of the reformed community, i've been there and back, and somewhat grateful not to be in the clutches of alcohol or any other drug, to speak of, i say such warnings may be offensive but aren't really uncalled for, if they save anyone's life. we are here, and stay here, because this town needs us, it's a drinking town, has a drinking problem, and it needs someone to say, you can beat this stuff and come back from it and live to tell the tale. which is what i'll do on wednesday. i have no intention of encouraging people to jump on trains. as i tell my kids, it's a different world, and you have to be smart, 'cause folks love you & want you to survive. chao

No Picnik: Photo-editing site's users blast Google

new c-net news, it's the big news out there, especially for us pop-art denizens who do our own chopping, saturating, sharpening, and posterizing. as i read about it it appears that google is just trying to ensure that it drives people to use google + ... i think, given the benefits of picnik, it would probably be worth it to me to use google + ... i haven't, so far, found many other reasons to use google + ... unlike many, i don't hold it against google for driving its fans to a new social networking system; it's like putting your phone booth in the new train station. what's the point of arguing? as long as i can use it, i'll be ok. might do a picnik retrospective extravaganza, just in case. starting tonight.

a poetry reading benefit is in the works; it will feature four different poets with me second on the list. i'm actually coming out as a poet, and not without a little nervousness. this is a small town though. i'm already famous. turns out, with all the effort i've put into selling my short stories online (spent a $70 coupon on free google link-advertising), i've only sold one book, and that was poetry. no problem, though, it won't slow me down. i'll get my publicity machinery going as soon as i can!

i was a single father for a couple of days, tried to restring my lap dulcimer in the process, ran into frustration on virtually all counts. patience, my son! tuning pegs are now dangling precariously on my dresser. one son has forgotten about his video camera temporarily, hot on the trail of a new downloadable game that he can wheedle us into getting for him. the other is on us for all kinds of games, movies, netflix, skype, whatever he can get, knowing full well that while we're messing with fixing the computer we're not watching the cookies, it's fairly easy to pull one over on two older parents, one foot in the grave. parents are supposed to cultivate these eyes in the back of our heads. i myself let all my hair grow too long over the holidays, now i'm just too tired to look out for any trouble.

told a few people, but kept it off facebook, that it being the year of the dragon, i'd celebrate by dragon myself into work for another year...i find myself falling asleep, again, however, as i write, so i'm off to bed. forgive the rambling. more later...chao

i've been challenged to do a poetry reading with my new book e pluribus haiku as a benefit for a local homeless shelter, by a guy who has gotten himself in newspapers nationwide for doing that, reading poetry as benefits for the homeless. he has several books out but is basically a colleague of mine at work, and quite good at self-promotion, i've always thought. i'm somewhat shy about my identity as a poet but am not likely to resist any challenge or well-placed dare of this nature so i think it may happen; it also is to his benefit that i happen to know not only the homeless shelter but also the people at the coffee shop where it would likely be held. it remains to be seen when, how, or who else might be involved. february is a time of poetry, i can tell you that, yet he also has a baby due so we have to move quickly.

my own computer is busy uploading another video for my ten-year-old and i'm afraid to sign out of his account and into mine in the middle of the process so i'm relegated to a back room funky computer at which i often mistype. he has become a man in black, who has his own youtube channel, and who easily could stay up until two or three every morning if i don't wail and moan and goad him into bed. around nine or ten when the little guy is asleep i do my exercise, furious stationary bicycling with cajun blues and accordion, and raunchy singing and i may or may not be on the beat as i get kind of zoned out into listening to it and not concentrating on the bicycle action. we also get skype calls from my granddaughter who plays the harmonica, has names for us (i'm gahwah, and one son is eeeyi)and she looks forward to talking to us because we climb all over each other and live the life of a bunch of wild animals with paws all over the screen, piling up on each other. she's learning to talk though and that's an ever-repeating miracle as kids seem to understand so much before they even start.

a cold spell has settled down over the place and this is somewhat typical for january here so i'm not necessarily complaining about global warming or whatever its opposite is, global or localized flooding or blizzarding. we breathe a little too much of whatever some furnace cranks out. the air is totally fresh outside but nobody wants to go out and balm around in it, though i do see a few bicyclists. outdoor sports? we don't have enough snow, though we have the appearance of it, sometimes. and it's just as likely to be in february as january anymore.

teaching the news again, and that's good, because i'm somewhat of a news junkie anyway these days; i do my africa news 'til i think that's normal, that's the center of the news world, and everyone should know gabon from gambia. unlike santorum, i at least know that africa is a continent, not a country. i should run for president, but i don't, because my computer is being used to upload youtubes.

another movie:
Pokemon Heart-gold and Soulsilver walkthrough part I

they're coming fast and furiously now; though it is a school night, i have yet another to make and upload for him, but haven't had the chance. it takes about a half-hour to put it into quicktime and another to put it up onto youtube, and you get involved in other stuff and don't notice when it's finished. in this one you can hear dinner being cooked in the background and an occasional family member interrupting....yet he's doing them in broad daylight because he has ideas and wants to produce. i know the feeling, and i'm proud of him.

my own writing is bogged down a bit because i don't quite know everything i'm talking about; i may have to back up and do some research. it's about the similarities between language, traffic and other self-organizing systems; links are coming, be patient.

a storm is rolling in, and that is unusual for january, in that it's rain this year, and not a raging blizzard of frigid snow. i hear thunder in the northwest as i type and am beginning to see some kinds of drizzle around the streetlight aura. i'm coming to the end, close to bed; we all go back to school and work in the morning.

over at the table with the reindeer jigsaw puzzle i finally got going and got dozens of pieces, as you reach a critical mass and soon there are a lot fewer pieces to choose from. i couldn't finish it, however; two months, and it's still not done.

similarly with the quilt, i work on it regularly, enjoy it, yet still am not out of the grays yet; the grays are so far my first and only color on top. just starting, you could say, but it's coming right along.

other projects, i have to give up, or shelve, for the moment, as i have no other choice, it's time to get back to work. i do exercise every day, thirty or forty minutes of cajun music, and i'm enjoying that, but i no longer do poetry then as it seems my mind is just full, or maybe i need to reflect on traffic and self-organization, not enough room in my brain. my dad's pictures, cesl archive, dulcimer tuning pegs, these have all been put off, for the moment. such is life; i give in, relax, let it rain. tomorrow i start back; wednesday i teach. chou

my son's most recent movie:
MightyDragonite's dragonite

i can mention two aspects of this movie-making bit: one, that although it requires an enormous amount of my time and guidance, he still learns faster, and knows more about it, than i do, partly because he's young but also because he wants to have a prominent channel in the pokemon-explanation business. he finds the people who do it well and he models himself after them; slowly he will become more polished, with a louder voice, clearer picture, and camera focused steadily on the action.

if you click on the channel you can see all the movies he's made; he gets "views", and "likes," and these are important to him, and i implore you to add your "view" and your "like" if you would be so kind. but this blog is not really about him; he has his own arc, and his own life which you will be able to see easily (if you "subscribe") only soon enough. really what i would like to say is that, on this grim and windy, cold (and soon rainy) holiday, there is one last day for me to start in on my project, and, it is slowly being eaten away by this process. i should not begrudge it, it's ok, it's just life as it is, and i'm not so much an expert on language as a self-organizing system anyway, that i really have that much to say, as i sit down and try to write.

but i have this pile of books, and they deal with language, what it is, and how to explain it, and natural systems, such as ant colonies, nerve structures, etc., and my challenge here is to somehow tie it all together, because i believe that language is what is known as a self-organizing system. and sometimes i get caught on the little stuff, like what is the difference between self-organized and self-organizing, and does that matter? or, how are humans with their perceptual structures different or similar to termites, or ants, or nerves? not sure about this stuff, but i plow forward anyway.

on the king holiday we are all implored to get out in the civic arena and listen to speeches about racial harmony, or about the dream, and collaborate with people from the other churches and various walks of life in this town which is quite diverse, contentious at times, and changing. i however struggle with the fact that i spend so much time just watching the little fellows, that i have very little left to do my own creative projects, and those are piling up and making it hard for me to move around in my own limited office space. i'll occasionally spend a few minutes sorting laundry, or moving papers around in that space, so that i have room for a couple of elbows, but it's a holiday, one part of me says, maybe i should have one more relax before the term crashes in again.

and let me explain about the quilt. i am now on my second quilt, and it is like the first; it has four-squares, with triangles sewn around the outside corners, so that when put together it will all be bow-ties of various colors in what is known as a bow-tie arrangement. the one i'm working on now is a saluki quilt; the last one was a hawkeye quilt, and the next two, for the twins, will be illini quilts. one theme is that the colors we call "our own" (in our case, saluki colors are black, white, silver and maroon-red) are often associated with sports teams and sports success, but should really be taken in, embraced, as folk colors, regional identification, free of the negative attitudes we often associate with sports and everything that goes with it. second, and i get this from the navajo, one thing that a person can do in this world is to take a vision of color and design, and pass it along to one's descendants, in some form or another, so that we have some of that color and design long after we are gone, and that is a better place marker, so to speak, than, say, a journal. my grandfather, yeah, he's the one who made this quilt, and it's ragged, dirty, frayed on the edges, but it's better to remember him by those colors, and the way they go together, than by something he wrote.

not sure if i believe that, but i'm acting on that principle.

my son could easily stay up all night playing little electronic games, and he would have every reason tonight, having been to an evening birthday party (at which he was one of only about five boys, but there were maybe thirty girls)...and having made and uploaded another movie, this one also about pokemon or something like it, and having a camera stand that actually works and holds steady on the screen so he can describe a battle. it's a quite interesting evolution in that we are both learning imovie at the same time but he is so much faster than me, and i am actually held back by my previous experience with an imovie that was simpler and easier to use. it's like each imovie assumes you'd mastered the last ones, and don't need to have explained to you, for example, how to get out of clip mode.

then, i'm mostly using pop arted news photos which aren't really mine, yet his are entirely original, with only his voice and shots of his screen, and his pokemon doing battle with others' pokemon. quite amazing actually, his turning into an original filmmaker, in front of my eyes.

these birthday parties, the other son had one too, were over in the north side of town, and because there were two, and i had to go back and forth each way, i was on a single street maybe eight times tonight, saw that same neighborhood over and over. i used to live out there, so it's all very familiar, but at the same time, with its narrow roads and kind of funky character, it's different every time. at the recycling center near the gym where the parties were i saw an enormous white animal that could have been a rat, it was darting amongst the bins, and didn't seem to have a tail, but was pretty spooky and stealthy tearing around. it's really cold out, and the students are still gone, and not many people are out on the roads unless they have to be, it's not that hard getting around these days. i actually love the winter, wouldn't mind walking around in it, getting some of that fresh air that nobody else wants. or doing winter sports, which never occurs to people here because we just don't have enough of the white stuff. we could, maybe, sled, if we had sleds and just the right amount of snow fell, we could all run out to the hill, we only have one or two and those are probably man-made, but nonetheless, what happens is that lots of people have nothing to do, and they see that snow coming for miles, and they go buy up all the sleds, and there's only maybe a half-dozen in town at any given time, and the rest of us who wait to actually see the snow, we have to use an old piece of cardboard or something, because we don't have a chance in hell of buying a sled.

so i gradually forget how to ski, how to sled, how to even stop on the ice, in a car while driving, we lose all these skills that we used to have and become wimps and pretty soon i'd just as soon stay home also, same as all these others, if it snows even a half-inch. it's enough to make it dangerous for me, because i no longer have a clue, i'm out of the habit.

then i stepped up the advertising campaign, got a $70 coupon for google ads and used it to direct traffic to my kindle books, in hopes of selling one, maybe, someday, and got five people or more to click through even on the first day, though nobody bought anything, or has yet, to my knowledge. these people are tough customers, times are hard, so maybe i won't sell a darned thing, who knows. maybe these people are aware on some subliminal level that all these stories are basically available on this blog if you only know where to find them, as i've been announcing them here one at a time for years. but for the moment i'm kind of bound up in this click-through business...so people actually click on these ads? and then people actually sell stuff based on their click? it's a system, where you can actually make some money????

so i've had this jigsaw puzzle since maybe november, and it has a hundred reindeer in it or something like that, it's massively confusing and i'm add anyway so i get lost one reindeer to the other and it's been around way too long; i got two more jigsaw puzzles for christmas but haven't been able to break out either one, until this big really hard one gets put away. and there are some pieces i'll spend up to a half hour looking for and still not be able to find it; i begin to suspect that some pieces walked away at some point. you want to know what happened to that vacation, those reindeer will tell you. but hey, if i have those stories on kindle, and have a system, and the system works, then this vacation is better than the last three combined. and it's gotten me to move on to the next thing, which is, can i get amazon to make the print copy too, and can i publish some other stuff, like esl reading books or the just passing through autobiography, or, and i forgot to mention a couple other resolutions here, can i move on to making t-shirts for the local quaker meeting, or the school, or both, and, will i ever find time to lay out the lap dulcimer and put entirely new tuning pegs on it. the cats here are betting that i won't.

school starts on tuesday, so i'm running out of time real fast, but a granddaughter came over today and i showed her the quilt and told her with a straight face that it was a saluki quilt and it was being made for her and i was doing the best i could and would fork it over as soon as possible, and after a while she warmed up a little and even smiled at me, several times, which totally charmed me and made me not care if all i did today was sew a few triangles. in fact i have maybe fourteen out of about a hundred and twenty, but that's entirely manageable if you think about it; it's few enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel even as i sew. and, at the grocery store i bought a new york times, not because i have any time to read, i don't, but because it's good to have high quality stuff, to not have time to read, and it'll sit around looking like it needs to be read. like those reindeer need to be pieced together, and the dulcimer. life is busy, and, at the same time, it's quite a hustle for everyone, right down to that white creature under the dumpster. one can't sit still, or the world will turn too fast and all hell will break loose. hang on for dear life, it's a roller coaster, so to speak.

new movie
Life Goes On - Occupy

better version
occupy, life goes on

Now
available
on
Kindle...

it's a rainy night, on the edge of freezing, with fog which is also on the edge of freezing, and the fog drifts in and out of different patches of the city so that sometimes you can see clearly and other times, you can't see much. i know this because i went out earlier, and practiced music, but i'm back at home now trying to make sure an excited 10-yr-old goes to bed by 11 on a school night, and i reflect a little on a break largely poorly used, a tree gone dry and ready to remove.

the movie? i stopped, though i could probably finish it before break is over. the garage band song? stopped that too, because the cello was in such rotten shape and the tuning peg of the dulcimer snapped from brittleness and i ordered more pegs which i thought i'd install myself, and they haven't come yet. the linguistics project? today, mired in reading about the topic, my brain was overloaded and i had to give it up for a while; i wasn't ready to think. the cesl history project?...i at least got a start on it, got some stuff done there. my dad's photography? most of it is up & online, but i'm not sure if all of it is, and i know the family pictures aren't; i'm not sure if i'm ready to put pictures of me as a 1-yr-old up on the web yet. so, i'm kind of stuck on it.

i did get two books of stories and one book of poetry up on kindle where i can now advertise and push them; i'm wondering what makes people buy this stuff and whether advertising of any kind might make any difference. might try to find out. i know that none of my 500 or so facebook friends bought any, but i didn't exactly push them as i would if i were restlessly relying on this stuff to make a living. i did tell them that i had this stuff on kindle, but how many people are keyed into kindle, enough to actually want to buy stuff that's on it? my wife is, but she doesn't have to buy my stories, they're old news to her. and you, the reader, you know where to find them; they've been around this place for years.

sticks? i didn't move them out of sight, and they are looking like a pile of sticks in the back yard, maybe my next book will be pile of sticks...that or old man and the toilet assembly ha ha.

i did go to the gym, almost every day, including today, and worked out until the sweat rolled off my face and back, took a sauna, came home & limped around due to soreness and stiffness in joints i don't generally use so heavily. i did this almost every day, yet still gained two pounds, which is accounted for by the fact that, basically, i'm home a lot, and just eat when i'm hungry. who wants to go out when it's rainy and cold and bleak, and nobody's out there? the cats curled up near me and took naps as the sun shifted at the windows of the living room, and it seemed warm enough and all the time in the world, even though as you can now tell, i should have been making music or movies. my son comes out tonight, almost eleven, and wants to tamper with his movie, which isn't perfect, but which, as you know, is now on you-tube, is up, and, is getting "likes" from my friends and others. but it's almost eleven, and it's a schoolnight. i play the dad and intimidate him into going to bed. poor kid, a little ragged out by school, what he wants is to be the guy who has a youtube channel, and knows what to do with it.

january here means highly variable weather. some days it will be very cold, others very warm; it rains, or snows, but there are cool sunny clear days also. sometimes the birds honk overhead, confused, as if it's unexpectedly getting warmer as they fly north. i realize places in alaska are getting twelve feet; we haven't got more than a half-inch, but may get some tonight, or maybe some other night, since it's the season. if it's too balmy i think people will feel like they lost out, at least i will. if it's too nice, i'm obliged to put stuff down, go outside, and take in some fresh air.

but now, i'm tired. it's that gym, with all its musclebound gorillas, a few tired old geezers like myself treading around, women trying their hardest to keep a figure from going down. it wears me out. it might be good fodder for more stories, but i've been more into poetry over the break, written maybe a hundred of them, it's really about all i've got to show for it, but it's something. i'd rather do the novel, but i didn't even start that, or restart it would be more accurate, i didn't even pick it back up so to speak (it also is on the web, for free, like most of it)...

and school starts what, on tuesday. but doesn't get serious until, maybe, wednesday. wenny-densy...my time is running out. chou, i'm off to bed

e pluribus haiku

now available on Kindle

seven days after new year, twelve after christmas, it was the original christmas, the twelfth day, the epiphany, so i left the lights on on the tree overnight, though it didn't make much difference. my wife has come home; two weeks as a single father over, it will change the routine for sure. give me more time, maybe, but probably not. school will start soon, the pressure's on. i haven't finished a thing i started.

thought about resolutions, and i resolved, for sure, not to do the usual stuff like losing weight or cleaning the garage; both of those were maybe half-done or quarter-done last year and still loom over me as things i want but what's the point. no, i decided to make a few that inspired me, like get started on collecting and learning actualism (a poetry movement in iowa city coincidentally when i was, that has virtually disappeared)...or, better, get started on the art of fixing musical instruments, as i have several that need fixed and nobody around this rural area with any clue as to how to go about it. so i actually got started with this second one, and ordered strings and keys for a lap dulcimer whose keys were so brittle they broke apart when i got it out. the cello will be harder, i realize, and so will the second fiddle, which is like the first only has some inherent problems; the third is tiny; i have no idea how to go about fixing that one. but i'm musing on about this inspirational resolution idea when my ten-year-old gives me his: make a hundred youtubes and get a hundred "likes"...now that's inspirational. he had a new videocam under the tree but the problem was, it wasn't loading them up to the computer, and when we got on youtube to get some free advice, some guy was talking about a "cheap-a--" camera and this kind of stuck a knife in him, took the wind out of his sails.

problem was, the computer wouldn't read the little thumb-drive thing, just wouldn't see it, so couldn't upload any of the movies. the company had no clue that a card-reader might be necessary, though it was, and our computers weren't all that outmoded or unusual; neither could read the thing. we emailed the company and they had no clue, and their offshore advisor had no clue, though she had pretty good english and was able to read out of a script book pretty well. finally some guy at the best-buy geek squad plugged a card-reader into there and we were able to get the movies onto the computer. there are four or five of them, not a bad production record, and they tell people how to get through various pokemon games, online games, dsi games, etc. they are called "walkthroughs" and this believe it or not is how he spends an enormous amount of time, watching them, and so he was eager to get on the production end and share some of his knowledge, and get a loyal fan base. but he was disappointed to find out that youtube basically wouldn't let him start his own channel, being only ten, and upload them himself. he got angry, saying he didn't want his channel having my name, or lying about his age, or anything like that, so he'd just give up the entire dream, put down the camera, forget about it.

this was a cruel end to a long drama, because, in my mind, he was already getting better at making them. several things have occurred to me: one, i could put a few of them here, or someplace where i could see them more easily, maybe make my own movie out of what he made so far. two, i could use the camera myself, if he refuses to use it, even interview him so as to document what we just went through, and not lose these cool "starter" movies which, i'm convinced, show the beginning of some creative talent. is there a way to talk him down from the tree? somehow, upon my wife's arrival, she was able to convince him that it would be ok, somehow, to use one of our addresses, yet still have his pokemon name on the channel and develop the reputation he sought. this he may yet do - stay tuned.

the report from peoria is, the twins are fine, it's a lot of work, they eat and poop a lot but due to scheduling irregularities nobody gets much sleep. there's an urgency to getting a schedule, getting a routine, and getting them both on it, but they don't both want to follow the program quite yet so everyone is apparently trying to play catch-up on their sleep while the babies just do what babies do...

got three books on kindle, successfully, and now should be publicizing them, and fixing up this site where i do that, but as you can see i haven't quite started. googling my name on amazon kindle products, you'll find all three, but i shouldn't be making it so difficult for you, i should have little ads in my templates, i could be using all these sites to be advertising them. and i shall.

as i go steadily more commercial, you the reader will have more opportunities to click on these little ads and go and actually buy this stuff, but the more astute of you will know from the start that it's been available free, on the web, all along, and the main reason for that is that i like publishing them when i make them and ideally get some comments on them before i wrap them up and sell them or present them to the public. and what better audience than you, my faithful readers? of course, it's not working out perfectly well; for one thing, very few people actually go to my stories and read them, and fewer yet actually comment, even on the written stuff, and i have thin skin anyway, and don't change much based on what they say. and, am relatively impatient with either waiting around for good comments or actually revising what i've ever written, so it's not getting done very well. suffice it to say, i have three things on kindle. two are stories; a third is haiku; if you borrow them, or buy them, please "double-like" or whatever. i'm convinced that one of them, someday, will be snapped up for movie rights; that's my goal. if not, i'm likely to figure out how to make movies myself, and then do that.

ao i've said it, there was my vacation; the cello's out, and looking unused; the dulcimer is out, i'm making a quilt, i'm only partway done with my jigsaw puzzle, unread magazines all over the house, tree's still up, garage needs organized, yet i blog, or i bog, or i hang out with the boys trying to figure out how to upload movies. in general, i haven't been very productive with my break, except that spending time with kids is always productive in its own kind of way, and helps out when the chips are down and you have absolutely no time to spend. they're my allies; however this movie thing works out, they are the ones who probably might even read this blog, this far, sometime, and i hope i never say anything to dismay them. i'm proud of everything i've seen so far, and that counts for all the kids i call mine, and their progeny, things have worked out pretty well so far, as andy rooney said, i complain a lot here, and i complain about a lot of things, but one thing i can't complain about is my life.

and with that i wish you a happy new year...