Looking for Dragons

One day, she went looking for the dragon.

She set out on food, walking through the trees.

She walked past the hidden apple tree.

And strolled through the sumac tree wood.

And stumbled into the Enchanted Forest.

She saw a bird. It wasn't singing.

When she reached a strange rock wall, she paused and looked around...

Was she lost?

She turned back. Everything looked the same.

She frowned, concerned, and began walking again.

She walked for hours.

Finally, she found an old birch tree. It seemed to be

pointing her towards something. She began to walk in that direction.

Suddenly, she stumbled into the field on the edge of the Enchanted Forest.

She breathed a sign of relief.

She began to head towards home, disappointed that she hadn't found the dragon.

Then, out of the corner of her eye she saw a splash of red, 

amid the green wash of green and brown that surrounded her.

It was beautiful.

Then she looked up.

She saw something in the trees.

She moved closer.

A wall? She began to follow it.

It was the Lost Fortress!

Her mind began to spin castles and adventures...

...and suddenly there were knights and witches

and fairies and animals...

...and there was her dragon.

31 Days of Planets: Fitness

Day 24

Okay, so Planet Fitness isn't really a planet. But I do live relatively close to their national headquarters, so I figured it would be okay if I wrote about them. It was founded in 1992 for occasional or inexperienced gym members and is a "Judgement Free Zone." Which means that humans can't possibly work out there. Which means it must be gym for aliens!

Here's what I think happened: 

Planet Fitness, in a galaxy far, far away, was faced with a serious disaster. All fiber and nutrient producing plants were struck with a massive plague, and only the sugar and fat producing plants remained. In addition, gravity was slowly decreasing as the planet continually lost chunks of its mass to the knawing darkness of space (that was because a really irritable group kept blowing pieces of it up). The predominant species, the Judgementafreeze, began to desperately struggle for survival and health - unable to eat properly and unable to exercise properly. Slowly, they grew rounder and fatter, cursing their inability to find health. 

Then, one far-thinking group of Jugementalfreeze from the country of Workoutzone on Planet Fitness, had a brilliant idea. Stasis pods. If they could put themselves on a spaceship and launch it towards a compatible planet, they could live in stasis until arrival. At this new planet, they could then find good food and good exercise, and live happily for many generations.

Enter, Exeter, NH, USA, North America, Earth, Milky Way Galaxy. In 1965 there was an unexplained UFO sighting. Flashing red lights, a flying vehicle, a young Navy private, and two police officers... It's called the Exeter Incident. Look it up. Well, you can guess what the real story is. It was the Judgementafreeze trying to find a place to land. They eventually did, carefully hid their spaceship, and began the process of integrating into human civilization. In 1992 they figured out that they could capitalize on capitalism and started the Planet Fitness franchise.

That's why, if some of the people working out next to you seem like aliens, they probably are.

In conclusion, watch out for aliens at Planet Fitness.

31 Days of Planets: Imaginary

Day 22

I think that everyone would benefit from an imaginary planet. The thing about imaginary planets is that you get to rule them - you're the boss! It can look like anything, be anything - it can be filled with people or have none, and the possibilities are only limited by the capabilities of your imagination.

I have an imaginary planet. I call it Sagitta (I stole that. It's the name of a constellation inside the Milky Way). Sagitta is shaped like a donut.

That's right. A Krispy Kreme. On the inside (the Inner Rim), there's an ocean. And let me tell you, they have some pretty awesome and weird fish in that massive ocean.

I know - looking good, right?

On the Outer Rim, there is a desert. There may also be some dessert out there, if you're lucky. Like a cupcake. Or dried ice cream. 

Then there are, of course, forests, and plains, and mountains, and rivers, and everything in between (literally - in between the inner and outer rim). Their animals are vaguely similar to those of Earth's but they evolved differently.

And just a few miles off of the ocean, Pomegranate City squats uncomfortably under the crazy thunderstorms and massive rainbows, and her people live for 1000 (Earth) years. 

But how did this majestic planet come to have a hole in the middle - missing a chunk of its soul? Well, it used to look more or less like this:

And then a massive asteroid came out of no where...

And KABOOM.

Which left only a very large mess behind.

After a few million years of spinning, the stuff all clumped together to become the donut that we all know and love today. 

In conclusion, what does your imaginary planet look like?

Pictures by me, except for first donut which was from here, and the ringed planet which was from here.

Canning Peaches in the World Inside My Head

In my head is another world. This world is a magnet for thoughts. It's a world that draws people who think so much that they forget to shower, who think so much that they look like they're floating somewhere else, who think so much they don't notice they've been standing in the middle of the sidewalk for fifteen minutes. Here people keep swarms of stinging insects in boxes and use shopping carts like summertime sleds and find ways to rappel from the clouds. Instead of metal and paper, currency is made of ideas.


In my world you can see the stars and no one is afraid of the dark. When the sun comes up, the sky changes into a thousand colours before it balances out into just one, and when it goes down in shatters into a different million coloured pieces that fly out into the vast expanse of everywhere and light up the dark with shining pricks of white light, a hundred billion miles away.


The trees are triangular. There is grass too, almost the same wavering green and winking lavender as the trees, and it spreads out from your feet in every direction, as if you are its source. It pours down the hill, spiky and filled with life and pizzazz. There are little flowers, blue ones. They look like your eyes, sparks of colour, sparks of life in the endless green. I can hear a river. It swishes an hiccups and bellows. It spins and tangles with the earth; it ducks under bushes and careens around trees. And then it takes a mad leap into a different large bit of water that's just biding its time until the dam breaks.

The sun is a square, if you look at it for too long. The clouds float around masquerading as rabbits and flying horses and Jesus' face. The people that live here have black skin, as black as the night sky and more beautiful than the earth itself, and white skin too, and all different shades of brown.


My mother and father live here, and sometimes I help Mom can peaches. It is very satisfying to have the peach juice running down your arms and the slices of peach splop-ing into the bowl of lemon juice. I like the way the boiling hot peaches almost scald your hands when you hold them tightly, and how the skins just slide off into a sticky, sweet blog of peach. The smell is there too, potent and alluring and delicious; and every so often some of the peach doesn't come off the pit and I can BITE it and the sweet juice runs down my throat and chin. Then, when all the peaches are peeled and sliced, Mom comes along and puts them in jars and heats the jars until the're really, really hot and the lids seal themselves. Then we put them in the basement and can eat them all winter long. The bits of peach stick to my skin and dry, and the smell lingers on my hands and arms for hours an hours, no matter how hard I scrub them--except I don't scrub them because no smelly lotion in the world is better than the scent of fresh peaches.

And in my world, while I'm helping my mother, sometimes the wind howls and roars, and the rain attacks with the fury of the gods. Pools form and water tries to race uphill, and the street lights sparkele and dim in the wild torrent of air that billows and gusts and bellows. Occasionally it simmers down to a whisper, but only to gather strength before launching another massive attack on the trees and the houses and the people who were standing on the sidewalk and thinking so hard they forgot to go inside.


Then I realize that the world inside my head looks and awfully lot like the world outside me head, so I move from my spot on the sidewalk to go explore this world instead.

Tin Snips and Tractors

One day, my little brother is going to be famous, but there is something about being famous that doesn't exactly leave room for tractors. Being famous is about large quantities of people seeing your face and knowing your name, and wanting to give you enough money to keep seeing your face and knowing your name. It's not about tractors.

So I would like to tell you a story about my little brother and tractors, with the hope that one day, when he is famous, there will also be something said about tractors.

Of course the story never begins with tractors, it always begins with boredom. As children, boredom was forbidden--that is to say, we were allowed to be bored, but we were required to either keep this fact a secret or be subjected to a large number of chores which we wished to avoid. Thus, our ability to self-entertain was a highly developed skill by the time we reached adolescence. Mostly, we made things.

Miniature Evan loved tractors. His favourite bedtime stories consisted of a calender of tractors with the names and numbers labeling every single picture and a catalog of farm equipment. These are not, of course, the only things he loved--his first drum set was made of laundry soap bottles and pot lids, and he had a cow outfit with cow spotted shorts, a cow spotted shirt, and a cow spotted hat. But for a long time, you could drive a tractor up the road and it would keep him occupied for, well, as least as long as it took the tractor to drive up the road.

Combine the ability to make things at a young age with a vast knowledge of farm equipment and a lot of free time and what do you get? A complete set of farm machinery made from tin cans with tin snips and pliers.

Since then Evan has made a large variety of things (homemade bass guitar, guitar pedals, musical instrument traveling boxes, a tube amp converted from a movie projector, and a variety of other unnecessary inventions), but nothing quite as interesting or endearing as his tin can tractors.