Red Button.

Blue Button.

Green Button.

No one cares about anything but the red button.

Blue Button? Nope.

Green Button? Nope.

Yellow Button? Nope.

All anyone ever wants to see is the red button.

Maybe they think it’s an easy button.

Maybe they think it’s the nuclear button.

Maybe they think it’s a stop button.

All I know is everyone is looking for the red button.

Would you walk a long green mile,
Just to see someone you love smile?

Would you undergo a tough trial,
To help a friend who’s in denial?

Would you sail across the Nile,
To find your mom’s lost file?

Would you grab the phone and dial,
To report a ten car highway pile?

Would you give up all your style,
For one moment to last a while?

Would you clean up animal bile,
In the super market’s pet food aisle?

Would you lay down brand new tile,
For the bathroom of your friend Lyle?

Or your feathers would you up and rile,
As you drank up your very last vial?

Slurp your strawberry milkshake.
Eat your vanilla cream cake.
Hurry–’fore we reach the lake!
Or you’ll get a stomach ache,
If less than thirty minutes you take.

Sugar cookies–you did bake?
I hope so for your own sake.
No cookies means a mean Jake.
How many more did you make?
I hope enough or his spirit’ll break.

Not a cookie should you fake.
They are his fave, that kid Jake.
Don’t swap one for a hotcake.
Don’t mess with him at the lake.
There’s only so much that he can take.

Do you think it will be soon,
That we’ll head out for Neptune,
And get there before high noon,
While humming a sailing tune?

Oh, would that be such a boon,
To get past Mars and the moon,
In the merry month of June,
And not be seen as a loon?

Would you travel by balloon?
No, you would be a baffoon.
You might crash in a sand dune
Or get caught by a typhoon.

You would headline the Tribune.
Your courage they would impugn.
For no one gets to Neptune
In a green hot air balloon.

So, maybe I was wrong about the Charlie Sheen Publicity Machine.

Or, maybe I wasn’t, because in order to win, you have to get lean.

And what better way to get lean than to get away from the scene?

Now, maybe you expected this next line to rhyme, but I don’t have to play to your expectations.

Charlie doesn’t, does he?

Maybe I should apply to an internship with TeamSheen?

On that, would you be very keen?

Well, I don’t have a plan, but my name rhymes with plan, and who needs a plan when you can wing it better than Stan or Fran or “the Man”?

It all makes sense unless you are dense, and then you don’t deserve two pence, unless you’re mending the fence.

But who needs fences for all the past tenses when running with your tiger senses?

Not me, I say. And don’t you be feeding that tiger no hay, ’cause tigers eat meats and love chewy treats, but none of them like their curds and whey.

What do you say?

Anyway, I don’t know if get enough pay, which I’m thinking needs to be one hundred grand a month or three and half grand a day, which is somewhat negotiable, so long as I don’t stub my toe.

“Where would you like to meet?”
Asked the gnome, standing on his feet.

“Out back, under the old wood seat,”
Replied the snail, resting in the peat.

“Oh, that would be oh so neat,”
Said the gnome, pondering the feat.

“It will be shady, out of the summer heat,”
Replied the snail, wishing he had feet.

“Yes, it will. It would be such a treat,”
Said the gnome, longing for a snack to eat.

“Alas, to get there we’d have to cheat,”
Pondered the snail, made of concrete.

“Who would take us to our retreat?”
Sighed the gnome in sadness and defeat.

“Perhaps some ants could form a fleet,”
Said the snail, “And haul us at night, discrete.”

“Oh,” replied the gnome, “That would be sweet.
But I fear they’ll not, now that it’s gonna sleet.”

There are countless stars out there in the night sky. So many, in fact, that we cannot see them all.

It seems like each time we upgrade our capabilities of seeing smaller and smaller distant objects, the more stars we find that are out there.

And, so we wonder if there is life out there besides ourselves. Are we alone in the universe? Are others out there wondering the same thing? Have any of them visited us?

One of the weakest arguments for why we haven’t met any other denizens of the universe is that space travel would be too costly and not economically feasible for any one to want to leave their planets and explore.

It’s one of those arguments that leave you scratching your head each time you hear it.

They say, with a straight face, that any highly intelligent species would realize that it’s not practical to travel across the galaxy to meet other species. That, apparently, once a civilization is advanced enough, everyone thinks alike. No one questions the group-think. No one steps out of line. They all throw up their arms and say, “Bah! Space travel–who needs it?”

It’s scary that there are people think that way. It sort of implies that any one that doesn’t think “in line” is somehow inferior or less evolved or whatever. It’s as if they believe that diversity of opinion must disappear among enlightened species.

I don’t buy it. And, if it is true, maybe we need to get out there and help free these other species from the shackles of group-think. Teach them the value of individuality.

But, I digress.

At any rate, I cannot imagine that, among any species capable of long-distance space travel, no one ever looks to the night sky, points to a distant star and says, “Let’s go there.” I cannot believe that any advanced civilization would give up its curiosity.

Now, they may feel we are too primitive for them to contact. Maybe they have something akin to a “Prime Directive” in Star Trek. That’s a possibility.

But, to say that advanced civilizations aren’t curious about what’s out there or aren’t going to expend the resources to get out there, I don’t buy it.

Allegedly, Kevin Bacon was paid $25,000 to NOT appear in a movie. (TMZ story: “Weinstein Bros Accused of Sabotaging Alien Movie“.)

Apparently, he had agreed to do a movie for $50,000, but then the executive producers reportedly felt Kevin Bacon wasn’t worth $50,000 and so, instead, agreed to pay him $25,000 to not do the movie.

Which doesn’t make a lot of sense. If $50,000 is too much to pay Kevin Bacon, and you pay him $25,000 not to do the movie, then you’re left with $25,000 to spend on someone to actually do the film. Who are you going to get for under $25,000 that’s better than Kevin Bacon? Now, if you have more money in the bag and are willing to spend, say, $100,000 on someone other than Kevin Bacon, okay, but then why not spend the additional $25,000 to pay Kevin Bacon to actually appear in the film rather than pay him $25,000 to go away and do nothing? If you’re willing to throw away $25,000 on someone to do nothing, then certainly it would be worth another $25,000 to have him do something, no?

In other words, if Kevin Bacon isn’t worth $50,000 but you’re willing to pay him $25,000 to go away and do nothing, then basically you have $25,000 you’re willing to throw away. That being the case, is it worth paying $25,000 to have Kevin Bacon do a movie? Because if it is, why not pay him $50,000 to have him do the movie, which is $25,000 you would have been willing to spend to have him go away plus another $25,000 you think he’s actually worth?

But, then again, maybe I just don’t understand Hollywood math.

So, here’s the thing…

The Kindle, the Nook, the iPad and eBooks are all big things now. I have some non-fiction eBooks being sold online, but no fiction.

So, I thought I would put something together and put it out there and see how it goes.

My first thought was to put together a collection of short stories and sell that.

Problem is that my short stories are in various genres and don’t really mix together that well.

But, I have an “abandoned” work that I’m hopeful I can finish. You may remember this and this.

Well, I am actually further along on that than I thought. You see, I worked on that (off and on) from 1992 to 1993, and then picked it up again in 1996. I went through several variations, changing point of view and plot and so on. I ended up with something like ten drafts before I gave up on the whole thing and tossed it in the trash. (I later dug it out of the trash.)

At some point along the way, I had mapped out the whole plot of the book, but never could make it work quite right for whatever reason.

I have on my hard drive nearly 3,500 words of the story. But, I pulled out my file and I have more written. And, a lot of what is already written can be rewritten and weaved into the storyline I had already mapped out. Last night, I typed in a couple pages I had in my file, which brought my word count up past 4,900 words. As I typed, I was rewriting, so that section fits right in. I’ll naturally need to do some editing later, but for now I can move on to the next section.

I’m not entirely sure how much of the story I have prewritten. I’m guessing maybe half of the story is complete and the other half needs to be written. Unlike some of my other WIPs, this one is all mapped out with a beginning, middle and end. So, it just needs writing and editing.

The other benefit of this work being so old (and having been through so many drafts) is that I don’t care anymore. Don’t take that the wrong way. I mean that I am not invested in the characters. I’m not married to the plot. And that makes it easier to make changes than when you’re sitting there thinking, well, this needs to happen and this needs to happen. I can look at it with a more objective viewpoint than perhaps I was able to all those years ago.

So, I figure I’ll finish going through all my notes and handwritten work and type it all in, rewriting as I go, and see what that gets me. The way it looks, it may end up being more novella length than novel, but that may be okay. I can wrap it up, get it out there and see if any one buys it and wants to read more of my work.

You know, I just throw everything under the “Blogging” category. Mostly everything, anyway. It just seems that whenever I’m not sure what category to put something, I put it under “Blogging.” Sure, there’s a “General” category, but that’s just too generic. So, whether I’m writing about blogging or something else, it has a tendency to get lumped into the “Blogging” category.

But, to paraphrase Charlie Sheen, that’s just how we roll around here.

Anyway…

So, call me jaded, but I can’t help but wonder whether the whole Charlie Sheen so-called “Total Career Destruction Tour” is one big publicity stunt. Not just for Charlie, but for CBS, “Two and a Half Men” and all that jazz. That is to say, they’re all in on it.

First he’s attacking the show’s producer and never wanting to work with him again, and now he’s willing to work with him and so on.

Of course, some may say he just wants to unburn his bridges and stuff, which could be true, but then it could be just the natural progression of the stunt and intended to look like it’s not a stunt because you wouldn’t think that anyone could script something like this.

But, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, but, on the flip side, the strangest fiction could be truth. So, who knows anymore?

At any rate, CBS is getting good ratings. A repeat of “Two and a Half Men” beat new shows. Other networks that are interviewing Charlie Sheen are getting good ratings. Suddenly, people have an excuse to watch TV.

And, you know, fewer people are watching TV these days, so is it so unbelievable that such a stunt like this could be organized? By the standards of people with deep pockets, it’s relatively inexpensive. It’s getting coverage everywhere. People are watching TV to see how far Charlie Sheen will go off the wall. It has all the trappings of “reality” TV which has been so vogue for the past while.

And, if Charlie Sheen does end up back on “Two and a Half Men,” you don’t think the ratings on that first episode back will be through the roof?

So, call me jaded or cynical, but I can’t help but wonder.

And, for the record, I don’t have tiger blood. Liger blood, maybe.

Probably not Tigger blood, though. Because I don’t really care to bounce and bouncing is what Tiggers do best.