Okay… I might feel bad about this one…

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But then again, maybe not…

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If Trump was trying out for Santa’s job, this is the speech he would give…

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Christmas isn’t winning anymore! We are giving too much away. If you make me Santa, you will be getting so many presents, you would get sick of them. Santa… what a loser. He is the worst thing to ever happen to Christmas. Does he even know how to run a business? I would be the best Santa ever. I would build an ice wall around the North Pole… put those elves to work on something the people want… because I am pretty sure most of them are rapists and drug smugglers. Why are they even making toys? That is what child labor in sweatshops in Asia are for. And I would make sure that Muslims don’t even get to celebrate Christmas, unless they are thoroughly vetted as Christians first. And anybody who wants to fight a war on Christmas, I will destroy them… I have a plan for that… but I can’t tell you about it yet… even though it is the best plan in the history of planning. Oh, and I will speed up global warming, because, if I have to live at the North Pole, I don’t want to be cold all the time… it does bad things to my hair. And when I build my new hotel there, you can all come and stay in it… if you can afford it… which most of you can’t… because you are losers.

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Yeah… all that stuff came out of my crack squirrel-infested head…

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You may remember that part in the middle with the white background. It was for a T-shirt I designed to advertise my children’s books and my action/humor science fiction novel series… (all still available over there in the sidebar, if you click the pictures of the books, you can actually order them)… On the back of the shirt, there are pictures of the book covers. I wear that shirt when I go places, and I sometimes sell a book or two, or attract a new victim… uh… I mean ‘follower’… to my blog.

But the thing is… hey, we haven’t had a ‘thing’ around here for a while… that the characters from my newest books for kids… (The Lonely Little Wizard, also available over there to the right)… were feeling left out. They say they want to be put on a shirt so they can walk around outside and see some stuff and breathe fresh air now and then.

So, I guess I should start working on that… you do not want to make wizards angry.

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Random pictures of trees, dogs and clouds…

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No, that isn’t Spanish moss, in case you were wondering. It is a form of lichen. But it looks cool hanging on trees.

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These are the last pictures of our epic camping adventure over the Thanksgiving holiday… almost… I mean, they are the last pictures of the camping part, but not… oh, just wait for it.

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There is our dog, Shiloh. I think I took that picture right after Mollie drove off with uncle Bert for her very first driving lesson ever…

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And then Shiloh looked at me like: are we sure this is a good idea?

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I spend a lot of time looking at clouds… because I am an artist… and that is where the action… and the color… tends to happen up in the sky.

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Clouds are cool.

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And if you keep an eye on them…

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… you might spot one that looks like a big, fluffy bunny running across the sky.

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Birds and words… part 6…

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Now, in our continuing story of our holiday camping adventure, we come to the majestic love dance of the western grebe.

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Grebes are adorable little water birds with bright red eyes.

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When they aren’t looking for food, they are looking for a dance partner.

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When they see someone that catches their eye, they swim slowly towards them.

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They spend a while looking at one another and bobbing their heads, imitating each other.

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Then they start running across the surface of the water.

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I can’t begin to tell you how funny and adorable this is.

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What is really interesting is that this behavior isn’t confined to mating season. They do it throughout most of the year.

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I think it is just a little harmless flirting.

 

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Birds and words… part 4…

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Here is another of my weird bird experiences on our camping adventure over the Thanksgiving holiday.

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There was this little scrub jay sitting on a fence.

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I just kept walking slowly closer and closer to it.

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He let me get within arm’s reach.

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That picture is not taken with a telephoto lens. I didn’t even really have to zoom in with the regular lens. It was sort of exciting.

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I also spotted this pair of red tail hawks doing their love dance up in the sky above me.

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I should have put the zoom lens on for that.

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Evolution revisited…

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Just something to think about…

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My books… a quick overview…

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  1. Saloon At The Edge Of Everywhere… book one of The Otherwhere Chronicles… It is about me, sort of. But not this me, a me that lives in another dimension. Oh, don’t worry, the other me is still lazy, irreverent, sarcastic and full of himself. But he works in a Texas-style saloon on an alien space station as the janitor, and somehow gets caught up in the action when alien space pirates hijack a space cruise ship. Against all his instincts, he and his crazy band of human and alien poker buddies end up saving the day, and the whole thing is broadcast live all over the entire universe, so now he is the most reluctant hero in the history of that or any other dimension. ($7.95- in Earth money- in this dimension)
  2. Down To Earth… book two of The Otherwhere Chronicles… So naturally, being a reluctant hero, our hero decides to evade his newfound fame by returning to the Bay Area back on Earth to visit his… my… mom. And that is when I… he… finds out that the whole alien space pirate thing was set up by this huge, nefarious,  intergalactic corporation, and then he has to fight a hand-to-hand combat duel against an alien mercenary that looks like a two-legged hippopotamus… but see, this whole time I… he… has one advantage because he found ‘the memory stone’, which is this ancient alien artifact used by The Giant Flying Pickles… (not the real name of the alien race that has been around forever and reseeds life into the universe after every new Big Bang)… and it helps him learn stuff because it is a repository of all the knowledge of the GFP’s… but it isn’t supposed to work on anybody but them, except it turns out that Humans are the first species ever to evolve naturally on their own with no help, but it sort of has a crush on me… the other me… and teaches me how to fly alien ships and fight duels and lots of other stuff… and, see this is why it is easier for you to buy the dang books than for me to explain them to you… but, long story short, I… he… ends up saving San Francisco from being vaporized and then me… or he… and all of his alien and human friends end up being put in charge of the corporation by the President of the United States, whom we… they… saved. Got it? ($7.95 in human money)
  3. Walking Around… book three of The Otherwhere Chronicles… And this is where it starts to get crazy, but once again, I… he… isn’t happy about being the hero to billions of life forms all over the place, because, once again, the whole adventure in San Francisco was broadcast live by these floating white balls called ‘The Reporters’… that might be a living species or might be an advanced technology of some sort, nobody really knows, but they like to broadcast interesting things, and interesting things seem to happen to Arthur Blacke… (that’s pronounced ‘Black’, just so you know)… so of course our hero leaves the corporation in the hands… and tentacles and whatnot… of his friends, and goes back to the alien space station and decides to take a holiday. He wants to do a walkabout around the entire Hub, which is the name of the space station. And that is where he learns that things are going to get more interesting because the giant corporation… that he is now CEO of… was a front being used to prepare his  dimension for an invasion from another dimension, and so I… he… ends up being hunted by a vat-bred alien killer with poisonous fangs in the palms of his hands, and then is chased for a few days by two relentless alien lizard warriors, and almost gets chopped into bits by two sword-wielding humans wearing tie dye. And all this happens between a lot of funny adventures and meeting lots of crazy aliens… and at the end I… he… gets coerced into being the Supreme Commander of the combined… but very unimpressive…  allied fleet that is supposed to stop the huge and very intimidating Black Fleet that will be showing up soon… (in book four, which is already written but not yet edited and in print)… not bad for a guy who started off as a janitor at the beginning of the story. You can think of this series as Doctor Who meets Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, if you want to. ($7.95 of your… our… dollars… and printed on real dead Earth trees).
  4. I Like Monkeys… An adorable book for young children that I wrote and illustrated myself. It came about because when I meet little kids… and I love little kids… I always end up saying: “I like monkeys.”… because I do, but also because I love the responses I get from the kids, and I have been remembering them, and used them as the basis for this book. ($12.00… or 5,000 fresh bananas).
  5. The Lonely Little Wizard… Another book that I wrote and illustrated for young kids. It is just a cute story about a little wizard looking for a friend. ( $15.00… but it has to be real money, not magic money… sorry).
  6. Double Service… My most recent novel, this is a murder mystery set in World War Two London. It is really just your basic murder mystery, but I think you might like it. ($9.95… or whatever the equivalent is in English pounds).

All these books are available by clicking the pictures of the books right over there in the sidebar. Think of it as supporting a starving artist or just the arts in general. Or knock a few people off your Christmas shopping list. I might even write some of you who buy it into my next novel or the one after that. I wrote some of my blog friends into the murder mystery. I am just funny that way.

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So, remember how we were in London last summer?

Of course you do… I spent a moth sharing pictures of our trip to Europe… And do you remember these pictures?

IMG_1646I shared a bunch of pictures of the two helicopters flying down the river Thames, and popping up right beside Big Ben and the Parliament building…

IMG_1633And I told you that they were filming a scene from a James Bond movie, and we were there to see it.

Well, we went and saw Spectre yesterday. It was exciting for a few reasons. First of all, it was our 16-year-old daughter’s first Bond movie. But then, to see the scenes at the end of the movie, where the bad guy’s helicopter is shot down, and to realize that we were all there to see part of it being made… that was freekin’ awesome!

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Anyway, if you don’t remember the original posts I did, you should go back and read them, because I don’t want to tell the whole story again. I am just lazy that way.

 

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My new book is now available!!!

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Double Service… a quaint little murder mystery set in London in World War Two, is now available… just by clicking the link… which is a button cleverly disguised as a picture of the book… over there in my sidebar on the right side of this blog page.

If you click that picture, you will be magically transported to a place where, for a nominal fee, they will print you a copy of the book, and send it to wherever you want them to send it to.

I mean, think about it. Think of all the stuff that went into making this possible.

First of all, I had to be born, then go to school and learn rudimentary English, then make up all the people and plots and stuff that went into the book.

Somebody had to invent the English language in the first place, and then figure out how to make a written version, and then invent printing… and computers…

A tree had to grow, and then be cut down with tools that somebody also had to invent… and then be sent to a place where it was ground up and milled into paper.

And, of course, money had to be invented, so that both I and the publishers could actually get something for all this work we did.

The internet had to exist in order for me to have a blog in which to tell you about the book, and so there was a place to put the button… cleverly disguised as a picture of the book… for you to click to get the book.

The post office had to be invented, and stamps, and trucks and planes to carry the book to you.

When you get right down to it, thousands of people worked for thousands of years to make this book happen.

We even had to have a global war against the Nazis… just to have an interesting historical background for the novel to take place in.

And all you have to do is click a button, type a few things into a few boxes, and then sit there waiting in anticipation for the book to show up right on your doorstep.

That seems like a pretty good deal.

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