Story: The Ninja of Health, XVIII

( Part XVII , XIX )

'The Tablecloth'

The Oracle had restructured the prophetic tablecloth in a very obscure way, which was partly a result of dealing with the preexisting threads and colours in the cloth and partly due to the imperfect nature of oracular activities. Not even Ken, who had discovered the capacity within himself during a particularly boring experience with breakfast cereal, could do it that well. Their friend, the Oracle, was the best, and the tablecloth was his newest experimental medium.

What was on the cloth? One interpretation might be the following:

`A lighthouse is standing on a cliff, above a red and green streaked cliff. At the bottom of the supposed cliff, pinwheel lollipops are sticking out of a giant crater, throwing off rays of zigzag colour. Above the lighthouse, if it is a lighthouse, a massive swirly thing hangs in the sky. The swirly thing suggests movement, but perhaps that's just the tablecloth, or the giant tree hanging in the sky next to it is putting you off...'

There are other interpretations, variously involving broccoli, hair dryers, a sweet shop, and a cataclysm around Big Ben. The final resolution will have to wait until later in the tale, but the final counter-resolution will take place much after that, when the recovered Oracle will reveal the truth about his prophetic vision and the connections between our unusual protagonists, the strange entity and the tinned pear shortages that followed.

(You see, this is what happens to the writing brain when you commit yourself to an incredibly stupid story about health-giving ninjas and oracles who tell the future via table ornaments! Next time: A dog who travels in time via his chew toy's supernatural... Hey, that's not bad!)

You can't stop it, there shall be more...

Vicissitudes

How relaxing it is to have the political dramas of the year behind us. Now we can relax and get on with our lives. What a relief it is to be able to finish watching the classic series 'Press Gang', tear through the last few pages of 'The Moonstone', get to grips with Open University courses, and become irrationally enraged by any trifle that passes this way because of pent up stress. Not only are we finally free from politics, but the GCSE exams are over for those of my students going through that ordeal. They're free and clear! What lucky people they are!

Going from eight to four students does lead lead to a budget downgrade, but it also leads to a healthy respite from exam stress and extreme time pressure, and in this case the hopeful pleasure of a job well done. It also leads to a very beneficial respite from the horrors or being positive and reassuring at all times. I absolutely believe that all my students are going to do very well, but that heightened state of reassurance is a difficult trick to pull off. It's a necessary trick, too, because obvious and apparent confidence is a vital quality to convey... It's nice to be able to leave it at its normal level for a while.

What is to come, as we close in on Quirky Muffin eight hundred, and the week wends happily on? Well, there will much talk about books, films, radio and television, much storytelling, and in the remaining times far too much whittering about events unseen and words obscure and forgotten due to the enigmatic vicissitudes of time. In the remaining hours there will a mass of French and Spanish practice, but that concerns you not, dear illusory readers of this fair and silly mock journal.

Hmmm, there's a word that is used in context frequently without any knowledge of its definition:

vicissitude: mutability in life or nature (especially successive alternation from one condition to another)

How often have you used a similar phrase and invoked the vicissitudes without due research? I must have done it dozens of times! How many odd little vicissitudes has this very blog gone through? And large ones too? Many, and probably many more to come.

All hail the vicissitudes!

O.

Story: The Ninja of Health, XVII

( Part XVI , XVIII )

What could a tablecloth mystically rewoven by a seer tapped into the great Pattern of the Cosmos possibly reveal about the true nature of an invisible and powerful alien being recently landed in the small town of Toddlingham? What might be hidden in the great Appendices of the Archives of the Modern Order of the Ninjas of Life? Why are we stalling in this blatant attempt at catching people up? Why are storks credited with the euphemismic creation of human life? Only some of the answers to these questions will become apparent in the next few paragraphs.

The letter from Peggy, Keeper of the Appendices, read as follows, reproduced as much as possible from the records of the time:

"My dear, dear friends,

It has been too long since we saw you last. It was only a few days ago that Ken was talking about how the teaching committee missed you so badly, and that he would be trying to get you back for a session sometime soon. I, personally, miss the excellent cooking and the hot air balloon lessons, but what can be done? You were called, after all.

We have pored though the Appendices, which took a while, as you might imagine! There are some relevant passages and extracts (enclosed with this letter) that we thought of interest, but no direct precedents to the visitor that you described. The sketches and letter have been duly committed to the reservoir of knowledge for later perusal.

Ken himself took a hand when I told him of the reference to the healing power, and placed Qi in charge of the school as he assisted me. The incident you referred to was one of the earliest meditation experiments conducted in the coloured ball pits at the soft play centre where Ken was volunteering at the time. Apparently he had sustained a fracture during a freak supermarket incident (he wouldn't give any more detail apart from mouthing 'gouda' at me), and while maintaining some pain control had raised a meditative state after working hours. More than an hour later he awoke in concentric colour circles of plastic balls, with nothing but a small twinge to remind him of the fracture, and an odd craving for peanut butter. More information will follow in a separate message from the man himself.

The picture of the tablecloth was very interesting, and we've turned the picture over to our local expert, who is completely baffled. Perhaps it is more intimately connected to your local environment? We will not give up. We are just as concerned about the Oracle as you two, and have sent someone to help you. You'll know them when you see them. Further support is being rallied from our small number.

Please stay alert. There may be clues anywhere.

Your devoted friend and teacher,

Peggy.

PS Please send recipe for the oaty biscuits. We lost ours in a fiery abyss during a Committee Barbecue, and Adeolu's dog stole the disc with the originals."

By This Time Tomorrow

By this time tomorrow, the furore will hopefully have settled down, and the great political votes of 2016 will have all been resolved. It has been an awful year for politics, where the US presidential election and the EU Referendum are just the tips of a very creepy iceberg of sleaziness. The free trade treaties between the EU and North America lurk below the surface, oozing with nasty conditions, as do the Burkini fiascoes of France and the endless flayings of Jeremy Corbyn. It has been so icky and horrible that it seemed as if it was never going to end. Even if Trump manages to edge out Clinton tomorrow, at least it will all be over for a few months, and settled. That will be something. Nothing will possibly go wrong now, until after  Christmas? Right?

People seem to be utterly hysterical about Trump. Don't they realise that even if the lunatic is elected, he will be hampered by Congress into being completely ineffectual, just as the dissimilar Corbyn has been here? He will be left tied in so many legislative knots that he won't be free until 2020 at the earliest. If he tried to start a nuclear war, the Joint Chiefs would in all likelihood mutiny! There's not really any danger, except from gross stupidity.

How nice it would be to finally be free from these electoral clouds. The world will obviously continue going to its doom due to the shear idiocy of its prevailing species, but at least elections will be over! Hurrah! France and Germany next year? Mere trifles, especially with the ongoing EU exit travails. Oh, yes, the elephant in the room: The EU exit. What a mess that is, but thankfully it's a mess that can be left for another day. It's hard enough to have gone through the voting and decision-making ordeal, the trauma of being labelled a racist by association by virtue of voting to leave, the endless patronising waffle of indignant newspaper columnists, and the senseless financial problems that will follow due to idiot traders with nothing better to do than play games with people's lives, without wrestling with any more of it prematurely. There really is no excuse for there being any financial problems now, as nothing has happened!

That will probably be enough. Roll on tomorrow, and the freedom from portentous future events. Freedom! Hopefully, this freedom won't be accompanied by crazed dictators commanding that we all 'kneel before Zod'. Hopefully...

O.

Note: Normal apolitical service will now be resumed. Enough is enough.

Yapness

This is going to be one of those 'blank page' activities, which may not go anywhere at all. At least it won't be about exam season, which is finally almost over, as my minions -- oops, that should say 'students' -- go forth into a second week of exams. It's more nervous to be the tutor than the student sometimes! That's a daft thing to say, isn't it? Of course the students are more nervous.

What to write? 'The Moonstone' isn't quite finished, so that will have to wait. British Summer Time bit the proverbial dust last weekend, but I'm not really in the mood to kick it in the teeth yet again as the relative normality of real time beds back in, against the backdrop of seasonal depression. 'Carcassonne: Over Hill And Dale' was a good game, but it's not particularly worth writing about. Breaking through writer's gloom is rough this time.

Fireworks night has been and gone, and was not at all nice in its noisiness and associated smokiness. I still don't understand the human love for burning things, but it's not a particularly endearing topic for this post, which may well end up being about nothing at all. Yes, nothing, the great concept that defies explanation. You cannot explain a nothing in its own terms, only as the absence of all other things! In fact, it has been such a strange few days that I watched a live play of 'Twilight Imperium III' by the Dice Tower. Fascinating game, but long and not for me!

Did you know that 'yapness' is an old word for 'hunger'? It's a nice little word, isn't it? (Thank you, Phrontistery, once again.) "Hello, dear, is there anything to eat? I've got quite a yapness building up!" Sadly, the etymology of the word isn't available. Where might it have come from? We'll never know, but if I were feeling a bit silly, it could end up as a cameo in 'Wordspace, Phase II', once 'The Ninja Of Health' has been wound up. There can be no peace until those ninjas have found their conclusion! Somehow, it shall be done, and then 'The Glove'.

O.

Book: 'Flywheel, Shyster And Flywheel' edited by Michael Barson, from the radio series by Perrin and Sheekman [1989] (1932-1933)

How many half hour scenarios can you squeeze Groucho and Chico Marx into on radio in a season, with no apparent effort, while also producing material that would be incorporated into several later movies, and recycling some from earlier efforts? As it turns out, the answer is twenty-six if your lead writers are Nat Perrin and Arthur Sheekman and the season is 1932-1933. Twenty-six golden half hours, only one of which survives in any aural form. Was the show any good? It's difficult to say. There is one entirely surviving episode, but we'll never know if it's representative. Nat Perrin did pretty well with 'The Addams Family' several decades later, so he had reverse precedent.

Fortunately, twenty-five of the twenty-six scripts for the show were rediscovered in 1988, so we at least know how the show was on the written page. Unsurprisingly, it was very Marx Brothers-ish, except without Harpo, who couldn't possibly appear in a radio show in any meaningful way. Personally, I think they could at least have had his horn, but it might not have been cost effective. It's a great show on the written page, sometimes repetitive on a script-by-script basis, but it would have been great in a weekly radio series. The ghost house sequence alone would have been priceless.

Despite being printed on the page, Groucho and Chico's voices spring into your mind, whether you want them to or not. You can't help but hear Chico's awful puns and gags in that mock Italian patois and groan in sympathy, nor can you read nonsensical Groucho dialogue and imagine any voice but his, grousing away in lyrical excellence. It's just a shame that you can't hear them in actuality, or find out who played any of the other roles. It would be nice if Margaret Dumont had played any of the Dumont-ian characters in the show, or if Zeppo had popped up playing any of the random bit parts. Maybe Harpo was in it? We would never have known, never having seen him speak on screen! Who played Miss Dimple, the ever dependable secretary of Groucho's law firm? How did any of it work?

Teasing out twenty-six episodes was probably not the easiest thing to do. Groucho's lawyer Flywheel (originally called Beagle before a real lawyer called Beagle complained) and Chico's inept and corrupt sidekick character Ravelli encountered mock haunted houses, robberies, adulteries, dogs, temporary tenures as judges, several rambles over America, and even a revival of most of the movie 'The Cocoanuts', and then stopped due to an unimpressed network. Sadly, the Marx Brothers were of their time, and when their time came they were badly behind it due to weariness, and the death of screenwriting due to censorship.

'Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel' may well have been excellent. The scripts are pretty good. All together now: 'Good night ladies, good night ladies...'

O.

The Almost Sonnet

It's nice to stretch yourself a little bit, especially when you're in the middle of sonnet season with your English student. Hence, a rudimentary sonnet has emerged, known provisionally as 'The Time Travel Sonnet'. It's still a bit rough, and the meter is broken, but as a first attempt it's not too bad. These things tend to evolve, after all. For those who haven't guessed, it's lightly inspired by 'Quantum Leap', but you could just as easily cite 'The Time Tunnel'.

Oh, the things we do for our students! You wouldn't believe just how much preparation can go into each hour of tutoring... I certainly don't believe it...


'Sonnet I' by Oliver Bain (2016)
(also known as 'The Time Travel Sonnet')

I fly through time, a rover back and forth,
Righting wrongs and seeking a pathway home.
With each flash of light, facing south or north,
My feet might touch past sand or future loam.
The first time was a trip to Rome by boat,
The next a jaunt to the Moon by balloon.
The third was a meal with an old dragoon,
But next I was chasing an angry goat!
How long have I been bouncing to and fro?
How long until this tale is fully told?
It was meant to be a test, a brave go,
With our time machine, which will our past fold.
When will I land this time, when that flash fades?
Home at last, the past, or green future glades?


We now return you to your regularly scheduled nonsense, here at the Quirky Muffin. Coming up fairly soon: The next part of 'The Ninja Of Health'!

O.