Yearly Redux (One of Many)

That Cat on Cackler's Lane

I tried to do a live action version of this poetry reading, but the cat wouldn't stay on my lap, even for dramatic purposes. She's currently sitting on the floor behind me, and every time I glance back at her to make sure she's not plotting my demise, her eyes crack open just enough to let me know that yes. Yes she is.

Posted by The Storyfolder on Monday, October 30, 2017

I tried to do a live action version of this poetry reading, but the cat wouldn’t stay on my lap, even for dramatic purposes. She’s currently sitting on the floor behind me, and every time I glance back at her to make sure she’s not plotting my demise, her eyes crack open just enough to let me know that yes. Yes she is.

For example, here’s a very old attempt at this poem. Over a year old, I think. At the very least that’s my mother and father’s basement, pre-construction.

 

And finally, I know I’m an evening early for the All Hallows, but I’m posting this one today because I’m hoping I’ll have a Reformation one for tomorrow. Even though the closer the clock ticks toward midnight, the less likely I am to finish before the deadline.

So much procrastinating, eventually so little time.

Requiem for a missed chance: The Weird Singing Draculas

Somehow I let Friday the 13th go by without comment. To rectify the gross oversight, here’s a short story, written in October of 1995 (that’s 22 years ago, for the folks who don’t like math):
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The Weird Singing Draculas
By Andrea Lynn Schultz
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Once upon a time, there were these three Draculas, who wanted to sing. Their names were Weirdo, Dodo, and Idiot. One day, they went to somebody’s house. The other monsters said they’d be back for them. At night the Draculas started singing the scariest thing they knew. It was “We will, we will, rock you, sock you, pick you up and drop you.” The person in the house got so scared he ran away. The Draculas laughed and laughed and laughed until they cried. One day the man came back. At night they started singing “We will, we will rock you, pick you up and drop you.” The man ran away again.
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It was finally Halloween night. Finally the guy came back. He had a plan to get the Draculas out of his house. He dressed up as Frankenstein and went into his downstairs bathroom and waited for them to start singing. When the Draculas started singing the man came out of hiding and started singing “I will eat you when I’m ready. I will give you one second to run away from me.” Right at that moment the man’s black cat came running downstairs and hit a fake witch on a broomstick. The fake witch hit a switch that turned on a big Halloween set! There was a goblin, a vampire, and another witch! The vampire’s head hit a bucket with a gooey monster, covered with slime and it fell out. That ruckus made the fake ghost and bat make noise. The pumpkin was lit so it had red glowing eyes. The Draculas remembered what the other monsters said when they left. They got so scared that they fainted. When they wake up, they ran so fast that all that you could see of them was a blur! The man was so glad, but the real monsters came and they ate him. The monsters take over the house. So that’s that.
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The End

Housekeeping

I just wasted twenty minutes trying to find the “Housekeeping!” clip from “Cool Runnings.” Here it is in another form:

Sanka Coffie: Maid Service, sir! Would you like your bed turned down? Mint? Perhaps I could dust your head!

Yul Brenner: Whatever is wrong with you is no little thing.

Apparently there never was a “housekeeping!” scene from “Cool Runnings.” “Maid Service, sir!” will have to do.

Basically, this week’s update is notice that I’m cleaning out my poetry section and revamping/re-posting. Realizing that I’ve run out of pre-written poems to post, this is, in fact, part of an enormously nefarious plot to re-post all of my pre-written poems again. Sometimes my own laziness genius amazes me.

It is at this precise moment that I’ve also realized that I’ve gone and blown my own cover. Actually, I have several slightly less diabolical reasons for this. One of them is the fact that I hate the way I’ve organized my poetry. The genre thing is just way too clunky, so I’m going to scrub that entirely and post them the way I do my stories.

Mind you, if that’s all I was doing I’d re-organize everything behind the scenes without all the fanfare (I’m lazy, but I’m not that lazy; or at least I know how to hide it better than that), but it’s also a really good opportunity to work on my drawing skills and get used to the new art program on my computer. What I’m going to do is illustrate each poem and post them as art files. I’m hoping that this will also help with the viewing issues for anyone who uses a mobile device. A small screen forces the lines to bleed over into each other, which can be really confusing when the rhythm and rhyme of a poem depends on understanding its structure. By posting them as media files they’re forced to stay true to their formats. Let me know if anyone notices any problems I’ve subsequently created with this solution.

As to the blog posts with the old links, right now I’m just planning on letting them lie with broken links in place. I’ll fix them as I re-post. If anyone is dying to read a poem I’ve removed, just email me and I’ll share that like a boss.

So! In short, here is the only poem currently on my website:

The Cat on Cackler’s Lane

Apologies to my IT guy and my editor, who are currently the main people affected by this decision. Enjoy seeing everything twice! I’m also using it as an excuse to post website updates on my Facebook page. Anyways, I can get away with this because I’m related to both of them. Or not so much “get away with” as “do it anyways, neener neener.”

The Cat Is Never Late – Only on a Different Schedule

I took a break from not writing “Small Town Super Nobody” to write something that should’ve gone up yesterday. Here it is:

The Cat on Cackler’s Lane

I dedicate this poem to Spooks, who’s probably dead. If she isn’t, she still neither knows nor cares that I dedicated something to her. In related news, I’ve updated my bio photo on the About page for seasonal reasons. Happy Halloween!