Well!  Let's see if I can get this blog going again -- and make it interesting.

When I was a bit younger, I wanted to collect all the world's ghost stories of legend and supposed reality -- and put them in a book.  One book.  Actually, one chapter of a book on weird stuff.  Needless to say, I'd bitten off more than I could chew.

By now, it feels like I've hunted down every book, magazine, and article on earth about interesting and unusual events.  I can pick and choose from a vast field of paranormal reports, fortean phenomena, true crime, historical oddities, and folk tales to put in my hypothetical anthology.  Say 10 or 12 interesting tales from each broad category, like Ghost Stories or Urban Legends.

So I started on the category of Stupid Criminals, but -- I came to this story in The World's Stupidest Criminals (edited by the Editors of the Fortean Times) , and I just stopped.  This guy was all I needed out of life.

Seems that on the morning of August 14, 1992, in Sunderland, England, a man entered Lloyds Bank.  Even though he wore a ski mask and carried a pistol, the tellers flatly refused to give him any money, so he left.  Shortly after that, he entered a savings and loan, but the tellers simply ducked under the counter (presumably behind bulletproof glass), so he fled again.  Just before noon he tried a savings and loan in Spennymoor, a nearby town.  This time he received $300.00.  However:

"As he ran off, three men tackled him, ignoring his gun, which turned out to be a water pistol.  Apart from recovering the stolen cash, they pulled off his watch, ski mask, gloves, and shirt, which contained $300 of the robber's own money.  The bungling bandit dived over a fence with a 20-foot drop on the other side, and was last seen hobbling away."

Well -- he did get away!

The Return of Ambition

Now why did they have to have nice furniture at Sutherland's Home Improvement store?  Just when I'd grown used to the idea of living in apartments forever, now I want a house again, just so I can put good furniture in it.

Several pieces caught my eye, but the item that started the dominoes falling was a rustic, wooden, outdoor bench, painted black but artificially weathered so as to have faded, almost white, streaks.  I've always wanted a bench for the outdoors, whether on a front porch, patio, or even out in the yard proper.  Something to sit on while listening to the birds (or lawn mowers and hedge clippers, which produce their own music), watching sunsets and falling leaves, and feeling cool breezes.  Not something to put on the pitiful square concrete apron in front of my apartment, where things occasionally disappear.

Add to that the actual reason I went to Sutherland's (and Lowe's):  Buying bricks, planks, and cinder blocks to make real, solid, and cheap bookcases.  Too long have I used plastic shelves that bend and even collapse under the weight of hardbacks.  Each one, also, being of a different size, width, and height, resulting in a chaotic landscape of printed matter.  Boards and cinder blocks may seem sophomoric, but they are of uniform size, and they are sturdy.  Looking at them makes me wonder how they would look in a permanent environment -- a house of one's own.

A third boost to determination came when I decided I couldn't go any longer without re-reading one of my favorite books -- The Crystal Gryphon, by Andre Norton.  It's the archetypal fantasy, as far as I'm concerned (apologies to Tolkien), and probably the best written of Andre's 200 books.  I imagine Crystal -- and the rest of my Norton collection -- and all my other volumes -- sitting on those sturdy (but cheap) shelves among pieces of comfortable (if rustic) furniture, in a home of my own (with a bench just outside on the patio).  It's an image to aim for.

*****

Today is Wednesday, June 24, 2015.  John Keel, Loren Coleman, and other fortean authors have pointed out that strange things tend to happen on the 24th of the month, especially June 24.  (For instance, the Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting, which gave the world the term "flying saucers," took place on June 24, 1947).  Add to that the claim that more UFOs (and other paranormal phenomena) are witnessed on Wednesdays than any other day of the week, and surely something weird ought to happen today.

Is it true?  I don''t know.  In my wasted youth I did go cruising around the countryside each year on the night of June 24, just to see if anything happened . . . nothing ever did.

Well, I actually went out and looked for a new job today . . . that's pretty unbelievable . . .

THREE YEARS PASS QUICKLY PAST . . .

It seems I all but forgot my blog and web-site over the past three years.  I did little of interest in the last few months here when I did remember it, as you can see in previous posts.  This may change soon, as I'm likely to have more free time.

Let's just say the environment at work grew steadily worse over the years, a situation which, combined with the long commute there and back, drained my energy to the point that I did little at night beyond goofing off on the Internet for a while then collapsing into sleep -- only to rise a few hours later and go to work again.

But enough of that.  I wasn't completely idle during that time.  As a matter of fact, thinking back to my teenage years, it seemed like I wrote one page per day (on good days) on "the" story (I only thought up one at a time).  Now I have numerous tales floating around, several of novel length, that all clamor for attention.  I've written/typed/edited many times the material I produced way back when during these "lost" three years.  I guess the key to it all is focusing on one at a time.

Here are a couple of recent ditties:  Specklit Stories.

And a longer tale about something lurking in Your Own Back Yard.

Now:  back to the old grindstone to produce more tales.  At least this is a more fun grindstone than one scribbling down figures and studying car titles and replacement license forms!