Natalie is ready for summer here on the island, decked out in her new mosquito hat, dagger and flyswatter.

Thumbs up to all who expressed concern over my recent rendezvous with the sidewalk via the airspace over the handlebars of my bicycle. Here's a shot of my shiner. And speaking of thumbs, they're gonna go in next week and fix a torn ligament. It'll be the first surgery I've had since my tonsils were taken out at age three. Gulp.

Stare at this for about 10 seconds or so - long enough to burn it into your retinas. Then look at a white wall and blink rapidly to see me floating in mid-air.

This image is from my non-existentialist cyber-church, The Church of Me, which, if you haven't visited, you can do so here:

http://www.here.is/the.church.of.me

Here is my new business card. It's printed front and back. A couple of details don't show up here, without which you cannot fully comprehend the greatness of this card, so I will describe them:

1. It's printed on punch-out business card paper, so there is a perforated edge. (This paper is hard to find now, as most do-it-yourself punch-out business card stock has smooth edges these days.) The color is buff.

2. The name and phone number are low-res and choppy (bitmapped), but they came out looking nice and smooth here (dammit!).

I've decided to start a new novel. But I want every word of this one to be a real crowd pleaser. So rather than toiling in isolation, then finding out whether it passes muster with the people, I've decided to confer with my peeps from the very beginning. My dear LJ friends are some of my main peeps.

So...

I'm thinking of starting the book with "The." THE something has a ring to it, I think, because it denotes a particular thing rather than just some random thing. On the other hand, I've been toying lately with "A." It's more elegant, and it's shaped like a little tent, which might appeal more to today's generation. The kids like tents, doncha think?

THE something or A something? I'm kinda stuck on this part. But if I can just unjam this goddam writer's block, I can focus on the second word. Which is all-important in a book, I think. In Tale of Two Cities, for example, Dickens went with "was." Sheer stroke of genius! Whereas Erich Segal in Love Story opted for the more plebeian "can." (Booor-ing!)

Any comments or insights you could offer would be much appreciated. By next week, with the input of my teeming hoards of collaborators, I hope to start homing in on an actual sentence.

Anyone look familiar?

From the newspaper...

Today is Natalie's and my wedding anniversary eve! We've been married, uh...11 years (I think). Tomorrow we're going to the King and Prince (I call it the Frog and Prince - old SNL aficionados might remember that). Our goal is to eat way too much fish and come home miserable.

Here is a photo taken on our wedding day...in a parallel universe where we were born ducks. (I think that universe is only a few millimeters from our own.)

Hi All,

I was gonna send these to Natalie so she could add to her post about her hair (words can't do it justice), but she has a pretty low file-size filter on her email (thanx to people who think nothing of sending out some 2 meg file you don't even want...you know the type). So I put them on my calendar website server so she could grab them. Then I thought, gee, here's an opportunity to viloate my one-LJ-posting-per-year rule. Of course, she might not like some of these, you never know when it comes to photos of oneself, but I'm taking a chance. But how could she not? LOOK at them!

The one that shows the back of her hair was out of focus, unfortunately, so I made it smaller. And the one with the red jacket was pre-haircut, for comparison (and because I love how the red jacket starts out as a heavy winter coat then suddenly stops after about 10 inches).

Here's the URL:

http://www.dicklecalendars.com/nataliehair

Does anyone remember an almost wordless strip that ran in Heavy Metal magazine (the American version of the French art magazine) called "The Bus"?

I'm running really late with my 2008 calendar, due to a pain in the neck (literally). It's a train theme this year. In the 2006 calendar the train was approaching the station to pick up the waiting passengers. In 2008 you'll be inside the train car, looking out over the terrain of The Land of Calendaria.

There will be little advertisements running along the edges of the ceiling. Mostly puns on time. If you have any ideas for more ads, I'd sure like to hear 'em!

Here are some ideas for ads that Natalie and I thought of so far:

Travel agency ad: "Tour the scenic 20th Century!"

Time Shares!

See Clock City (Maybe this should go on the roof of a birdhouse outside.)

Time Flies Airlines

Or: Rid your home of those annoying time flies. (Can I do both?)

WANTED
For Stealing Tuesdays
(Picture of Daybreaker, whom PD collectors will immediately recognize as this dumpy little hellion who travels from year to year swiping days).

An upcoming movie starring Susan Day, Frederick March and any other actor whose name is based on time).

Graffiti: "For a good time, call 678-656-2326"

I'd love to hear ideas not just for ads, but for any design changes, additions etc. as it has not gone to the printer yet. Are the colors ok? I can't see'em anymore, the calendar fried my brain.

Thanks in advance for doing my job for me!

It's been a year since I last posted an entry. A YEAR. So I thought it's time for my annual post.

It occurred to me why I haven't been using LJ. I had Mac System 9. LJ is not OS9-friendly. Pages wouldn't display properly (sometimes not at all, depending on whose journal it was) and some features wouldn't function. But now that I'm on OSX, it works!

I like the feeling of community and being in touch. I miss it. Especially working alone all day, and not having a lot of friends here on St Simons Island, where Natalie and I have lived for only about half a year. Even if I were covered up in friends, I still miss my old LJ pals. So, if you guys'll take me back, I'd like to jump back in, now that I'm hep, computer-wise (for about 15 minutes).

It has come to my attention that Natalie posted a photo of me with my sister-in-law's hair on my head, which makes me look like some yazoo who just came off a three day drunk. So I thought I'd post a photo of the real me, not clowning around but just being me. (This is not a good shot - I was in somewhat of a pensive mood that day, and the lighting was bad.)

.





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* I saw this in a pamphlet from the USDA about how you can get free meat from the government. It was lying on a dryer in a laundromat. I thought, hell yeah, who wouldn’t like to have some free
( Turn the page )

I'm writing a novel. yeah, I know, everybody and his brother is writing a novel. But this is gonna be a kick-ass one. Illustrated, too. A Pilliard Dickle illustrated novel.

But I want it not only to be good, I want it to sell. So I've decided to look toward the most successful authors and analyze what it is they do that makes their books sell.

I started with Mary Higgens Clark. She's one of the most successful authors ever. Her daughter Carol Higgens Clark is not nearly as good (so say the Higgens Clark fans, I dunno, I’ve never read one). But the daughter’s books still sell because they plaster that name "Higgens Clark" across it in giant letters. Even with a Carol tacked on, it still sells out the wazoo.

That’s the secret, I think. Magic words on the front cover that guarantee sales..

I therefore wish to announce that I am hereby, effective immediately, changing my name from Pilliard Dickle to Pilliard Higgens Dickle Clark.

Or better yet: Pilliard HIGGENS Dickle CLARK!

I need a new mantra. My old one's not working. It was assigned to me by a TM teacher a long time ago. I was supposed to keep it a secret. Never tell anyone. And I was told to bring a flower to the giving-me-my-mantra ceremony.

And therein lies the problem. All that hooey. I just can't buy in to all that.

George Harrison said in one of his songs: “Chant the name of the Lord and you’ll be free.”

Well, I want that freedom. I lust for that state of centered tranquility. I know it can work. One billion Indians can't be wrong. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to chant some word some guy made up for some lord he thinks exists. I just can't do it.

Hell, I know - I’ll make up my own lord. I’ll give it a name, and I'll chant that.

How about Earl D Porker?

Hold on. Lemme close my eyes and try it out a sec.

brb

Hmmm...a little angular. Needs to be softer. More M sounds. And N sounds.

“Mon-EY. Mon-EY. Mon-EY.”

No, too stressful. If I were rich, maybe it’d work, but the association with money is: “I don’t got any!” Five minutes into my meditation, I’d be worrying about the mortgage and the phone bill.

“Eminem, Eminem, Eminem.” Yeah, that’d be about as soothing as in a bandsaw up your butt. But if it weren’t for the association with the singer, it would be perfect.

Wait. I’ve got it! it just popped into my mind, and it's perfect! It’s got M’s and N’s out the wazoo. Plus a pleasant childhood association to boot.

ANNOUNCEMENT: My new mantra, which I'm never supposed to reveal, is: M&M’s!

Whwww... Whwwww...

That is the sound of my breath. Blowing the dust off an antiquated journal. Boy, this thing hasn't been cracked in a while. Wonder what I could get for it on Antiques Roadshow?

Crreeeak...

The door slowly opens. Shafts of late afternoon sunlight bathe the room in a placid glow. The deathlike quietude is broken only by the fluttering of a wayward pigeon that flew in through a missing windowpane (probably knocked out by a kid with a sling shot - after all, it's just an abandoned idea factory).

What's this? Some rusty machinery. "Update?" "Recent?" "Scrapbook?" How does this stuff work again? Hmmm. Do I turn a crank? Stoke a fire? I'm sure it'll come back to me. After all, LJ is like riding a bicycle.

Wait! A recovered memory! Don't you have, like "Friends" or somethin'?

Who were they? Are they still alive? Will they remember me?

Natalie suggested I take a walk by the old school. Nothing has changed, it's still the same. But where have all the flowers gone? Has anybody here seen my old friend John? I've been around for a long long year, but I've had no voice. Now I find I've changed my mind. I've opened up the door.

Maybe I could woo my friends back by offering a prize if they can identify the songs referenced in the above paragraph.*

*Offer not valid in Oregon, Kansas or the Virgin Islands.

...

I finally coaxed my sorry-ass brain into writing another chapter about itself. This was originally written as part of a birthday present for my brother-in-law Jeff (Natalie's brother) (as opposed to my OTHER wife's brother). He and I exchange writings for birthday. Then I decided to try to squeeze some more mileage out of it by making it a chapter in that novel-in-progress I call "My Brain: The Inside Story." Problem is, I think it should be the opening. So I'm tacking it on the beginning, then I'll write another chapter—a "morter" chapter, like morter between two bricks—to segue it into what was formerly the first chapter.

But it all is probably a moot point - it's been so long since I've posted anything that you've probably forgotten most of it by now anyway. But that's ok. It can be just a little stand-alone story. It'll all come together when I sell it to Fox as a mini-series.

Usually when somebody posts an entry, they have some news, other than the fact that they're posting an entry. But in my case, this IS news! My last post was in...hmmm, I don't remember, but I do recall that the top news story was whether they were going to impeach Nixon.

Anyhoo...I thought I'd post a post and see if anybody is listening. In fact, I'm toying with the crazy idea of coming out of my shell and actually communicating with my LJ friends - if I still have any. I will admit to having been a tad out of the loop lately. (BTW - anybody hear how that whole Nixon thing turned out?)