Month: February 2019

A Bit Puzzling, Isn’t It?

One of the most overlooked entertainment sources: the puzzle. I love puzzles — everything just clicks right into place, cleanly and perfectly to create the bigger picture. All you have to do is find where what goes. It’s a nice contrast to real life, which is messy and things usually don’t fit into place without adjustments or trimming, leaving part of the picture incomplete. And even worse, in real life you have no idea what it’s supposed to look like, so you’re trying to put pieces together without knowing what you’re supposed to put where.

I also like the idea behind the pieces versus the whole. When you look at a piece, you might just see black with some light grey in it, but once it’s in place it makes sense, and moreover, that one piece may not seem like much in the whole picture, but if it weren’t there the image wouldn’t seem right. It would be incomplete, something that irks me unendingly. I doubt I’m the only one.

Beyond the fact that the picture looks nice, and the puzzle has nice metaphorical value, I can think of two other main reasons why I like puzzles so much. The first is that it provides a sense of satisfaction, to have figured it out on your own and to have created something nice by doing so (the same satisfaction applies to LEGOs). The second is that it can be a relatively mindless activity (or at least, doesn’t require total focus), since it’s very much a visual connection or attempting to put the piece in various places. This leaves the mind open for wandering, which, for a writer like myself, is a wondrous thing. This is especially beneficial for me, because, as much as I love contemplating plots and characters and the perfect wording for some sentence or another, I have trouble focusing to do so. It’s the issue I run into when watching YouTube or television or listening to music: I can’t sit still. I want to be doing something with my hands, to feel like I’m doing something productive. The same goes for mental writing exercises: I want to do them, I enjoy doing them, but I have to be doing something with my hands. And puzzles are the perfect candidate for that, because they don’t detract much attention from the story, while giving me something fulfilling to do.

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I can’t get through! There’s a Bearicade!

No, that isn’t misspelled. I really did mean “Bearicade,” not “barricade.” That’s because Mom and I recently played a wonderful card game called Bearicades, about forests and scared prey, and big, scary lumberjacks and equally big and scary predators, but they happen to be playing defense and trying to protect the prey, so they count as the good guys. You know something’s gone really bad to get the predators and the prey to team up!

Bearicades

So there are these cute animals, all innocent and stuff (yeah right, like that snake wasn’t just waiting for a lumberjack to bite!) that are specially grouped into forests. You can choose whether you want to play beginner style by color, or by ring numbers. Each has a special ability, which will be activated as specified on the card (sometimes it’s when the animal runs away, when you Flip the card, or some, like the Salmon, can just be activated whenever).

Then there are the lumberjacks. The active player for the turn (designated by the Frog) draws the top lumberjack and places him in the middle. But of course, no lumberjack lumberjacks by himself, so each lumberjack card lists a certain amount of friends of his who also get drawn. The active player then gets to distribute the lumberjacks between the forests in whatever manner they like, the only rule being that each has to have one.

Then comes the predator phase. There are some really cool predators in the deck, like Cougars, Bats, Foxes, and Angry Bees, but most of the predators are Bearicades. No, not “bears,” “Bearicades,” named as such because they can block a lumberjack, leaving both in play but, at least for the time being, neutralizing the threat. Bearicades also have abilities that can be utilized if they are discarded, depending on the species of Bearicades, including Flipping an animal, forcing lumberjacks to Run Away, or allowing a trade of themselves for another Bearicade in the discard. Other predators can do similar to the latter two, though some allow a switch for any predator in the discard, instead of just Bearicades.

In the sad event that a lumberjack is unstoppable and reaches your forest, you must choose one of your four animals to Run Away as a result. The good news is, the lumberjack follows it over to the discard pile. Some animals also have effects centered around running away, making them the strategic choice, depending on the situation. The bad news is, that animal is out of the game for good, and you only have four of them, so you have to be careful!

Once all of the lumberjacks have been taken care of in some way or another, whether they’re staring down a Bearicade or the back of another lumberjack in the discard, it becomes Night. The player with the Frog draws one Predator for each player still in the game, getting first pick as to which one they want. Each player gets one Predator to add to their hand, and then the Frog passes and the next long day of fighting off the evil forces of humanity begins.

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“The Tale of my Sweet Cat Brother”

Some friends and I were fooling around on our school Chromebooks (a way I find many an interesting thing online, like 2048) when one of them introduced me to a random generator, for stories, songs, poems, names, letters and more. Standardly, I’m unimpressed with random generators, but it was good for a laugh. I decided to write a ballad using their system, as an homage to one of the cats I grew up with, MungoJerry (named after the character from Cats). The result was good enough for me to share it here.

It began on an Old Spring Afternoon:
I was the most Smart Writer around,
He was the most Sweet Cat. 
He was my Brother, 
 My Sweet Brother,
 My Cat.
 
We used to Eat so well together,
 Back then.
 We wanted to Yowl together, around the world,
 We wanted it all.
 
But one Afternoon, one Old Afternoon,
 We decided to Yowl too much.
 Together we Yelled at a Vet.
 It was Lethargic, so Lethargic.
 
From that moment our relationship changed.
He grew so Stationary.
And then it happened:
Oh no! Oh no!
He Cried to God.
 Alas, God!
 My Brother Cried to God.
 It was Dying, so Dying.
 
The next day I thought my whiskers had broken,
 I thought my tail had burst into flames,
 (But I was actually overreacting a little.)
 
But still, he is in my thoughts.
 I think about how it all changed that Afternoon,
 That Old Spring Afternoon.
 
My tail... ouch!
 When I think of that Sweet Cat,
 That Sweet Cat and me.

We miss you, Mungo.

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Dandelion

This is a story I wrote based off of a picture of someone staring horrified at a lump in the carpet. Enjoy!

    “What were you thinking?” my father yelled, waving my wish list in the air. “You are not getting a dog! I want you to rewrite this letter, and I don’t want to see it even mention a dog!”

    Yep, that’s my father for you. Once he makes up his mind, there’s no changing it. Unfortunately for him, I may have inherited some of his stubbornness. So when my father told me I had to rewrite my letter, and I couldn’t mention ‘a dog’, I erased ‘a dog’ from my number 1 ‘want it’ space and replaced it with ‘a puppy’.

    Needless to say (though I’m going to say it anyways), my father was not pleased. He said I was grounded until I had rewritten the letter. I was fine with that. If I wasn’t allowed to leave my room, I didn’t have to go to school, right?

    Well, so much for that idea. My father made me go to the bus stop, so I sat down next to Donna, my best friend. “What’s wrong?” she asked, only briefly glancing at my face before returning to reading. I explained my problem.

    “Why don’t you start with something small like, say, a hamster?” she suggested.

    The reason I didn’t try to get a hamster was I didn’t want a hamster. I wanted a dog, and that was final. In reading, we learned about figurative language. That gave me a great idea.

    When I got home, I rewrote my list. This time, it didn’t mention a dog. Instead, my wish list included a “Servant-bot 3.0”. I said I wanted it because I was ‘lonely’.

    I showed the list to my father and then I put it in my backpack. Hopefully, the person who recieved my list would see the word ‘lonely’ and get the clue.

    All I could do was wait, so I went to my room. There I found my toy food bowl. I gently placed it on my nightstand. The next day I couldn’t pay attention in class. My mind kept drifting to my list. If this didn’t work, what would?

    When I got home, I went to my room. I turned on my lamp and gasped. My little food dish was gone!

    I immediately stormed downstairs and into my father’s office. “Where is it?” I demanded, tears in my eyes. “Where is my little food dish?”

    “I thought it was in your room.” my father nonchalantly replied, not looking away from his paperwork.

    I stomped out of the room, fuming. I immediately ran straight to my room, searching furiously through my stuff. I stomped back down to my father’s office.

    “It’s not there!” I complained.

    “Why don’t you check the garage?” he suggested.

    “Oh no you don’t!” my mother exclaimed, entering the office. “You’re going to go wash up for dinner.”

    The next day, after school, I stepped into my father’s office. “Can I have the keys so I can check the garage for my bowl?”

    He thought for a moment, then replied, “No. I’ll come with you, though.” With that we set out for the garage door. My father slid the key into the hole and opened the door, revealing a vast, dark opening.

    “After you,” my father said, gesturing towards the garage. I took a deep breath and plunged into the darkness.

    A moment or two later, a lamp flickered on. I saw my father change the settings on the dimmer, and suddenly I could see the other side of the garage.

    I turned back to my father. He grinned and did a mock bow like a stage performer. As he straightened up, he froze. The look on his face was clear. I turned very slowly to see where he was pointing.

    “Wha-What’s that?” my father stammered, his eyes wide. I cautiously approached the lump. I reached down, grabbed the end of the carpet, and yanked it back. My eyes widened for a moment, then I burst into hysterical laughter.

    There on the floor was my food bowl. But that wasn’t all! There was also a small, adorable yellow puppy! “Happy Birthday, son.” my father said, stepping over and patting me on the back. And that’s the story of how I got Dandelion.

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