Category: Live! From Paradise!

LB: Live! From Paradise #220 – “Welcome Twitters”

(The Intro above is from this column's previous web incarnation)

by Larry Brody

The Twitter revolution is here. A tidal wave of short, stark messages is cascading over the Internet, and for many web surfers it’s become a matter of shooting the curl or drowning.

For those who have been doing silly things like reading books or going to concerts and movies or even watching TV and listening to the radio instead of getting their heads irradiated by sitting 18 inches from their computer monitors day in and day out, Twitter is a website where folks can join up and both send and receive short messages to and from their friends…and about a bazillion other people as well.

And when I say short, I mean it. The longest any message can be is 140 characters. That means 140 letters, spaces, and punctuation marks. AKA one or two very short sentences. (And I thought Sesame Street was destroying our attention spans!)

Twitter messages (which for some metaphorical purpose far beyond my ability to understand are called “tweets”) fall into two main categories.

The first category is what can best be described as “The Personal Report.” As in:

“(yawn) Long day of work draws to a close. Happy half hour spent watching Powerpuff Girls before collapsing. 🙂 Night, all!” by a Twitterer called dduane.

The second category is anything but personal. It’s “Salesmanship 101.” As in:

“Webcast your brain surgery? Hospitals see marketing tool…” by well-known Twitterer GuyKawasaki.

I admit to having a Twitter account of my own, and to being fascinated by the haiku-like possibilities of the Tweet. How else can I explain this message I sent a while ago?

“People keep telling us we’re not here. But we know we are. Existential crisis imminent?”

All in all, this short form is fun. It enables me to communicate with people quickly, without having to agonize over every noun, verb, and, especially, adjective. And it enables others to communicate with me in the same easy cavalier way.

But no matter how hard I try to be cutting edge, I’m still hardly the King of Tomorrow. Because what I enjoy receiving most are messages that are about something. And because they’re about something they bring me into the writers’ lives in a way no usual Tweet can.

Messages like this one, from reader Rob O’Hannon:

“My wife and I have a 1995 Saturn…that we both love…230,000 miles, and still a good kick to it…

“Today my mechanic gave me the bad news. The front supports are…rotted out… To repair the damage would probably cost more than the car’s worth. And so, by the end of the month, we need to say goodbye…

“I remember blizzard days when I took the long way home instead of facing the insanity storms bring to highway drivers. Riding down back roads, up and over ice-covered hills, bopping along to the tape deck, she never let me down. We were road warriors together; I could feel through her, and she responded to my needs.

“…She was never the prettiest car in the world. She’s needed some minor, and not so minor, repairs here and there. But I always felt safe in her. And I always knew that when the chips were down, we’d both make it home.

“I’m going to miss that come next winter.”

And this, from fellow Arkansan D.C. Rowlett:

“Out at Possum Trot when I was a boy it was a sure sign of rain when the road grader ran. No matter if there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky, if that road grader ran it would rain within a few hours.

“During cotton…picking season I almost worshiped that road grader. When I saw the black diesel smoke and heard the roar of the engine I knew without a doubt I was gonna get a day or so off from the back breaking labor…

“Here on the Ponderosa that magic is still alive, only these days it is not the road grader, nosirree. It is the garden tiller that has the power to summon the rain.

“…Each time I fire up the…tiller we get a gully washer and a toad strangler. Yesterday I fired up the big tiller—oh why didn’t I just use the hoe and little garden weasel thingy?

“Sorry, folks, but I used the…tiller and it is gonna be raining awhile!”

Okay, so neither of these two messages is in the same class as Oprah Winfrey’s first Tweet:

“HI TWITTERS. THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY.”

But, just between us, man, am I glad.

LB: Live! From Paradise #219 “Massacre at Cloud Creek”

(The Intro above is from this column's previous web incarnation)

by Larry Brody

A new mystery greeted me when I awoke the other day.

Cloud Creek Ranch’s very own Midnight Massacre.

The night had been filled with the sounds of a typical Paradise thunderstorm. The roll of thunder. The crack of lightning. The click-beep of appliances as the power went off and on. By the time daylight arrived, the rain was a steady, rooftop drizzle and the only loud sounds came from the dogs, who’d slept inside all night and wanted out. “Now! Now! Immediately!”

That may seem all fine and dandy, but what it really meant was just the opposite. A normal sound, one that had greeted the ears of both Gwen the Beautiful and myself every morning for many years, was nowhere to be heard.

The sound of chickens.

Of roosters proudly crowing to announce to the world that, “These hens are ours!” And of hens cackling otherwise, “In your dreams!”

I pulled on my boots and my duster, plopped a baseball cap onto my head, and let the dogs out onto the front porch while I continued around the side of the house to the chicken yard, where our fine flock of silly, almost poodle-like silkies should’ve been scratching away at the dirt.

I saw the first silky on the way. In the clearing, near the big stone fire pit on the little rise we call The Mound. Headless and soaked, the chicken lay on a pile of feathers. When I knelt down, I saw the long spurs that told me this was all that remained of our two roosters. Beyond the dead rooster, on the other side of the fire pit, were several more piles of feathers.

“Great….”

I hurried to the chicken yard. The gate was closed, the latch double-clipped into place. Within the yard, two bedraggled white hens cowered against the trunk of tree that’d fallen about a year ago but was way too big for me to cut up and cart away. Behind them, between the two small coops, another headless body lay.

Another hen, the one we called Orange Chicken. She’d been the sole survivor of the dozen chickens we’d inherited when we first bought this place. Which mean she also was the last chicken to whom we’d given a name.

“Greater….”

I moved through the chicken yard, hoping to find more survivors hiding in its nooks and crannies. There wasn’t a one. Didn’t find any more bodies either, but, brother, did I see feathers. Everyplace!

I turned to the two remaining hens. “How—?” I said. And, “Who—”

No reply. Instead they clutched at each other in the way that’d taught me, years ago, what very real and sensitive spirits even these creatures have.

The rain began coming down harder, but I had a mystery to solve. I walked along the fence, looking for a break that would let a marauder in. All was secure. Except—

Yep, there it was. A place where the chain link was bent back, just a little. A place where something small, smart, and determined could force itself through. And a few feet away, where the clearing met the woods I saw something fitting that description.

Quickly, I left the chicken yard and pushed through the brush to a dead weasel. Its mouth was drawn back in a snarl, and its body was intact as though it had been shaken to death, the way a dog might do the deed.

Weasels hunt in families. I know that from the Discovery Channel. It seemed to me that what must have happened was that several weasels had wormed their way in but been chased off, along with some squawking victims, by a defending dog.

The only problem with that theory was that the most likely reason the weasels had made their move was that Emmy the Bold and her gang had been inside.

From behind me came the sound of panting breath. A twig snapped, and I turned to see what looked like a large, tan dog watching from the trees a few feet away. Our eyes met. I reached out to it…

And the dog faded—no, wafted—into the woods, vanishing like smoke.

The Cloud Creek Ranch Ghost Dog.

The rain grew even stronger, but I stood there for I don’t know how long. I realized that in spite of the carnage I was smiling.

Great…

Greater…

“The greatest,” I said, this time with no sarcasm at all.

And I ran back to the house to tell Gwen.

LB: Live! From Paradise #218 “Animal Talk”

(The Intro above is from this column's previous web incarnation)

by Larry Brody

Here on The Mountain, the animals are restless.

“I need to talk to you,” Huck the Spotless Appaloosa said early this morning as I rolled the hay cart to the corral.

“He really does,” Rosie the Romantic Arabian affirmed, stamping her hoof. “It’s important.”

“I want you! I want you now!” Ditsy Dixie the Yellow Lab yelped from the dog yard.

“And me! And me! And me!” Emmy the Bold, Decker the Giant-Hearted, and Belle the Wary called out as they pushed their way past her to the fence.

“When you have a minute there’s something we need to talk about, boss.” That was the biggest of the unnamed Silky chickens, calling from their pen. (Unnamed because chicken have a tendency to expire when you least expect it, and giving them names made their deaths much harder to bear.)

The only Cloud Creek Ranch animal inhabitant who didn’t push himself into my usual morning reverie was Bob the Careful Tuxedo Cat. In fact, when I awoke and reached out for Gwen the Beautiful and found my hand on his furry little rump instead he responded with a sound somewhere between a hiss and a sigh and slipped off the bed. Bob had never wanted me for anything in his life, and that wasn’t changing now.

But the others—

“Things are way out of kilter around here,” Huck said.

I tossed the hay over the fence, figuring that, as usual, Huck and Rosie would dig in. Instead, they pinned me with sideways gazes.

“He thinks it’s unacceptable,” Rosie added.

“What’s unacceptable?”

From the porch, the dogs filled me in with loud, staccato barks.

“You’re not giving us enough attention! You’re not playing—”

The rooster I was now thinking of as the Silky King (uh-oh, that’s the same as naming him, isn’t it?) interrupted. “You’re not singing to us! You’re not doing that Mozart thing when you throw us our bread!”

“You don’t talk to us anymore!”

And there it was, the same complaint, from three different directions and seven different breeds of Not-Supposed-To-Be-But-Nevertheless-Sentient-Beings:

Oh, man, I was in Trouble. With a capital T.

And they went on:

“Why don’t you pay attention to us? Why don’t you come outside like you used to? Why are you hiding in the house? Is it something we’ve done? Have we hurt you? How? Tell us!”

I looked around the clearing at the Cloud Creek Crew. Let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

“It’s not you,” I said. “I love you all. It’s—”

“What? What?” Dixie cried.

“It’s July.”

“July? Who’s that?” Belle said.

“It’s a ‘when,'” Decker growled. “A month.”

“Not just any month,” I pointed out. “It’s a month when the temperature lives in the 90s and the humidity’s even higher. A ‘now’ when I’m covered in sweat by the time I walk across the front porch. A ‘when’ when flies swarm and chiggers burrow and ticks suck—”

“No ticks or chiggers or flies here, boss,” the Silky King called. “Anything like that comes in this pen and it’s lunch.”

“Ah,” I said, “you love the summer weather in Paradise, don’t you?”

The Silky King answered with a crow. I shook my head.

“But I don’t,” I told everyone. I looked from one animal to the other. Tried to explain. “This weather wipes me out,” I said. “It leaves me weak and exhausted and itchy. Look at these welts! I wake up scratching and go to sleep the same way.

“When it’s cooler you know where to find me. Outside. Making my phone calls from the front porch. Working at my laptop on the back porch. Hanging out with you.

“But in the summer—I’ve got to hide,” I said. “And you’re not who I’m hiding from. It’s the weather, that’s all.”

The animals were silent. Thinking. (I think.) Then:

“People!” Huck snorted. “You’ve got some serious problems.”

“Bad breeding,” nickered Rosie.

“And you call yourselves the planet’s top dogs?” Emmy said.

The horses dipped their heads down into the hay.

The dogs flopped down on their bellies on the grass.

The chickens scratched in the dirt.

Our conversation was over. I went back into the house and up to the bedroom. Gwen was still sleeping. Bob lay on my pillow, but he was awake. “Everybody out there feels sorry for you because you’re a human,” he said. “Do you feel sorry for yourself too?”

I thought about it.

“Only when I itch,” I said, scratching away.

LB: Live! From Paradise #216 “The Old Billionaire’s Prognosis”

(The Intro above is from this column's previous web incarnation)

by Larry Brody

A few weeks ago I filled this space with the joyous news that the Old Billionaire was back among what he himself would call “those passing for sane.”

He was taking meds that eased his anger and made it possible for him to communicate with the rest of us without going ballistic about something that seemed like nothing to anyone else.

Since then the two of us have spent time together almost every day, immersing ourselves in friendship “before,” as the O.B. put it, “I lose myself again.”

We’ve talked more than a little about his condition, which may not in fact be dementia but, in his words, “just plain, old-fashioned bi-polar disorder, according to some of the big shots I’ve been flying around to be prodded and poked by.

“Then there’s still other fancy MDs who say that what I am is schizophrenic. One shrink said that in front of another who was part of the Bi-Polar Posse, and Dr. Bi-Polar got so red in the face that he looked like the crazy one. Except then Dr. Schizzy started ranting and it was pretty clear that he wasn’t exactly your normal human being either.

“If I was still running my company,” the Old Billionaire continued, “you can bet that neither one of those geniuses would’ve gotten on, or stayed on, the payroll. And one of ’em wanted me to build him his own hospital wing!”

“You’ve always got a theory about things, O.B.,” I said. “What’s your theory about yourself now?”

He regarded me mischievously. “Well, I like the point of view that this kid from Hollywood gave me. The idea that as lost as I am about what’s real and what’s not, this is how lost I’ve always been.”

“I said that?”

“Sure you did,” said the O.B. “Because you’re as nuts as I am. When you look at me, you see your own future, and because you’re just about the most optimistic, hopeful person that ever waltzed obliviously across this infuriating and mortally dangerous planet, you’ll probably get to where I am and go, ‘Wow! I’m so out of it I can’t even remember what to use toilet paper for! Isn’t that grand?!'”

I started to protest. The Old Billionaire held up his hand.

“No point in arguing about it,” he said. “Now that the meds take away my deepest downs, I kind of get into that place too once in awhile. And it’s not a bad place at all.

“But sure, I’ve got a theory about all this. My theory is that anybody who says, ‘Life is an illusion’ is somebody who’s never lived. Life is real as can be. But it’s subject to interpretation.

“When we’re babies we’re closer to what’s ‘really real.’ As we get older everybody around us teaches us the common, accepted version of ‘real.’ But when we get still older our brains start hitting on different cylinders and we’re back to the beginning again. We have to reinterpret and find new ways to understand what’s going on.”

“So when you said you remembered two different pasts, one where you had an affair with your assistant and one where you didn’t, you meant that literally?”

“Ah! I knew you’d find a way to get to that!” He laughed. “Some reality this is, where my marital fidelity—or not—has become the most interesting part of my life!

“Have to admit, though, that it’s the most important thing to Nettie and me too. I’ve been trying to explain to her that all of us go traipsing around through thousands of realities everyday. Making every decision possible. So the likelihood is that I actually have gone both ways. I’ve been loyal and…not.”

“What’s she say to that?”

“My wife’s a wonderful woman, Larry B. She started out fighting me, but lately she’s been wrapping her head around this whole situation, and it’s a mightily capable head, yessiree. Came up with her own theory, that the cheating O.B.’s in another dimension, and me, I’m the one who stayed true. And now we’re getting along almost as good as ever.”

“You’re a lucky man, O.B.,” I said.

“Absolutely,” he said.

Then his smile faded.

“Now all I’ve got to do is keep her away from the shrinks who say my problems come from being angry at myself. Because Nettie’ll know better than anybody that the only thing could make me that furious would be if I really did betray us both.”