I think that will probably depend on how well I follow instructions from here on out. The dance thing, I mean.

You see, messages come in all forms and from many sources. In fact, depending on your belief system, you may even be convinced that you receive messages from beyond the veil between the worlds. And, sometimes those messages come along with a set of instructions that need following.

I suppose at this point you are wondering what messages from the great beyond have to do with the picture of Evil Kat’s shapely gams over here on the right. Well, to be honest, both everything and nothing. You see I’m not actually going to go on about being contacted by the dead. I am, however, going to go on about messages. In particular a message I received just the other day, and it just so happens that it has quite a bit to do with E Kay’s shoes.

In particular, her Mary Janes.

(BTW, I’d have put the whole picture up there, however if you have seen the revamped cover of Perfect Trust, for which this was one of many shots taken to create the final collage, you know things were far less pretty above the waist… Not gory or anything… You’ll just have to read the book if you don’t understand what I’m getting at… But, yeah, E K was one of the models… How cool is that?)

And, back to our regularly scheduled blog…

So, E K has several pairs of Mary Jane styled pumps. Dress up, work, leather, patent leather,  canvas, heels, flats, wedges, brown, black, and so on…

You get the idea.

I couldn’t begin to tell you about the fashion statement surrounding these, primarily because I have absolutely no fashion sense at all. I will pair stripes and plaids in a heartbeat, so I am definitely NOT the go-to guy where this sort of stuff is concerned. However, as shoes go these seem to work for the Evil One, and I am perfectly willing to admit that I think she looks pretty damn good in them. This latter fact may have something to do with one of those childhood memories, that being the little blonde-haired girl next door when I was growing up. We were all of about 7 and I was crushing on her pretty hard. Being the style of the 60’s she always wore frilly dresses and patent leather Mary Janes. They say you never forget your first love. Well, I wouldn’t call this playmate from my childhood a “love,” so I guess that old saying applies to crushes too.

So, there you go. Nothing sick or twisted, just Id, ego, and superego colliding to stir fond puppy love memories in my heart whenever I see the evil redhead in her Mary Janes.

Okay, enough with psychoanalyzing the Murv…

Now, the thing about E Kay’s shoes is that while most of them reside in her evil shoe closet, there are a few pairs that occupy strategic locations around the house – i.e. wherever she happened to take them off. Of course, her evilness is still more conscientious about her shoe placement than the O-spring. If you go stumbling through the dark in the middle of the night around our house, while traversing the living room you will trip over every pair of shoes the child owns. E K, however, does place hers pretty much out of the way. One such “out of the way” location where her feet become un-shod – and the aforementioned shods remain – is the general vicinity of her desk in our shared office.

And yes, Virginia (No, not you Doc… No, not the state either… I mean the metaphorical and collective Virginia) this is from whence I received a message. I just didn’t know it at the time. See below…

If you look closely at the left shoe you will notice a piece of paper lounged out on the insole as if it belongs there…

You see, the other day I rolled back from my desk on a mission to put something in the cabinets on the other side of the room. Since our office is relatively small our desks are against opposite walls. When I stood up to make the 4 steps to the cabinets I had to step around the shoes. When I looked down I noticed this bit of paper occupying the insole.

I didn’t really think much of it at first. Her shoes were sitting next to the paper recycling bin and since she is a shredding maniac I figured that in a frenzy of potential paper-mâché production the previous evening a scrap had escaped her evil clutches in a daring attempt at freedom. Unfortunately for the scrap, however, it plummeted into her shoe where it was overcome by odoriferous fumes and expired before it could get away.

Do NOT tell her I said that…

I continued about my task, tucking some papers into a cabinet, then returned to my desk. once again stepping around the pair of Mary Janes. This time, however, I noticed that there appeared to be writing upon the bit of paper. Again, I didn’t really think much of it until several seconds had passed and I was seated back at my desk. Some manner of subliminal trigger clicked, clanked, or whatever it is they do and I stopped everything I was doing. The image of the paper with the writing on it flashed through my gourd and I screwed up my face in thought as I wondered, “Did that really say what I think it said?”

Now I was curious. So, what else could I do? I rolled back, turned around in my chair, then leaned over to look at the scrap in the shoe (all while holding my nose, of course…) And, much to my surprise, it did in fact say what I thought it said.

“Leave Treat”

I’d heard “trick or treat” before, but never “leave treat,” although it definitely sounded like a pretty clear instruction to me. For a minute I started wondering if she was trying to get in touch with her Dutch roots and thought it was Christmas or something. But I came to my senses and remembered she is primarily Welsh and Irish, not Dutch.

Then for another brief moment I considered stuffing a banana into the shoe just to see what would happen when her evilness came home. However, since I wasn’t sure if that would spark some sort of Freudian dilemma or not, and I didn’t have any Vodka or Scotch miniatures on hand, I elected to simply laugh and snap a picture or two, because it was obvious to me at that juncture that this would be blog material.

Unfortunately, I get the impression that maybe I should have put some individually wrapped Dove chocolates in there or something.

Why?

Well, what you can’t see here is the knobby tread this pair of shoes has on the sole. The reason that is important is that I am now sporting a mirror image of it all over my face. All I know is that E K was doing a lot of unintelligible screaming while she was dancing on my head, but I did manage to catch a little snippet about her shoes being empty when she arrived home and when was I going to learn to follow instructions?

More to come…

Murv

Before you get all huffy and send me a nasty email, put that sentence on the back burner for a second and read the blog entry itself… The sentiment in the grandiose title is definitely not my own.

You see, a while back I penned a blog entry about, of all things, writing blogs. Yeah, pretty redundant, I know, but what can I say… It was a slow news day. At any rate, in a nutshell that particular entry investigated the whole concept of how, as an author who is also a blogger, I should only be writing about writing, (yeah, even more redundancy, go figure…) And, I was to do this all for the express purpose of disseminating information to other writers, and/or aspiring writers, so that they may learn from me.

Truth is, I didn’t even know I was qualified to teach, so as you can imagine this whole idea came as a shocker to me.

Well, if you happened to have read that particular entry you already know I found the above notion funnier than all hell. Still, even though I had, and have, every intention of continuing to write entertaining blogs rather than such self-serving B S as previously noted, I thought maybe I’d go out into the proverbial blogosphere and have myself a look see. You know what I mean… Do a little investigation on my own to find out if maybe I was missing a bus or something. Hey, I’ve made my share of mistakes, so it could very well be that this whole entertainment thing is a crock, and being a pompous ass is where it’s really at… What better way to find out than to do a little digging?

So, I tossed my cyber-shovel over my shoulder and away I went.

I read blog after blog, written by authors I had never heard of, but who purported themselves to be experts in the field of authoring. Know what I found?

A load of self-serving, pompous B S…

Yeah… I was disappointed. I wasn’t overly surprised by any stretch of the imagination, but I have to admit that I was definitely disappointed. I mean, after all, I was hoping to learn something. That’s what the whole writing about writing thing is all about, correct? Lesser writers like myself getting an education from the elite wordsmiths… (Of course, like I said, I had never heard of any of these elite authors, but that didn’t matter. They said they were the best of the best right there on their blogs, and they wouldn’t lie about something like that, would they?)

Well,  I have to admit that even though I found exactly what I was expecting to find,  I did in fact learn something. I learned that I was correct all along…

I  definitely do not want to be one of those types of bloggers, or even authors for that matter.

The harsh reality of the blogging world is this – there’s more than just a  convoy of turnip trucks full of us out there. The number of blogs currently on the web is way more than I can count, even if I take off my shoes and socks. Yeah… There are a whole lot of blogs, and each one is vying for attention. So, people – unfortunately, quite a few authors in particular – sometimes decide that in order to attract attention they should become self-appointed experts, then hand out advice from on-high.

“On-high” being the pedestal upon which they have placed themselves. And, unfortunately, the advice they dispense takes the form of criticism, more often than not.

Now, don’t get me wrong here… Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and even to expressing it aloud in most cases, whether critical or not. Of course, I should mention that one shouldn’t always express an opinion out loud… There are times when one should keep one’s opinion to oneself. It’s a matter of discretion and common sense.

At any rate, I readily admit I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to the whole opinion expressing thing… Hell, I’m doing it right now. And, this might even be one of those occasions when I should be keeping my mouth shut. Who knows? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

But the thing is, I always try to make note of the fact that what I am saying is merely my personal opinion, and that disagreeing with me does not a moron make.

So, opinions are not my issue. My gripe is when self-important people treat their opinions like they are hard, cold fact that everyone must cleave to lest they be labeled an idiot.

Well, actually, I should back up a second… I have to be honest. I really don’t have a gripe at all. Truth is, I found all of the stuff I read to be fairly amusing, but mostly because it’s so damn obvious the people who wrote it take themselves way too seriously. And, based on their rhetoric, if you can label it such, apparently they are effin’ brilliant, and I’m… Well… I’m not.

Just like it says in the title of this blog entry. And, to borrow one of this genre of bloggers favorite expressions, “I should know, because I [insert important sounding sh*t here].”

More to come…

Murv